Actually this isn't anything new for Microsoft, in fact they've gone so far as to require editing your system DLLs with a hex editor to adjust basic network configuration settings. And people think us linux hackers are amazing compiling source code, how about those windows guys reverse engineering binary code in DLLS.:)
Your concepts of "require" and "basic" are at odds with most peoples'.
Not that I hate it per se, but I seriously believe it to be a huge potential liability in a standard production environment, let alone an HA/critical one.
From your comment, you do not know enough about the Registry to criticise it.
8 bits == 2^8 == 256 possible addresses. Take out the broadcast and network addresses (.0 and.255) and you have 254 left. Hell, take out even the gateway address as you suggested (although I really don't see why), and you still have 253. Where do the other 2 go?
One for each of the two redundant routers the gateway VIP is on ?
Because we can still actually measure that the mountains are growing TODAY. We can measure how far part of California moves north each year. Your descendants 20 million years from, living on the part of California west of the San Andreas Fault, will be up where Alaska is today.
Why is it ok to extrapolate changes of a few millimetres a year to a mountain range, but not ok to do the same with evolution ?
We cannot observe evolution today. We cannot even artificially make evolution happen by our best efforts.
We can, and have, observed evolution today. Speciation has been documented in both natural and artificial settings.
Wanna know my big engineering hurdle? We should first and foremost be thinking about population controls. Nail that one (figuratively, we want less kids) and we are well on our way to solving some real-world issues.
That's a social problem, not an engineering problem.
Winners don't like depending on other companies to cover their ass. They like being able to do it themselves. They take responsibility because that is their nature.
So if someone doesn't have their own farm, don't build their own vehicles from scratch (including mining and refining the ore and machining the parts), didn't build their own house from scratch, etc, they're a loser ?
One problem with this: What happens when an artist creates a popular album and dies right after it's released? While people hate recording companies in general, they do make a substantial investment in their artists, and they wouldn't get much if any of the fruits of their investment.
Same thing that happens after they pay a $100k headhunting bonus to that hotshot CEO and he dies in a plane crash a week later.
To deal with situations like this, I'd say that a minimum copyright time should apply, regardless of the lifespan of the artists. It should be substantial but reasonably limited - perhaps to 25 years. So, it'd be "Until the artist dies, or 25 years, whichever term is longer."
No. There is not a single valid reason for copyright to last an instant past the death of the creator. No-one else gets paid after they die, why should copyright holders ?
Because other people are making money off their work. First off, the idea that music is some sort of physical product is wrong. Music is a service. By listening, or using as things like a soundtrack, you are using their service. They expect to be paid for that service. How and what is charged is entirely up to the provider.
LIVE music is a service. Pre-recorded music is not.
Should the Beatles (or michael jackson?) not have been paid by Nike for using their song as the foundation of a huge add campaign that may have generated millions of dollars?
Did they record a version specifically for those ads ?
It's Ok for other people to get rich in part by your work?
Sure. Happens to most people every day. Builders, engineers, policemen, cleaners. People are constantly "getting rich" because of something they did and only got paid for once. You might even say it's one of the fundamental parts of a capitalist economy.
This whole discussion really points to the question of how do artists make a living? I mean, artists of all genres and media are creators of unique, valuable stuff. But I think the real issue is this:
No, the real issue is that the vast majority of art is not outstanding. That is, there are tens of millions of people the world over who could produce something as good. Ie: if you're not producing outstanding art, your work simply isn't worth much, because everyone knows at least one person who can do it just as well.
Being a really well marketed ditch digger, still doesn't make you anything more than a ditch digger.
(The same applies to all you "programming is creative" types. Yes, a small proportion of programming is "art". However, most of it isn't, and the average "software engineer" is the IT equivalent of a bricklayer.)
What if they don't want to tour, or live performance doesn't fit their music?
Then tough shit. The rest of us poor sods have to go to work every day to earn money, why should they be any different ?
I'd just like to get this clarified: The claim here is that people have no right to expect to get paid for recordings of their works?
They should have no right to expect to be paid more than once for a given amount of work just like everyone else.
In all the debates about copyright, not once has a reasonable justification been given why people who deal in imaginary property be given such such massively generous benefits and rights compared to everyone else.
I'm only trying to exclude the guy who generally doesn't copy, but once got a mix tape from his girlfriend. Things like routinely pirating software, using a P2P network, or borrowing a friend's CD to make a copy are all included.
In which case, I'd feel quite comfortable claiming a majority of - and at the very least a statistically significant minority - of under-30s are regular copyright infringers. That's going by (my understanding of, at least - I'm not a native) the US's copyright laws. In places like Australia where it's only relatively recently become legal to record (most) things off TV, or format-shift CDs you own onto MP3s, the proportion would be even higher (for example, for the first year or two the iPod was out in Australia, as good as 100% of owners would have been copyright infringers).
Heck, I'd feel comfortable claiming that even 20 years ago a significant minority were regularly copying/lending friends cassettes (/CDs, if you were rich), or recording songs off the radio (and it's certainly difficult to see much difference in principle between either of them and P2P).
As for personal experience bias, take a look at some figures. The first hit I got for "worldwide iPod sales" is a Business Week article from 2004 that puts the global annual sales for such players at 17 million units. Unless you think annual distribution has increased by more than an order of magnitude in the interim, there is no way that everyone under 30 has an iPod or similar, even in first world places like the US, western Europe and Australia.
I have to confess I'm not particularly interested in doing any in-depth research around this topic. However, this article would suggest that mp3-style music players have, indeed, gone through a massive growth phase over the last few years. Apple _alone_ has apparently offloaded ca. 135 million iPods in the last 3 years. Don't forget that most mobile phones today come with an MP3 player, too - it's not just about dedicated devices.
Also, do not forget personal CD players, minidisc players (*very* popular in some parts of the world) and even the good old fashioned cassette walkman.
Basically, I don't consider it even slightly unreasonable to say that the vast majority of under-30s have some sort of "personal audio device" and wouldn't feel particularly nervous about expending that to say a majority of under-40s as well (although it would probably get a bit thin at the upper end of that scale).
You can easily enough test this for yourself. There are plenty of studies out there, commissioned by both sides of the copyright debate. Just go look at the figures, look up the population of the country in question (exclude the very young if you want), and divide them out. I have never seen any study that concludes that the majority of people share files on P2P, or routinely make illegal copies by other means either. Just to be clear, I'm not claiming that most people never infringe copyright at all; there are some obvious daft cases like whistling a tune in the public restroom or singing Happy Birthday at a child's party that IMHO should be covered by fair use but in some places they aren't. But if you're talking about wilful infringement on a significant scale, such as using a P2P network or routinely copying CDs for friends, it sounds like you'll be surprised at what you'll find.
Your "significant scale" conditional seems to be a convenient out here. What's a "significant scale" ? Is having a few infringing songs on your ipod a "significant scale" ? How about a pirated copy of Windows or Office ? How about photocopying pages out of a textbook at school/university ?
Really, the "scale" thing is just a red herring. It's still copyright infringement, and non-trivial numbers of people doing it (and they don't need to be even *close* to a majority to qualify as non-trivial) clearly indicate there's a problem with the law itself, not the people.
I think you're suffering from personal experience bias here. I'd be jaw-droppingly astounded if the majority of people under 30 even have an iPod (or equivalent). Even if they do, your conveniently narrowed demographic happens to cover by far the largest group of regular copyright infringers.
I think you're the one suffering from personal experience bias here (or you're using a ridiculously out-of-context definition that includes, say, all the people under 30 in the whole world). Of all the people I work with or know under 30 (heck, under 40), I can't think of a single one who doesn't have an iPod, or other mp3 player, or walkman, or a mobile phone with music on it, or something similar - and that covers a reasonable breadth of individuals from people living off welfare to investment bankers. Similarly, all of the younger (late school/early university) adults and children I know through these people have them as well. While I recognise the plural of anecdote is not data, I would find it _extremely_ difficult to believe the majority of individuals under 30-40 years old don't own some sort of portable music device (to say nothing of what they might have at home). Heck, even when I was in school 20+ years ago, around half the kids had Walkmans (or rip-offs) and pretty much everyone that was left had at least a "boombox" in their bedroom.
And, yes, my demographic does include what is probably the largest proportion of "copyright infringers", to make a point - the up-and-coming generation of people that will be running the world reasonably soon, clearly don't believe that copying music (or anything else) is the 8th deadly sin. Hopefully, this will eventually result in more sane laws to reflect community standards. I'm expecting some fairly significant flailing around by the copyright lobby in the interim, however, to try and save their obsoleted business models - no-one gets off a gravy train like that willingly.
No, my argument remains the same. OS X is priced as an upgrade. You are trying to argue semantics.
What happened to the "already paid for an OS X licence" part? Now it's just any previous MacOS licence. OS 9 and OS X are two very different pieces of software, analogous to Win95 and Vista.
If you look at other posts, you should find that I use "MacOS", "MacOS X", "OS X", etc interchangably in that context. Apple also consider them part of the same product family - remember, that 'X' stands for 'version 10'.
MacOS "Classic" and MacOS X are certainly very different pieces of software from a technical perspective. However, we're not talking about a technical perspective, we're talking about a pricing structure.
If I don't need a previous piece of software, then purchasing a later version of that software must be purchasing a full install, not just an upgrade. I don't need a previous version of OS X to install it (legally, under the EULA, etc), so the OS X box I buy at retail is a full install and not an upgrade.
You do need a previous version of MacOS, by virtue of needing a Mac. That the installer does not needlessly check for a previous version, does not change this.
You may believe that it's priced as an upgrade, but in the absence of another version that's just a guess.
You may believe that it's not priced as an upgrade, but in the absence of another version, that's just a guess.
It's certainly priced in line with previous OS releases from Apple (I'm thinking System 6, System 7, MacOS 8, MacOS 9 here), but those could be upgrades under either of our arguments.
System 6 wasn't available at retail IIRC, System 7.x was the first (and at around $140, substantially more expensive than OS X today). MacOS 8 and 9 were (again, IIRC) $99.
I see your point about the hardware dongle, and really it's the best point you've made so far. I'm looking at this from the software point of view, and you're now talking about hardware and software.
Apple don't sell Macs without MacOS and they don't licenses OS X for use on anything except Macs. In the context of pricing, you can't separate the two.
I'm looking at this from the software point of view, and you're now talking about hardware and software. I suspect we're coming at this from different angles and probably won't agree.
Here's the difference between our positions. I am largely arguing that Apple prices OS X as an upgrade because their EULA precludes running it on a machine that doesn't have an existing MacOS license. Further evidence to support my position is similar pricing to contemporaries (Windows), the inability to purchase Apple hardware sans OS (ie: you cannot satisfy the EULA without having a previous MacOS license), the difficulty of installing OS X onto non-Apple hardware (apart from the latest version onto a small subset of PCs) and the complete lack of support from Apple if you manage to do so. Your sole counterargument is that the installer doesn't carry out a check for an existing copy - a check that isn't necessary anyway, because owning a Mac == owning a previous copy of MacOS.
To emphasise the point again, "checking for a previous version" is not a valid benchmark. Microsoft do this because it's trivial to buy a PC without Windows (and always has been). Apple do not because it's never, ever been possible to buy a Mac without MacOS and only quite recently become feasible to install it at all on non-Apple hardware. Apple is not being any less restrictive than Microsoft (arguably, more so), they're just using different methodologies.
But what a lot of people on Slashdot fail to appreciate, often in their haste to justify their own illegal behaviour, is that the majority of people are not on-line file sharers. In fact, a substantial majority would not infringe copyright to any significant extent given reasonable fair use provisions (which, I agree with others, are necessary for copyright to be a fair bargain between society and its artists).
That's a mighty long bow you're drawing there. You would have to work very hard, indeed, to convince me that "a substantial majority" of the population had not violated copyright at some point in their lives (before P2P, after all, people used to just swap CDs and tapes). Narrowing the demographic somewhat, I'd be jaw-droppingly astounded if the majority of people under 30 didn't have at least some "illegal" music on their iPod (or equivalent).
If I create something, and it doesn't sell well during my lifetime but does begin to sell well as soon as I've gotten hit by a bus, I can let my family inherit the copyright so that they can collect the money I would have gotten if I'd lived longer. The potential for this to happen encourages me to create it in the first place, especially if I'm old and don't think I'll live to collect royalties myself.
So, if someone has a job that pays poorly while they're alive, but subsequently becomes high-paying after their death, should their employer be forced to pay their surviving family the difference ?
The point isn't just to pay the person who created the work as a reward for their efforts. The point is to offer them an incentive (the promise that they or their children or grandchildren will be paid if the work is successful) in advance, before they've decided whether to invest the time and/or money required to create the work in the first place. Are we (society) offering them too much (is the term of copyright too long)? Yes, and we can debate that issue, but let's not misunderstand the purpose.
Why should "work for copyright" be rewarded so much more generously than any other type of work ?
I think that's the *best* way to revamp our "intellectual property" laws. Change it so that patents and copyrights may only be held by the individuals who created the work or invented the patentable idea. Corporations should be barred from owning the copyrights or patents. The only IP a corporation may own is its trademarks.
I agree with the spirit, but practically speaking this isn't doable. Many works inherently involve multiple participants. No one person can hold the copyright to, say, a movie.
Patents would be good for the standard 20 years, or to the death of the patent holders, whichever comes first. Copyrights would be good for the life of the authors. I mean, why the hell not? Sure, that might be 80 years, but what the hell. It's not like we *need* it.
Life + (X number of years) is a good way to keep people from getting killed for access to their highly profitable creation though... 70 years is probably too long, but I think 15 years is reasonable.
I do not understand the rationale behind this argument, yet it is raised all the time. Are you seriously suggesting people will commit premeditated murder rather than copyright infringement ?
Of course it's 'refutable.' It installs without regard for any previous OS version, therefore it's a standalone OS install.
This is not relevant to how it is priced.
I can buy OS X 10.5 and install it on a machine that shipped with OS 9. No check is made for a previous version of OS X, or even a previous version of any Mac OS.
Nor does one need to exist, since you can't have a Mac without having previously paid for a MacOS license. When a hardware dongle exists, that's all the "proof" required.
Want to install OS X on non-Apple hardware? Just get an EFI-based PC and go ahead. No checks, no upgrades. Yes, it's not within the licence but it again shows the nature of the non-upgrade OS X retail box.
If you want to step outside the bounds of the EULA, then it's only fair to do the same with Vista, no ? In which case you can do exactly the same thing with an "upgrade" version of Vista.
OS X is not sold as an upgrade, and does not act as an upgrade. You need to show at least one of these to prove it's an upgrade OS.
It is most certainly sold as an upgrade, as demonstrated by Apple explicitly disallowing you from using it on any machine that doesn't already have a MacOS license.
Wishing don't make it so, drsmithy.
Good advice, you should follow it. No matter how much you wish, you cannot change the irrefutable fact that Apple still only license retail versions of MacOS X on machines that already have MacOS licenses. Hence, it is sold (and priced) as an upgrade.
I'm going to stop you right there. You know nothing about me or my family, yet you insist that a 12 year old couldn't know his parent's finances.
Apparently you have great difficulties comprehending that the world is not black and white. I "insisted" nothing. I pointed out that it was extremely *unlikely* that someone not even into their teens would have a comprehensive understanding of their family's financial affairs.
Not all families work like yours. My family was particularly dysfunctional but I'm not lying about this one. Your inability to believe this and your willingness to call people liar clearly mark you as a narrow minded zealot with an agenda.
I haven't called anyone a liar who wasn't lying. My scepticism is founded in a) experience (most *adults* don't have a good handle on their own finances) and b) your reticence to offer any further clarification on the topic.
I'd have more luck having a sane and rational argument with a brick so instead of raising my blood pressure and bothering to counter each of your inane and childish rants I'm going to laugh at your ass and leave your delusions unchallenged. Have a lovely day in your little fantasy land where commercial operating systems cost next to nothing. You're not worth my time.
Careful. Waving around hypocrisy like that could take someone's eye out.
Really? Irrelevant? I didn't know that. I thought it made all the difference. But I'll play by your rules for a moment.
Yes, irrelevant. Because this discussion is about OS prices as a discrete item, not a proportion of an overall cost.
Your own figures 'showed' that Vista and 3.1 are the "same cost" essentially. But apparently there's been no improvements to hardware, nothing like 386->core 2 duo, no no. We're using the same hardware essentially, and it certainly isn't any cheaper by comparison.
Firstly, my figures showed that DOS+Windows 3.1 (the only remotely rational comparison to Vista from that timeframe) cost about 30% more in adjusted dollars. Secondly, I never said anything of the sort about "using the same hardware", I merely pointed out there haven't been many functional improvements in computers. You appear to be lying in an attempt to divert attention away from your complete lack of actual argument.
Amazon has Vista Upgrade for ~$200, whereas the Apple Store has Leopard for $130, unless you're smart and get the 4 serial family pack, which is $40 per license. Not basically the same cost. At all.
Home Premium is more than equivalent to OS X and Amazon lists it at US$95. Sorry, you're wrong again. The family pack is, of course, only useful if you actually have a family full of Macs (in which case, yes, OS X is cheaper - congratulations, you "won" an argument I never made).
For the Jeopardy and other programs my wife enjoys, as well as the evening news, an old $200 TV is plenty good enough.
Well, that's great, but it doesn't change the fact that Vista has a fairly significant piece of functionality - which many people believe is worth purchasing a copy for on its own (there's a lot of people out there with XP of Vista media centres) - that OS X lacks.
How much actual difference is there between an "OEM" and a "Full Retail" copy? Certainly the price difference cannot account for a cardboard box and a plastic disk.
An OEM copy is only licensed to be used with the hardware it is sold with (how legally enforceable that is, is another matter).
That's before you even consider that a German court ruled that nothing prevented retail sales of "OEM Software".
I'm not entirely sure what your point is ? For starters, I'm not voicing any opinions whatsoever on the OEM vs retail product differentiation. Further, what may hold true in one German court most certainly cannot be assumed to hold true in all courts (even within Germany, unless it was their highest Court).
What else do you propose I call people who either knowingly make assertions out of ignorance, or lie, then ?
Could you be more patronizing or insulting if you tried? I knew exactly what our budget breakdown was growing up thanks, from about the age of 10 or 12.
Sure. I could point out how unlikely it was that a 10-12 year old knew the details of his parents finances, no matter how smart he thought he was back then. Especially since you haven't indicated how much they each earning back in the early '90s. What proportion of the household income went on food ? Taxes ? Mortage/rent ? Transport ?
You make a back of the envelope calculation you admit is useless, and then say it follows that you've proven your point????? MORON.
No, I never said it proved my point, I said it provided support for my argument. Which is a hell of lot more than you, or any poster to this thread, has attempted to do, with their "arguments" that mostly boil down to "lalalalalala I'm right and your're wrong lalalalalala".
Vista has actually cut out a LOT of useful functionality, and replaced it with half arsed crap that doesn't work (like a backup that's worse than useless because the joke's on you if you bother to use it) and a bunch of glitz. I can't fucking BELIEVE they've crippled simple stuff like the sound recorder! Go ahead compare that goddamn accessory with the XP version or even the win 3.1 version!!!! and tell me that little feature of Vista is improved.
It's "cut a lot of useful functionality", but the best you can come up with is a problem that was most likely user related and the sound recorder ?
What about all the functionality it's added since ~1992 ? Pre-emptive multitasking, protected memory, symmetric processing, hardware abstraction layers, networking stacks, web browsers, remote control, email clients, media players, home movie authoring, home theatre, etc. All that, yet in adjusted dollars you're paying less now than you were in ~1992.
...and a Rolls Royce isn't expensive compared to a Space Shuttle. How many people average Jo users do you know that own legit versions of Photoshop - which by the way is a specialized piece of editing software that's got features most people would find difficult to use.
I know more people with legit copies of software like Photoshop than I do who bought the "Full Retail" version of Windows (any version, ever) - and that's without even considering actual businesses I've worked for and with.
Oh you know some other way of getting it that doesn't involve buying a whole new machine?
If you have a PC that came with some version of Windows (most people), buy an upgrade version. The percentage of people who have PCs that didn't come with some version of Windows, would struggle to hit whole-number percentages.
Tax deducted? Buddy do you know how a tax deducation works? You get the full price taken off your taxable income. The maximum portion you're paying of that in Aus is less than 50%. So you write off $600 Windows and the most you'll get back is under $300.
Don't forget GST. Now take that (unrealistic, but whatever) $300 and spread it across 3-5 years (let's say 4) of use. There are about 900 working days over 4 years, so the per-day cost for that "expensive" copy of Vista (that they wouldn't have bought anyway) to a business is about $0.33.
Regardless, downloading and installing an alternative piece of free software is $0.
And that's about all it's worth if it doesn't meet your needs.
I'm certainly not going to tell someone struggling to make ends meet to part with $300-$600 on top of whatever they spend on hardware because hey it's cheap tax "amortised over 3 years and tax deducted". You come across sounding like a spoilt rich arsehole.
To a business, it *is* cheap (especially, as I keep trying to point out, in the context of other pieces of major commercial softw
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Actually this isn't anything new for Microsoft, in fact they've gone so far as to require editing your system DLLs with a hex editor to adjust basic network configuration settings. And people think us linux hackers are amazing compiling source code, how about those windows guys reverse engineering binary code in DLLS. :)
Your concepts of "require" and "basic" are at odds with most peoples'.
Not that I hate it per se, but I seriously believe it to be a huge potential liability in a standard production environment, let alone an HA/critical one.
From your comment, you do not know enough about the Registry to criticise it.
Because no one is subject to random economic events.
Bullshit.
I find that ironic, considering their industry is based solely around the insecurity of Windows.
False. The primary purpose of AV software is to deflect the bullet when the user tries to shoot himself in the foot.
8 bits == 2^8 == 256 possible addresses. Take out the broadcast and network addresses (.0 and .255) and you have 254 left. Hell, take out even the gateway address as you suggested (although I really don't see why), and you still have 253. Where do the other 2 go?
One for each of the two redundant routers the gateway VIP is on ?
Because we can still actually measure that the mountains are growing TODAY. We can measure how far part of California moves north each year. Your descendants 20 million years from, living on the part of California west of the San Andreas Fault, will be up where Alaska is today.
Why is it ok to extrapolate changes of a few millimetres a year to a mountain range, but not ok to do the same with evolution ?
We cannot observe evolution today. We cannot even artificially make evolution happen by our best efforts.
We can, and have, observed evolution today. Speciation has been documented in both natural and artificial settings.
Wanna know my big engineering hurdle? We should first and foremost be thinking about population controls. Nail that one (figuratively, we want less kids) and we are well on our way to solving some real-world issues.
That's a social problem, not an engineering problem.
Winners don't like depending on other companies to cover their ass. They like being able to do it themselves. They take responsibility because that is their nature.
So if someone doesn't have their own farm, don't build their own vehicles from scratch (including mining and refining the ore and machining the parts), didn't build their own house from scratch, etc, they're a loser ?
One problem with this: What happens when an artist creates a popular album and dies right after it's released? While people hate recording companies in general, they do make a substantial investment in their artists, and they wouldn't get much if any of the fruits of their investment.
Same thing that happens after they pay a $100k headhunting bonus to that hotshot CEO and he dies in a plane crash a week later.
To deal with situations like this, I'd say that a minimum copyright time should apply, regardless of the lifespan of the artists. It should be substantial but reasonably limited - perhaps to 25 years. So, it'd be "Until the artist dies, or 25 years, whichever term is longer."
No. There is not a single valid reason for copyright to last an instant past the death of the creator. No-one else gets paid after they die, why should copyright holders ?
Because other people are making money off their work. First off, the idea that music is some sort of physical product is wrong. Music is a service. By listening, or using as things like a soundtrack, you are using their service. They expect to be paid for that service. How and what is charged is entirely up to the provider.
LIVE music is a service. Pre-recorded music is not.
Should the Beatles (or michael jackson?) not have been paid by Nike for using their song as the foundation of a huge add campaign that may have generated millions of dollars?
Did they record a version specifically for those ads ?
It's Ok for other people to get rich in part by your work?
Sure. Happens to most people every day. Builders, engineers, policemen, cleaners. People are constantly "getting rich" because of something they did and only got paid for once. You might even say it's one of the fundamental parts of a capitalist economy.
This whole discussion really points to the question of how do artists make a living? I mean, artists of all genres and media are creators of unique, valuable stuff. But I think the real issue is this:
No, the real issue is that the vast majority of art is not outstanding. That is, there are tens of millions of people the world over who could produce something as good. Ie: if you're not producing outstanding art, your work simply isn't worth much, because everyone knows at least one person who can do it just as well.
Being a really well marketed ditch digger, still doesn't make you anything more than a ditch digger.
(The same applies to all you "programming is creative" types. Yes, a small proportion of programming is "art". However, most of it isn't, and the average "software engineer" is the IT equivalent of a bricklayer.)
What if they don't want to tour, or live performance doesn't fit their music?
Then tough shit. The rest of us poor sods have to go to work every day to earn money, why should they be any different ?
I'd just like to get this clarified: The claim here is that people have no right to expect to get paid for recordings of their works?
They should have no right to expect to be paid more than once for a given amount of work just like everyone else .
In all the debates about copyright, not once has a reasonable justification been given why people who deal in imaginary property be given such such massively generous benefits and rights compared to everyone else.
I'm only trying to exclude the guy who generally doesn't copy, but once got a mix tape from his girlfriend. Things like routinely pirating software, using a P2P network, or borrowing a friend's CD to make a copy are all included.
In which case, I'd feel quite comfortable claiming a majority of - and at the very least a statistically significant minority - of under-30s are regular copyright infringers. That's going by (my understanding of, at least - I'm not a native) the US's copyright laws. In places like Australia where it's only relatively recently become legal to record (most) things off TV, or format-shift CDs you own onto MP3s, the proportion would be even higher (for example, for the first year or two the iPod was out in Australia, as good as 100% of owners would have been copyright infringers).
Heck, I'd feel comfortable claiming that even 20 years ago a significant minority were regularly copying/lending friends cassettes (/CDs, if you were rich), or recording songs off the radio (and it's certainly difficult to see much difference in principle between either of them and P2P).
As for personal experience bias, take a look at some figures. The first hit I got for "worldwide iPod sales" is a Business Week article from 2004 that puts the global annual sales for such players at 17 million units. Unless you think annual distribution has increased by more than an order of magnitude in the interim, there is no way that everyone under 30 has an iPod or similar, even in first world places like the US, western Europe and Australia.
I have to confess I'm not particularly interested in doing any in-depth research around this topic. However, this article would suggest that mp3-style music players have, indeed, gone through a massive growth phase over the last few years. Apple _alone_ has apparently offloaded ca. 135 million iPods in the last 3 years. Don't forget that most mobile phones today come with an MP3 player, too - it's not just about dedicated devices.
Also, do not forget personal CD players, minidisc players (*very* popular in some parts of the world) and even the good old fashioned cassette walkman.
Basically, I don't consider it even slightly unreasonable to say that the vast majority of under-30s have some sort of "personal audio device" and wouldn't feel particularly nervous about expending that to say a majority of under-40s as well (although it would probably get a bit thin at the upper end of that scale).
You can easily enough test this for yourself. There are plenty of studies out there, commissioned by both sides of the copyright debate. Just go look at the figures, look up the population of the country in question (exclude the very young if you want), and divide them out. I have never seen any study that concludes that the majority of people share files on P2P, or routinely make illegal copies by other means either. Just to be clear, I'm not claiming that most people never infringe copyright at all; there are some obvious daft cases like whistling a tune in the public restroom or singing Happy Birthday at a child's party that IMHO should be covered by fair use but in some places they aren't. But if you're talking about wilful infringement on a significant scale, such as using a P2P network or routinely copying CDs for friends, it sounds like you'll be surprised at what you'll find.
Your "significant scale" conditional seems to be a convenient out here. What's a "significant scale" ? Is having a few infringing songs on your ipod a "significant scale" ? How about a pirated copy of Windows or Office ? How about photocopying pages out of a textbook at school/university ?
Really, the "scale" thing is just a red herring. It's still copyright infringement, and non-trivial numbers of people doing it (and they don't need to be even *close* to a majority to qualify as non-trivial) clearly indicate there's a problem with the law itself, not the people.
I think you're suffering from personal experience bias here. I'd be jaw-droppingly astounded if the majority of people under 30 even have an iPod (or equivalent). Even if they do, your conveniently narrowed demographic happens to cover by far the largest group of regular copyright infringers.
I think you're the one suffering from personal experience bias here (or you're using a ridiculously out-of-context definition that includes, say, all the people under 30 in the whole world). Of all the people I work with or know under 30 (heck, under 40), I can't think of a single one who doesn't have an iPod, or other mp3 player, or walkman, or a mobile phone with music on it, or something similar - and that covers a reasonable breadth of individuals from people living off welfare to investment bankers. Similarly, all of the younger (late school/early university) adults and children I know through these people have them as well. While I recognise the plural of anecdote is not data, I would find it _extremely_ difficult to believe the majority of individuals under 30-40 years old don't own some sort of portable music device (to say nothing of what they might have at home). Heck, even when I was in school 20+ years ago, around half the kids had Walkmans (or rip-offs) and pretty much everyone that was left had at least a "boombox" in their bedroom.
And, yes, my demographic does include what is probably the largest proportion of "copyright infringers", to make a point - the up-and-coming generation of people that will be running the world reasonably soon, clearly don't believe that copying music (or anything else) is the 8th deadly sin. Hopefully, this will eventually result in more sane laws to reflect community standards. I'm expecting some fairly significant flailing around by the copyright lobby in the interim, however, to try and save their obsoleted business models - no-one gets off a gravy train like that willingly.
You're changing your argument now.
No, my argument remains the same. OS X is priced as an upgrade. You are trying to argue semantics.
What happened to the "already paid for an OS X licence" part? Now it's just any previous MacOS licence. OS 9 and OS X are two very different pieces of software, analogous to Win95 and Vista.
If you look at other posts, you should find that I use "MacOS", "MacOS X", "OS X", etc interchangably in that context. Apple also consider them part of the same product family - remember, that 'X' stands for 'version 10'.
MacOS "Classic" and MacOS X are certainly very different pieces of software from a technical perspective. However, we're not talking about a technical perspective, we're talking about a pricing structure.
If I don't need a previous piece of software, then purchasing a later version of that software must be purchasing a full install, not just an upgrade. I don't need a previous version of OS X to install it (legally, under the EULA, etc), so the OS X box I buy at retail is a full install and not an upgrade.
You do need a previous version of MacOS, by virtue of needing a Mac. That the installer does not needlessly check for a previous version, does not change this.
You may believe that it's priced as an upgrade, but in the absence of another version that's just a guess.
You may believe that it's not priced as an upgrade, but in the absence of another version, that's just a guess.
It's certainly priced in line with previous OS releases from Apple (I'm thinking System 6, System 7, MacOS 8, MacOS 9 here), but those could be upgrades under either of our arguments.
System 6 wasn't available at retail IIRC, System 7.x was the first (and at around $140, substantially more expensive than OS X today). MacOS 8 and 9 were (again, IIRC) $99.
I see your point about the hardware dongle, and really it's the best point you've made so far. I'm looking at this from the software point of view, and you're now talking about hardware and software.
Apple don't sell Macs without MacOS and they don't licenses OS X for use on anything except Macs. In the context of pricing, you can't separate the two.
I'm looking at this from the software point of view, and you're now talking about hardware and software. I suspect we're coming at this from different angles and probably won't agree.
Here's the difference between our positions. I am largely arguing that Apple prices OS X as an upgrade because their EULA precludes running it on a machine that doesn't have an existing MacOS license. Further evidence to support my position is similar pricing to contemporaries (Windows), the inability to purchase Apple hardware sans OS (ie: you cannot satisfy the EULA without having a previous MacOS license), the difficulty of installing OS X onto non-Apple hardware (apart from the latest version onto a small subset of PCs) and the complete lack of support from Apple if you manage to do so. Your sole counterargument is that the installer doesn't carry out a check for an existing copy - a check that isn't necessary anyway, because owning a Mac == owning a previous copy of MacOS.
To emphasise the point again, "checking for a previous version" is not a valid benchmark. Microsoft do this because it's trivial to buy a PC without Windows (and always has been). Apple do not because it's never, ever been possible to buy a Mac without MacOS and only quite recently become feasible to install it at all on non-Apple hardware. Apple is not being any less restrictive than Microsoft (arguably, more so), they're just using different methodologies.
But what a lot of people on Slashdot fail to appreciate, often in their haste to justify their own illegal behaviour, is that the majority of people are not on-line file sharers. In fact, a substantial majority would not infringe copyright to any significant extent given reasonable fair use provisions (which, I agree with others, are necessary for copyright to be a fair bargain between society and its artists).
That's a mighty long bow you're drawing there. You would have to work very hard, indeed, to convince me that "a substantial majority" of the population had not violated copyright at some point in their lives (before P2P, after all, people used to just swap CDs and tapes). Narrowing the demographic somewhat, I'd be jaw-droppingly astounded if the majority of people under 30 didn't have at least some "illegal" music on their iPod (or equivalent).
If I create something, and it doesn't sell well during my lifetime but does begin to sell well as soon as I've gotten hit by a bus, I can let my family inherit the copyright so that they can collect the money I would have gotten if I'd lived longer. The potential for this to happen encourages me to create it in the first place, especially if I'm old and don't think I'll live to collect royalties myself.
So, if someone has a job that pays poorly while they're alive, but subsequently becomes high-paying after their death, should their employer be forced to pay their surviving family the difference ?
The point isn't just to pay the person who created the work as a reward for their efforts. The point is to offer them an incentive (the promise that they or their children or grandchildren will be paid if the work is successful) in advance, before they've decided whether to invest the time and/or money required to create the work in the first place. Are we (society) offering them too much (is the term of copyright too long)? Yes, and we can debate that issue, but let's not misunderstand the purpose.
Why should "work for copyright" be rewarded so much more generously than any other type of work ?
I think that's the *best* way to revamp our "intellectual property" laws. Change it so that patents and copyrights may only be held by the individuals who created the work or invented the patentable idea. Corporations should be barred from owning the copyrights or patents. The only IP a corporation may own is its trademarks.
I agree with the spirit, but practically speaking this isn't doable. Many works inherently involve multiple participants. No one person can hold the copyright to, say, a movie.
Patents would be good for the standard 20 years, or to the death of the patent holders, whichever comes first. Copyrights would be good for the life of the authors. I mean, why the hell not? Sure, that might be 80 years, but what the hell. It's not like we *need* it.
Because it removes incentive to create more.
Life + (X number of years) is a good way to keep people from getting killed for access to their highly profitable creation though... 70 years is probably too long, but I think 15 years is reasonable.
I do not understand the rationale behind this argument, yet it is raised all the time. Are you seriously suggesting people will commit premeditated murder rather than copyright infringement ?
Of course it's 'refutable.' It installs without regard for any previous OS version, therefore it's a standalone OS install.
This is not relevant to how it is priced.
I can buy OS X 10.5 and install it on a machine that shipped with OS 9. No check is made for a previous version of OS X, or even a previous version of any Mac OS.
Nor does one need to exist, since you can't have a Mac without having previously paid for a MacOS license. When a hardware dongle exists, that's all the "proof" required.
Want to install OS X on non-Apple hardware? Just get an EFI-based PC and go ahead. No checks, no upgrades. Yes, it's not within the licence but it again shows the nature of the non-upgrade OS X retail box.
If you want to step outside the bounds of the EULA, then it's only fair to do the same with Vista, no ? In which case you can do exactly the same thing with an "upgrade" version of Vista.
OS X is not sold as an upgrade, and does not act as an upgrade. You need to show at least one of these to prove it's an upgrade OS.
It is most certainly sold as an upgrade, as demonstrated by Apple explicitly disallowing you from using it on any machine that doesn't already have a MacOS license.
Wishing don't make it so, drsmithy.
Good advice, you should follow it. No matter how much you wish, you cannot change the irrefutable fact that Apple still only license retail versions of MacOS X on machines that already have MacOS licenses. Hence, it is sold (and priced) as an upgrade.
I'm going to stop you right there. You know nothing about me or my family, yet you insist that a 12 year old couldn't know his parent's finances.
Apparently you have great difficulties comprehending that the world is not black and white. I "insisted" nothing. I pointed out that it was extremely *unlikely* that someone not even into their teens would have a comprehensive understanding of their family's financial affairs.
Not all families work like yours. My family was particularly dysfunctional but I'm not lying about this one. Your inability to believe this and your willingness to call people liar clearly mark you as a narrow minded zealot with an agenda.
I haven't called anyone a liar who wasn't lying. My scepticism is founded in a) experience (most *adults* don't have a good handle on their own finances) and b) your reticence to offer any further clarification on the topic.
I'd have more luck having a sane and rational argument with a brick so instead of raising my blood pressure and bothering to counter each of your inane and childish rants I'm going to laugh at your ass and leave your delusions unchallenged. Have a lovely day in your little fantasy land where commercial operating systems cost next to nothing. You're not worth my time.
Careful. Waving around hypocrisy like that could take someone's eye out.
Really? Irrelevant? I didn't know that. I thought it made all the difference. But I'll play by your rules for a moment.
Yes, irrelevant. Because this discussion is about OS prices as a discrete item, not a proportion of an overall cost.
Your own figures 'showed' that Vista and 3.1 are the "same cost" essentially. But apparently there's been no improvements to hardware, nothing like 386->core 2 duo, no no. We're using the same hardware essentially, and it certainly isn't any cheaper by comparison.
Firstly, my figures showed that DOS+Windows 3.1 (the only remotely rational comparison to Vista from that timeframe) cost about 30% more in adjusted dollars. Secondly, I never said anything of the sort about "using the same hardware", I merely pointed out there haven't been many functional improvements in computers. You appear to be lying in an attempt to divert attention away from your complete lack of actual argument.
Amazon has Vista Upgrade for ~$200, whereas the Apple Store has Leopard for $130, unless you're smart and get the 4 serial family pack, which is $40 per license. Not basically the same cost. At all.
Home Premium is more than equivalent to OS X and Amazon lists it at US$95. Sorry, you're wrong again. The family pack is, of course, only useful if you actually have a family full of Macs (in which case, yes, OS X is cheaper - congratulations, you "won" an argument I never made).
For the Jeopardy and other programs my wife enjoys, as well as the evening news, an old $200 TV is plenty good enough.
Well, that's great, but it doesn't change the fact that Vista has a fairly significant piece of functionality - which many people believe is worth purchasing a copy for on its own (there's a lot of people out there with XP of Vista media centres) - that OS X lacks.
How much actual difference is there between an "OEM" and a "Full Retail" copy? Certainly the price difference cannot account for a cardboard box and a plastic disk.
An OEM copy is only licensed to be used with the hardware it is sold with (how legally enforceable that is, is another matter).
That's before you even consider that a German court ruled that nothing prevented retail sales of "OEM Software".
I'm not entirely sure what your point is ? For starters, I'm not voicing any opinions whatsoever on the OEM vs retail product differentiation. Further, what may hold true in one German court most certainly cannot be assumed to hold true in all courts (even within Germany, unless it was their highest Court).
Horse shit.
What else do you propose I call people who either knowingly make assertions out of ignorance, or lie, then ?
Could you be more patronizing or insulting if you tried? I knew exactly what our budget breakdown was growing up thanks, from about the age of 10 or 12.
Sure. I could point out how unlikely it was that a 10-12 year old knew the details of his parents finances, no matter how smart he thought he was back then. Especially since you haven't indicated how much they each earning back in the early '90s. What proportion of the household income went on food ? Taxes ? Mortage/rent ? Transport ?
You make a back of the envelope calculation you admit is useless, and then say it follows that you've proven your point????? MORON.
No, I never said it proved my point, I said it provided support for my argument. Which is a hell of lot more than you, or any poster to this thread, has attempted to do, with their "arguments" that mostly boil down to "lalalalalala I'm right and your're wrong lalalalalala".
Vista has actually cut out a LOT of useful functionality, and replaced it with half arsed crap that doesn't work (like a backup that's worse than useless because the joke's on you if you bother to use it) and a bunch of glitz. I can't fucking BELIEVE they've crippled simple stuff like the sound recorder! Go ahead compare that goddamn accessory with the XP version or even the win 3.1 version!!!! and tell me that little feature of Vista is improved.
It's "cut a lot of useful functionality", but the best you can come up with is a problem that was most likely user related and the sound recorder ?
What about all the functionality it's added since ~1992 ? Pre-emptive multitasking, protected memory, symmetric processing, hardware abstraction layers, networking stacks, web browsers, remote control, email clients, media players, home movie authoring, home theatre, etc. All that, yet in adjusted dollars you're paying less now than you were in ~1992.
I know more people with legit copies of software like Photoshop than I do who bought the "Full Retail" version of Windows (any version, ever) - and that's without even considering actual businesses I've worked for and with.
Oh you know some other way of getting it that doesn't involve buying a whole new machine?
If you have a PC that came with some version of Windows (most people), buy an upgrade version. The percentage of people who have PCs that didn't come with some version of Windows, would struggle to hit whole-number percentages.
Tax deducted? Buddy do you know how a tax deducation works? You get the full price taken off your taxable income. The maximum portion you're paying of that in Aus is less than 50%. So you write off $600 Windows and the most you'll get back is under $300.
Don't forget GST. Now take that (unrealistic, but whatever) $300 and spread it across 3-5 years (let's say 4) of use. There are about 900 working days over 4 years, so the per-day cost for that "expensive" copy of Vista (that they wouldn't have bought anyway) to a business is about $0.33.
Regardless, downloading and installing an alternative piece of free software is $0.
And that's about all it's worth if it doesn't meet your needs.
I'm certainly not going to tell someone struggling to make ends meet to part with $300-$600 on top of whatever they spend on hardware because hey it's cheap tax "amortised over 3 years and tax deducted". You come across sounding like a spoilt rich arsehole.
To a business, it *is* cheap (especially, as I keep trying to point out, in the context of other pieces of major commercial softw