Actually, I think you hear a chorus of people pointing out the hypocrisy of a music industry that claims to want to protect artists, and then rips them off. Just, y'know, FYI.
I do think you have the hypocrisy claim backward. The last time I checked, "industry" implied creating and protecting profit, not protecting entities out of some sense of decency (If this view is misinformed I'd love correction). The allegation should instead be leveled against the majority of the chorus who spend money on pop drivel, be it movies, CDs, cable/satellite, or even watch Commercial TV and then expect decent behavior when money is on the line. All the while nobody understands that the real world is most often driven by profit or other material gain, not protecting individual rights or property.
The real moral of this story is that copyright and license are important for anything anybody produces. If you want protection, know your rights and responsibilities and vigorously protect and defend them: be your own advocate. Any corporation where intellectual property is important understands this and has departments dedicated to protecting and advancing their interests. So far as I can tell, none of the legal niceties (e.g. something as simple as "(c)2001 Tempest" on the work) were observed by the original arranger. If Tempest cares and can find the help, he can still register a copyright of the arrangement in question. The step of obtaining a copyright will force Geffen Records to take notice, rather than automatically falling in to the category of "quacks who wrote 'I wrote song X Y years ago and I want my royalties' letters".
Hark! Do I hear the dull roar of a Free (as in beer) community enraged by Corporate America, worse the dreaded Music Industry, treading on the rights of the proletariat or individual? Are mine eyes deceiving, or is the general tone of comments really asking for an expansion or, at the very least, greater enforcement of copyright laws? Just because this "four chord" Nelly Furtado song is very (very+) similar, yet corporate-ly created, doesn't necessary mean it was purposefully stolen. Simply put, there are only so many listenable chord progressions and only so many samples. Worse, the human brain is a very odd thing, especially when it comes to music, that can retain amazingly detailed information subconsciously (which I sadly have personal knowledge of from my own "phonographic memory"). I can very well imagine that whomever did the sequencing or production may have once heard Tempest's track, such that this take "just sounded right". It is also possible, given the relative simplicity of the basic "riff" and lack of melody in modern music, that this could have just happened with no sinister undertones (no pun intended). For a humorous, though simplified, example take a listen to this rant on Pachelbel's Canon in D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM.
I really can't imagine that all the folks up in arms over this case of corporate "stealing" are paying their "quarter" every time they sing "Happy Birthday" in public http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You #Copyright_issues_and_public_performances, that that anybody whose ever done Karaoke has checked their venue's status with ASCAP, made sure the cover band they hired is paying the necessary royalties,...
Yeah, I didn't think so either.
The whole copyright system is broken and needs fixing. Music is no different, but the answer is not punish the legitimate musicians in the mean time.
I think you're slightly out of touch. Your examples are not the real concers for a farmer. The "break the bank" costs are fuel, electricity, seed, fertilizer, pesticides and the mortgage. The only reason a corporate farm is more competitive than the little guy is because they can get better deals on the consumables. They also typically make do with fewer hands, but this is not because they have larger, more efficient equiptment. Rather, they take short cuts and do not steward their land as well.
Part of the reason the family farm is in trouble is that very few folks in the business think outside the box to use new technologies to their fullest advantage and we, as a society, do not reward them for doing so.
I don't disagree with saying Farmers shouldn't be given special treatment, but I do disagree with you saying the ginormous factory/corporate farm is the only model worth pursuing. The factory farm produces an artificially cheap product through unsustainable means. If that is your idea of efficiency lord help us all.
A better solution would be to have the homeowners association pay for the sound barriers.
Within or near city centers many of the effected neighborhoods were built long before the road was expanded or even built. Many were boulivards carrying traffic at sedate speeds before their conversion to multi-lane super-highways that carry a greatly increased volume of vehicles at much higher speeds.
To follow a slightly different logic: The people using the roads should be the ones paying for them (forget about the lower taxes on diesel fuel used by the large trucks whose relentless pounding destroys the roads). As a direct result of the people using the new road, there is a large increase in noise. Therefore, as part of the roadway's construction or expansion, noise reduction needs to be included to try and mitigate some of the new noise pollution.
Setting realistic expectations for reachability is only part of the problem. People place calls for conversation at inappropriate times (e.g. driving or *in* restuarants or stores to use up that "wasted" time) and, even if they recieve or place a call during an "appropriate time", there is a general unwillingness to hang up with the disembodied voice gabbing in their ear when the physical situation changes. The net effect is that quite a few folks end up ignoring completely or only giving partial attention to real world situations that need their undevided attention.
I can't count the number of folks I've seen drive extremely poorly, bollux up the works going through check-out lines or ignore friends at dinner all while carrying on a conversations with the box at their ear. Apart from when you're isolated in a box (driving your car or at home) the conversations are loud and disruptive in any but the noisiest of environments, making for an unenjoyable time for the friends in the flesh and everybody within earshot.
What ever happened to Bungee being able to keep its culture in the burocracy known as Microsoft? If you start dictating the tools used for the job, that is as good a way as any to kill off the culture. People are making decisions based on doing a job they like, not just the $$ or benes. Leave them alone and you will recieve rewards. Start dictating practice and you may as well have fired the lot.
@Home is just trying to get people using their service for "buisiness" to pay buisiness (read higher) rate. Traffic over a VPN isn't necessarily any more than your home user reading web pages or playing streaming audio, but it is just @Home's way of milking more money out of the companies, which they think have the money.
Linux has been here at U of M for quite a long time. It had been used experimentally for quite awhile and it has started to become mainstream (www.eecs.umich.edu is debian).
On the subject of CAEN Linux. It was in development and use long before the MS License came about. No conspiricy here. Sorry folks. It isn't distributatly outside the U because of some of the encryption hacks (kerberos) and AFS daemons.
If you want something really exciting for mainstream linux at at least this University, LSA (note, not CoE) is working on a synctree for linux (based on RedHat 6.0ish). I havn't gotten an update recently but I think it is almost done. Both good and bad, it at least means an end (ok, sorry. Its academia, lets be honest here, a slight decrease) to the rampant security holes from poorly (to nonexistantly ) administered boxes in the largest college.
Not quite. Novell purchased DR-DOS from Digital Research. It didn't want to pursue MS, least they upset the behemoth. Novell also asked that Caldera NOT pursue litigation.
MS Won this round. No complaints or equivocations. We learned our lession after the first round of tests and started to improve. The absolute best thing we can do is only qualify, and as a last resort ignore, the soon to come MS attacks. This analysis is a good start to qualifying them, but we can't be content. Linux is not invincable, nor will it ever be. Take the this in stride and don't whine. Venting your frustration here is as good as walking into the hallowed halls in Redmond and saying "I'm upset, grind me under your heal please. Take my pride in my OS, it isn't as good as I thought it was!" Domination is just around the corner, but only if you spend your time working towards it rather than saying "It's (still) not fair".
This whole thing kind of strikes me as a semi-publicitiy stunt. People shouldn't write publicly about their former employers unless it's really, really bad. And in this case, it was just a minor personality conflict.
Kind of ridiculous. If you don't like it, just quit. It's that simple.
The Open Source Community is just that, a community. Communication happens. If the idea was for this to be kept quiet, Raster would not have been able to tell ANYBODY about it. Here in/. land, the responsibility for informing and putting the issues in the community in perspective is that of the persons posting the news stories (CT, Hemos, etc). Raster himself did not submit the story. The external E developers deserved to know what was going on. The fact that it got posted on/. blew everything out of proportion.
Remember, the internet brings us all together. By that same token if you make a mistake there is a possibility of millions reading about it. Also, if you write something you could later regret, there is a possibility of millions reading it. Raster made the latter mistake. Live and learn.
CD's are different from magnetic media. Also, the CD has been an audio standard for ~20 years and there still isn't a widely available (and cheap) standard to replace it (Mini-Disks compete more with Tapes than anything else and DVD's have a strike against them because video is listed in the title). They are only now getting to be more of a standard than a tape deck in cars. The CD-ROM drive is only now getting (slowly) replaced in computer systems by DVD-ROM drives, which are backwards compatable. I have yet to see software distributed on DVD (4GB is a lot of space to fill and DVD stamping costs are higher). CD's are legacy. However, Consumers don't ever want to have to throw away their music collections or software. You can still buy record players (at Best Buy yet) and probably will still be able to buy record players with relative ease for the next 10 to 20 years even though most people stopped buying records in the Mid-80's to early 90's. The Audiophiles out there prefer *gasp* analog! Oh, and next time you look at some of your older CD's see how many of them were actually recorded DDD. Not very many. 16bit 44.1khz sound is here to stay for awhile. Oh, and when it does change, I challenge you to tell the differance on 99.99% of the home stereo equiptment out there. I look at the THD, Signal-to-Noise and frequency response on most of the consumer audio products out there and I am shocked. "I picked up this kicking 200 Watt/Channel Front 100Watt/c Center 60 Watt/Channel w/ 4% THD, rear integrated tuner/preamp/amplifier/surroud proccessor with DSP effects and nifty flashing lights and these speakers with 15" ported woofer (and fequency response that has more holes than cheese grater), all for $1500 and boy does it thump."
hehe. I can do Vinal, etc. I know a several people that can do the wax recordings. I know, the exception rather than the rule, and the wax recordings are what you call limited use. 100 years isn't a lot for good technology. There is also is a market for reproductions, audiophiles and collectors. Personal data, however, is a totally different matter. Computers have become a commodity item. When you are done with it throw it away and migrate you data to your new system or loose it for all time.
I see no reason why anyone has a right to know anything about Microsoft's products. The fact that Windows is popular does not make it public domain software, and I see no moral obligation on their part to document or not document any part of it.
The moral obligation is not that they document it, rather it is that they allow for competition. The definition of a monopoly is: exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action (from http://www.m-w.com). I think that MS has all three. To restrict the monopolists power, some or all of those need to be checked. MS supplies the API and that wouldn't change. MS still has hardware vendors wrapped around their little finger (remeber win9x refund day and the per box licensing fee that they used to charge). MS legally has the right to refuse knowledge of their API's. What are Microsoft's stances: They reserve the right to "innovate" (create and impliment new APIs/"standards"). They want to be able to have licensing agreements (An exec admitted in court that MS didn't have to take into consideration any market forces when they priced Win98, hrm doesn't that sound like a monopoly to you?). They want to keep their API's secret. Lets take a look at the real world (not the strange software one). Auto companies regularly buy competiter cars, drive them for a while then take them apart to see what makes them tick. It makes the auto companies stay in line with each other (within the limits of patants and intellectual right, yes). With software you have to use cleanroom techniques to reverse engineer things otherwise things get really hairy.
What then is the best solution? You have your choice of take away their ability to license to vendors (no income), take away their right to "innovate" or take away their right to refuse others knowledge of their product? Since they are making an operating system rather than a standalone word processor, it would seem that the SHOULD release the specs. Since they also produce an office suite, programming tools, and write hardware drivers, I guess they really don't need to release those pesky APIs for things like other competing compilers or optimized drivers.
There is a strong argument to be made against software patents, and I would support revoking all of MS's software patents along with the rest of the industry's patents if it is done in a reasonable way. But until that happens, I see no reason for the courts to make a special exception to Microsoft's lawful property rights. If software patents are bad, the solution is to repeal them, not simply to revoke them if they are "abused." Giving the courts the power to revoke/cripple patents at will is a terrible preceedent.
Aye, that it is.
This is perhaps the most ridiculous. For starters, this is a free speech violation, as it prohibits Microsoft from expressing an opinion on the topic. Furthermore, it seems to me that if this were done it would be a simplistic attempt to use the trial to bludgeon hardware manufacturers into building open systems. Open systems are in most cases a good thing, but computer companies have a right to make closed systems as well, and I see no reason to forbid them from getting MS ceritification.
The third point would be bad law. I understand RMS's reasoning, however. The problems is that MS does have a very tight grasp on the marktet. Once hardware vendors realize that there is money in them thar Open Source/Free Software people they will come around (i.e. Logitecs announcment today).
My Take on the situation: MS should "open" up their APIs. Even a simple disclosure of all them would be an improvment over the black box called windows. If I buy a machine from a big name company (like that will happen), I want to have a choice of OS. I never have thought of an OS as a commodity item. Again from http://www.m-w.com, and Operating system is: software that controls the operation of a computer and directs the processing of programs (as by assigning storage space in memory and controlling input and output functions). MS is trying to change that definition. Sure, the install media for the OS can come with a web browser, but don't call it an integral part of the OS. Anyway. Enough of this.
The divisions that tear us apart and give weight to the idea that linux is not ready for the mainstream. "Look at them, they can't even agree on a name, how can they code a decent OS." While it is true that we are a bunch of coders and disillusioned users, not marketers there needs to be a united front. If the big names in the Open Source community keep beating the horse (the very not dead Linux in this case), there will be nothing left. Go with what you have. If you want personal fame, found your own software company and make a million. If you believe in Free Software find a soapbox and sing its praises, rather than going after the politics and things you can't change. I always called Linux Linux. Yes, linux is made up of many different parts. What is linux's true name? It is too long to list all the people who have contributed. Yes the GNU tools are the foundation, but the name Linux has stuck. Can we get back to taking over the world now?
Bill is just paranoid and overconfidant enough to make a mistake. His FUD will at some point backfire. I don't know if I relish the tumult when the empire comes crubling down, but I hope linux is up to snuff when it does.
Sorry Guys, devils advocate here, flame away. Note: I like some things about the Mac (RISC processor, etc), but won't spend the money to buy one due to being a college student as well as their still inflated price (better, yes but I can't build an apple from components or upgrade one as cheaply), and Apple's attitude.
Why would BA want to support Macintoshes? What is the max percentage of home users who use Macintoshes? The cost of supporting them becomes prohibitive at low numbers, and I see the number being somewhere below 10%. If your service can target >90% of the installed base of systems, your market capitalization can still be fairly high. Now, while they are supporting the iMac they may start to support the newer G3 systems, but where do you draw the line, all PowerPC systems? The x100's were pretty bad, and are nubus. Do you support the PCI power Macs? What about all those people that still have 68k beasties? The LC's don't take standard Ethernet cards and others, like the Performas, have special communications ports. Older Macs as a whole are rather difficult to support (support in terms of providing Ethernet cards and installation), because of the different ways in which NICs were crammed in there. Once you don't support the older Macs, what is the percentage of G3's and >x200s compared to all PC's 486 and above? Can we say miniscule?
Now, I'll admit that them flatly not supporting Macs is not fair, and it could easily be non-MS Operating Environments, period. But they are a business. Do the right thing and pursue it. Don't just give up.
Slashdot Mirror
We might be able to say lowest average this millennium if enough old timers show up.
Good by and good luck Rob!
It is one of those new-fangled words the youth use. See: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=yo
Now, keep it down over there or I'll call the cops.
I do think you have the hypocrisy claim backward. The last time I checked, "industry" implied creating and protecting profit, not protecting entities out of some sense of decency (If this view is misinformed I'd love correction). The allegation should instead be leveled against the majority of the chorus who spend money on pop drivel, be it movies, CDs, cable/satellite, or even watch Commercial TV and then expect decent behavior when money is on the line. All the while nobody understands that the real world is most often driven by profit or other material gain, not protecting individual rights or property.
The real moral of this story is that copyright and license are important for anything anybody produces. If you want protection, know your rights and responsibilities and vigorously protect and defend them: be your own advocate. Any corporation where intellectual property is important understands this and has departments dedicated to protecting and advancing their interests. So far as I can tell, none of the legal niceties (e.g. something as simple as "(c)2001 Tempest" on the work) were observed by the original arranger. If Tempest cares and can find the help, he can still register a copyright of the arrangement in question. The step of obtaining a copyright will force Geffen Records to take notice, rather than automatically falling in to the category of "quacks who wrote 'I wrote song X Y years ago and I want my royalties' letters".
Hark! Do I hear the dull roar of a Free (as in beer) community enraged by Corporate America, worse the dreaded Music Industry, treading on the rights of the proletariat or individual? Are mine eyes deceiving, or is the general tone of comments really asking for an expansion or, at the very least, greater enforcement of copyright laws? Just because this "four chord" Nelly Furtado song is very (very+) similar, yet corporate-ly created, doesn't necessary mean it was purposefully stolen. Simply put, there are only so many listenable chord progressions and only so many samples. Worse, the human brain is a very odd thing, especially when it comes to music, that can retain amazingly detailed information subconsciously (which I sadly have personal knowledge of from my own "phonographic memory"). I can very well imagine that whomever did the sequencing or production may have once heard Tempest's track, such that this take "just sounded right". It is also possible, given the relative simplicity of the basic "riff" and lack of melody in modern music, that this could have just happened with no sinister undertones (no pun intended). For a humorous, though simplified, example take a listen to this rant on Pachelbel's Canon in D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM.
u #Copyright_issues_and_public_performances, that that anybody whose ever done Karaoke has checked their venue's status with ASCAP, made sure the cover band they hired is paying the necessary royalties, ...
I really can't imagine that all the folks up in arms over this case of corporate "stealing" are paying their "quarter" every time they sing "Happy Birthday" in public http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_Yo
Yeah, I didn't think so either.
The whole copyright system is broken and needs fixing. Music is no different, but the answer is not punish the legitimate musicians in the mean time.
I think you're slightly out of touch. Your examples are not the real concers for a farmer. The "break the bank" costs are fuel, electricity, seed, fertilizer, pesticides and the mortgage. The only reason a corporate farm is more competitive than the little guy is because they can get better deals on the consumables. They also typically make do with fewer hands, but this is not because they have larger, more efficient equiptment. Rather, they take short cuts and do not steward their land as well.
Part of the reason the family farm is in trouble is that very few folks in the business think outside the box to use new technologies to their fullest advantage and we, as a society, do not reward them for doing so.
I don't disagree with saying Farmers shouldn't be given special treatment, but I do disagree with you saying the ginormous factory/corporate farm is the only model worth pursuing. The factory farm produces an artificially cheap product through unsustainable means. If that is your idea of efficiency lord help us all.
A better solution would be to have the homeowners association pay for the sound barriers.
Within or near city centers many of the effected neighborhoods were built long before the road was expanded or even built. Many were boulivards carrying traffic at sedate speeds before their conversion to multi-lane super-highways that carry a greatly increased volume of vehicles at much higher speeds.
To follow a slightly different logic: The people using the roads should be the ones paying for them (forget about the lower taxes on diesel fuel used by the large trucks whose relentless pounding destroys the roads). As a direct result of the people using the new road, there is a large increase in noise. Therefore, as part of the roadway's construction or expansion, noise reduction needs to be included to try and mitigate some of the new noise pollution.
Setting realistic expectations for reachability is only part of the problem. People place calls for conversation at inappropriate times (e.g. driving or *in* restuarants or stores to use up that "wasted" time) and, even if they recieve or place a call during an "appropriate time", there is a general unwillingness to hang up with the disembodied voice gabbing in their ear when the physical situation changes. The net effect is that quite a few folks end up ignoring completely or only giving partial attention to real world situations that need their undevided attention.
I can't count the number of folks I've seen drive extremely poorly, bollux up the works going through check-out lines or ignore friends at dinner all while carrying on a conversations with the box at their ear. Apart from when you're isolated in a box (driving your car or at home) the conversations are loud and disruptive in any but the noisiest of environments, making for an unenjoyable time for the friends in the flesh and everybody within earshot.
-Brad
What ever happened to Bungee being able to keep its culture in the burocracy known as Microsoft? If you start dictating the tools used for the job, that is as good a way as any to kill off the culture. People are making decisions based on doing a job they like, not just the $$ or benes. Leave them alone and you will recieve rewards. Start dictating practice and you may as well have fired the lot.
@Home is just trying to get people using their service for "buisiness" to pay buisiness (read higher) rate. Traffic over a VPN isn't necessarily any more than your home user reading web pages or playing streaming audio, but it is just @Home's way of milking more money out of the companies, which they think have the money.
Block the standard ports it runs on....
Linux has been here at U of M for quite a long time. It had been used experimentally for quite awhile and it has started to become mainstream (www.eecs.umich.edu is debian).
On the subject of CAEN Linux. It was in development and use long before the MS License came about. No conspiricy here. Sorry folks. It isn't distributatly outside the U because of some of the encryption hacks (kerberos) and AFS daemons.
If you want something really exciting for mainstream linux at at least this University, LSA (note, not CoE) is working on a synctree for linux (based on RedHat 6.0ish). I havn't gotten an update recently but I think it is almost done. Both good and bad, it at least means an end (ok, sorry. Its academia, lets be honest here, a slight decrease) to the rampant security holes from poorly (to nonexistantly ) administered boxes in the largest college.
Not quite. Novell purchased DR-DOS from Digital Research. It didn't want to pursue MS, least they upset the behemoth. Novell also asked that Caldera NOT pursue litigation.
MS Won this round. No complaints or equivocations. We learned our lession after the first round of tests and started to improve. The absolute best thing we can do is only qualify, and as a last resort ignore, the soon to come MS attacks. This analysis is a good start to qualifying them, but we can't be content. Linux is not invincable, nor will it ever be. Take the this in stride and don't whine. Venting your frustration here is as good as walking into the hallowed halls in Redmond and saying "I'm upset, grind me under your heal please. Take my pride in my OS, it isn't as good as I thought it was!" Domination is just around the corner, but only if you spend your time working towards it rather than saying "It's (still) not fair".
This whole thing kind of strikes me as a semi-publicitiy stunt. People shouldn't write publicly about their former employers unless it's really, really bad. And in this case, it was just a minor personality conflict.
/. land, the responsibility for informing and putting the issues in the community in perspective is that of the persons posting the news stories (CT, Hemos, etc). Raster himself did not submit the story. The external E developers deserved to know what was going on. The fact that it got posted on /. blew everything out of proportion.
Kind of ridiculous. If you don't like it, just quit. It's that simple.
The Open Source Community is just that, a community. Communication happens. If the idea was for this to be kept quiet, Raster would not have been able to tell ANYBODY about it. Here in
Remember, the internet brings us all together. By that same token if you make a mistake there is a possibility of millions reading about it. Also, if you write something you could later regret, there is a possibility of millions reading it. Raster made the latter mistake. Live and learn.
CD's are different from magnetic media. Also, the CD has been an audio standard for ~20 years and there still isn't a widely available (and cheap) standard to replace it (Mini-Disks compete more with Tapes than anything else and DVD's have a strike against them because video is listed in the title). They are only now getting to be more of a standard than a tape deck in cars. The CD-ROM drive is only now getting (slowly) replaced in computer systems by DVD-ROM drives, which are backwards compatable. I have yet to see software distributed on DVD (4GB is a lot of space to fill and DVD stamping costs are higher). CD's are legacy. However, Consumers don't ever want to have to throw away their music collections or software. You can still buy record players (at Best Buy yet) and probably will still be able to buy record players with relative ease for the next 10 to 20 years even though most people stopped buying records in the Mid-80's to early 90's. The Audiophiles out there prefer *gasp* analog! Oh, and next time you look at some of your older CD's see how many of them were actually recorded DDD. Not very many. 16bit 44.1khz sound is here to stay for awhile. Oh, and when it does change, I challenge you to tell the differance on 99.99% of the home stereo equiptment out there. I look at the THD, Signal-to-Noise and frequency response on most of the consumer audio products out there and I am shocked. "I picked up this kicking 200 Watt/Channel Front 100Watt/c Center 60 Watt/Channel w/ 4% THD, rear integrated tuner/preamp/amplifier/surroud proccessor with DSP effects and nifty flashing lights and these speakers with 15" ported woofer (and fequency response that has more holes than cheese grater), all for $1500 and boy does it thump."
hehe. I can do Vinal, etc. I know a several people that can do the wax recordings. I know, the exception rather than the rule, and the wax recordings are what you call limited use. 100 years isn't a lot for good technology. There is also is a market for reproductions, audiophiles and collectors. Personal data, however, is a totally different matter. Computers have become a commodity item. When you are done with it throw it away and migrate you data to your new system or loose it for all time.
I see no reason why anyone has a right to know anything about Microsoft's products. The fact that Windows is popular does not make it public domain software, and I see no moral obligation on their part to document or not document any part of it.
The moral obligation is not that they document it, rather it is that they allow for competition. The definition of a monopoly is: exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action (from http://www.m-w.com). I think that MS has all three. To restrict the monopolists power, some or all of those need to be checked. MS supplies the API and that wouldn't change. MS still has hardware vendors wrapped around their little finger (remeber win9x refund day and the per box licensing fee that they used to charge). MS legally has the right to refuse knowledge of their API's. What are Microsoft's stances: They reserve the right to "innovate" (create and impliment new APIs/"standards"). They want to be able to have licensing agreements (An exec admitted in court that MS didn't have to take into consideration any market forces when they priced Win98, hrm doesn't that sound like a monopoly to you?). They want to keep their API's secret. Lets take a look at the real world (not the strange software one). Auto companies regularly buy competiter cars, drive them for a while then take them apart to see what makes them tick. It makes the auto companies stay in line with each other (within the limits of patants and intellectual right, yes). With software you have to use cleanroom techniques to reverse engineer things otherwise things get really hairy.
What then is the best solution? You have your choice of take away their ability to license to vendors (no income), take away their right to "innovate" or take away their right to refuse others knowledge of their product? Since they are making an operating system rather than a standalone word processor, it would seem that the SHOULD release the specs. Since they also produce an office suite, programming tools, and write hardware drivers, I guess they really don't need to release those pesky APIs for things like other competing compilers or optimized drivers.
There is a strong argument to be made against software patents, and I would support revoking all of MS's software patents along with the rest of the industry's patents if it is done in a reasonable way. But until that happens, I see no reason for the courts to make a special exception to Microsoft's lawful property rights. If software patents are bad, the solution is to repeal them, not simply to revoke them if they are "abused." Giving the courts the power to revoke/cripple patents at will is a terrible preceedent.
Aye, that it is.
This is perhaps the most ridiculous. For starters, this is a free speech violation, as it prohibits Microsoft from expressing an opinion on the topic. Furthermore, it seems to me that if this were done it would be a simplistic attempt to use the trial to bludgeon hardware manufacturers into building open systems. Open systems are in most cases a good thing, but computer companies have a right to make closed systems as well, and I see no reason to forbid them from getting MS ceritification.
The third point would be bad law. I understand RMS's reasoning, however. The problems is that MS does have a very tight grasp on the marktet. Once hardware vendors realize that there is money in them thar Open Source/Free Software people they will come around (i.e. Logitecs announcment today).
My Take on the situation: MS should "open" up their APIs. Even a simple disclosure of all them would be an improvment over the black box called windows. If I buy a machine from a big name company (like that will happen), I want to have a choice of OS. I never have thought of an OS as a commodity item. Again from http://www.m-w.com, and Operating system is: software that controls the operation of a computer and directs the processing of programs (as by assigning storage space in memory and controlling input and output functions). MS is trying to change that definition. Sure, the install media for the OS can come with a web browser, but don't call it an integral part of the OS. Anyway. Enough of this.
That first sentance should read "These divisions tear us apart and give weight to the idea that linux is not ready for the mainstream." Sorry folks.
The divisions that tear us apart and give weight to the idea that linux is not ready for the mainstream. "Look at them, they can't even agree on a name, how can they code a decent OS." While it is true that we are a bunch of coders and disillusioned users, not marketers there needs to be a united front. If the big names in the Open Source community keep beating the horse (the very not dead Linux in this case), there will be nothing left. Go with what you have. If you want personal fame, found your own software company and make a million. If you believe in Free Software find a soapbox and sing its praises, rather than going after the politics and things you can't change. I always called Linux Linux. Yes, linux is made up of many different parts. What is linux's true name? It is too long to list all the people who have contributed. Yes the GNU tools are the foundation, but the name Linux has stuck. Can we get back to taking over the world now?
Bill is just paranoid and overconfidant enough to make a mistake. His FUD will at some point backfire. I don't know if I relish the tumult when the empire comes crubling down, but I hope linux is up to snuff when it does.
Sorry Guys, devils advocate here, flame away. Note: I like some things about the Mac (RISC processor, etc), but won't spend the money to buy one due to being a college student as well as their still inflated price (better, yes but I can't build an apple from components or upgrade one as cheaply), and Apple's attitude.
Why would BA want to support Macintoshes? What is the max percentage of home users who use Macintoshes? The cost of supporting them becomes prohibitive at low numbers, and I see the number being somewhere below 10%. If your service can target >90% of the installed base of systems, your market capitalization can still be fairly high. Now, while they are supporting the iMac they may start to support the newer G3 systems, but where do you draw the line, all PowerPC systems? The x100's were pretty bad, and are nubus. Do you support the PCI power Macs? What about all those people that still have 68k beasties? The LC's don't take standard Ethernet cards and others, like the Performas, have special communications ports. Older Macs as a whole are rather difficult to support (support in terms of providing Ethernet cards and installation), because of the different ways in which NICs were crammed in there. Once you don't support the older Macs, what is the percentage of G3's and >x200s compared to all PC's 486 and above? Can we say miniscule?
Now, I'll admit that them flatly not supporting Macs is not fair, and it could easily be non-MS Operating Environments, period. But they are a business. Do the right thing and pursue it. Don't just give up.