People aren't allowed to modify and redistribute my free speech.
Of course they can. If, as you argue (and I agree) freedom of speech refers to the right, inherent in mankind, to speak without interference, then clearly copyrights fly right out the window. What else are they but a restriction on free speech? (Yes Virginia, unrestricted free speech would include libel, slander, copyright infringements, etc.)
The way in which free speech applies to free software is that people can write any code they want. Even if it's the same as someone else's. It's not so much that it's free from the standpoint of the original author; it's free for everyone else. And human beings generally work better in communities, where people can use each other's strengths, than they do on their own.
The one exception to the free software idea though is that if you redistribute (which no one is making you do, though it's obviously a Good Thing for everyone) you have to GPL that software, rather than take from the free software community and never give back.
Ah, but there are many disadvantages also. Hardware is very different from software; openness doesn't have the same benefits and drawbacks as it does with software. Point one: the multiplicity of useless drivers. If I want to use a video card in a Mac, I plug it in and it works. Ditto for projectors, input devices, et cetera, even when made by many different companies. You can't do that in any other OS I know. USB was a step in the right direction, but it's still not enough. This is the disadvantage from having a too-open platform, one where no standards were ever defined.
To which an AC replied:
And in exchange, you get less choice in devices to run on your system. The reason everything "works" when plugged into the Mac is because everything is controlled by Apple.
So the initial argument (which glosses over the fact that there's still got to be a driver in there someplace) was that hardware (supported by the generic Apple driver) just works.
I honestly kind of doubt that Millenium has done this very much. Every video card I've ever seen on the Mac *other* than the ones that Apple itself uses has had additional drivers to do anything more than the generic driver supports.
But even though this is a mildly crappy argument - yes most hardware should be able to use the generic driver at the very least - the AC made the outrageous claim that the lack of drivers was somehow Apple's fault. I was pointing out that Apple has no control over this. Neither does Microsoft, or Linus. It's all manufacturers.
(I mean, you wouldn't go out and buy a piece of Mac only hardware either? Nothing weird about it either way)
MacOS has some generic drivers. When you plug in a video card designed for those drivers it will just work. (The drivers are pretty good though, and can handle quite a bit) If the hardware isn't sufficiently similar to what the driver supports, the manufacturer needs to write a driver. And even for cards that do work out of the box, drivers are usually needed for special features. This is nothing unusual.
You don't honestly think that Microsoft writes all the drivers for IBM hardware do you? They do their own, they probably do some generic ones, and they write specs for other people to follow. Rather like Apple.
Apple also publishes specs. If a hardware manufacturer doesn't write a MacOS driver, it's a problem to complain to them about - they're capable of doing it. It is not a problem to lay at Apple's door. They are not in that business, nor should they be.
Or you can follow the Linux route, and develop your own driver. With some knowledge of Mac system programming and open specs on hardware you too can create a driver. Not really different than what Linux folks already do.
But it's not a HARDWARE issue. Macs have frickin' PCI and AGP slots. Things plug in just fine. It's just a matter of who wants to support some given market. Apple does not control what hardware is compatable with their systems. HARDWARE MANUFACTURERS do that. So don't say that it's Apple's fault that there are fewer pieces of hardware immediately available for it. 'Cos it's not.
Additionally, I am perfectly aware that Apple is not the secret master of the hw world. In case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic. Duh.
The reason everything "works" when plugged into the Mac is because everything is controlled by Apple.
I guess you found out the big secret. Apple is actually the largest hardware company in the world. Plug in a (Quantum, IBM, Western Digital, etc.) SCSI, IDE or Firewire hard disk and it just works. Because all of the drive manufacturers are Apple fronts.
USB keyboards and mice? (and on a few rare machines, PS2, no kidding) All Apple. Even MS hardware is actually a division of Apple.
If only they had simply published specs that third parties could develop for, knowing that compliant hardware would just *work* instead of having to ruthlessly take over the hw industry and secretly produce everything themselves. Wouldn't that be a far better solution?
he one area that Macs have always been appreciated is graphics work. However, with the availability of Photoshop, Lightwave/3D Studio (which do not run on Macs), etc. for the PC has rendered (no pun intended) the Mac inferior. SGI machines reign at the high-end and Intel/AMD machines control the low end. With the selection of PC 3D cards being far superior to that of Mac cards, I do not see the Mac regaining much market share in the professional graphics market.
Gah? Macs are still exceptionally strong in DTP. It's not just Photoshop. Firstly, there are a whole bunch of programs that I *need* to do real dtp work. There are a number of Mac-only (including system level) programs and OS extensions that help me out in countless ways. Like ColorSync. And lastly, there's no way in hell that I'm dumping all of that stuff and rebuying it for Windows. The fonts alone would bankrupt me.
This is all in addition to the fact that I don't like Windows, software I want isn't available on other platforms, and the Mac feels extremely comfortable. I know the ins and outs of it, and there are all kinds of subtle UI elements that I like. Like the mouse tracking.
So as a professional graphic designer who's been doing dtp for 10 years or so, I can tell you that you're thoroughly wrong.
There is a US Copyright Office. (IIRC it's part of the Library of Congress) When you register your copyright, you do so with them.
BUT, original things you write are copyrighted even if you have no copyright statement on the document, and even if you don't register your copyright.
BUT, this is pretty useless for MS, since nonregistered copyrighted works can't be used to get significant damages from infringors.
Additionally, although I haven't taken a look at the stupid thing, if it's insufficiently original (and this is possible if it's a technical enough document) that it's not copyrighted at all.
You're seriously saying that (and I'm being even more generous here) *ALL* non-MS OSes for x86 together have a significant market share?
I think you're nuts. Being a monopoly has nothing at all to do with how many competitors you have. If there were a million and one variations x86 OSes, but MS still had (as is pretty widely agreed upon) a 90% market share, MS would still be a monopoly.
They are THE most dominant player. Being a single entity (unlike the Unix camp which competes internally - buying Red Hat means you don't buy Caldera, and probably aren't fooling much with BSD at all, and vice versa) MS can just exert all that much more power relative to the other OS vendors.
So if large computer manufacturer Foo decided to build machines with Linux and/or Windows preinstalled, and MS disapproved, what do you think will happen? Will Foo:
Abandon MS and install only Linux?
Renegotiate their license with MS so that rather than pay MS $20 per installation they pay $100 (no matter what the ratio of Windows:Linux is)
Abandon Linux and install only Windows
Hint: It's not the first two. Outside of heavy-duty machines, niche OSes are NICHE OSes. Very few people use them, and there are not enough of them in the marketplace to counteract the pressure that MS can exert.
Like I said, it's not the number of alternatives, it's the concentration of power. If it were more evenly distributed among all players, there would be no monopoly. If you can't go to CompUSA and get a competitively priced system preloaded with an alternative you can begin to suspect that something is going on.
well then let there be a 'resume dl' key that gets transmitted in the dl, just prior to the actual file.
even if you reconnect to the server through a different set of hosts, you can pick up where you left off by giving the key and whatever information about how much file you got.
keys would be discarded from the server pretty rapidly (~30 minutes) or could be disabled altogether (if you don't want to deal with resumed dls)
it's not great, and i'm sure there's a better way to do this, but i think that you can resend data through different encrypted channels.
If we lived in a purely capitalist society there would not be any laws. MS could force people to buy at gunpoint and call it 'effective marketing'.
Repeat after me: Human beings are not intrinsically capitalists.
Generally capitalism coincides with what we want to be doing anyway. But not always. Thus rather than being slaves to the system, is it not better to make the system serve PEOPLE? Hell, come up with something better than capitalism - something which doesn't permit, by it's very nature, abuses of power, and which doesn't require constant (fallible) human intervention - and I'm sure it'll take off like hotcakes. Obviously no one's thought it up yet....
The DOJ will monitor the two companies and prevent them from improper behavior (hopefully anything more than saying 'Hi Bill' 'Hi Steve') for a certain amount of time. IIRC 10 years.
This isn't new - the baby Bells had similar restrictions. Unfortunately the bastards are all merging again. One wonders when people will be happy with a successful business and not need MORE.
There doesn't have to be a corporate murder law. Corporations are wholly artificial. They cannot exist at all without the government letting them. As long as it's split up equitably among the owners, there's no reason why the government must continue to allow it to exist.
Being a corporation is a privilege, and as such can be revoked at any time. Murder is not necessary. Human beings, have a right to exist, thus the circumstances where that right can be revoked must not be commonplace.
Well if it's interstate commerce, then the government already has the power to regulate the software industry. There's nothing new there.
And they've done this before - IBM was involved in a huge case decades ago (which provided the opportunity for microcomputing in general, and MS in specific to become successful), ATT was somewhat involved in software (Unix was developed at Bell Labs, but IIRC ATT's protected monopoly prevented them from moving into other markets, which they wanted to do) and there have undoubtably been others.
Mostly though, the Govt probably couldn't care less what business MS is in. They're behaving incorrectly no matter what business it is. Personally I'm a little disappointed that MS headquarters aren't going to get sown with salt.
Oh? That's funny. The original Starbucks store is across from Pike Place Market in Seattle. I didn't know Seattle was part of Portland these days. Shows what I know.
Well... you may want some kind of UI for the AI itself. That's more or less one of the functions of the paperclip. 'Course the value of having little characters is debatable. Apple did some research on that sort of thing a while back, when they were working on Bow Tie.
additionally this sort of thing would be useful for making playlists. just hit the 'fast driving music' or 'i'm feeling depressed' button on the mp3 car stereo and let the AI take over.;)
IIRC Jobs abandoned his daughter (who he did not believe was actually his) and her mother (who he wasn't married to) and until threatened with a lawsuit didn't pay child support or anything.
I know I've seen this in one of the recent (pretty well researched) books about Apple. And I've heard it elsewhere for years.
Jobs is IMHO a twisted rat bastard. He's managed to make Apple look good (financially, productwise, style, etc) which is a plus, but he's historically been a crappy manager who has been bad for Apple and NeXT, is not at all technical and tends to revise history to make himself look good.
Ironically Bill might be a marginally better human being than Steve, though I'm not going to defend MS at all.
Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki could only be bad b/c of the deaths of many people and the long-term damage to the residents and the environment. (Of course I think that dropping the bomb was a good idea - it would have been developed anyway, and given that my zadye was in the Army Air Force in the Pacific I probably wouldn't be here if Japan had to be forcibly invaded)
However, there are suprisingly few people on the moon. And we haven't found any living things there either. If you're going to use nukes, space is the best place to do it.
That depends. Some of the communist leaders believed that, others just said so while persuing other goals. I kind of doubt that anyone has seriouisly advocated the original Marxist-Leninist ideology for some time now.
Russia has persued the acquisition of more and more territory for use as a buffer for (at least) hundreds of years. I mean hell, look at what keeps happening to the Poles; their country was once IIRC larger than France.
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Of course they can. If, as you argue (and I agree) freedom of speech refers to the right, inherent in mankind, to speak without interference, then clearly copyrights fly right out the window. What else are they but a restriction on free speech? (Yes Virginia, unrestricted free speech would include libel, slander, copyright infringements, etc.)
The way in which free speech applies to free software is that people can write any code they want. Even if it's the same as someone else's. It's not so much that it's free from the standpoint of the original author; it's free for everyone else. And human beings generally work better in communities, where people can use each other's strengths, than they do on their own.
The one exception to the free software idea though is that if you redistribute (which no one is making you do, though it's obviously a Good Thing for everyone) you have to GPL that software, rather than take from the free software community and never give back.
Ah, but there are many disadvantages also. Hardware is very different from software; openness doesn't have the same benefits and drawbacks as it does with software. Point one: the multiplicity of useless drivers. If I want to use a video card in a Mac, I plug it in and it works. Ditto for projectors, input devices, et cetera, even when made by many different companies. You can't do that in any other OS I know. USB was a step in the right direction, but it's still not enough. This is the disadvantage from having a too-open platform, one where no standards were ever defined.
To which an AC replied:
And in exchange, you get less choice in devices to run on your system. The reason everything "works" when plugged into the Mac is because everything is controlled by Apple.
So the initial argument (which glosses over the fact that there's still got to be a driver in there someplace) was that hardware (supported by the generic Apple driver) just works.
I honestly kind of doubt that Millenium has done this very much. Every video card I've ever seen on the Mac *other* than the ones that Apple itself uses has had additional drivers to do anything more than the generic driver supports.
But even though this is a mildly crappy argument - yes most hardware should be able to use the generic driver at the very least - the AC made the outrageous claim that the lack of drivers was somehow Apple's fault. I was pointing out that Apple has no control over this. Neither does Microsoft, or Linus. It's all manufacturers.
(I mean, you wouldn't go out and buy a piece of Mac only hardware either? Nothing weird about it either way)
Yep. That's the trick.
MacOS has some generic drivers. When you plug in a video card designed for those drivers it will just work. (The drivers are pretty good though, and can handle quite a bit) If the hardware isn't sufficiently similar to what the driver supports, the manufacturer needs to write a driver. And even for cards that do work out of the box, drivers are usually needed for special features. This is nothing unusual.
You don't honestly think that Microsoft writes all the drivers for IBM hardware do you? They do their own, they probably do some generic ones, and they write specs for other people to follow. Rather like Apple.
Apple also publishes specs. If a hardware manufacturer doesn't write a MacOS driver, it's a problem to complain to them about - they're capable of doing it. It is not a problem to lay at Apple's door. They are not in that business, nor should they be.
Or you can follow the Linux route, and develop your own driver. With some knowledge of Mac system programming and open specs on hardware you too can create a driver. Not really different than what Linux folks already do.
But it's not a HARDWARE issue. Macs have frickin' PCI and AGP slots. Things plug in just fine. It's just a matter of who wants to support some given market. Apple does not control what hardware is compatable with their systems. HARDWARE MANUFACTURERS do that. So don't say that it's Apple's fault that there are fewer pieces of hardware immediately available for it. 'Cos it's not.
Additionally, I am perfectly aware that Apple is not the secret master of the hw world. In case you couldn't tell, I was being sarcastic. Duh.
I guess you found out the big secret. Apple is actually the largest hardware company in the world. Plug in a (Quantum, IBM, Western Digital, etc.) SCSI, IDE or Firewire hard disk and it just works. Because all of the drive manufacturers are Apple fronts.
USB keyboards and mice? (and on a few rare machines, PS2, no kidding) All Apple. Even MS hardware is actually a division of Apple.
Modems? Apple. Video cards? Apple. Drive controllers? Apple. Monitors? Apple. RAM? Apple. Processor upgrades? Apple.
If only they had simply published specs that third parties could develop for, knowing that compliant hardware would just *work* instead of having to ruthlessly take over the hw industry and secretly produce everything themselves. Wouldn't that be a far better solution?
Gah? Macs are still exceptionally strong in DTP. It's not just Photoshop. Firstly, there are a whole bunch of programs that I *need* to do real dtp work. There are a number of Mac-only (including system level) programs and OS extensions that help me out in countless ways. Like ColorSync. And lastly, there's no way in hell that I'm dumping all of that stuff and rebuying it for Windows. The fonts alone would bankrupt me.
This is all in addition to the fact that I don't like Windows, software I want isn't available on other platforms, and the Mac feels extremely comfortable. I know the ins and outs of it, and there are all kinds of subtle UI elements that I like. Like the mouse tracking.
So as a professional graphic designer who's been doing dtp for 10 years or so, I can tell you that you're thoroughly wrong.
You're sort of right and sort of wrong.
There is a US Copyright Office. (IIRC it's part of the Library of Congress) When you register your copyright, you do so with them.
BUT, original things you write are copyrighted even if you have no copyright statement on the document, and even if you don't register your copyright.
BUT, this is pretty useless for MS, since nonregistered copyrighted works can't be used to get significant damages from infringors.
Additionally, although I haven't taken a look at the stupid thing, if it's insufficiently original (and this is possible if it's a technical enough document) that it's not copyrighted at all.
I think you're nuts. Being a monopoly has nothing at all to do with how many competitors you have. If there were a million and one variations x86 OSes, but MS still had (as is pretty widely agreed upon) a 90% market share, MS would still be a monopoly.
They are THE most dominant player. Being a single entity (unlike the Unix camp which competes internally - buying Red Hat means you don't buy Caldera, and probably aren't fooling much with BSD at all, and vice versa) MS can just exert all that much more power relative to the other OS vendors.
So if large computer manufacturer Foo decided to build machines with Linux and/or Windows preinstalled, and MS disapproved, what do you think will happen? Will Foo:
Hint: It's not the first two. Outside of heavy-duty machines, niche OSes are NICHE OSes. Very few people use them, and there are not enough of them in the marketplace to counteract the pressure that MS can exert.
Like I said, it's not the number of alternatives, it's the concentration of power. If it were more evenly distributed among all players, there would be no monopoly. If you can't go to CompUSA and get a competitively priced system preloaded with an alternative you can begin to suspect that something is going on.
well then let there be a 'resume dl' key that gets transmitted in the dl, just prior to the actual file.
even if you reconnect to the server through a different set of hosts, you can pick up where you left off by giving the key and whatever information about how much file you got.
keys would be discarded from the server pretty rapidly (~30 minutes) or could be disabled altogether (if you don't want to deal with resumed dls)
it's not great, and i'm sure there's a better way to do this, but i think that you can resend data through different encrypted channels.
Of course, "Think Different" is perfectly fine. People keep misinterpreting it as "Think Differently," which is also okay, but not what Apple means.
;)
Think Different == You must think about the concept 'different.'
as opposed to
Think Differently == You must think differently in general than you do now.
Just my little pet peeve
If we lived in a purely capitalist society there would not be any laws. MS could force people to buy at gunpoint and call it 'effective marketing'.
Repeat after me: Human beings are not intrinsically capitalists.
Generally capitalism coincides with what we want to be doing anyway. But not always. Thus rather than being slaves to the system, is it not better to make the system serve PEOPLE? Hell, come up with something better than capitalism - something which doesn't permit, by it's very nature, abuses of power, and which doesn't require constant (fallible) human intervention - and I'm sure it'll take off like hotcakes. Obviously no one's thought it up yet....
The DOJ will monitor the two companies and prevent them from improper behavior (hopefully anything more than saying 'Hi Bill' 'Hi Steve') for a certain amount of time. IIRC 10 years.
This isn't new - the baby Bells had similar restrictions. Unfortunately the bastards are all merging again. One wonders when people will be happy with a successful business and not need MORE.
There doesn't have to be a corporate murder law. Corporations are wholly artificial. They cannot exist at all without the government letting them. As long as it's split up equitably among the owners, there's no reason why the government must continue to allow it to exist.
Being a corporation is a privilege, and as such can be revoked at any time. Murder is not necessary. Human beings, have a right to exist, thus the circumstances where that right can be revoked must not be commonplace.
Well if it's interstate commerce, then the government already has the power to regulate the software industry. There's nothing new there.
And they've done this before - IBM was involved in a huge case decades ago (which provided the opportunity for microcomputing in general, and MS in specific to become successful), ATT was somewhat involved in software (Unix was developed at Bell Labs, but IIRC ATT's protected monopoly prevented them from moving into other markets, which they wanted to do) and there have undoubtably been others.
Mostly though, the Govt probably couldn't care less what business MS is in. They're behaving incorrectly no matter what business it is. Personally I'm a little disappointed that MS headquarters aren't going to get sown with salt.
Red Hat doesn't have a monopoly on operating system or office software on the dominant microcomputer architecture. MS has both.
If Red Had _did_ then you might have something (though if it were all GPLed it might not matter - then all RH has is their name)
Oh? That's funny. The original Starbucks store is across from Pike Place Market in Seattle. I didn't know Seattle was part of Portland these days. Shows what I know.
Well... you may want some kind of UI for the AI itself. That's more or less one of the functions of the paperclip. 'Course the value of having little characters is debatable. Apple did some research on that sort of thing a while back, when they were working on Bow Tie.
additionally this sort of thing would be useful for making playlists. just hit the 'fast driving music' or 'i'm feeling depressed' button on the mp3 car stereo and let the AI take over. ;)
Web-controlled nuclear-powered death bots.
But you'd better invest in a good server b/c the site would see a lot of traffic. Well, until enough people had used the death bots anyway.
Well you're thinking of the Star Trek project (going where no Mac has been before) as others have mentioned.
Of course there's also talk that the Windows port of QuickTime involved porting over a lot of Mac Toolbox code as well....
You mean, 'You can't make an omlette without eggs and cheese and peppers and onions...'
;)
IIRC Jobs abandoned his daughter (who he did not believe was actually his) and her mother (who he wasn't married to) and until threatened with a lawsuit didn't pay child support or anything.
I know I've seen this in one of the recent (pretty well researched) books about Apple. And I've heard it elsewhere for years.
Jobs is IMHO a twisted rat bastard. He's managed to make Apple look good (financially, productwise, style, etc) which is a plus, but he's historically been a crappy manager who has been bad for Apple and NeXT, is not at all technical and tends to revise history to make himself look good.
Ironically Bill might be a marginally better human being than Steve, though I'm not going to defend MS at all.
But I think that was '94 or '96. On the plus side it did cause (one thousand years later) an age of sorcery and super-science ;)
Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki could only be bad b/c of the deaths of many people and the long-term damage to the residents and the environment. (Of course I think that dropping the bomb was a good idea - it would have been developed anyway, and given that my zadye was in the Army Air Force in the Pacific I probably wouldn't be here if Japan had to be forcibly invaded)
However, there are suprisingly few people on the moon. And we haven't found any living things there either. If you're going to use nukes, space is the best place to do it.
That depends. Some of the communist leaders believed that, others just said so while persuing other goals. I kind of doubt that anyone has seriouisly advocated the original Marxist-Leninist ideology for some time now.
Russia has persued the acquisition of more and more territory for use as a buffer for (at least) hundreds of years. I mean hell, look at what keeps happening to the Poles; their country was once IIRC larger than France.