"Wouldn't it have been much more efficient to build the network and not connect it to the public internet?"
They're not doing it for the same reason they're buying their spaceflight technology outright from the Russians: It's almost always easier to use the work of others and modify it for your own use than to build something similar from the ground up.
That, and allowing the people to have access to some of the internet makes Beijing look kinder and gentler.
"Lets see, WWI, its illegal to hinder the war effort. One man was arrested for distrubiting flyers to draftees. Freedom of speech, apparently not. And now you say but that was then."
And we can all see that one out of 100,000,000 is a blatant sign of systematic abuse by the US government.
Out of curiousity, was he convicted? And if so, of what exactly?
"we have so many laws in the US that effectively controls most forms of speech. These laws have legit purposes, but they have been and will continue to control unpopular speech."
You have no right to say unpopular things in a medium literally owned and maintained by the populous. They own it, they say what you can and can't do with it. Simple as that.
"Want to get on a soap box downtown in a peaceful, way (ie not shouting at the top of your lungs). Well thats loitering, disturbing the peace."
You are loitering not by what you're saying but by where you're saying it. You do not own the sidewalk you are setting up your soapbox on. In most cities the sidewalk is owned by individual property owner (most deeds going to the curb), who may or may not like you using their sidewalk for your own purposes. In order to balance the rights of the sidewalk owner with the sidewalk user (without having new rules posted every block), there are laws that force the owner to maintain the sidewalk for public use and there are laws that prevent sidewalk users from abusing the "generosity" of sidewalk owners.
You are disturbing the peace not by speaking but by forcing others to listen. Your right to say what you want to say shouldn't infringe upon the rights of passers-by to peace and quiet. Whether you're shouting or not you're still talking to people who don't want to listen to you (as well as possibly impeding traffic on the sidewalk). The balance here is that you're disturbing the peace reguardless of the topic of your speaking.
And let's not forget: When all is said and done there are 4100+ local governments in the US, eaich with their own speech-limiting laws that are tailored to fit their own constituations. What's illegal in one county may be legal in another (ie. your example of soapbox speeking isn't illegal everywhere). And even if it is illegal, often it's illegal because you haven't paid for the proper permit. Public resources are available to anybody who wants to pay for them.
"Free speech seems to be one of those values in the US that is only really protected, as long as its what your saying is popular."
Free speech isn't protected at all. US Congress is barred from infringing on it, but there is nothing in the federal constitution that says that the states can't do it. And the only real reason speech is almost always protected in state constitutions is tradition.
We don't have the "right" to free speech, we have the right to have a say in who can restrict our speech, when and why. To that end the federal constitution DOES guarantee that each state will have a republican form of government.
"I find it funny and disturbing that there are NO LOITERING signs at out public parks."
That sign is there for the same reason you see signs that say SPEED LIMIT on public roads. Your use of public property has to take into account the rights and desires of the public that paid for it.
The park is paid for by public money and therefore (at least indirectly) is owned by everybody. Laws like that are made out of deference to the taxpayers who may not want their tax dollars used the way you want to use it. While the resources are made available for anybody to use (whether you're a taxpayer/constituant or not), you are not free to abuse it (much like the previous sidewalk example). You're not allowed to loiter on public grounds in the same way that you're not allowed to cut down trees on those public grounds. The same way they can require you to have a driver's license to use public roads.
If you want to insist on your "right" to use other people's property to say what you want, when and to whom, you should consider joining a pro-spam lobby; they're demanding exactly the same thing.
When all is said and done, the differences between speech limitations in the USA and PRC are:
1.) Typically speech is only limited in the US where it would infringe upon the rights of others. Americans can say what they want but they can't kick down your door to say it to you. In the PRC speech is limited in and of itself, limiting your other rights in the process (such as the right to use your private property as you see fit). Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one, and in the PRC you're not allowed to own one.
2.) Speech limitations in the US are enacted at the local level, where they affect a small population and a small area (ie. the majority are a small, relatively weak group of people whose powers are limited to a small geogrpahic area). And there are only general similarities (and many differences) between the laws set up from county/city to county/city. And while it may be technically possible for the federal government to exert influence in each and every of those 4100+ legislatures, it just isn't feasable or reasonable (and probably illegal). On the other hand, speech limitations in the PRC are decided at Beijing and apply to the entire country and it's 1.2 billion inhabitants (the majority is immense and all-powerful). Because the laws have to apply to everybody, they have to be oppressive enough to cover every situation.
3.) In the US, you have the ability to move freely about the country, and the federal government doesn't get in the way of your ability to leave the country outright (unless, of course, you're on probation or parole or something similar). If you are unhappy with the speech-limiting laws in your city or county, you are free to move to a different city or county. People in the PRC are not free to leave the country on a whim, however. But even if you could, moving to a different county and a different country are entirely different things.
... this happens right smack dab in the middle of Microsoft's self-proclaimed Focus on Security Month.
Re:Article is inaccurate.
on
What is .NET?
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· Score: 2
"I prefer Miguel's description of.NET [microsoft.com] which is"
Actually, they're more or less both right. What you just listed are the edges of.NET. The article talked about what's in the middle. It's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins because they're only making small adjustments to existing software. The web services and service apps envisioned are really the same old NT Server, IIS, SQL Server, VisStudio, IE, etc. but somewhat modified to accept and use.NET code.
Adapting these apps to merge with.NET isn't much different from how Microsoft changed some apps to merge with Active Directory in Win2k for example, Exchange 2000 adds metadata classes to existing Active Directory accounts instead of creating its own accounts and directory like previous versions.
Strictly speaking, Active Directory is just a directory service, but you could also include Windows 2000 Server (which uses AD for its domain structure), Exchange 2000 (use of AD described above), IE (new browser tools in the OS needed to browse and search the directory) as part of the entirety of "Active Directory."
"The real problem here is the idea of "corporate personhood" which extends all the civil rights meant for people (including buying congressmen, senators, presidents and supreme court justices) to corporations."
Supreme court justices? What are you smoking? Or are you yet another of those rabid "Bush stole the election!" folks?
Supreme Court justices aren't for sale for the sole reason that they don't have to fund election campaigns. They're appointed by the president and decided upon by Congress. Instead of having to reach millions of voters, potential justices have to convince 535 people. And instead of campaigning around the country and saying different things to different people, these 535 people are all in the same building, listening very carefully (and asking questions) to what a candidate has to say to all of them. And once their in, they're in for as long as they want to be (or if they get impeached and removed from office), so they don't even need to worry about future campaigns.
"there is one easy solution to this. "
The price of a Congresscritter depends on how many people they represents (and thefore how much money he needs to spend on their campaign) The nice thing about the House is that they're numerous (lower cost per seat, higher cost for a majority vote) and represent about the same number of people each (same price each). Toss in short two-year term lengths (frequent campaign contributions needed, always coming and going) and they're not a very good prospect for bribery. Not much trouble here.
The President may only be one position (well, two now that the VP is on the same ticket), but his price is further upped by the fact that he needs more than a simple majority (more like a majority of the majorities). Toss in the fact that there's only one of him and therefore subject to more scrutiny (compare media attention and voter turn-out this November to 2000) and you can see that the idea of buying a presidency is risky as well as pricey.
IMO, the only real problem is the Senate. Too many for national scrutiny, too few to make buying a majority prohibitively expensive, and differing state populations means Senators from smaller states are cheaper to buy. Toss in a combination of a six-year term and a short public memory and you end up with Ted Kennedys.
The Senate problem is easily solved by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment. Remove campaigns from the equation and you don't have to worry about campaign finance.
"make all elections 100% publicly funded"
OUCH! That means my tax dollars would have to fund campaigns for one fedreal President/Vice President ballot, two federal Senator ballots, one fedral Congresscritter, one Governor/Lt. Governor (and whatever other executive offices are on a separate ballot, such as your state's AG, Comptroller, etc.), one state Senator, one state Congresscritter, three state judges, one county President, three county council members, one county Sheriff, other executive offices at the local level... If you figure each ballot will have five candidates each, that's a LOT of campaigns. Even more if I happen to live in a city with a city government. My tax money is wasted enough as it is, thankyouverymuch.
"If you are signing the petition, but have not and will not watch the show, you're really not helping."
You're forgetting something: The only time it actually helps to watch the show is if you have a Nielson box on your set. If you don't show up on the Nielson ratings, your opinion means squat.
It's all relative, actually. The prices of the individuals and the price of the bundle affect each other.
"You've seen "Buy 4 foobars, get the 5th one free!"? Same idea."
And why does a company do this? I can think of three possibilities:
1.) This is a temporary sale. The manufacturer is selling their foobars near or at the break-even point (or maybe even below) in order to generate more customers. Adobe has been doing this for a while so I don't believe they fall into this category.
2.) Because of packaging constraints, it's actually less expensive for the manufacturer to sell foobars in groups than individually. Adobe software isn't particularly delicate and the mass and volume of the contents of five individual app boxes is about the same as the mass and volume of the bundle box. So Adobe doesn't fall into this category either.
3.) The foobars are only worth 80% of retail and the manufacturer marks up the individual foobars in order to create the illusion of value (and make a little extra profit on the side). This sounds closest to what Adobe is doing.
"the price of the bundle is less than the sum of the five apps; this is supposed to encourage you to buy the higher-priced bundle, making more money for the publisher than if you'd only bought 1..3 apps individually."
But Adobe is making more money either way.
1.) The individual apps are marked up 25% of what they're really worth, so Adobe is making more money. Adobe wins, consumer loses.
2.) The bundle is less expensive than the sum of the individuals, making it seem more valuable/cost-effective than it really is (because the individual apps are marked up). Adobe sells more of the bundles as consumers buy more than they really need. Adobe wins, consumer loses.
"This is something different than Joe User selling his copy of Windows 98 that he got with his computer that he doesn't use."
One of the differences is that Joe User doesn't have the resources to fight EULAs. It required someone who was making serious money off of "legal" EULA violations to pull this case off.
"They are selling the bundle cheaper, because it is a bundle."
How is it being a bundle justification for the higher prices for the individual apps?
When you buy a boxed set of books, often it is less expensive than the individual titles simply because the boxed set uses paperback binding, inherently cheaper than hard-covered books. But I see no glaring cost-saving in use with bundled software. They still have the same number of CDs, often the same instruction manuals included with it, and the only differences I can see are the packaging and maybe the jewel case. Sure, there are instances where bundled software is actually integrated together in the code, but from the sounds of it all we have here is Adobe taking the contents of five cheap boxes and putting them into one slightly larger cheap box.
"What will end up happening if this takes off is that bundled software will no longer be cheaper than the individual packages."
There's no reason for the bundles to be less expensive than the individual apps more than a few cents for the savings in cardboard. If the bundles save their money by not including paper manuals, then it's time for Adobe to condsider selling individual copies of software without paper manuals. Any other reason for the drastically lower pricing in bundles is a direct result of artificial mark-ups in the individual apps. Even claiming the drastic price difference is a result of stamping all the apps on fewer CDs is a joke, since we all know the price of blanks CDs.
"This will do nothing but hurt the end users is companies are allowed to do it though."
How? The only people I see getting "hurt" are the companies that are losing out on their artificial mark-up. The only money they'd be losing is money they shouldn't have made to begin with. And even then they're still turning a profit because they ARE selling the bundles. On the other hand, the re-seller could still get hurt if part of the bundle isn't as popular as the rest.
I can't see the situation you're fearing as anything but capitalism at it's best. The publishers (Adobe in this instance) are now forced to compete with their own pricing schemes on a level playing field, putting market forces and the consumer in charge of the value of their software instead of the publisher.
Consumers blame the corps. The corps blame the recorders. The recorders blame the advertisers. It goes around and around and around. I think things would be just a bit simpler if everybody involved accepted one simple truth:
NOBODY LIKES ADVERTISEMENTS!
It doesn't matter whether they put the ads in between scenes in the show or the use glaringly obvious product placement or anything of the sort. Time and time again the consumers have said "We don't like advertising." Hell, 99% of the advertising industry is trying to find new ways of advertising that the consumer literally cannot avoid, because even they know...
NOBODY LIKES AdVERTISEMENTS!
Do you think the anti-spam group would be so vocal if the content of these bulk e-mails wasn't advertising? Would various groups be unhappy with the way they're portrayed in commercials if their portrayals weren't used in order to sell something?
Now I admit that there's always a time and a place to inform potential customers about a product. But we have systems that allow business to do this that nobody minds. The phone book. Signs near the point-of-sale (soda fountains with "Coca-Cola" written on them). Hell, even QVC can be considered in this light.
If you're going to insist on putting advertising into a medium where the consumer does not want to see it, they will always find a way to avoid it, even if it means simply not paying attention to them. And frankly I don't understand how such advertisers are able to say that they earn their customers a profit with this.
If the broadcast networks insist on using intrusive advertising like this as their only means of income, then they deserve exactly what they get when, lo and behold, people avoid those advertisements. Hell, I wonder how many network execs own a PVR, because (lest we forget)...
Anybody know what the networks originally thought of the remote control? You know, the device that let's a viewer watch a different channel other than commercials without getting up?
"These days, most data is usable only if you can share it, or share the products of your analysis, or use other people's results/etc."
But from the sounds of it we're not talking about something as simple as sharing applications and files that need to be shared. It seems that in an effort to optimize the performance of individual workstations this fictional OS is load-balancing just about all tasks amongst the workstations. "Here, help me parse this password list." This isn't publishing a web page, this is setting up your system partition as an FTP site, along with anonymous telnet access to the OS, as a default.
"The trick is having a good security policy that keeps your internal network separate from your outside-accessible resources."
It's a trick, but not the trick. Just because you have a firewall doesn't mean you don't need any security behind it. As long as you insist on putting information on the wire, security concerns grow with the volume of the information, and this idea wants to share everything. Besides, what if you configure this OS's firewall wrong and it tries load-balancing its security funcitons with the wrong side of the router?
Most of the time when there's a hole in the operating system's security a cr/hacker has to poke at the system a bit to see if there are any holes ("active radar," if you will). Somebody usually can't tell if a system is currently insecure unless they probe it first. But if you set up a system like this then you won't even need so much as a packet sniffer because everybody will be busy broadcasting information to the rest of the network in an effort to set up load-balancing. Set up a rogue laptop somewhere and who knows what it will volunteer to help load-balance. Payroll comes to mind.
With the client-server model you can focus the majority of your security efforts to the server end. While passwords may go back and forth over the wire, the server itself is where the validation (decryption, etc.) takes place. In the model described here, you have to set up sever-esque security at each and every workstation because you never know where the validation will be taking place. You want to log in as Bob and hose the network? Why bother trying to find out his real password when you can just wait until your workstation is the one validating passwords?
"Imagine computers in a group providing disk storage for their users, transparently swapping files and optimizing their collective performance, all with no central administration."
Whoever thought up this pipe dream apparently doesn't understand the Zeroth Law of Network Security: If you want information to be secure, DON'T PUT IT ON THE FUCKING NETWORK!
Seriously! As if most business OSes don't default to the least-secure settings already! Why would you want to run important apps on a system where the default is to share anything and everything with any computer in listening distance?
"The ship has already sunk. Linux is based on 40+ year old technology."
Oh? And I suppose that makes it so much better than the 15-20 year old OS/2 that Windows NT is based off of? And let's not forget that OS/2 was patterned off of 40-year old software that IBM used on its mainframes.
If the success of Internet Explorer is any indication,.NET could very well be the future of the internet if something major happens to Microsoft. "Something major" means government action, the only people who currently have enough power to curtail Microsoft. Linux just doesn't have the power to do it. They may in the future, but not now, and not before the roll-out of.NET.
If you want to curse Icaza's name for attempting to adapt Linux into something that can survive in a potential.NET environment, that's fine. But just because you want to go down with a sinking ship doesn't mean that the rest of us are evil for trying to fix said sinking ship.
Most people (myself included) tend to opt-out of everything whever the opportunity is given out of principle. We're all so sick of all the advertisements we get sent to us that we'll opt out of everything to try to minimize it, even though we might be a little interested in, say, what WinAmp may be up to lately.
I think that, once people are done basking in the freedom of having little to no junk mail, some people may begin to opt in to one or two things here and there. And then the people who send out these ads can be confident that the recipients actually want it.
I'm not sure if there are any official numbers attesting to this, but the few people I know of that actually spend money on pay-per-view (and I do mean "few," since it tends to cost more than a 3- or 5-day VHS rental) videotape the PPV broadcast.
All I can see this doing is either removing the middleman between the movie company and the "unauthorized" copiers or flopping on its face when these kinds of people run into copy protection.
If one side or the other did any serious astroturfing it should be pretty easy to spot once these are published. Simply put them through the various anti-cheating programs that make the headlines around here so often to find out how many of these messages are suspiciously similar.
I'm not sure they could change the license away from GPL, at least the code they already have written. The old code is GPL and must stay GPL according to the termps of the GPL. And if I remember correctly, any code that uses GPL code must also then be GPL. So that means any future versions of Wine (unless started over from scratch) must continue to be GPL.
I think that's what they mean by "viral licensing."
Slashdot Mirror
"Wouldn't it have been much more efficient to build the network and not connect it to the public internet?"
They're not doing it for the same reason they're buying their spaceflight technology outright from the Russians: It's almost always easier to use the work of others and modify it for your own use than to build something similar from the ground up.
That, and allowing the people to have access to some of the internet makes Beijing look kinder and gentler.
"Lets see, WWI, its illegal to hinder the war effort. One man was arrested for distrubiting flyers to draftees. Freedom of speech, apparently not. And now you say but that was then."
And we can all see that one out of 100,000,000 is a blatant sign of systematic abuse by the US government.
Out of curiousity, was he convicted? And if so, of what exactly?
"we have so many laws in the US that effectively controls most forms of speech. These laws have legit purposes, but they have been and will continue to control unpopular speech."
You have no right to say unpopular things in a medium literally owned and maintained by the populous. They own it, they say what you can and can't do with it. Simple as that.
"Want to get on a soap box downtown in a peaceful, way (ie not shouting at the top of your lungs). Well thats loitering, disturbing the peace."
You are loitering not by what you're saying but by where you're saying it. You do not own the sidewalk you are setting up your soapbox on. In most cities the sidewalk is owned by individual property owner (most deeds going to the curb), who may or may not like you using their sidewalk for your own purposes. In order to balance the rights of the sidewalk owner with the sidewalk user (without having new rules posted every block), there are laws that force the owner to maintain the sidewalk for public use and there are laws that prevent sidewalk users from abusing the "generosity" of sidewalk owners.
You are disturbing the peace not by speaking but by forcing others to listen. Your right to say what you want to say shouldn't infringe upon the rights of passers-by to peace and quiet. Whether you're shouting or not you're still talking to people who don't want to listen to you (as well as possibly impeding traffic on the sidewalk). The balance here is that you're disturbing the peace reguardless of the topic of your speaking.
And let's not forget: When all is said and done there are 4100+ local governments in the US, eaich with their own speech-limiting laws that are tailored to fit their own constituations. What's illegal in one county may be legal in another (ie. your example of soapbox speeking isn't illegal everywhere). And even if it is illegal, often it's illegal because you haven't paid for the proper permit. Public resources are available to anybody who wants to pay for them.
"Free speech seems to be one of those values in the US that is only really protected, as long as its what your saying is popular."
Free speech isn't protected at all. US Congress is barred from infringing on it, but there is nothing in the federal constitution that says that the states can't do it. And the only real reason speech is almost always protected in state constitutions is tradition.
We don't have the "right" to free speech, we have the right to have a say in who can restrict our speech, when and why. To that end the federal constitution DOES guarantee that each state will have a republican form of government.
"I find it funny and disturbing that there are NO LOITERING signs at out public parks."
That sign is there for the same reason you see signs that say SPEED LIMIT on public roads. Your use of public property has to take into account the rights and desires of the public that paid for it.
The park is paid for by public money and therefore (at least indirectly) is owned by everybody. Laws like that are made out of deference to the taxpayers who may not want their tax dollars used the way you want to use it. While the resources are made available for anybody to use (whether you're a taxpayer/constituant or not), you are not free to abuse it (much like the previous sidewalk example). You're not allowed to loiter on public grounds in the same way that you're not allowed to cut down trees on those public grounds. The same way they can require you to have a driver's license to use public roads.
If you want to insist on your "right" to use other people's property to say what you want, when and to whom, you should consider joining a pro-spam lobby; they're demanding exactly the same thing.
When all is said and done, the differences between speech limitations in the USA and PRC are:
1.) Typically speech is only limited in the US where it would infringe upon the rights of others. Americans can say what they want but they can't kick down your door to say it to you. In the PRC speech is limited in and of itself, limiting your other rights in the process (such as the right to use your private property as you see fit). Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one, and in the PRC you're not allowed to own one.
2.) Speech limitations in the US are enacted at the local level, where they affect a small population and a small area (ie. the majority are a small, relatively weak group of people whose powers are limited to a small geogrpahic area). And there are only general similarities (and many differences) between the laws set up from county/city to county/city. And while it may be technically possible for the federal government to exert influence in each and every of those 4100+ legislatures, it just isn't feasable or reasonable (and probably illegal). On the other hand, speech limitations in the PRC are decided at Beijing and apply to the entire country and it's 1.2 billion inhabitants (the majority is immense and all-powerful). Because the laws have to apply to everybody, they have to be oppressive enough to cover every situation.
3.) In the US, you have the ability to move freely about the country, and the federal government doesn't get in the way of your ability to leave the country outright (unless, of course, you're on probation or parole or something similar). If you are unhappy with the speech-limiting laws in your city or county, you are free to move to a different city or county. People in the PRC are not free to leave the country on a whim, however. But even if you could, moving to a different county and a different country are entirely different things.
... this happens right smack dab in the middle of Microsoft's self-proclaimed Focus on Security Month.
"I prefer Miguel's description of .NET [microsoft.com] which is"
.NET. The article talked about what's in the middle. It's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins because they're only making small adjustments to existing software. The web services and service apps envisioned are really the same old NT Server, IIS, SQL Server, VisStudio, IE, etc. but somewhat modified to accept and use .NET code.
.NET isn't much different from how Microsoft changed some apps to merge with Active Directory in Win2k for example, Exchange 2000 adds metadata classes to existing Active Directory accounts instead of creating its own accounts and directory like previous versions.
Actually, they're more or less both right. What you just listed are the edges of
Adapting these apps to merge with
Strictly speaking, Active Directory is just a directory service, but you could also include Windows 2000 Server (which uses AD for its domain structure), Exchange 2000 (use of AD described above), IE (new browser tools in the OS needed to browse and search the directory) as part of the entirety of "Active Directory."
"The real problem here is the idea of "corporate personhood" which extends all the civil rights meant for people (including buying congressmen, senators, presidents and supreme court justices) to corporations."
Supreme court justices? What are you smoking? Or are you yet another of those rabid "Bush stole the election!" folks?
Supreme Court justices aren't for sale for the sole reason that they don't have to fund election campaigns. They're appointed by the president and decided upon by Congress. Instead of having to reach millions of voters, potential justices have to convince 535 people. And instead of campaigning around the country and saying different things to different people, these 535 people are all in the same building, listening very carefully (and asking questions) to what a candidate has to say to all of them. And once their in, they're in for as long as they want to be (or if they get impeached and removed from office), so they don't even need to worry about future campaigns.
"there is one easy solution to this. "
The price of a Congresscritter depends on how many people they represents (and thefore how much money he needs to spend on their campaign) The nice thing about the House is that they're numerous (lower cost per seat, higher cost for a majority vote) and represent about the same number of people each (same price each). Toss in short two-year term lengths (frequent campaign contributions needed, always coming and going) and they're not a very good prospect for bribery. Not much trouble here.
The President may only be one position (well, two now that the VP is on the same ticket), but his price is further upped by the fact that he needs more than a simple majority (more like a majority of the majorities). Toss in the fact that there's only one of him and therefore subject to more scrutiny (compare media attention and voter turn-out this November to 2000) and you can see that the idea of buying a presidency is risky as well as pricey.
IMO, the only real problem is the Senate. Too many for national scrutiny, too few to make buying a majority prohibitively expensive, and differing state populations means Senators from smaller states are cheaper to buy. Toss in a combination of a six-year term and a short public memory and you end up with Ted Kennedys.
The Senate problem is easily solved by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment. Remove campaigns from the equation and you don't have to worry about campaign finance.
"make all elections 100% publicly funded"
OUCH! That means my tax dollars would have to fund campaigns for one fedreal President/Vice President ballot, two federal Senator ballots, one fedral Congresscritter, one Governor/Lt. Governor (and whatever other executive offices are on a separate ballot, such as your state's AG, Comptroller, etc.), one state Senator, one state Congresscritter, three state judges, one county President, three county council members, one county Sheriff, other executive offices at the local level... If you figure each ballot will have five candidates each, that's a LOT of campaigns. Even more if I happen to live in a city with a city government. My tax money is wasted enough as it is, thankyouverymuch.
If they were, then this case would still be open to the public and then everybody would get to see the sourcecode. Legally, no less.
The multi-million dollar donations we see here might not happen if we just repealed the Seventeenth Amendment
"Anyone else amazed by the fact that there is a place called Chevy Chase, Maryland?!"
Where do you think the actor got his stage name?
If it's copy-protected, it's not really a CD. Thank you, Philips.
"If you are signing the petition, but have not and will not watch the show, you're really not helping."
You're forgetting something: The only time it actually helps to watch the show is if you have a Nielson box on your set. If you don't show up on the Nielson ratings, your opinion means squat.
"You've got it backwards"
It's all relative, actually. The prices of the individuals and the price of the bundle affect each other.
"You've seen "Buy 4 foobars, get the 5th one free!"? Same idea."
And why does a company do this? I can think of three possibilities:
1.) This is a temporary sale. The manufacturer is selling their foobars near or at the break-even point (or maybe even below) in order to generate more customers. Adobe has been doing this for a while so I don't believe they fall into this category.
2.) Because of packaging constraints, it's actually less expensive for the manufacturer to sell foobars in groups than individually. Adobe software isn't particularly delicate and the mass and volume of the contents of five individual app boxes is about the same as the mass and volume of the bundle box. So Adobe doesn't fall into this category either.
3.) The foobars are only worth 80% of retail and the manufacturer marks up the individual foobars in order to create the illusion of value (and make a little extra profit on the side). This sounds closest to what Adobe is doing.
"the price of the bundle is less than the sum of the five apps; this is supposed to encourage you to buy the higher-priced bundle, making more money for the publisher than if you'd only bought 1..3 apps individually."
But Adobe is making more money either way.
1.) The individual apps are marked up 25% of what they're really worth, so Adobe is making more money. Adobe wins, consumer loses.
2.) The bundle is less expensive than the sum of the individuals, making it seem more valuable/cost-effective than it really is (because the individual apps are marked up). Adobe sells more of the bundles as consumers buy more than they really need. Adobe wins, consumer loses.
There's a lot to be said about bluffing. Just because a EULA doesn't hold legal water doesn't mean the end-user won't believe it.
"This is something different than Joe User selling his copy of Windows 98 that he got with his computer that he doesn't use."
One of the differences is that Joe User doesn't have the resources to fight EULAs. It required someone who was making serious money off of "legal" EULA violations to pull this case off.
"They are selling the bundle cheaper, because it is a bundle."
How is it being a bundle justification for the higher prices for the individual apps?
When you buy a boxed set of books, often it is less expensive than the individual titles simply because the boxed set uses paperback binding, inherently cheaper than hard-covered books. But I see no glaring cost-saving in use with bundled software. They still have the same number of CDs, often the same instruction manuals included with it, and the only differences I can see are the packaging and maybe the jewel case. Sure, there are instances where bundled software is actually integrated together in the code, but from the sounds of it all we have here is Adobe taking the contents of five cheap boxes and putting them into one slightly larger cheap box.
"What will end up happening if this takes off is that bundled software will no longer be cheaper than the individual packages."
There's no reason for the bundles to be less expensive than the individual apps more than a few cents for the savings in cardboard. If the bundles save their money by not including paper manuals, then it's time for Adobe to condsider selling individual copies of software without paper manuals. Any other reason for the drastically lower pricing in bundles is a direct result of artificial mark-ups in the individual apps. Even claiming the drastic price difference is a result of stamping all the apps on fewer CDs is a joke, since we all know the price of blanks CDs.
"This will do nothing but hurt the end users is companies are allowed to do it though."
How? The only people I see getting "hurt" are the companies that are losing out on their artificial mark-up. The only money they'd be losing is money they shouldn't have made to begin with. And even then they're still turning a profit because they ARE selling the bundles. On the other hand, the re-seller could still get hurt if part of the bundle isn't as popular as the rest.
I can't see the situation you're fearing as anything but capitalism at it's best. The publishers (Adobe in this instance) are now forced to compete with their own pricing schemes on a level playing field, putting market forces and the consumer in charge of the value of their software instead of the publisher.
Consumers blame the corps. The corps blame the recorders. The recorders blame the advertisers. It goes around and around and around. I think things would be just a bit simpler if everybody involved accepted one simple truth:
NOBODY LIKES ADVERTISEMENTS!
It doesn't matter whether they put the ads in between scenes in the show or the use glaringly obvious product placement or anything of the sort. Time and time again the consumers have said "We don't like advertising." Hell, 99% of the advertising industry is trying to find new ways of advertising that the consumer literally cannot avoid, because even they know...
NOBODY LIKES AdVERTISEMENTS!
Do you think the anti-spam group would be so vocal if the content of these bulk e-mails wasn't advertising? Would various groups be unhappy with the way they're portrayed in commercials if their portrayals weren't used in order to sell something?
Now I admit that there's always a time and a place to inform potential customers about a product. But we have systems that allow business to do this that nobody minds. The phone book. Signs near the point-of-sale (soda fountains with "Coca-Cola" written on them). Hell, even QVC can be considered in this light.
If you're going to insist on putting advertising into a medium where the consumer does not want to see it, they will always find a way to avoid it, even if it means simply not paying attention to them. And frankly I don't understand how such advertisers are able to say that they earn their customers a profit with this.
If the broadcast networks insist on using intrusive advertising like this as their only means of income, then they deserve exactly what they get when, lo and behold, people avoid those advertisements. Hell, I wonder how many network execs own a PVR, because (lest we forget)...
NOBODY LIKES ADVERTISEMENTS!
Anybody know what the networks originally thought of the remote control? You know, the device that let's a viewer watch a different channel other than commercials without getting up?
I prefer "three can keep a secret if two are dead."
"These days, most data is usable only if you can share it, or share the products of your analysis, or use other people's results/etc."
But from the sounds of it we're not talking about something as simple as sharing applications and files that need to be shared. It seems that in an effort to optimize the performance of individual workstations this fictional OS is load-balancing just about all tasks amongst the workstations. "Here, help me parse this password list." This isn't publishing a web page, this is setting up your system partition as an FTP site, along with anonymous telnet access to the OS, as a default.
"The trick is having a good security policy that keeps your internal network separate from your outside-accessible resources."
It's a trick, but not the trick. Just because you have a firewall doesn't mean you don't need any security behind it. As long as you insist on putting information on the wire, security concerns grow with the volume of the information, and this idea wants to share everything. Besides, what if you configure this OS's firewall wrong and it tries load-balancing its security funcitons with the wrong side of the router?
Most of the time when there's a hole in the operating system's security a cr/hacker has to poke at the system a bit to see if there are any holes ("active radar," if you will). Somebody usually can't tell if a system is currently insecure unless they probe it first. But if you set up a system like this then you won't even need so much as a packet sniffer because everybody will be busy broadcasting information to the rest of the network in an effort to set up load-balancing. Set up a rogue laptop somewhere and who knows what it will volunteer to help load-balance. Payroll comes to mind.
With the client-server model you can focus the majority of your security efforts to the server end. While passwords may go back and forth over the wire, the server itself is where the validation (decryption, etc.) takes place. In the model described here, you have to set up sever-esque security at each and every workstation because you never know where the validation will be taking place. You want to log in as Bob and hose the network? Why bother trying to find out his real password when you can just wait until your workstation is the one validating passwords?
"Imagine computers in a group providing disk storage for their users, transparently swapping files and optimizing their collective performance, all with no central administration."
Whoever thought up this pipe dream apparently doesn't understand the Zeroth Law of Network Security: If you want information to be secure, DON'T PUT IT ON THE FUCKING NETWORK!
Seriously! As if most business OSes don't default to the least-secure settings already! Why would you want to run important apps on a system where the default is to share anything and everything with any computer in listening distance?
"The ship has already sunk. Linux is based on 40+ year old technology."
Oh? And I suppose that makes it so much better than the 15-20 year old OS/2 that Windows NT is based off of? And let's not forget that OS/2 was patterned off of 40-year old software that IBM used on its mainframes.
If the success of Internet Explorer is any indication, .NET could very well be the future of the internet if something major happens to Microsoft. "Something major" means government action, the only people who currently have enough power to curtail Microsoft. Linux just doesn't have the power to do it. They may in the future, but not now, and not before the roll-out of .NET.
.NET environment, that's fine. But just because you want to go down with a sinking ship doesn't mean that the rest of us are evil for trying to fix said sinking ship.
If you want to curse Icaza's name for attempting to adapt Linux into something that can survive in a potential
Most people (myself included) tend to opt-out of everything whever the opportunity is given out of principle. We're all so sick of all the advertisements we get sent to us that we'll opt out of everything to try to minimize it, even though we might be a little interested in, say, what WinAmp may be up to lately.
I think that, once people are done basking in the freedom of having little to no junk mail, some people may begin to opt in to one or two things here and there. And then the people who send out these ads can be confident that the recipients actually want it.
I'm not sure if there are any official numbers attesting to this, but the few people I know of that actually spend money on pay-per-view (and I do mean "few," since it tends to cost more than a 3- or 5-day VHS rental) videotape the PPV broadcast.
All I can see this doing is either removing the middleman between the movie company and the "unauthorized" copiers or flopping on its face when these kinds of people run into copy protection.
If one side or the other did any serious astroturfing it should be pretty easy to spot once these are published. Simply put them through the various anti-cheating programs that make the headlines around here so often to find out how many of these messages are suspiciously similar.
Just two good ol' boys
:) )
Never meanin' no harm
Just like you never saw
Been in trouble with the law
Since the day they was born
(Mod me down if you must, but you're just jealous that you didn't make the reference first
I'm not sure they could change the license away from GPL, at least the code they already have written. The old code is GPL and must stay GPL according to the termps of the GPL. And if I remember correctly, any code that uses GPL code must also then be GPL. So that means any future versions of Wine (unless started over from scratch) must continue to be GPL.
I think that's what they mean by "viral licensing."