"Pleasing users is not Microsoft's game. That's what their competitors have to do."
That's the most insightful thing I've heard about business in general in a long time. ANY business without meaningful competition is pretty much in the same position.
And linux's one or two percent of the desktop market is hardly "meaningful competition" -- hell, even Apple's 3 or 4 percent doesn't bother M$ much.
WHEN and IF someone comes along with a real competitor to Windows, then we'll see M$ change their tune. In fact, that's how you'll know that linux (and/or any other desktop OS) has become a meaningful competitor!!
Nazlfrag says, "...this is likely the only explanation that would work on PHBs."
[thinking] Like this??
"Well, see, if we let this time travel thing happen, it'll take us back to before the company existed, and then we won't have any customers and we'll go out of business. So we'd better fix it before 2038 rolls around, cuz otherwise you won't have been born yet and you won't get your quarterly bonus."
Unclear? Not really. But the various analogies do help point out how absurd are some parts of copyright law, in that were it anything but a digital [whatever], the very same actions would be perfectly legal and considered fair and reasonable by most people. (And isn't that largely what any law is supposed to accomplish -- keeping life fair and reasonable for most people..??!)
What copyright law has done is take a corner case that should apply only under special circumstances, and smeared it uniformly across all cases, no matter how much hammering is necessary to make it fit.
Buy a copy of XP/Vista/Whatever, discover the activation is much of a PITA to deal with, then download one that you can actually USE without that PITA -- a better analogy would be buy a book, find the print is too small to read, so you take it down to the copy shop and make an enlarged copy for your own personal use.
Technically infringement? Probably. Unethical?? Not that I can see.
You probably didn't have to pay $500 or so for that linux app from 5-6 years ago. You DID have to pay $500 or so for that Adobe app that they refuse to patch so it will work with Vista.
All you have to do to see what happens if education is handled by the parents, not as required by and standardized by the gov't, is to look back about 150 years. The "permanent underclass" of the uneducated quite definitely existed.
Okay, I'm complaining... there are some businesses where no one in their right mind puts a street address on a website (frex, for a kennel, a street address is an invitation to all sorts of meatspace trouble, thanks to the political nuts out there these days).
I just went to look, and can't get near the content thanks to the flash crap that links to more flash crap. If there's a store or a download present, I can't see it. If I were a Radiohead fan, I'd be heading for bittorrent myself at this point.
Let any one entity own no more than a certain *percentage* of the *total* media outlets for a given broadcast and circulation area. That way if there is only one newspaper and one radio station, the same entity can't own both, but if there are several of each, then anyone might own more than one type of media.
At a guess, 1/3rd of the total media outlets would be a reasonable max under a single ownership, with waivers down to 1/2 in markets that are too small to support multiple media outlets.
There should also be a waiver (possibly approved on a case-by-case basis) to allow owners in single-media markets to bring in a NEW outlet in a different medium -- say if you owned the paper but there is no local TV station, you could also start a TV station. But you couldn't start a 2nd TV station or newspaper until some competiting entity entered your market.
Radiohead had to know it would hit the filesharing networks -- so the best move would have been to seed it themselves before anyone else could do so, and to include a textfile stating why they released it as they did and a URL where you could go to pay something if you decide the album is worth buying.
I suppose you just run the numbers, same as for anything else.
Example which by unfortunate chance is handy: I have to replace my well pump. I can either go with a 10 horsepower pump that does 60 gallons per minute, or a 3 horsepower pump that does 18 gallons per minute and costs about $1000 less up front. Now, 10HP uses one helluva lot more electricity than 3HP... but it only needs to run a fraction as much time to pump the same water. Turns out when we ran the numbers, the 10HP was actually more cost-effective since its net use was about 5% less than the 3HP -- which makes up the difference in price in about two years, AND the 10HP is liable to have better longevity since it's made better and won't have to work as many hours; and if I really need 60GPM of water, I can have it, which the other pump cannot deliver at all. So that upfront extra $1000 works out over its 30 year lifespan to several thousand in direct savings (varying with the price of electricity), and some unknown amount of savings wrt other factors (longevity, volume).
This is actually quite similar to figuring needs for a data center -- if you have NN-big servers using XX-amps power and putting out YY-BTUs worth of heat, where is the balance between electrical use, cooling costs, and smaller units that won't do as much work? So you run the numbers, because they may not be what you'd expect.
BTW per figures I saw a couple years ago, about 40% of the electricity used in California goes to feed the starving data centers.
Ah, Vista. Haven't tried it yet myself... Gods know what it's doing... hell, maybe it's just jacking off!
XP also has housekeeping fits at odd times, tho it doesn't usually wake itself from a sound sleep to do so. I suppose Vista's logic was "do housekeeping while the computer is otherwise-idle" but got a little carried away on their definition of "idle".
System Restore likes to have a cleaning fit when XP first wakes up, and I imagine it and other janitors do much the same on Vista, only more of it (Vista having so much more bloat).
If you the juror were found guilty of and required to pay $220k for this very same offense, would YOU feel that you'd been fairly penalized? Or would you feel that you'd been buggered but good by that jury of your peers?
ANYONE can legally record and distribute Beethoven's symphonies. No copyright on those notes!
But not everyone can make a recording that people want to hear, and more especially a recording that they want to hear more than once (ie. buy hardcopy of), or want to pay money to hear performed live.
So there is a strong selection toward paying *talented* musicians and conductors, and doing so proportionately to their skill and/or popular appeal, even tho the music itself is 100% FREE.
There's really no reason other genres can't make their musicians a living the same way, except that a bloated "star-making machinery" is gumming up the works.
As to the "stealing" thing, free downloads have ultimately SOLD me almost every CD I've bought. Yep, that FREE advertising was what attracted me. I didn't see or hear any other form of ads, and wouldn't have paid any attention to them if I had.
I think you're right -- if the idea is to get people to try linux, don't you want to make it easy for them, not frustrating? And if choice is good, why is Linspire's choice "bad"?? Or is your devotion to the "GNU religion" so important that you'd rather be martyrs to its political correctness than builders of bridges among OSs??
OT... if ovlidium isn't a real word, it sure should be!!
That's the one and only. $80 is the best price I've seen.:( For that you might as well buy a new motherboard with the required ports. (Tho I've noticed prices on good motherboards are going up, up, up...)
Interesting about the drive order, what's up with that?? or just no good linux drivers for it yet?
An AC still modded at zero reports, "DO NOT buy one of those adapters. They are known to be faulty in numerous respects to the SATA protocol, and have been reported (by both Linux and FreeBSD users) to cause data corruption or data loss, as well as DMA timeouts and other anomalies. Buy yourself a cheap SATA controller card if you lack SATA ports. Buy yourself a PATA controller card if you lack PATA ports."
That's very interesting; anyone else have information on this??
The problem is, there is no such thing as a cheap SATA2 controller that handles 500GB drives. Having searched extensively, the lowest price I've seen was $85. Not exactly "cheap". The $35-and-less cards max out at 300 to 400 GB. Furthermore, it seems only SATA1 comes in PCI; SATA2 adapters apparently only come in PCIx, until you get into the very pricey ones.
I'd bet you're right on the contaminated media. Either that, or bogus read/write heads. Sounds like you were getting effectively one sector = one error. Would be interesting to have some data recovery cleanroom outfit give 'em the once-over.
Even something as simple as unfiltered polluted (smokey) air would be the death of 'em, given the literally microscopic tolerances in today's HDs.
I've been specifically warned that *software* RAID is a disk-corruption disaster waiting to happen, and that no wholly-safe software RAID exists. I don't know how true this is, but I don't plan to find out from personal experience.:)
Slashdot Mirror
"Pleasing users is not Microsoft's game. That's what their competitors have to do."
That's the most insightful thing I've heard about business in general in a long time. ANY business without meaningful competition is pretty much in the same position.
And linux's one or two percent of the desktop market is hardly "meaningful competition" -- hell, even Apple's 3 or 4 percent doesn't bother M$ much.
WHEN and IF someone comes along with a real competitor to Windows, then we'll see M$ change their tune. In fact, that's how you'll know that linux (and/or any other desktop OS) has become a meaningful competitor!!
Nazlfrag says, "...this is likely the only explanation that would work on PHBs."
[thinking] Like this??
"Well, see, if we let this time travel thing happen, it'll take us back to before the company existed, and then we won't have any customers and we'll go out of business. So we'd better fix it before 2038 rolls around, cuz otherwise you won't have been born yet and you won't get your quarterly bonus."
Hmmm... I think you're right!!
Unclear? Not really. But the various analogies do help point out how absurd are some parts of copyright law, in that were it anything but a digital [whatever], the very same actions would be perfectly legal and considered fair and reasonable by most people. (And isn't that largely what any law is supposed to accomplish -- keeping life fair and reasonable for most people..??!)
What copyright law has done is take a corner case that should apply only under special circumstances, and smeared it uniformly across all cases, no matter how much hammering is necessary to make it fit.
Buy a copy of XP/Vista/Whatever, discover the activation is much of a PITA to deal with, then download one that you can actually USE without that PITA -- a better analogy would be buy a book, find the print is too small to read, so you take it down to the copy shop and make an enlarged copy for your own personal use.
Technically infringement? Probably. Unethical?? Not that I can see.
You probably didn't have to pay $500 or so for that linux app from 5-6 years ago. You DID have to pay $500 or so for that Adobe app that they refuse to patch so it will work with Vista.
All you have to do to see what happens if education is handled by the parents, not as required by and standardized by the gov't, is to look back about 150 years. The "permanent underclass" of the uneducated quite definitely existed.
"Now try to explain why the day after January 19th 2038 will be December 13th 1901."
Time travel WORKS!
Okay, I'm complaining... there are some businesses where no one in their right mind puts a street address on a website (frex, for a kennel, a street address is an invitation to all sorts of meatspace trouble, thanks to the political nuts out there these days).
I'm reminded of an old country/western song that goes:
"She got the gold mine, I got the shaft..."
I just went to look, and can't get near the content thanks to the flash crap that links to more flash crap. If there's a store or a download present, I can't see it. If I were a Radiohead fan, I'd be heading for bittorrent myself at this point.
Well, how about this as an alternative:
Let any one entity own no more than a certain *percentage* of the *total* media outlets for a given broadcast and circulation area. That way if there is only one newspaper and one radio station, the same entity can't own both, but if there are several of each, then anyone might own more than one type of media.
At a guess, 1/3rd of the total media outlets would be a reasonable max under a single ownership, with waivers down to 1/2 in markets that are too small to support multiple media outlets.
There should also be a waiver (possibly approved on a case-by-case basis) to allow owners in single-media markets to bring in a NEW outlet in a different medium -- say if you owned the paper but there is no local TV station, you could also start a TV station. But you couldn't start a 2nd TV station or newspaper until some competiting entity entered your market.
Thoughts anyone?
Yeah, I want to see this guy's "restored to original" image -- anyone got a link?
That's a good idea -- get their fans to do the work :)
:)
I didn't look at their site yet... not a fan, but since "$0" is acceptable, I'm willing to give it a listen and maybe get converted.
Radiohead had to know it would hit the filesharing networks -- so the best move would have been to seed it themselves before anyone else could do so, and to include a textfile stating why they released it as they did and a URL where you could go to pay something if you decide the album is worth buying.
I suppose you just run the numbers, same as for anything else.
Example which by unfortunate chance is handy: I have to replace my well pump. I can either go with a 10 horsepower pump that does 60 gallons per minute, or a 3 horsepower pump that does 18 gallons per minute and costs about $1000 less up front. Now, 10HP uses one helluva lot more electricity than 3HP... but it only needs to run a fraction as much time to pump the same water. Turns out when we ran the numbers, the 10HP was actually more cost-effective since its net use was about 5% less than the 3HP -- which makes up the difference in price in about two years, AND the 10HP is liable to have better longevity since it's made better and won't have to work as many hours; and if I really need 60GPM of water, I can have it, which the other pump cannot deliver at all. So that upfront extra $1000 works out over its 30 year lifespan to several thousand in direct savings (varying with the price of electricity), and some unknown amount of savings wrt other factors (longevity, volume).
This is actually quite similar to figuring needs for a data center -- if you have NN-big servers using XX-amps power and putting out YY-BTUs worth of heat, where is the balance between electrical use, cooling costs, and smaller units that won't do as much work? So you run the numbers, because they may not be what you'd expect.
BTW per figures I saw a couple years ago, about 40% of the electricity used in California goes to feed the starving data centers.
Tape? you had tape?? We had to make do with punchcards. When we got a tape reader for our IBM1620, it was a major upgrade!
As to the "new machine 6 months later" -- I suppose the ones who could afford it did so. Everyone else either suffered or backtracked.
Ah, Vista. Haven't tried it yet myself... Gods know what it's doing... hell, maybe it's just jacking off!
XP also has housekeeping fits at odd times, tho it doesn't usually wake itself from a sound sleep to do so. I suppose Vista's logic was "do housekeeping while the computer is otherwise-idle" but got a little carried away on their definition of "idle".
System Restore likes to have a cleaning fit when XP first wakes up, and I imagine it and other janitors do much the same on Vista, only more of it (Vista having so much more bloat).
If you the juror were found guilty of and required to pay $220k for this very same offense, would YOU feel that you'd been fairly penalized? Or would you feel that you'd been buggered but good by that jury of your peers?
Beethoven, Solti, Chicago Symphony. Crap, I think your post is going to prove expensive reading! :)
To simplify your point:
ANYONE can legally record and distribute Beethoven's symphonies. No copyright on those notes!
But not everyone can make a recording that people want to hear, and more especially a recording that they want to hear more than once (ie. buy hardcopy of), or want to pay money to hear performed live.
So there is a strong selection toward paying *talented* musicians and conductors, and doing so proportionately to their skill and/or popular appeal, even tho the music itself is 100% FREE.
There's really no reason other genres can't make their musicians a living the same way, except that a bloated "star-making machinery" is gumming up the works.
The most important words in TFA:
"Who needs middlemen?"
As to the "stealing" thing, free downloads have ultimately SOLD me almost every CD I've bought. Yep, that FREE advertising was what attracted me. I didn't see or hear any other form of ads, and wouldn't have paid any attention to them if I had.
I think you're right -- if the idea is to get people to try linux, don't you want to make it easy for them, not frustrating? And if choice is good, why is Linspire's choice "bad"?? Or is your devotion to the "GNU religion" so important that you'd rather be martyrs to its political correctness than builders of bridges among OSs??
OT... if ovlidium isn't a real word, it sure should be!!
That's the one and only. $80 is the best price I've seen. :( For that you might as well buy a new motherboard with the required ports. (Tho I've noticed prices on good motherboards are going up, up, up...)
Interesting about the drive order, what's up with that?? or just no good linux drivers for it yet?
An AC still modded at zero reports, "DO NOT buy one of those adapters. They are known to be faulty in numerous respects to the SATA protocol, and have been reported (by both Linux and FreeBSD users) to cause data corruption or data loss, as well as DMA timeouts and other anomalies. Buy yourself a cheap SATA controller card if you lack SATA ports. Buy yourself a PATA controller card if you lack PATA ports."
That's very interesting; anyone else have information on this??
The problem is, there is no such thing as a cheap SATA2 controller that handles 500GB drives. Having searched extensively, the lowest price I've seen was $85. Not exactly "cheap". The $35-and-less cards max out at 300 to 400 GB. Furthermore, it seems only SATA1 comes in PCI; SATA2 adapters apparently only come in PCIx, until you get into the very pricey ones.
I'd bet you're right on the contaminated media. Either that, or bogus read/write heads. Sounds like you were getting effectively one sector = one error. Would be interesting to have some data recovery cleanroom outfit give 'em the once-over.
:)
Even something as simple as unfiltered polluted (smokey) air would be the death of 'em, given the literally microscopic tolerances in today's HDs.
I've been specifically warned that *software* RAID is a disk-corruption disaster waiting to happen, and that no wholly-safe software RAID exists. I don't know how true this is, but I don't plan to find out from personal experience.