And no, there are no real alternatives to Windows on the desktop, not yet, not for the average user.
Well then, what does it take to satisfy the average user?
1. Ease of use: Id say that the latest editions of the big distributions are all quite easy to use and to maintain. My mom actually runs Linux, she tried it at my place and liked the GUI better. She might run into problems configuring drivers and such, but the average user doesnt do that too much, and calls support anyway.
2. Reasonable pricing: Well, that battle is already won, wouldnt you say?
3. Lots of useful programs to run on it: Here Linux still have a disadvantage, but not by much. There are excellent (and cheap, if not free) replacement for almost all common Win apps. They might be hard to find for the average bloke though.
4. Games: Yup. A home PC is pretty much about entertainment. More and faster porting is needed.
5. Availability: Lets face it. Most pepole dont care or dare enough to replace what came preinstalled in their box. And that is Windows, and soon enough only Windows XP. But that might start to change. Dell just started shipping workstations with Red Hat 7.1 preinstalled. What if they extend that to consumer desktops? It could be the start of something interresting... Heres Dells page about it.
I agree with this, but again, I think it will be reduced especially because I think that legal action will be taken against anyone who makes an mp3 ripper that does "error correction" and allows ripping of copy protected cds.
You may be right. Although there is an obvious legit use for a CD to MP3 converter (personal copying), that WOULD protect it from any lawsuit, the DeCSS case shows that legal action can be taken against a ripping routine. But I still think a error correcting algoritm would stand the lawyer-bashing. The legal use of it would be too obvious and too common to overlook.
Call me naive if you wish.:)
So let me ask directly: do you really feel that when all cd's are are copy-protected like this, piracy will not be reduced at all? That no one anywhere will be prevented by ignorance or laziness or fear (of using an "illegal" mp3 ripper) from getting mp3s he otherwise would have gotten? Because that's what I'm hearing, and I don't buy it.
No. I cannot say that we wont be affected at all. But I think the effect will be much more marginalized than you seems to fear. But generally, the music swapping seems to have a natural way of getting around problems like this. Chop a leg off and another one will sprout. As an example, the death of Napster hasnt affected the sum of MP3 swapping as much as pepole first thought. Other networks, currently the FastTrack based ones are the biggest, have almost as many connected users and availability as Napster had.
If they cut off Joe Schmoe as a provider of the swapping material, the ones that know how to rip will probably get more persistant in doing so, for the same reason software cracking teams prevail: Out of sheer spite - they are actually idealists in a way.
It has a lot to do with the WPA. It is an example of exactly the same thing (Technology that brings inconvenience for the law abiding customers, but no real obstacle for the pirates - that is plain stupidity wherever is it implemented.) going on in another line of business. And as the most well known example of it, which other example should I use?
True. Somewhere in the early 90's (91? 92?) CDs from all major (and most minor) labels all of a sudden sounded louder. A volume compression was added to the final mix that hadnt been there before. Everyone already normalized the volume, so to get louder then took to compression.
One reason for this might be that they discovered it sounds better. Im not gifted with the audiophile ears to judge that. Another explanation might be that the a tune played on the radio or on a dancefloor with a higher volume gets the listeners attention. The listener remebers the song and hence, sales might rise. And if one label adds compression, the rest must follow.
Actually, that one got ripped because there were unprotected ones released too. But you are right. Someone will always manage to rip, no matter what the obstacle.
Everyone here seems to argue that 'look this is stupid because piracy is still possible'. But the point is that it will be reduced (to only people who, for example, knwo what D/A A/D means, which I assure you is a minority). As far as the RIAA is concerned, that's a big win.
That, i belive, is not the point. If they with this method prevents alot of pepole from ripping, some pepole will still be able to rip it. If nothing else, a ripping program with built-in error correction will probably see the light of day before long if this becomes a new standard for manufactured CDs.
The rapid spreading of MP3 files is the big threat to the record companies. (At least they claim it is, I beg to differ.) Copies of MP3 files spreads faster then plauges with all the p2p filesharing networks out there that just gets stronger and stronger.
Actually, you just need one good copy of an error corrected MP3 file, and you can (and will, if the demand for the song is high enough) populate the planet with it. What was the copy protection worth then?
There will still be enough pepole who knows how to rip to provide the MP3 sharing world with the music. And the only ones that will lose on this are the pepole who wants to rip their own legally obtained music for portable players, mix-CDs and such stuff.
Every time a signal goes through the DA/AD process, it looses detail and gains distortion.
Blah. For the ordinary cd-ripping geezer who just wants a bunch of MP3 files, the difference is not noticeable. Convering raw cd-audio into a 128 kbps (good enough for Joe Shmoe) MP3 reduces the sound quality alot more than a short DA-AD brigde.
Just think of all the new and interresting ways we could tamper with politics. Give us Internet voting, and a couple of kids with nogthing else to do will give us Dan Quayle for president.
Nothing new, then? We manage very well to screw up elections anyway. The Florida Ballot Ballet wasnt the only one in the world. Merely one of the biggest. Lets make sure the analog voting works first. Then we can get all technical...and stuff.
Zelazny, the only Cool Guy
on
Lord of Light
·
· Score: 1
The amber series was my first contact with Zelazny, and I must say that he is still my favourite fantasy author. He also has a wit and style that noone else have managed to match.
Think about it: Which other author could pull thhe following off (not correctly quited, I dont have the books with me) without sounding ridiculous?
"I shall not rest, until I have smitten thee!"
"Hey, whats your bitch!?"
Here is what we did. BSA didnt come knocking on our door, but they did mail and call, demanding an inspection. Our dialouge went something like this:
-This company does not use unlicensed software.
(Which is true - we dont)
-Well, we still want to come over and make sure that it is as you are saying.
-Sure come on over. But first we got to discuss the compensation, I said.
Pause.
-Compensation?
-Yes, naturally. How long do you think an inspection will take?
-Oh, i dunno. About five hours for a company about you size.
-I see, I said. How and with how much will you compensate us for charging in and disturbing our work a whole afternoon. This is a time-critial business, you know.
-You want us to pay you for diong an inspection?
-I expect you to compensate us for deliberately disturbing our work, yes. We simply dont have time to satisfy your curiosity. Having you pepole in the house and on our hard drives also means we cannot work openly with indoor company information that day. If this information leaks outside our walls, out competition will get an advantage that is worth millions.
-Oh, you can trust us not to pass on any information.
-Then, I said, you can trust us when we say that we dont pirate.
1. sign the cease and desist letter
2. destroy the kIllustrator-package
3. name every KIllustrator user
4. disclose the profit they made from it
5. Pay somethimng like $2000 to the lawyers
1. Not if it includes an obligation to do what the letter says (2, 3 and 4)
2. Screw that. Kai-Uwe Sattler owns the IP for his code. IANAL, but that must be an illegal request.
3. Theoretically, physically and reasonably impossible.
4. No problem. Its a non-profit piece of software. So thatr would sum up to...nada. Only a commersial distribution package including Killus would profit from it. The Uni or Sattler hasn't made any profit. One could also discuss if the name of the app is the sole cause of an imagined profit. Which of course its not.
Besides, who would this be payed to? Adobe, I presume?
5. Oh, ok. Although too high a fee for a mail that I could had written, even lawyers got to eat.
To protect a developer or company from future "abmahnung"-ers which charge 2000 euro, couldn't a lawyer take a small fee to send a cheap warning-letter, and thus protecting a product from any other independent law firms to bully them around?
Of course, the owner of the trademark might still sue the pants off them, but they might want to send out a friendlier request before going to court.
"It is a program for creating illustrations.
Therefore, it is an illustrator program."
No, it's not an illustrator program. It's an illustration program.
It was probably wrong to give Adobe the right to the pretty generic Illustator in the first place. But that damage is altready done. Now we have to live with it. Change name on the Killustrator (sounds pretty lame as far as names goes anyway) and everyone is happy.
"They would probably sue you for your Auto Repair and probably win. The McDonalds mark is one of the strongest in existence."
If my name is Old McDonald and I have a Farm, no lawyer in the world can stop me from calling it McDonalds Farm and sell tickets to come in and look at my goat.
If my name is Old McDonald and I open a restaurant, I might get some trouble.:)
True. I borrowed a set of embarrasingly expensive ($2500 or something like that)headphones from a friend of mine. I had to go back to my old $50 phones immediately. I missed the "crunch" of my own setup. The sound was just too correct, I guess, clean and clinic. No...balls.
To make them work the way they are supposed to I would had needed the rest of the high-end setup too. And even then some music would sound hollow.
I listen quite alot to (intentionally) lo-fi rock music. In a high-end context those recordings lose all meaning. But on the otherhand, Im a discophile and not an audiophile. Music, not sound, is mu turn-on.
I think it would be hard to nail MS on the copyright issues, unless smarttags are confusingly similar to normal links, and even then it might not be easy.
Well, if AOL can sue the pants off Aimster for having a domain name (aimster.com) that AOL claim is similar to their Instant Messanger (AIM) trademark, I guess anything is possible...
As for copyright issues, well you could say the same thing about proxy services like Junkbuster, which strip certain elements out of webpages before the user sees them. At the end of the day it's less offensive to copyright holders, because it adds value to their pages at no cost or effort to them, whereas Junkbuster removes any chance of them being able to fund their efforts, leading to the closure of many people's pages.
Just thinking. When it comes to changing the content of a web page, isnt Babelfish or Smurfalizer just as illegal as MS 6.0 would be?
I think I should add that the linking in this case should not be presented as hyperlinks, as they can easily be mistaken for the authors chosen links. Put a list of "Keywords in this document" in a sidebar of the browser or something.
Besides, as a web designer I must object. Wavey purple lines on my pages that I didnt put there would look butt ugly.:)
So the legal issue does not only affect the content provider, but the designer. Web page design is protected intellecual propety too, and should not be tampered with like this.
Slashdot Mirror
And no, there are no real alternatives to Windows on the desktop, not yet, not for the average user.
Well then, what does it take to satisfy the average user?
1. Ease of use: Id say that the latest editions of the big distributions are all quite easy to use and to maintain. My mom actually runs Linux, she tried it at my place and liked the GUI better. She might run into problems configuring drivers and such, but the average user doesnt do that too much, and calls support anyway.
2. Reasonable pricing: Well, that battle is already won, wouldnt you say?
3. Lots of useful programs to run on it: Here Linux still have a disadvantage, but not by much. There are excellent (and cheap, if not free) replacement for almost all common Win apps. They might be hard to find for the average bloke though.
4. Games: Yup. A home PC is pretty much about entertainment. More and faster porting is needed.
5. Availability: Lets face it. Most pepole dont care or dare enough to replace what came preinstalled in their box. And that is Windows, and soon enough only Windows XP. But that might start to change. Dell just started shipping workstations with Red Hat 7.1 preinstalled. What if they extend that to consumer desktops? It could be the start of something interresting...
Heres Dells page about it.
I agree with this, but again, I think it will be reduced especially because I think that legal action will be taken against anyone who makes an mp3 ripper that does "error correction" and allows ripping of copy protected cds.
:)
You may be right. Although there is an obvious legit use for a CD to MP3 converter (personal copying), that WOULD protect it from any lawsuit, the DeCSS case shows that legal action can be taken against a ripping routine. But I still think a error correcting algoritm would stand the lawyer-bashing. The legal use of it would be too obvious and too common to overlook.
Call me naive if you wish.
So let me ask directly: do you really feel that when all cd's are are copy-protected like this, piracy will not be reduced at all? That no one anywhere will be prevented by ignorance or laziness or fear (of using an "illegal" mp3 ripper) from getting mp3s he otherwise would have gotten? Because that's what I'm hearing, and I don't buy it.
No. I cannot say that we wont be affected at all. But I think the effect will be much more marginalized than you seems to fear. But generally, the music swapping seems to have a natural way of getting around problems like this. Chop a leg off and another one will sprout. As an example, the death of Napster hasnt affected the sum of MP3 swapping as much as pepole first thought. Other networks, currently the FastTrack based ones are the biggest, have almost as many connected users and availability as Napster had.
If they cut off Joe Schmoe as a provider of the swapping material, the ones that know how to rip will probably get more persistant in doing so, for the same reason software cracking teams prevail: Out of sheer spite - they are actually idealists in a way.
It has a lot to do with the WPA. It is an example of exactly the same thing (Technology that brings inconvenience for the law abiding customers, but no real obstacle for the pirates - that is plain stupidity wherever is it implemented.) going on in another line of business. And as the most well known example of it, which other example should I use?
True. Somewhere in the early 90's (91? 92?) CDs from all major (and most minor) labels all of a sudden sounded louder. A volume compression was added to the final mix that hadnt been there before. Everyone already normalized the volume, so to get louder then took to compression.
One reason for this might be that they discovered it sounds better. Im not gifted with the audiophile ears to judge that. Another explanation might be that the a tune played on the radio or on a dancefloor with a higher volume gets the listeners attention. The listener remebers the song and hence, sales might rise. And if one label adds compression, the rest must follow.
Actually, that one got ripped because there were unprotected ones released too. But you are right. Someone will always manage to rip, no matter what the obstacle.
Everyone here seems to argue that 'look this is stupid because piracy is still possible'. But the point is that it will be reduced (to only people who, for example, knwo what D/A A/D means, which I assure you is a minority). As far as the RIAA is concerned, that's a big win.
That, i belive, is not the point. If they with this method prevents alot of pepole from ripping, some pepole will still be able to rip it. If nothing else, a ripping program with built-in error correction will probably see the light of day before long if this becomes a new standard for manufactured CDs.
The rapid spreading of MP3 files is the big threat to the record companies. (At least they claim it is, I beg to differ.) Copies of MP3 files spreads faster then plauges with all the p2p filesharing networks out there that just gets stronger and stronger.
Actually, you just need one good copy of an error corrected MP3 file, and you can (and will, if the demand for the song is high enough) populate the planet with it. What was the copy protection worth then?
There will still be enough pepole who knows how to rip to provide the MP3 sharing world with the music. And the only ones that will lose on this are the pepole who wants to rip their own legally obtained music for portable players, mix-CDs and such stuff.
So, I CAN make digital copies with this cd? -Yes
How are these different. If the technology limits digital copies then what is the difference??
Ah. Just a typo. Replace "digital" with "illegal"
Every time a signal goes through the DA/AD process, it looses detail and gains distortion.
Blah. For the ordinary cd-ripping geezer who just wants a bunch of MP3 files, the difference is not noticeable. Convering raw cd-audio into a 128 kbps (good enough for Joe Shmoe) MP3 reduces the sound quality alot more than a short DA-AD brigde.
Can I make illegal digital copies with this cd?
-No.
Can I make illegal analog copies with this cd?
-Yes
So, I CAN make digital copies with this cd?
-Yes
Can I make legal digital copies (to my own MP3 player)?
-No
Can I bypass this stupidity by adding a DA-AD conversion to my digital copying?
-Most probably, yes.
Wont this give me MP3 files with lesser quality?
-Most probably, no. Not if you do it right.
Sooo... What we have is an encoding method that will only bring inconvenience to the law abiding consumer doing his private copying?
-Yes
The real pirates will work around it, and the music will eventually end up on Gnutella or wherever anyway.
-Yes
Doesnt this smell awfully lot like the Win XP Product Activation stupidity?
-Definitely, yes
Just think of all the new and interresting ways we could tamper with politics. Give us Internet voting, and a couple of kids with nogthing else to do will give us Dan Quayle for president.
Nothing new, then? We manage very well to screw up elections anyway. The Florida Ballot Ballet wasnt the only one in the world. Merely one of the biggest. Lets make sure the analog voting works first. Then we can get all technical...and stuff.
The amber series was my first contact with Zelazny, and I must say that he is still my favourite fantasy author. He also has a wit and style that noone else have managed to match.
Think about it: Which other author could pull thhe following off (not correctly quited, I dont have the books with me) without sounding ridiculous?
"I shall not rest, until I have smitten thee!"
"Hey, whats your bitch!?"
Then of course, that was Sweden. Even thugs listens to reason over here. Lame friggin country. :)
Here is what we did. BSA didnt come knocking on our door, but they did mail and call, demanding an inspection. Our dialouge went something like this:
-This company does not use unlicensed software.
(Which is true - we dont)
-Well, we still want to come over and make sure that it is as you are saying.
-Sure come on over. But first we got to discuss the compensation, I said.
Pause.
-Compensation?
-Yes, naturally. How long do you think an inspection will take?
-Oh, i dunno. About five hours for a company about you size.
-I see, I said. How and with how much will you compensate us for charging in and disturbing our work a whole afternoon. This is a time-critial business, you know.
-You want us to pay you for diong an inspection?
-I expect you to compensate us for deliberately disturbing our work, yes. We simply dont have time to satisfy your curiosity. Having you pepole in the house and on our hard drives also means we cannot work openly with indoor company information that day. If this information leaks outside our walls, out competition will get an advantage that is worth millions.
-Oh, you can trust us not to pass on any information.
-Then, I said, you can trust us when we say that we dont pirate.
-Um, can I get back to you?
-Sure thing. Bye!
Well, we never heard from him again...
"2. Screw that. Kai-Uwe Sattler owns the IP for his code. IANAL, but that must be an illegal request."
:)
Sorry, my mistake. It was the packaging (the box) of the Killustator that they wanted destroyed.
The Koffice team can reply immediately, telling then that there are now no Killustrator boxes on the face of the earth.
1. sign the cease and desist letter 2. destroy the kIllustrator-package 3. name every KIllustrator user 4. disclose the profit they made from it 5. Pay somethimng like $2000 to the lawyers
1. Not if it includes an obligation to do what the letter says (2, 3 and 4)
2. Screw that. Kai-Uwe Sattler owns the IP for his code. IANAL, but that must be an illegal request.
3. Theoretically, physically and reasonably impossible.
4. No problem. Its a non-profit piece of software. So thatr would sum up to...nada. Only a commersial distribution package including Killus would profit from it. The Uni or Sattler hasn't made any profit. One could also discuss if the name of the app is the sole cause of an imagined profit. Which of course its not.
Besides, who would this be payed to? Adobe, I presume?
5. Oh, ok. Although too high a fee for a mail that I could had written, even lawyers got to eat.
To protect a developer or company from future "abmahnung"-ers which charge 2000 euro, couldn't a lawyer take a small fee to send a cheap warning-letter, and thus protecting a product from any other independent law firms to bully them around?
Of course, the owner of the trademark might still sue the pants off them, but they might want to send out a friendlier request before going to court.
"It is a program for creating illustrations. Therefore, it is an illustrator program."
No, it's not an illustrator program. It's an illustration program.
It was probably wrong to give Adobe the right to the pretty generic Illustator in the first place. But that damage is altready done. Now we have to live with it. Change name on the Killustrator (sounds pretty lame as far as names goes anyway) and everyone is happy.
"They would probably sue you for your Auto Repair and probably win. The McDonalds mark is one of the strongest in existence."
:)
If my name is Old McDonald and I have a Farm, no lawyer in the world can stop me from calling it McDonalds Farm and sell tickets to come in and look at my goat.
If my name is Old McDonald and I open a restaurant, I might get some trouble.
"So you woud want to launch in the same direction, east that is."
Oh, and I thought the best direction for a launch was Up.
Cheers, mate.
...I'd prefer the string quartet. Then again, I doubt they can play Pink Floyd loud enough to induce brain damage in small children.
Depends on how close you sit.
Ever heard Flesh Quartet? When they feel like it they're both amped, distorted and quite damn loud.
True. I borrowed a set of embarrasingly expensive ($2500 or something like that)headphones from a friend of mine. I had to go back to my old $50 phones immediately. I missed the "crunch" of my own setup. The sound was just too correct, I guess, clean and clinic. No...balls.
To make them work the way they are supposed to I would had needed the rest of the high-end setup too. And even then some music would sound hollow.
I listen quite alot to (intentionally) lo-fi rock music. In a high-end context those recordings lose all meaning. But on the otherhand, Im a discophile and not an audiophile. Music, not sound, is mu turn-on.
Not if the thang is disabled by default, as they claim it will be. Not that I trust the old Bill Bunch to stick to their claims, but anyway.
I think it would be hard to nail MS on the copyright issues, unless smarttags are confusingly similar to normal links, and even then it might not be easy.
Well, if AOL can sue the pants off Aimster for having a domain name (aimster.com) that AOL claim is similar to their Instant Messanger (AIM) trademark, I guess anything is possible...
As for copyright issues, well you could say the same thing about proxy services like Junkbuster, which strip certain elements out of webpages before the user sees them. At the end of the day it's less offensive to copyright holders, because it adds value to their pages at no cost or effort to them, whereas Junkbuster removes any chance of them being able to fund their efforts, leading to the closure of many people's pages.
Just thinking. When it comes to changing the content of a web page, isnt Babelfish or Smurfalizer just as illegal as MS 6.0 would be?
I think I should add that the linking in this case should not be presented as hyperlinks, as they can easily be mistaken for the authors chosen links. Put a list of "Keywords in this document" in a sidebar of the browser or something.
:)
Besides, as a web designer I must object. Wavey purple lines on my pages that I didnt put there would look butt ugly.
So the legal issue does not only affect the content provider, but the designer. Web page design is protected intellecual propety too, and should not be tampered with like this.