It's a public blog. If someone who is 20 levels in the company above the minions they have in their phone support offices wants to know how their customers are really being treated, I can't imagine a better place to look...maybe aside from their/dev/null folder where all of the Better Business Bureau and Attorney General complaints go.
The only way the average person usually gets the attention of a company that size is to cough up the money for a lawsuit or quit using them along with about 10 million other disgruntled customers. Your leaving the company would need to show up on a graph so some PHB may finally ask why the customer numbers are going down.
Maybe I should start blogging about Cox Communications. I just moved into their service area, and I'd gladly take Comcast back.
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind in the future. I like that it tells what kind of key it is. I just wish they could come up with a way for it not to be necessary. I think it's a bit better with Vista. At a Microsoft meeting, they said they've reduced the number of DVDs. Now they're all the same with the exception of volume licenses.
Every now and then I run into a machine that requires that a repair installation of Windows XP be done. The f***ing repair process asks for the product key. Sometimes a customer of mine hands me about 10 certificates of authenticity from Windows upgrades because you can't remove them from the upgrade packaging. Nobody has any idea which key belongs to which computer. The computer won't boot, so I can't extract the key with a key finder. The upgrade keys won't work with a full version install disk, OEM's need an OEM disk, etc. I've also had the mentioned problem with Office. My Office 2003 app was FrontPage 2003, which I installed but never started. Back to my previous point, the thing I dread most about fixing a dead machine is often the licensing BS I'll have to deal with. If I change parts...maybe a motherboard with a different chipset...Office and Windows XP, among other applications, want to reactivate. OEM copies consider it a different machine, and since they only get 1 activation, you need to call and explain what you're doing to Microsoft. What a pain in the ass. It's sad when your worst fear of upgrading a machine is how the software activation will react. This will only get worse as more software requires different versions of product activation. Most software with license protection is a pain in the ass.
There's a balance that needs to be struck. Unfortunately, I think copy protection and identification is necessary for many companies that make money on closed source software. I've often seen that people who can afford software won't pay for it if they don't have to. I'd just like for the process to get easier. Having to take time out to install a licensing server on a network is BS. Having to call tech support and sit on the phone for hours getting a copy protection issue straight on software I've paid for is BS as well.
I agree with you on this one. If a company were to go ahead with polluting the sky with this garbage, I don't think they could ever do enough to convince me to buy from them again. At least with banner ads and TV ads, we're getting a service in exchange for viewing the ads, and we can opt-out by not going to those Internet sites or TV channels.
Your approach seems to be the "end justifies the mean" approach. There's nothing wrong with it, but many people go to these presentations to appreciate the means. There may come a time when holographic actors are indistinguishable from real actors, but some people will still have more appreciation for the human actors. It may not exactly be logical, but I don't think this perception will change anytime soon. On the flip side, others will appreciate the technology that went into being able to fake the whole thing, but I doubt theatres would bring in the kind of money they do for hitting the play button on a holographic projector.
My family has season tickets at our theatre, and I've seen Les Miserables a few times. I think the fact that it is live really adds to the experience, and if this goes too far, I agree that it could seriously affect attendance. At least at our theatre though, you have to buy season tickets for years to get decent tickets because it's so popular. I think the producers may be running into a problem of not being able to make any more money by selling additional tickets because many of the play houses are full. Raising the prices appreciably may seriously reduce attendance, so maybe then need to resort to saving money to make more. Of course, raising the price $.50 a show per person would probably make up the $10,000 per week saved by replacing the musicians, and most people who are buying $70 per person tickets wouldn't even notice a $.50 increase. Personally, I'd rather pay the extra $.50. I don't like it. I guess I just argued against my own point.
As far as I know, the music format is open, but the DRM is proprietary to Apple. What I'm suggesting is an open DRM that would allow people to move their music to other platforms as they choose. If in the future you chose, for example, to switch to Linux, how will you play your iTMS music? What should be important is that you paid for your music, not what platform you play it on.
It seems clear that the music companies will not let music be made available on-line without DRM, so it will always be a necessary evil. Although there are more players available, the Windows Media format locks your music onto the Windows platform just as the iTunes Music Store locks your music into an Apple format. It would be nice if somebody could come up with true cross-platform DRM. I don't mind paying for music, but I don't want to be locked out of playing my music in Linux, for example. In my opinion, it would be nice if an Open Source DRM implementation would take hold.
As I've said before, I think the best solution for the RIAA will be to clean up their image and get people on their side. If people saw artists and their organization as people who need to make a living instead of money hungry whores, they may get a bit more sympathy from the market. These lawsuits are probably costing them more than they are making from them, and the bad PR is just driving their customers away instead of bringing them back. I think what the lawsuits will instead cause is that the next big P2P network will be encrypted and anonymous like Freenet is striving for.
I agree with you on the necessity of copyright laws. I will graduate in computer science next year, and I'm glad for the protection. I don't think the trading is right either, but even putting aside the fact that our taxes would have to pay for the education, I think it would be ineffective.
I think that groups like the RIAA are actually contributing to the problem that they are trying to solve. All of their publicity lately has been about high-profile lawsuits. Now they're going after individual users. It's terrible publicity, and I think in the end, the more mature people will pay anyway. The problem is that I think they may eventually DRM themselves out of that market as well. The people will speak with their wallets, and I think many of our worries will eventually solve themselves. I think a good approach for the industry may be to quit the lawsuits for awhile and focus on fixing their image. The only way people will stop trading illegally is if they decide to on their own. That will require people to see the artists and the industry as people that deserve their support instead of as money-hungry corporations. It's not as if they're making money on the lawsuits. They are to send out a message, and I think it's the wrong message.
I don't mind companies protecting their interests, but the problem here is that some congressmen are trying to introduce laws that take our rights and privacy away just to keep their fat checks coming in. Giving ANYONE the right to hack a computer because they suspect someone illegally has copyrighted material is dangerous. That's what we have courts for. Allegations should be proven before sentences are handed out. Also, there are often legitimate, unforeseen reasons to break just about any rule.
I think copyright laws should be amended to give specific rights such as the right to make copies to different media as long as you don't distribute it to others. The rights holder shouldn't be able to dictate when and where you view it.
If they want to use DRM or give licenses for public broadcast or site licences, that should be done in a contract signed by both parties, and it should be up to the company to sue in civil court for breach of contract if they choose to do so.
Lawsuits for copyright violations are expensive. All these new laws are doing is forcing the taxpayers to pay for it. I don't think it's up to the taxpayers to defend a proposed business model. If they want DRM so bad, they should come up with good DRM instead of expecting us to pay to clean up their mess, and we shouldn't be forced to have hardware installed in our computers even if we choose not to do business with companies that require DRM hardware.
I'm with you on that one. It would be nice if they would eventually figure out that the people who are already downloading all their movies from a P2P network will continue to do it no matter what DRM is in place. They should focus on keeping the customers they have instead of trying to strongarm people who have no intention of buying from them. All those college students throwing around $7,000 copies of Maya come to mind. If they all got taken to jail, I don't think Alias Wavefront would gain anything but bad publicity. Anyway, the problem with boycotting is that when people do boycott, the RIAA and the MPAA spin the numbers to look as though it's the P2P networks causing them to lose business. They act as though people can't exist without watching their movies or listening to their music. If you're not getting it from the RIAA or MPAA, you must be stealing it, right? There are good alternatives such as watching local bands live and buying CDs directly from them. I think once people start getting nailed for sharing files on a regular basis, the RIAA and MPAA will see just how well people can go on without them.
I can't believe that out of all the replies to this, only a few people have had something to say but, "This is a stupid comment. Nobody sues Microsoft. Blah, blah, blah." I was actually referring to the perception of accountability rather than actually being able to win a suit. You can sue anybody for anything, even if it is futile. I agree that I should have worded it better, but it amazes me how many people had to post just about the same reply after seeing it posted about 5 times before.
We've had discussions here before about whether every word of a EULA is enforceable, and I believe that one day if blatant negligence can be proven in court, some software company may, in fact, be held liable. Personally, I hope it doesn't end up happening that way, because that would mean that open source authors could potentially be held liable for their software as well.
Anyway, I wasn't even saying that I particularly agree with those reasons, but those are the main ones that I've heard, and some of them are valid.
The other thing that I've seen a lot of is people bashing others just because they happen to use a Microsoft tool once in awhile. I like to use Linux for anything that I can, but in some circumstances, a proprietary solution can get the job done better or easier. Linus's use of Bit Keeper is a prime example. Being productive was more important to him than making a political statement, and he chose the best tool for the job.
He's taken a lot of heat for that choice, but I agree with it.
First, most non-tech corporate types have heard of Exchange. Next, they like to have someone to sue. Even those projects with companies behind them don't have much to go after. Even though Microsoft has a EULA that supposedly frees them from any liability if the software screws up, it makes the corporate types feel better. Also, they can hire any MCSE off the streets to run the Exchange server. There aren't many standard certs that they can rely on when they need to hire your replacement after you've bundled together all this unfamiliar software on their servers. When you consider the hiring difficulties, lack of certifications, and lack of accountability of the authors of the software, the open source projects may, in fact, cost a good bit more than the $10,000 worth of Microsoft software. The entry costs of this software look enormous to individuals, but to corporations, it often doesn't appear to be much money. Corporations care much less about software politics than most of us do. The open source solution has the benefit of getting out of proprietary formats, but I don't think that's very high up on the list of priorities of the people making the decisions.
Software patents and closed file formats make it too easy for companies to reduce their competition. Some ideas are just plain obvious, and just because someone was the first to write to the patent office shouldn't mean that anyone else who wants to implement an obvious idea should require their permission. The guy who was sueing everybody for the windowing technique for solving the y2k issue comes to mind. I had thought up that idea long before I ever heard about his patent. It seemed pretty obvious to me. It's too bad more companies don't have the guts to let their software sell itself based on its quality. If Microsoft, for example, opened the Word format, they'd most likely still hold most of the office software market, and nobody could accuse them of using the formats to unfairly stifle competition. Patents are even worse, because at least file formats can possibly be reverse engineered. Removing software patents may hurt a few companies in the short run, but it would be good for consumers because the industry itself would mature at a faster rate, and companies couldn't fix prices just because nobody else has a right to sell a similar product.
This could be quite a pain if people were to make signal jammers that would make the laptop think the person is gone even when he is sitting at the computer.
It appears to me that Apple wants to retain the OS X name for quite awhile, so they're using the.1,.2,.x as major version numbers. The 10 is just the name. From what I saw of the new features, it does look like a major OS upgrade. The fact that they include minor version numbers after the 10.1 or 10.2 seems to verify this. I still think making the major upgrades look like minor version numbers was a bad PR move.
Unless you have an internal network with NO access to the outside world, the RW server would still be vulnerable. Also, many attacks come from within corporations. The only way this would make much of a difference would be if the internal server wasn't networked at all and had great physical security. That would make updates rather inconvenient considering you'd have to bring some sort of media to the rack to load site updates. Otherwise, you're still depending on the firewall and server configuration to keep people off of the internal system.
I could see Microsoft doing this, but I think both will be hindered by DRM issues. My personal opinion is that I would like Sony electronics better if the electronics division would split into a separate company from the publishing division. The memory stick Walkman, for example, could have been a wonderful toy if it weren't for the DRM crap in it.
I quit using radar detectors because they always managed to find microwave ovens and automatic doors, but I could never tell which alert was a cop. I ended up feeling on edge the entire time I was driving. If I was alerted to every little bit of network activity, I'd probably never get any sleep at night. IDS systems are intended to make you feel more secure, not less.
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It's a public blog. If someone who is 20 levels in the company above the minions they have in their phone support offices wants to know how their customers are really being treated, I can't imagine a better place to look...maybe aside from their /dev/null folder where all of the Better Business Bureau and Attorney General complaints go.
The only way the average person usually gets the attention of a company that size is to cough up the money for a lawsuit or quit using them along with about 10 million other disgruntled customers. Your leaving the company would need to show up on a graph so some PHB may finally ask why the customer numbers are going down.
Maybe I should start blogging about Cox Communications. I just moved into their service area, and I'd gladly take Comcast back.
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind in the future. I like that it tells what kind of key it is. I just wish they could come up with a way for it not to be necessary. I think it's a bit better with Vista. At a Microsoft meeting, they said they've reduced the number of DVDs. Now they're all the same with the exception of volume licenses.
Every now and then I run into a machine that requires that a repair installation of Windows XP be done. The f***ing repair process asks for the product key. Sometimes a customer of mine hands me about 10 certificates of authenticity from Windows upgrades because you can't remove them from the upgrade packaging. Nobody has any idea which key belongs to which computer. The computer won't boot, so I can't extract the key with a key finder. The upgrade keys won't work with a full version install disk, OEM's need an OEM disk, etc. I've also had the mentioned problem with Office. My Office 2003 app was FrontPage 2003, which I installed but never started. Back to my previous point, the thing I dread most about fixing a dead machine is often the licensing BS I'll have to deal with. If I change parts...maybe a motherboard with a different chipset...Office and Windows XP, among other applications, want to reactivate. OEM copies consider it a different machine, and since they only get 1 activation, you need to call and explain what you're doing to Microsoft. What a pain in the ass. It's sad when your worst fear of upgrading a machine is how the software activation will react. This will only get worse as more software requires different versions of product activation. Most software with license protection is a pain in the ass.
There's a balance that needs to be struck. Unfortunately, I think copy protection and identification is necessary for many companies that make money on closed source software. I've often seen that people who can afford software won't pay for it if they don't have to. I'd just like for the process to get easier. Having to take time out to install a licensing server on a network is BS. Having to call tech support and sit on the phone for hours getting a copy protection issue straight on software I've paid for is BS as well.
I agree with you on this one. If a company were to go ahead with polluting the sky with this garbage, I don't think they could ever do enough to convince me to buy from them again. At least with banner ads and TV ads, we're getting a service in exchange for viewing the ads, and we can opt-out by not going to those Internet sites or TV channels.
Your approach seems to be the "end justifies the mean" approach. There's nothing wrong with it, but many people go to these presentations to appreciate the means. There may come a time when holographic actors are indistinguishable from real actors, but some people will still have more appreciation for the human actors. It may not exactly be logical, but I don't think this perception will change anytime soon. On the flip side, others will appreciate the technology that went into being able to fake the whole thing, but I doubt theatres would bring in the kind of money they do for hitting the play button on a holographic projector.
My family has season tickets at our theatre, and I've seen Les Miserables a few times. I think the fact that it is live really adds to the experience, and if this goes too far, I agree that it could seriously affect attendance. At least at our theatre though, you have to buy season tickets for years to get decent tickets because it's so popular. I think the producers may be running into a problem of not being able to make any more money by selling additional tickets because many of the play houses are full. Raising the prices appreciably may seriously reduce attendance, so maybe then need to resort to saving money to make more. Of course, raising the price $.50 a show per person would probably make up the $10,000 per week saved by replacing the musicians, and most people who are buying $70 per person tickets wouldn't even notice a $.50 increase. Personally, I'd rather pay the extra $.50. I don't like it. I guess I just argued against my own point.
As far as I know, the music format is open, but the DRM is proprietary to Apple. What I'm suggesting is an open DRM that would allow people to move their music to other platforms as they choose. If in the future you chose, for example, to switch to Linux, how will you play your iTMS music? What should be important is that you paid for your music, not what platform you play it on.
It seems clear that the music companies will not let music be made available on-line without DRM, so it will always be a necessary evil. Although there are more players available, the Windows Media format locks your music onto the Windows platform just as the iTunes Music Store locks your music into an Apple format. It would be nice if somebody could come up with true cross-platform DRM. I don't mind paying for music, but I don't want to be locked out of playing my music in Linux, for example. In my opinion, it would be nice if an Open Source DRM implementation would take hold.
ISC has already released a new version of BIND that can be configured to ignore wildcard data from root servers. More info is at http://www.isc.org/products/BIND/delegation-only.h tml.
I, for one, will install it.
http://news.com.com....
As I've said before, I think the best solution for the RIAA will be to clean up their image and get people on their side. If people saw artists and their organization as people who need to make a living instead of money hungry whores, they may get a bit more sympathy from the market. These lawsuits are probably costing them more than they are making from them, and the bad PR is just driving their customers away instead of bringing them back. I think what the lawsuits will instead cause is that the next big P2P network will be encrypted and anonymous like Freenet is striving for.
I agree with you on the necessity of copyright laws. I will graduate in computer science next year, and I'm glad for the protection. I don't think the trading is right either, but even putting aside the fact that our taxes would have to pay for the education, I think it would be ineffective.
I think that groups like the RIAA are actually contributing to the problem that they are trying to solve. All of their publicity lately has been about high-profile lawsuits. Now they're going after individual users. It's terrible publicity, and I think in the end, the more mature people will pay anyway. The problem is that I think they may eventually DRM themselves out of that market as well. The people will speak with their wallets, and I think many of our worries will eventually solve themselves. I think a good approach for the industry may be to quit the lawsuits for awhile and focus on fixing their image. The only way people will stop trading illegally is if they decide to on their own. That will require people to see the artists and the industry as people that deserve their support instead of as money-hungry corporations. It's not as if they're making money on the lawsuits. They are to send out a message, and I think it's the wrong message.
Actually, since the laws benefit content providers, shouldn't they pay to educate us?
I don't mind companies protecting their interests, but the problem here is that some congressmen are trying to introduce laws that take our rights and privacy away just to keep their fat checks coming in. Giving ANYONE the right to hack a computer because they suspect someone illegally has copyrighted material is dangerous. That's what we have courts for. Allegations should be proven before sentences are handed out. Also, there are often legitimate, unforeseen reasons to break just about any rule.
I think copyright laws should be amended to give specific rights such as the right to make copies to different media as long as you don't distribute it to others. The rights holder shouldn't be able to dictate when and where you view it.
If they want to use DRM or give licenses for public broadcast or site licences, that should be done in a contract signed by both parties, and it should be up to the company to sue in civil court for breach of contract if they choose to do so.
Lawsuits for copyright violations are expensive. All these new laws are doing is forcing the taxpayers to pay for it. I don't think it's up to the taxpayers to defend a proposed business model. If they want DRM so bad, they should come up with good DRM instead of expecting us to pay to clean up their mess, and we shouldn't be forced to have hardware installed in our computers even if we choose not to do business with companies that require DRM hardware.
I'm all for them making the money that is due them, but if the labels want to make CDs that I'll return to the store as defective, that's up to them.
I'm with you on that one. It would be nice if they would eventually figure out that the people who are already downloading all their movies from a P2P network will continue to do it no matter what DRM is in place. They should focus on keeping the customers they have instead of trying to strongarm people who have no intention of buying from them. All those college students throwing around $7,000 copies of Maya come to mind. If they all got taken to jail, I don't think Alias Wavefront would gain anything but bad publicity. Anyway, the problem with boycotting is that when people do boycott, the RIAA and the MPAA spin the numbers to look as though it's the P2P networks causing them to lose business. They act as though people can't exist without watching their movies or listening to their music. If you're not getting it from the RIAA or MPAA, you must be stealing it, right? There are good alternatives such as watching local bands live and buying CDs directly from them. I think once people start getting nailed for sharing files on a regular basis, the RIAA and MPAA will see just how well people can go on without them.
I can't believe that out of all the replies to this, only a few people have had something to say but, "This is a stupid comment. Nobody sues Microsoft. Blah, blah, blah." I was actually referring to the perception of accountability rather than actually being able to win a suit. You can sue anybody for anything, even if it is futile. I agree that I should have worded it better, but it amazes me how many people had to post just about the same reply after seeing it posted about 5 times before.
We've had discussions here before about whether every word of a EULA is enforceable, and I believe that one day if blatant negligence can be proven in court, some software company may, in fact, be held liable. Personally, I hope it doesn't end up happening that way, because that would mean that open source authors could potentially be held liable for their software as well.
Anyway, I wasn't even saying that I particularly agree with those reasons, but those are the main ones that I've heard, and some of them are valid.
The other thing that I've seen a lot of is people bashing others just because they happen to use a Microsoft tool once in awhile. I like to use Linux for anything that I can, but in some circumstances, a proprietary solution can get the job done better or easier. Linus's use of Bit Keeper is a prime example. Being productive was more important to him than making a political statement, and he chose the best tool for the job. He's taken a lot of heat for that choice, but I agree with it.
First, most non-tech corporate types have heard of Exchange. Next, they like to have someone to sue. Even those projects with companies behind them don't have much to go after. Even though Microsoft has a EULA that supposedly frees them from any liability if the software screws up, it makes the corporate types feel better. Also, they can hire any MCSE off the streets to run the Exchange server. There aren't many standard certs that they can rely on when they need to hire your replacement after you've bundled together all this unfamiliar software on their servers. When you consider the hiring difficulties, lack of certifications, and lack of accountability of the authors of the software, the open source projects may, in fact, cost a good bit more than the $10,000 worth of Microsoft software. The entry costs of this software look enormous to individuals, but to corporations, it often doesn't appear to be much money. Corporations care much less about software politics than most of us do. The open source solution has the benefit of getting out of proprietary formats, but I don't think that's very high up on the list of priorities of the people making the decisions.
Software patents and closed file formats make it too easy for companies to reduce their competition. Some ideas are just plain obvious, and just because someone was the first to write to the patent office shouldn't mean that anyone else who wants to implement an obvious idea should require their permission. The guy who was sueing everybody for the windowing technique for solving the y2k issue comes to mind. I had thought up that idea long before I ever heard about his patent. It seemed pretty obvious to me. It's too bad more companies don't have the guts to let their software sell itself based on its quality. If Microsoft, for example, opened the Word format, they'd most likely still hold most of the office software market, and nobody could accuse them of using the formats to unfairly stifle competition. Patents are even worse, because at least file formats can possibly be reverse engineered. Removing software patents may hurt a few companies in the short run, but it would be good for consumers because the industry itself would mature at a faster rate, and companies couldn't fix prices just because nobody else has a right to sell a similar product.
This could be quite a pain if people were to make signal jammers that would make the laptop think the person is gone even when he is sitting at the computer.
It appears to me that Apple wants to retain the OS X name for quite awhile, so they're using the .1, .2, .x as major version numbers. The 10 is just the name. From what I saw of the new features, it does look like a major OS upgrade. The fact that they include minor version numbers after the 10.1 or 10.2 seems to verify this. I still think making the major upgrades look like minor version numbers was a bad PR move.
If people are gonna be doing manual labor at their computers, they'll need more energy.
Unless you have an internal network with NO access to the outside world, the RW server would still be vulnerable. Also, many attacks come from within corporations. The only way this would make much of a difference would be if the internal server wasn't networked at all and had great physical security. That would make updates rather inconvenient considering you'd have to bring some sort of media to the rack to load site updates. Otherwise, you're still depending on the firewall and server configuration to keep people off of the internal system.
I could see Microsoft doing this, but I think both will be hindered by DRM issues. My personal opinion is that I would like Sony electronics better if the electronics division would split into a separate company from the publishing division. The memory stick Walkman, for example, could have been a wonderful toy if it weren't for the DRM crap in it.
I quit using radar detectors because they always managed to find microwave ovens and automatic doors, but I could never tell which alert was a cop. I ended up feeling on edge the entire time I was driving. If I was alerted to every little bit of network activity, I'd probably never get any sleep at night. IDS systems are intended to make you feel more secure, not less.