This is such a common, and such a thoughtless, belief.
"If I buy a CD, or buy a music file online, I don't want someone else dictating what I can and can't do with it."
Well, no. That's not how the world works.
The whole business model of selling content to consumers is EXACTLY predicated on "dictating what you can and can't do with it."
Forget digital media and DRM/TPM. Go back to publishing an actual book, with physical pages.
If you bought a book, you do NOT have the right to do "anything you want with it". In particular, you can't republish that book and sell it, or even give it away, thousands of times. That violates the copyright law, and you'll be sued and/or thrown in jail.
More importantly (for this discussion), if the copyright law were revoked, why would anyone try to make money by publishing a book? If it's unsuccessful, you lose money. If it's successful, it'll be ripped off, and you lose money. Either way, you lose.
This is just so basic I can't believe that people don't get it.
I get the feeling that the Slashdot-groupthink here is "screw those evil corporations, we'll get the government to pass a law saying they HAVE to give us the ability to copy ANYTHING they publish."
In the days when copies were analog, and making copies was time-consuming and had a cost per copy, fair use copies with no TPMs is a viable compromise for both sides. The content providers are not really all that concerned with Joe Sixpack sitting at his VCR for two hours dubbing a copy of a movie for his buddy. This is not a scalable rip-off.
Today, when you can digitally copy things fast and losslessly, and you can distribute them over the Internet to thousands of people as easily as you can give that dubbed VCR tape to your one neighbor, this no longer works.
TPMs are here to stay. Deal with it.
My challenge to you:
Come up with a TPM that stops people from copying and distributing a work more than "fair use", but that allows "fair use". You get to decide exactly what "fair use" means technically, but it must fit today's working definition -- personal backups, personal use on other devices, research/library use.
Can you do it? Or do you just want to sit there flaming about nasty corporations?
This is a perfectly reasonable argument, thanks. You actually lay out the issue and give your opinion. This stands in stark contrast to the knee-jerk posted article which simply assumes that Microsoft is wrong and Miers is somehow tarred by association with Microsoft and this case.
And I completely agree with you that what Microsoft did is "ridiculous" and "poor practice".
That said... the real question was not whether a class-action lawsuit can be filed.. obviously anyone can sue anyone for anything at any time with no real consequences. (THAT is another problem, BTW.) The question is, what class should be certified by the judge? This is the critical question for the plaintiff's lawyers, because if the class isn't huge, or if they have to do work to qualify class members, it isn't worth their while to pursue the suit.
In this case, the question is: if you bought DOS, and you never used the compression feature, or you used it and never had a problem with it... are you part of the class bringing suit? In other words, did you have an injury that should be compensated?
Oh, I don't disagree with what you said, at all. It's completely reasonable that I should be able to get high-severity bug fixes in the release that I purchased, without buying a new release.
That was not my point. My point was: why are we assuming that including ALL users of a release, even those who were NOT affected by a particular bug, in the class certified for a class-action lawsuit, is the right thing to do? Just because the people arguing against this are Microsoft and a Bush appointee? Maybe, just maybe, they are RIGHT, and you should analyze each situation rather than knee-jerk reacting or talking about some other issue.
Why did your FUD detector go off? Is it not conceivable that plaintiff's lawyers are sometimes doing things that are bad, and the corporations they are suing are sometimes trying to do the right thing? That's what I mean by "Slashdot knee-jerk reaction". You just had one.
Stop and think. You are a product manager in a for-profit software company. A successful class-action lawsuit has just transferred all the profit from your last product into the hands of a bunch of lawyers, because of some decision you made about when and how to schedule fixes into product releases. What do you do this time? Do you hold onto the next release for another month, six months, a year, while you try to lawsuit-proof it? Do you allocate resources away from new features and onto handling the most obscure situations? Do you start looking for a new career because this one is going nowhere and isn't fun any more? Is it REALLY the right thing to allow lawyers into this loop?
As to your comments on what you feel is "progress"... sure, absolutely, you have the power to choose what you view as value in software, and to spend your resources in that direction. However, this has nothing to do with the subject at hand... whether you also let lawyers and class action lawsuits into that value-determining feedback loop to the producers of the software.
Wow, that's Slashdot at its even-better-than-that. Amazing.
Are you done? Good. Allow me to retort.
1) What you said has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand.
2) It's so over the top as to be ludicrous. No one has ever been "thrown in jail" for sharing "a copy with someone else" (i.e. one copy).
3) If you don't like the fact that Company X's software costs money for each licensed copy... DON'T BUY IT. They have a perfect right to offer a product with certain terms and conditions for a certain price. You have the ability to choose whether to buy it, or go with a different company, or write your own, or tap into open source. Just because you prefer one alternative or another, don't assume that your preference is the only one true way. Or you're just another ignorant Slashdotter.
So, just because it's Microsoft that she worked for, and Bush nominated her, we knee-jerk react that all this is bad?
Do you really want any vendor's software, that has bugs that aren't fixed in a given release (clue: that's EVERY vendor's software), to be liable to a class action lawsuit (translation: lawyer's legal rape and pillage) ??
I think that had the decision gone the other way, you'd see much less innovation and progress from software companies, in general.
That Fry's $150 PC comes with Linux installed, so wouldn't be of much use to the average clueless consumer. Adding Windows to that machine doubles the cost.
IBM spends a large amount of internal IT dollars to outfit its employees with Windows and Office. As I read this story, the $75M is a credit for amounts already spent. Not $75M of new stuff.
ps I am an IBMer.
You should also know that IBM, internally, plans to convert at some point over to Linux and open-source based platforms for its employees. There are pilot programs already underway.
The "bad guys" (don't want to call them hackers because of the debate about that term) are not going to just go away because we give them mean looks and call them poopheads.
There are three types of motivation:
1. The excitement and fulfillment that comes from understanding a system and finding the holes in it, and often leaving your mark so others know you were there.
2. Political and ideological motivations -- a desire to educate people, and punish the "enemy".
3. Economic motivations. This includes both advertising, and theft/scams.
The trends started at (1) and are increasingly moving towards (2) and (3). Ironically, the technology generated by (1) is being used by those whose motives are very different than the type (1)s.
The only way to fix this is to reduce the openness and anonymity of the Internet.
I repeat:
The only way to fix this is to reduce the openness and anonymity of the Internet.
Just as we had to find a balance between privacy and security/integrity in every other aspect of society (e.g. telephones, credit cards,...), we will have to do that on the Internet.
Tough to reconcile those numbers with the fact that Apple revenues were a single digit percentage or IBM's OEM microelectronics revenue. Power architecture and IBM chips are imbedded in each of the new gaming platforms (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft).
This is not a corporate inertia issue. OS/2 was originally a joint development project with Microsoft. IBM does not, itself, have the ability to open-source it. Nor is Microsoft likely to agree with this.
1. Learn to spell "fascist", at least, if you are going to use that epithet.
2. I can only assume that this is flamebait. If you seriously believe that the current system for running the Internet is "fascist", you are so far out of touch with reality that I cannot imagine having any kind of rational discussion with you.
FedEx will deliver to any residential or business address in the USA.
From my home town (in Texas) I can send a 1 pound package or letter for less than $5 and get tracked delivery in a few days. I can also spend a little more and get it there faster, via their air service.
And they don't "cover the envelope in advertisements".
The only thing I get via US Mail any more is (1) junk mail/advertising, and (2) letters from any business who hasn't provided me an online method for doing business with them -- which is very, very few.
Plus, the occasional eBay-purchased item for those really cheap sellers. I just bought an item that took 6 freaking days to get to Texas from Oregon. Ridiculous.
ABSOLUTELY. Go for it. This is EXACTLY what a free market is all about.
I am not being sarcastic. I am being dead serious.
If you want to build your own, UN-controlled network, stop talking and DO IT. That would be completely fine with us.
By the way... if this did happen, there's no way that it would not interconnect to the current Internet and allow access to US businesses on the Web. No one would want it otherwise.
It is the archetypical definition of a government service. It provides, real cheap, absolute lowest common denominator service. It is congenitally unable to modernize. It is union-dominated. It is self-serving and inward-looking as only a monopoly can be. Whatever the opposite of "customer-oriented" is, that's the post office.
I am a very calm and non-confrontational person. The only time I've EVER (and this is in over 50 years of living) had an angry fit in public was, you guessed it, at the post office, waiting in line to mail a package. I got there with four people in front of me. After 30 minutes of watching employees wander in and out without manning a service post, and of listening to the one guy who was working chat with old people about nothing (literally), I screamed "You people wouldn't know customer service if it bit you in the leg!" and stomped out.
By contrast, I can bring some stuff into FedEx or DHL, ask them for a nice, self-sealing box for free, fill out a simple form, give them 8 bucks or so, grab a copy of my form, and zing, I'm done in less than 5 minutes. I can then go home, type in my tracking number, and follow my package in real time through each step of the delivery process. And they get it there in one or two days.
It's not the people, it's the system.
And if you let the Internet be regulated by the ITU, you'll get EXACTLY the same level of crappy, take-it-or-leave-it service. Not to mention all kinds of regulation you WON'T like.
IBM OpenPower Linux server line
on
LinuxPPC64 Contest
·
· Score: 2, Informative
"The first developers to successfully submit an application port from the Tier 2 Application List (50) will be awarded a dual-boot (MacOS/X and Linux) Apple Power Mac G5 2.0GHz Part number is M9455LL/A. Approximate Retail Value: $2,500 USD as of March 15th, 2005."
Re:IBM Commercial Products and a good Book for fre
on
Deploying OpenLDAP
·
· Score: 1
I bought DVD XCopy from Fry's for $55 with a $55 rebate. 1-2-3 Studios (the manufacturer) went out of business. Fry's paid me the $55. It took some doing and complaining, but I did get the money.
I have NEVER had a problem getting a rebate from a Fry's purchase, other than the one mentioned above, and another where I stupidly didn't follow the directions. And I've probably gotten 50 rebates from them in all in the last few years, including many free-after-rebate items.
Look: if you think the rebate submission deadlines are too short, if you have trouble following directions, if you don't want to take the time to submit/keep a copy/track, or if you just think rebates are a scam --- DON'T BUY THE PRODUCTS IN THE FIRST PLACE. But quit whining about it.
Slashdot Mirror
This is such a common, and such a thoughtless, belief.
"If I buy a CD, or buy a music file online, I don't want someone else dictating what I can and can't do with it."
Well, no. That's not how the world works.
The whole business model of selling content to consumers is EXACTLY predicated on "dictating what you can and can't do with it."
Forget digital media and DRM/TPM. Go back to publishing an actual book, with physical pages.
If you bought a book, you do NOT have the right to do "anything you want with it". In particular, you can't republish that book and sell it, or even give it away, thousands of times. That violates the copyright law, and you'll be sued and/or thrown in jail.
More importantly (for this discussion), if the copyright law were revoked, why would anyone try to make money by publishing a book? If it's unsuccessful, you lose money. If it's successful, it'll be ripped off, and you lose money. Either way, you lose.
This is just so basic I can't believe that people don't get it.
I get the feeling that the Slashdot-groupthink here is "screw those evil corporations, we'll get the government to pass a law saying they HAVE to give us the ability to copy ANYTHING they publish."
In the days when copies were analog, and making copies was time-consuming and had a cost per copy, fair use copies with no TPMs is a viable compromise for both sides. The content providers are not really all that concerned with Joe Sixpack sitting at his VCR for two hours dubbing a copy of a movie for his buddy. This is not a scalable rip-off.
Today, when you can digitally copy things fast and losslessly, and you can distribute them over the Internet to thousands of people as easily as you can give that dubbed VCR tape to your one neighbor, this no longer works.
TPMs are here to stay. Deal with it.
My challenge to you:
Come up with a TPM that stops people from copying and distributing a work more than "fair use", but that allows "fair use". You get to decide exactly what "fair use" means technically, but it must fit today's working definition -- personal backups, personal use on other devices, research/library use.
Can you do it? Or do you just want to sit there flaming about nasty corporations?
This is a perfectly reasonable argument, thanks. You actually lay out the issue and give your opinion. This stands in stark contrast to the knee-jerk posted article which simply assumes that Microsoft is wrong and Miers is somehow tarred by association with Microsoft and this case.
And I completely agree with you that what Microsoft did is "ridiculous" and "poor practice".
That said... the real question was not whether a class-action lawsuit can be filed.. obviously anyone can sue anyone for anything at any time with no real consequences. (THAT is another problem, BTW.) The question is, what class should be certified by the judge? This is the critical question for the plaintiff's lawyers, because if the class isn't huge, or if they have to do work to qualify class members, it isn't worth their while to pursue the suit.
In this case, the question is: if you bought DOS, and you never used the compression feature, or you used it and never had a problem with it... are you part of the class bringing suit? In other words, did you have an injury that should be compensated?
I think THAT is highly debatable.
Oh, I don't disagree with what you said, at all. It's completely reasonable that I should be able to get high-severity bug fixes in the release that I purchased, without buying a new release.
That was not my point. My point was: why are we assuming that including ALL users of a release, even those who were NOT affected by a particular bug, in the class certified for a class-action lawsuit, is the right thing to do? Just because the people arguing against this are Microsoft and a Bush appointee? Maybe, just maybe, they are RIGHT, and you should analyze each situation rather than knee-jerk reacting or talking about some other issue.
Why did your FUD detector go off? Is it not conceivable that plaintiff's lawyers are sometimes doing things that are bad, and the corporations they are suing are sometimes trying to do the right thing? That's what I mean by "Slashdot knee-jerk reaction". You just had one.
Stop and think. You are a product manager in a for-profit software company. A successful class-action lawsuit has just transferred all the profit from your last product into the hands of a bunch of lawyers, because of some decision you made about when and how to schedule fixes into product releases. What do you do this time? Do you hold onto the next release for another month, six months, a year, while you try to lawsuit-proof it? Do you allocate resources away from new features and onto handling the most obscure situations? Do you start looking for a new career because this one is going nowhere and isn't fun any more? Is it REALLY the right thing to allow lawyers into this loop?
As to your comments on what you feel is "progress"... sure, absolutely, you have the power to choose what you view as value in software, and to spend your resources in that direction. However, this has nothing to do with the subject at hand... whether you also let lawyers and class action lawsuits into that value-determining feedback loop to the producers of the software.
Wow, that's Slashdot at its even-better-than-that. Amazing.
Are you done? Good. Allow me to retort.
1) What you said has absolutely nothing to do with the subject at hand.
2) It's so over the top as to be ludicrous. No one has ever been "thrown in jail" for sharing "a copy with someone else" (i.e. one copy).
3) If you don't like the fact that Company X's software costs money for each licensed copy... DON'T BUY IT. They have a perfect right to offer a product with certain terms and conditions for a certain price. You have the ability to choose whether to buy it, or go with a different company, or write your own, or tap into open source. Just because you prefer one alternative or another, don't assume that your preference is the only one true way. Or you're just another ignorant Slashdotter.
So, just because it's Microsoft that she worked for, and Bush nominated her, we knee-jerk react that all this is bad?
Do you really want any vendor's software, that has bugs that aren't fixed in a given release (clue: that's EVERY vendor's software), to be liable to a class action lawsuit (translation: lawyer's legal rape and pillage) ??
I think that had the decision gone the other way, you'd see much less innovation and progress from software companies, in general.
1) Go to the HP site and download the freakin drivers.
2) Go to Fry's or online and buy a freakin NAT router/firewall for like $20. This will block the worms until you can get the updates installed.
That Fry's $150 PC comes with Linux installed, so wouldn't be of much use to the average clueless consumer. Adding Windows to that machine doubles the cost.
IBM spends a large amount of internal IT dollars to outfit its employees with Windows and Office. As I read this story, the $75M is a credit for amounts already spent. Not $75M of new stuff.
ps I am an IBMer.
You should also know that IBM, internally, plans to convert at some point over to Linux and open-source based platforms for its employees. There are pilot programs already underway.
The "bad guys" (don't want to call them hackers because of the debate about that term) are not going to just go away because we give them mean looks and call them poopheads.
...), we will have to do that on the Internet.
There are three types of motivation:
1. The excitement and fulfillment that comes from understanding a system and finding the holes in it, and often leaving your mark so others know you were there.
2. Political and ideological motivations -- a desire to educate people, and punish the "enemy".
3. Economic motivations. This includes both advertising, and theft/scams.
The trends started at (1) and are increasingly moving towards (2) and (3). Ironically, the technology generated by (1) is being used by those whose motives are very different than the type (1)s.
The only way to fix this is to reduce the openness and anonymity of the Internet.
I repeat:
The only way to fix this is to reduce the openness and anonymity of the Internet.
Just as we had to find a balance between privacy and security/integrity in every other aspect of society (e.g. telephones, credit cards,
Tough to reconcile those numbers with the fact that Apple revenues were a single digit percentage or IBM's OEM microelectronics revenue. Power architecture and IBM chips are imbedded in each of the new gaming platforms (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft).
This is not a corporate inertia issue. OS/2 was originally a joint development project with Microsoft. IBM does not, itself, have the ability to open-source it. Nor is Microsoft likely to agree with this.
That's exactly true. Dave Cutler was the father of Windows NT and came from DEC and VMS.
see http://www.answers.com/topic/dave-cutler
1. Learn to spell "fascist", at least, if you are going to use that epithet.
2. I can only assume that this is flamebait. If you seriously believe that the current system for running the Internet is "fascist", you are so far out of touch with reality that I cannot imagine having any kind of rational discussion with you.
Wrong.
FedEx will deliver to any residential or business address in the USA.
From my home town (in Texas) I can send a 1 pound package or letter for less than $5 and get tracked delivery in a few days. I can also spend a little more and get it there faster, via their air service.
And they don't "cover the envelope in advertisements".
The only thing I get via US Mail any more is (1) junk mail/advertising, and (2) letters from any business who hasn't provided me an online method for doing business with them -- which is very, very few.
Plus, the occasional eBay-purchased item for those really cheap sellers. I just bought an item that took 6 freaking days to get to Texas from Oregon. Ridiculous.
It was an opinion. I like to think I don't let ego get in the way of my opinions, but obviously I could be wrong.
Again....
go for it. Prove me wrong. I actually think that would be great.
ABSOLUTELY. Go for it. This is EXACTLY what a free market is all about.
I am not being sarcastic. I am being dead serious.
If you want to build your own, UN-controlled network, stop talking and DO IT. That would be completely fine with us.
By the way... if this did happen, there's no way that it would not interconnect to the current Internet and allow access to US businesses on the Web. No one would want it otherwise.
I am a very calm and non-confrontational person. The only time I've EVER (and this is in over 50 years of living) had an angry fit in public was, you guessed it, at the post office, waiting in line to mail a package. I got there with four people in front of me. After 30 minutes of watching employees wander in and out without manning a service post, and of listening to the one guy who was working chat with old people about nothing (literally), I screamed "You people wouldn't know customer service if it bit you in the leg!" and stomped out.
By contrast, I can bring some stuff into FedEx or DHL, ask them for a nice, self-sealing box for free, fill out a simple form, give them 8 bucks or so, grab a copy of my form, and zing, I'm done in less than 5 minutes. I can then go home, type in my tracking number, and follow my package in real time through each step of the delivery process. And they get it there in one or two days.
It's not the people, it's the system. And if you let the Internet be regulated by the ITU, you'll get EXACTLY the same level of crappy, take-it-or-leave-it service. Not to mention all kinds of regulation you WON'T like.
The correct URL for the OpenPower line is:
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/openpower/
Click Here
from the Rules on the website:
"The first developers to successfully submit an application port from the Tier 2 Application List (50) will be awarded a dual-boot (MacOS/X and Linux) Apple Power Mac G5 2.0GHz Part number is M9455LL/A. Approximate Retail Value: $2,500 USD as of March 15th, 2005."
MY BAD. I somehow messed up the URL.
HERE IT IS.
Sorry posted before I was finished.
You can download and use it for free. Only if you want support do you have to pay. It's also included with other IBM middleware such as WebSphere.
On the linked page there's also a link to an IBM redbook that has a few initial chapters on LDAP. Again this is free for the download.
Domino is not the thing to get from IBM for LDAP. It drags along a ton of non-LDAP stuff.
From IBM, you should go for the Tivoli Directory Server.
It is a full function DB2-based directory server. Best of all, you can download it FOR FREE.
I bought DVD XCopy from Fry's for $55 with a $55 rebate. 1-2-3 Studios (the manufacturer) went out of business. Fry's paid me the $55. It took some doing and complaining, but I did get the money.
I have NEVER had a problem getting a rebate from a Fry's purchase, other than the one mentioned above, and another where I stupidly didn't follow the directions. And I've probably gotten 50 rebates from them in all in the last few years, including many free-after-rebate items.
Look: if you think the rebate submission deadlines are too short, if you have trouble following directions, if you don't want to take the time to submit/keep a copy/track, or if you just think rebates are a scam --- DON'T BUY THE PRODUCTS IN THE FIRST PLACE. But quit whining about it.
Leave it to us who can deal with it.