I agree. This is the difference between capitalism and a free market. When there is a monopoly, there is no free market because the buyer can't choose different suppliers. Yet monopolies are often the result of a long term capitalist market.
Having a free market should be the goal--not a capitalistic one. Unfortunately, the government seems to be pushing for a capitalistic market that is tightly regulated (as in enforcing policies that define every way the company should act). This is much like communism--the only difference is that the government doesn't own the companies on paper. Maybe it is this way in some countries, but it is this way in my country (the US). They don't even seem to punish most real criminal behavior--just bring down everyone with absurd contradictory and restrictive standards.
It should be that the government maintains a free market by enforcing anti-trust laws (which they don't--just look at Microsoft) and punishing actual criminal behavior--such as fraud, theft, murder, etc.
What is this mysterious data that can't be expressed in HTML???? Blipverts!!!??!!?? Maybe they'll putcartoons into the bill--to help explain why they passed it. Oooo...maybe they can put in complex equations so everyone will think they are smart.
I think some people just believe XML is some sort of magical file format that should be used no matter what. I expect MPEG 5 will be in XML, then they'll wonder why the files are so much larger and takes 10x the processing time and memory to decode.
XML may be useful in some places, but not everywhere. Replacing it with binary formats is bad because it will unnecessarily increase the filesize and resources to decode them. Using it for config files will require all programs to run an XML parser and make the config files less human readable. Using it to express laws will just make them inaccessible to the common person by requiring them to have expensive proprietary software (or software made by an illegal monopoly) to even view them.
If they want bills to be searchable, they should be designing database tables for them, and allow the public to export the database (or subsets of it) in a standard database format. For online viewing, they could easily export the data into HTML (or XML) using PHP.
Using "Microsoft Word and a special converter to do the job" is just stupid. Creating a program that allows some intern to key the data into the database would probably be easier and more effective in the long run.
Standard HTML is just as searchable as long as you use the tags properly. One does have to wonder if M$ "encouraged" them to use this format.
Bad economy = poor sales? RIAA doesn't think so.
on
RIAA to Sue You Now
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· Score: 2
Or could it be because people are getting fed up with the latest crap from Britnay Spears and N'sync?
You seem to be missing the most absurd point about their claims that copyright infringement is causing sluggish sales in 2001/2002: the economy has been in the toilet that entire time! Yeah, what you said may have something to do with it, but I think the economy is the biggest factor.
Not quite as absurd as the doublethink they were pulling in 2000. They said they were losing profits to "piracy", and yet I heard 2000 was one of the best years they had profitwise.
As I remember the listening booths had two legal problems. First, some company had some sort of patent on them, and sued over it. Second, the RIAA / labels were in some hissy fit about getting royalties for people listening to their music--I believe that online music stores had the same problem...
Maybe someone that remembers better can fill you in on the specifics and give you links?...trying the old Linux hacker's trick for getting results out of the community--submit a incomplete or buggy patch and hope the community gathers together to fix the problem.;-)
You say the cons for Linux and Macs are that they don't have many games. However, why not just buy gaming consoles for play. There are at least two non-Microsoft competitors in that market--Sony and Nintendo. Maybe some of you have reasons not to like them (they seem to be obsessed with copy protection too), but I think they are much better alternatives to MS. As an extra bonus, you don't have to mess with hardware configurations and stupid compatiblity problems, or wait for long boots...
...and yes there are games that are computer only, however it seems to me that recently all the good games are on console anyway, and the computer game section of stores are almost dead. I mean last time I looked, The Sims was the most exciting game there! Lame.
Re:GCC 2.x and 3.x compiler
on
Pet Bugs?
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· Score: 2
This reminds me of a problem I was having compiling programs that used Linux system calls. Every time I tried to compile anything, I kept getting a bunch of errors saying lots of data types were undefined. I traced where the data types were defined down to the kernel's asm/posix_types.h, but I couldn't figure out why they weren't getting defined. It took me a while, but doing a 'gcc -v' revealed that it was using the wrong header file--there is some other asm/posix_types.h in an internal directory that gcc searches before/usr/include. To fix it, I had to put a -I/usr/include in my compiler flags.
I'm not sure, but we may be arguing about terminology here. I suppose the demonlord Gates will put in technology that monitors what everyone does--in fact what you're saying already appears to be in XP. But what I was saying is palladium is worse because they'll be preventing you from doing things they don't approve--like writing your own programs without M$ approval, or even competing with M$ in any way...
I mostly agree with you, however I thought I'd dispute a few points.
I'm also frightened by the proposed Palladium system from our favorite software monopoly. The notion that machines I buy for my own purposes will be "checking up on me" to make sure I'm honest is profoundly disturbing.
Palladium doesn't check up on you. It makes sure you can't do anything a few hardware/software venders don't want you to do....and it also enforces what you are allowed to do with specific files--set by the creator of that file. It's like they own your computer, and you are just borrowing it from them--funny how they're taking away ownership from the common person. Next, you'll be considered property of various corporations because you ate some of "their" food that you "rented".
If I may throw some blame in the other direction, think about these developments the next time you violate someone's copyright. If weren't doing that, the motivation behind a lot of these "Big Brother" technologies would go away. Your crime is not victimless.
I agree that copyright infringement has victims, however they are only victims if they lose a sale. IANAL, but that appears to be part of fair use--"(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." (
Title 17 of the United States Code - chapter 1 section 107)
However I disagree that infringement is the cause of these "big brother" measures. It's all about how many corporations believe that they have a "right" to profits. Why else would that clause in NAFTA chapter 11 be an issue? Corporations' interpetation of this law allowed them to sue the United States and Mexico because those countries enforced antitrust and environmental law! The entertainment cartel is no different--they believe that they should be allowed to sell plutonium laced food to children if they can make a profit from it....or create laws that allow them to control all audio and video distribution systems.
As for me, I'm going to avoid doing business with the cartel as much as possible. I just recieved my order from CDBaby, and I'm very satisfied with it. At least I have a resonable assurance that the money I pay them won't be used to take away my freedom, deny me the ability to play CDs I bought, or steal money from me.
It won't matter if MS releases the source because most likely a lot of this will be patented. Probably all owned by Microsoft no doubt--or they'll start buying all the companies that have these patents if not. Open source projects can't affort to pay patent fees (assuming M$ gives out licenses), and any for profit software company will be crushed by the monopoly if they are perceived as 'competition.' The US government has really dropped the ball with their anti-trust lawsuit--hopefully some other countries will step in...
This is part of the reason that I think that these attempts at DRM systems are really an attempt to control all communications by a few big corporations. Think about it--patents will give MS and some of the big chip manufacturers almost exclusive control in the computer and networking environments. The keys to create and release content will most likely be held by the big media companies--'content' meaning all video, still image, and audio data...and probably text. The future of communications (the telephone, document transfer, music, motion pictures) will all be digial and accessed by the internet. Therefore anyone wanting to communicate over long distances (as we do with the telephone now) or send a message to a large group of people (such as your own original song, or a usenet like post) will have to:
Buy a computer/appliance made with chips only created by the big chip manufacturers.
Buy only software created by or sanctioned by Microsoft.
Get an approved digital key from one of the big media companies.
They could reject anyone whose opinions they don't agree with. The future doesn't look very good at all if they succeed...
In one of the previous articles about this issue, someone mentioned that the organizations that sell licenses for the big labels (I think they're BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC) force people to pay even if the broadcaster doesn't play any of their music. Is there any truth to this? Have you been approached by any of them? If so, how did you deal with them?
When I read this post, I got this image of the FCC trying to blot out the sun! "Those damn freebanders...don't they realize they need our permission to use the spectrum!" I wonder how long it'll be until a government agency actually tries that...;-)
Yeah, after hearing all this, I don't think I'll ever set foot in a Best Buy store. Why the push for PSP plans? I suppose it's just to con money out of customers. As far as I can tell, they'reuseless.
I agree about Circuit City--I went in their store once and it sucked. They're also the pushers of Divix
Do one higher than that. Don't make any noise--just walk to the nearest phone, call the police, and get the guy arrested. Then the people there will be afraid to steal anything from you or falsely accuse you of anything...and it is stealing. You paid for the merchandise, so it is now your property, not the store's.
If you do that, just be sure everything in the bag is on the receipt--sometimes the cashier accidently misses scanning everything--just like sometimes they double scan stuff...it'd be embarassing to get arrested if you're the one that called the police.;-)
Not to knock your post or the Netscape people, but what is up with them always saying their browser is going to become an operating system? One could probably create a spreadsheet or word processor with Crystal Space, but I wouldn't recommend it...
I'm sure it's just as easy (or easier) to use GTK/ wxWindows or write the program in Python / Java than it would be to use Mozilla. It would be as portable, and you wouldn't have as much bloat either.
You can try running a web server bound to the loopback interface. Then set up virtual hosting for ad.doubleclick.net....and there must be a way to return a 1x1 pixel jpeg for every request...
perhaps a.gnu is in order for open source projects, for instance.
Don't you mean for GPL'd projects?
At any rate, I don't see why one organization (such as ICANN) should be able to control all top level domains. Why can't there be many organizations that provide top level domains, and the ISP and users decide which ones they use. For example, your.gnu could be handled by RMS.
There already are providers of alternate top level domains--OpenNIC for one. They even have a.oss domain for Open source projects.
I say let the open market decide--sure, you'll have conflicting names. Say someone registers booger.biz under ICANN, and someone else already owns booger.biz in the OpenNIC system. Who cares. ICANN cares because they think they are the supreme dictators of DNS, but if I don't want to recognize ICANN's.biz that they deliberately collided with OpenNIC, then it is my business!
What you said is theoreticly possible, however if you
read the alert, you'll see that this virus just hides code inside jpegs and needs an trojan program (included in the virus) to actually extract and execute the virus. It also says the virus can't spread itself on uninfected computers.
Sarcasm: Oh yeah, this virus will spread like wildfire!
Probably 50% of the population can create music as good or better than the entertainment cartel, so why not just make our own and freely distribute it? This is possible because a $2000(US) computer could do the recording--in fact a $1000 should do it. Yeah they'll also have to buy instruments, however most anyone interested in music already owns them--how many people do you know that own a guitar? No need for the thousand dollar per hour music studio and big label execs.
This will do several things:
Reduce the profit of the cartel.
It would show that the cartel's arguments that "copyright infringement is cutting into profits" are invalid--the people copying music on the internet would be doing it legally.
Give the public truely free music.
Allow the listeners and common people participation in the creation/modification of the music they listen to. Which will also allow the unexperienced to become more interested in making music--start by being an amateur DJ, go on to mixing tracks, and graduate by creating their own vocal / instrumental tracks.
I don't know about French politics, however this seems much like the US law that requires all makers of "any digital audio recording device or digital audio recording medium" (aka CD burners, blank CDs, etc.) to pay royalties to two funds--1/3 to a "musical works fund" and 2/3 to a "sound recordings fund". See
TITLE 17 CHAPTER 10 SUBCHAPTER C of US law.
The French are just doing the same thing. From the main post and the article, it doesn't appear to be an actual "tax", but "royalty payments" to a select group of copyright holders (aka the entertainment cartel).
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. This is the difference between capitalism and a free market. When there is a monopoly, there is no free market because the buyer can't choose different suppliers. Yet monopolies are often the result of a long term capitalist market.
Having a free market should be the goal--not a capitalistic one. Unfortunately, the government seems to be pushing for a capitalistic market that is tightly regulated (as in enforcing policies that define every way the company should act). This is much like communism--the only difference is that the government doesn't own the companies on paper. Maybe it is this way in some countries, but it is this way in my country (the US). They don't even seem to punish most real criminal behavior--just bring down everyone with absurd contradictory and restrictive standards.
It should be that the government maintains a free market by enforcing anti-trust laws (which they don't--just look at Microsoft) and punishing actual criminal behavior--such as fraud, theft, murder, etc.
Oh yeah, just make up some contrived obviously biased answer! Do you make infomercials???? Or maybe you just don't know anything about html.
The html version of your "example" would probably look more like this:
<p><a name="para1">(1)</a> blah, blah, blah
What is this mysterious data that can't be expressed in HTML???? Blipverts!!!??!!?? Maybe they'll put cartoons into the bill--to help explain why they passed it. Oooo...maybe they can put in complex equations so everyone will think they are smart.
I think some people just believe XML is some sort of magical file format that should be used no matter what. I expect MPEG 5 will be in XML, then they'll wonder why the files are so much larger and takes 10x the processing time and memory to decode.
XML may be useful in some places, but not everywhere. Replacing it with binary formats is bad because it will unnecessarily increase the filesize and resources to decode them. Using it for config files will require all programs to run an XML parser and make the config files less human readable. Using it to express laws will just make them inaccessible to the common person by requiring them to have expensive proprietary software (or software made by an illegal monopoly) to even view them.
If they want bills to be searchable, they should be designing database tables for them, and allow the public to export the database (or subsets of it) in a standard database format. For online viewing, they could easily export the data into HTML (or XML) using PHP.
Using "Microsoft Word and a special converter to do the job" is just stupid. Creating a program that allows some intern to key the data into the database would probably be easier and more effective in the long run.
Standard HTML is just as searchable as long as you use the tags properly. One does have to wonder if M$ "encouraged" them to use this format.
You seem to be missing the most absurd point about their claims that copyright infringement is causing sluggish sales in 2001/2002: the economy has been in the toilet that entire time! Yeah, what you said may have something to do with it, but I think the economy is the biggest factor.
Not quite as absurd as the doublethink they were pulling in 2000. They said they were losing profits to "piracy", and yet I heard 2000 was one of the best years they had profitwise.
Supply is directly tied into production cost, so production cost has everything to do with supply.
Offtopic? Come on, that is a funny post! Someone moderate parent as funny!
Maybe that's what CDBaby is for?
As I remember the listening booths had two legal problems. First, some company had some sort of patent on them, and sued over it. Second, the RIAA / labels were in some hissy fit about getting royalties for people listening to their music--I believe that online music stores had the same problem...
Maybe someone that remembers better can fill you in on the specifics and give you links? ...trying the old Linux hacker's trick for getting results out of the community--submit a incomplete or buggy patch and hope the community gathers together to fix the problem. ;-)
You say the cons for Linux and Macs are that they don't have many games. However, why not just buy gaming consoles for play. There are at least two non-Microsoft competitors in that market--Sony and Nintendo. Maybe some of you have reasons not to like them (they seem to be obsessed with copy protection too), but I think they are much better alternatives to MS. As an extra bonus, you don't have to mess with hardware configurations and stupid compatiblity problems, or wait for long boots...
...and yes there are games that are computer only, however it seems to me that recently all the good games are on console anyway, and the computer game section of stores are almost dead. I mean last time I looked, The Sims was the most exciting game there! Lame.
This reminds me of a problem I was having compiling programs that used Linux system calls. Every time I tried to compile anything, I kept getting a bunch of errors saying lots of data types were undefined. I traced where the data types were defined down to the kernel's asm/posix_types.h, but I couldn't figure out why they weren't getting defined. It took me a while, but doing a 'gcc -v' revealed that it was using the wrong header file--there is some other asm/posix_types.h in an internal directory that gcc searches before /usr/include. To fix it, I had to put a -I/usr/include in my compiler flags.
I'm not sure, but we may be arguing about terminology here. I suppose the demonlord Gates will put in technology that monitors what everyone does--in fact what you're saying already appears to be in XP. But what I was saying is palladium is worse because they'll be preventing you from doing things they don't approve--like writing your own programs without M$ approval, or even competing with M$ in any way...
I mostly agree with you, however I thought I'd dispute a few points.
Palladium doesn't check up on you. It makes sure you can't do anything a few hardware/software venders don't want you to do. ...and it also enforces what you are allowed to do with specific files--set by the creator of that file. It's like they own your computer, and you are just borrowing it from them--funny how they're taking away ownership from the common person. Next, you'll be considered property of various corporations because you ate some of "their" food that you "rented".
I agree that copyright infringement has victims, however they are only victims if they lose a sale. IANAL, but that appears to be part of fair use--"(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." ( Title 17 of the United States Code - chapter 1 section 107)
However I disagree that infringement is the cause of these "big brother" measures. It's all about how many corporations believe that they have a "right" to profits. Why else would that clause in NAFTA chapter 11 be an issue? Corporations' interpetation of this law allowed them to sue the United States and Mexico because those countries enforced antitrust and environmental law! The entertainment cartel is no different--they believe that they should be allowed to sell plutonium laced food to children if they can make a profit from it. ...or create laws that allow them to control all audio and video distribution systems.
As for me, I'm going to avoid doing business with the cartel as much as possible. I just recieved my order from CDBaby, and I'm very satisfied with it. At least I have a resonable assurance that the money I pay them won't be used to take away my freedom, deny me the ability to play CDs I bought, or steal money from me.
It won't matter if MS releases the source because most likely a lot of this will be patented. Probably all owned by Microsoft no doubt--or they'll start buying all the companies that have these patents if not. Open source projects can't affort to pay patent fees (assuming M$ gives out licenses), and any for profit software company will be crushed by the monopoly if they are perceived as 'competition.' The US government has really dropped the ball with their anti-trust lawsuit--hopefully some other countries will step in...
This is part of the reason that I think that these attempts at DRM systems are really an attempt to control all communications by a few big corporations. Think about it--patents will give MS and some of the big chip manufacturers almost exclusive control in the computer and networking environments. The keys to create and release content will most likely be held by the big media companies--'content' meaning all video, still image, and audio data...and probably text. The future of communications (the telephone, document transfer, music, motion pictures) will all be digial and accessed by the internet. Therefore anyone wanting to communicate over long distances (as we do with the telephone now) or send a message to a large group of people (such as your own original song, or a usenet like post) will have to:
They could reject anyone whose opinions they don't agree with. The future doesn't look very good at all if they succeed...
I'm curious about something.
In one of the previous articles about this issue, someone mentioned that the organizations that sell licenses for the big labels (I think they're BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC) force people to pay even if the broadcaster doesn't play any of their music. Is there any truth to this? Have you been approached by any of them? If so, how did you deal with them?
When I read this post, I got this image of the FCC trying to blot out the sun! "Those damn freebanders...don't they realize they need our permission to use the spectrum!" I wonder how long it'll be until a government agency actually tries that... ;-)
Yeah, after hearing all this, I don't think I'll ever set foot in a Best Buy store. Why the push for PSP plans? I suppose it's just to con money out of customers. As far as I can tell, they're useless.
I agree about Circuit City--I went in their store once and it sucked. They're also the pushers of Divix
Do one higher than that. Don't make any noise--just walk to the nearest phone, call the police, and get the guy arrested. Then the people there will be afraid to steal anything from you or falsely accuse you of anything...and it is stealing. You paid for the merchandise, so it is now your property, not the store's.
If you do that, just be sure everything in the bag is on the receipt--sometimes the cashier accidently misses scanning everything--just like sometimes they double scan stuff...it'd be embarassing to get arrested if you're the one that called the police. ;-)
Not to knock your post or the Netscape people, but what is up with them always saying their browser is going to become an operating system? One could probably create a spreadsheet or word processor with Crystal Space, but I wouldn't recommend it...
I'm sure it's just as easy (or easier) to use GTK/ wxWindows or write the program in Python / Java than it would be to use Mozilla. It would be as portable, and you wouldn't have as much bloat either.
You can try running a web server bound to the loopback interface. Then set up virtual hosting for ad.doubleclick.net. ...and there must be a way to return a 1x1 pixel jpeg for every request...
I do see your point--I agree that differing MX records would be a problem. No one wants misdirected mail, just ask the post office! ;-)
Don't you mean for GPL'd projects?
At any rate, I don't see why one organization (such as ICANN) should be able to control all top level domains. Why can't there be many organizations that provide top level domains, and the ISP and users decide which ones they use. For example, your .gnu could be handled by RMS.
There already are providers of alternate top level domains--OpenNIC for one. They even have a .oss domain for Open source projects.
I say let the open market decide--sure, you'll have conflicting names. Say someone registers booger.biz under ICANN, and someone else already owns booger.biz in the OpenNIC system. Who cares. ICANN cares because they think they are the supreme dictators of DNS, but if I don't want to recognize ICANN's .biz that they deliberately collided with OpenNIC, then it is my business!
What you said is theoreticly possible, however if you read the alert, you'll see that this virus just hides code inside jpegs and needs an trojan program (included in the virus) to actually extract and execute the virus. It also says the virus can't spread itself on uninfected computers.
Sarcasm: Oh yeah, this virus will spread like wildfire!
Probably 50% of the population can create music as good or better than the entertainment cartel, so why not just make our own and freely distribute it? This is possible because a $2000(US) computer could do the recording--in fact a $1000 should do it. Yeah they'll also have to buy instruments, however most anyone interested in music already owns them--how many people do you know that own a guitar? No need for the thousand dollar per hour music studio and big label execs.
This will do several things:
I don't know about French politics, however this seems much like the US law that requires all makers of "any digital audio recording device or digital audio recording medium" (aka CD burners, blank CDs, etc.) to pay royalties to two funds--1/3 to a "musical works fund" and 2/3 to a "sound recordings fund". See TITLE 17 CHAPTER 10 SUBCHAPTER C of US law.
The French are just doing the same thing. From the main post and the article, it doesn't appear to be an actual "tax", but "royalty payments" to a select group of copyright holders (aka the entertainment cartel).