In my case, it's my wife. If you get her pissed at you, look out! She is a customer service agent's worst nightmare. She will only get MORE indignant and demanding if she gets the runaround, usually to a bunch of people who "can't authorize that". She is completely unafraid of creating a scene and making sure everyone in earshot knows that the company she's dealing with is screwing her over.
In some ways, I hate it. The looks I get as the "poor husband" (or, perhaps, "asshole husband of the bitch") are quite humorous when looked at in hindsight, but very uncomfortable at the time.
But in other ways, its great. Our cable connection was down for maintenance for a couple of hours one day, and she couldn't bid on an auction she had been watching for days. You wouldn't think that a couple of hours of downtime would be worth a month's free high-speed access, but apparently she convinced them that it was, and took up a couple of hours techie and admin peoples' time to boot.
I don't even want to think about what she'd do if she were to (shudder) put a Celine Dion "CD" into an iMac, and watch the machine lock up.
The key seems to be the ability to be utterly uninterested in giving the poor schmuck who you are addressing a break. I can't really do that. Yes, I want the company to get its just desserts, but I feel for the kid I'd have to deal with (whose job depends on making my task difficult). My wife, on the other hand, really couldn't care less if she's ruined the day of someone earning minimum wage. "If some store shits on me, I'm shitting right back on whoever they send out to talk to me."
In other words, I'll just make sure that if I come across a defective CD or DVD, I'll be making sure that my wife get riled up about too. The media industry won't know what hit them!
Probably not. The suit was brought by a non-profit company, probably with no assets, formed with the specific purpose of initiating this lawsuit.
The guy who "runs" eMarketersAmerica is also the lawyer bringing forth the suit. He's also a big-time spammer's personal attorney (see the bottom comment in Spamhaus' response). You can bet that this Felstein guy has made sure that there's nothing to countersue for.
If I'm not mistaken, the DeCSS t-shirt also got lumped in to the court injuction during the trial. I don't think a T-shirt qualifies as a "device", yet got slapped as infringing by a judge. Not a threatening cease-and-desist notice (which is only one lawyer's opinion on paper), but a real judge's ruling!
.. than I am in increasing mass storage performance! The size of the drive may have increased astoundingly, but the data transfer speed has barely increased at all. The Disk I/O has become THE bottleneck on the PC.
True, with cheap RAM these days it seems like there is little reason to have to put up with applications swapping out to disk, but it does still happen.
I just wish that there was an affordable RAID setup that actually increased performance to some significant degree. I don't remember where, but I saw a study that showed that the cheap RAID adapters, when configured to RAID0 (striping), saw only negligible increase in performance. If motherboards came with a RAID setup that allowed you to install two identical disks as a single virtual drive and get close to double the performance, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
by 2005 Linux will have become a mainstream OS if it continues at this pace.
I'd like to think so, but I doubt it. Just because Linux is already the equal to (or better than) Windows in OS capability on the desktop doesn't mean that it will be anything close to mainstream in just two years. Microsoft has a lot of things that will keep themselves dominant for the foresalble future, including existing user momentum, locked-in vendors (both hardware and software), and a very loyal following. All of these advantages are only magnified when they can spend millions at the drop of a hat to reinforce them.
We've learned over and over again the the best product doesn't always win.
Now it's not all doom and gloom. I think that Windows will continue to own the home market for at least the next five years (probably longer). But the enterprise is where Linux has a much better chance. Here is where Linux's advantages of security, open code, and TCO are far more important than in the home market (who are mostly interested in games, touchy-feely simplicity, and an abundance of high-qualtiy apps that can be pirated for their personal use).
Microsoft's only chance with longhorn is to pre-install it on every machine, if they lose their monopoly there Linux and even Apple will kick their ass.
You've got it exactly correct: it WILL be pre-installed on every machine, just like today. It's obvious that the judicial system isn't going to punish Microsoft for strong-arming box makers ("Put Windows on all machines, or we won't allow you to put Windows on *any* machines"), so they will happily continue.
This is my opinion, but currently Linux is becoming easy to use. 2 years from now it may be a complete success on the desktop or a complete failure, but considering every piece is in place I dont think Microsoft can afford 2 years.
As I kind of stated above, yes they *can* wait. They have billions in reserve, and according to their numbers they continue to pull in millions in revenue every day. They have reserves to be able to stick out this fight for a *long* time, even if they make a critical mistake (a dubious assumption: we may hate MS, but they ain't stupid).
Yes, Linux is easy to use, *for what it does*. But one of the things it *doesn't* do well is replicate Windows. And, for better or for worse, "Windows" is what most people seem to want, not "an OS that is easy to use".
Enterprise-class apps, I'm not sure really what your talking about---- are you talking about things like Photoshop, or the Macromedia products? Or are you talking about esoteric server apps?
I'm talking about really expensive, really specialized client-server applications that all big businesses need to have. Stuff like products from Peoplesoft, SAP, Primavera, and a whole lot of others that make solutions that really don't enter the radar screens of folks like us. These guys don't advertise or get articles written about their products in enthusiast or consumer press. For this stuff, look to big business magazines and journals.
The client tools (even if they work through a browser) for these applications are almost always supported ONLY on a standardized Windows platform (these days W2K or XP only). Their back ends MAY be more flexible for their implementation, but generally not. They want their customers to have their systems run on a standard (read: Microsoft) platform, or they won't support it.
... by anyone that actually knows what is necessary to do a Linux-on-desktop rollout anyways. Sure, they are part of the overall message, but no one who is serious actually says that using Linux is free (as in beer).
The real benefits are that money can be saved using Linux if you use Linux within your enterprise for what it is: a network-centric operating system. If you try to simply make Linux work like Windows, you have just forced Linux to ignore its strengths.
The REAL impediments to moving to enterprise-wide Linux implementations are not listed as myths here, because no one ever pretends that these are easy. The big ones:
Resistance to change by users - Users will always raise a stink when forced to learn something new. In general, this reaction is softened somewhat for Windows upgrades, because most people realize that they'll probably soon be (or already are) using the same new version of Windows at home as well, so it won't be seen to be "forced" by nearly as many people.
Access to existing Microsoft documents - Most businesses have all of their data locked away in MS documents, and only MS apps can be guaranteed to open them properly. We really need a slick tool that batches these.doc,.xls,.ppt, etc. documents and mass converts them open XML documents, once the filters are (we hope) figured out to the Nth degree of accuracy.
Home-grown applications - Most businesses have a bunch of tools that range from fully developed applications, right down to customized macros on spreadsheets, that were created on MS products. They may be company supported or just a pet project of an employee who needs it to get his/her work done. Regardless, moving to Linux will probably break them, and cause much grief to those maintaining them.
Enterprise-class apps on Windows only - The *really* big one. Big companies have already invested huge dollars in purchasing proprietary applications for accounting, project/time management, human resources, etc. The companies that produce these tools aren't going to make Linux versions until they see a few big customers committing to go with their product AND switching to Linux. Pretty hard for a company to commit to the switch if the product doesn't yet exist. The proverbial Catch-22.
I don't doubt that these things will eventually happen: Microsoft's continuing increase in obnoxiousness is helping companies along nicely in this regard.
I really believe that one big company, with plenty of internal IT resource, and reason to want Microsoft knocked down a few pegs, could eliminate Windows systems on their own systems (hurdling the obstacles I listed above). This could serve as the benchmark that other companies can point to and see that it is possible. Are you listening, IBM? I'm talking to you!
To put it as politely as possible, you, sir, are an ass.
Hardly. He/she had it exactly correct. It is you who is wrong.
As others in this thread have pointed out, there is a fundamental difference between an idea (a creative work, or an invention) and a piece of physical property. This is how your example is flawed: you are trying to put the rules of copyright onto a real-life object (quite poorly, as well).
Just so you get it this time...
1) The idea of ownership of property is as old as humanity. If I am in possesion of land, a house, a tool, etc., I want to retain it because if someone takes it, I will no longer have that property.
2) Before the advent of copyrights and patents (both relatively new concepts), there was nothing to protect the creative work of an artist or inventor. If something useful came out of the imagination of one brilliant mind, any other person could do or copy the same thing. It's not like taking the person's property at all: the person is not deprived of anything tangible at all.
3) It can be argued that since one person's brilliance can be easily reproduced by another without brilliance, that as a result there is no incentive to be creative and share your work unless there is some means in place to get reimbursed/recognition of your work.
4) The U.S. Constitution (for one) defined copyright and patents as being vehicles by which, in the interest of cultivating the commons with knowledge, rewarded creators with limited-term artificial monopolies on their ideas, creative works, and inventions. Copyrights and patents were not created so that their creators could control these ideas forever: quite the opposite. Without these tools, it was feared that innovation would slow due to the fact new ideas would be kept secret to a select few. But with these tools, new ideas would be made public for all to see, and benefit from freely, following a period of control of the idea granted to the creator.
There is no reference in the Constitution, or its amendments, to granting property rights to non-tangible things. This is by design, not by accident. Reading the journals of the founding fathers will make this clear.
You are, no doubt, a fond user of the term "intellectual property". This term was created precisely for the mindset you hold, that an idea should be permitted to be owned and controlled more like a physical thing, and push for changes to laws to make it such. Sadly, many people (who are actually only hurt by such thinking: they don't understand the consequences of not having a rich commons of creative work) agree with you that this is a logical way of thinking about this.
Re:OK, so maybe I'll give this "Linux" thing a try
on
Review of SuSE 8.2
·
· Score: 1
No problem. Actually I too used the opportunity to rant (I'm sure you noticed), but you don't seem to have minded too much.
Hope you get from Linux what you can. It's all about freedom to me. Some people are convinced that Microsoft has to die and Linux must rule. I feel that everyone should use what their own needs and values dictate. I don't have any problem with people and companies for whom their answer is a MS product. Do what makes sense to you.
Re:OK, so maybe I'll give this "Linux" thing a try
on
Review of SuSE 8.2
·
· Score: 1
What's different now? More mature in almost every way. But then, so is Windows. I'd say that the gap of end-user maturity is closing, though, and fast. It will likely never close entirely: Microsoft has, you know, revenue from which to fund improvements. But Linux is getting very close to "good enough" for a great many Newbies.
Can I install Linux and be productive in less than 5 hours? Depends on what you mean by "productive".
Will you be able to open up a word processor that looks very much like MS Word and use it like Word? Yes you will. Will you be able to open up existing, complex MS Word documents and edit them? Not likely. Will you be able to find a program that lets you edit video and make MPEG movies? Yup. Will these programs work with the slickness and polish of Premiere or Final Cut? Nope. Can you run a web authoring tool? Sure. Will it be Dreamweaver or GoLive? Sorry.
See where I'm going here? The tools available to a Linux user are not the same as those to a power Windows user. To many, the point of a computer is to be productive, not to spend time leaning a tool. The effort to relearn techniques, accept the lack of a feature available in a Windows app, or losing the ability to open Windows app documents are more than enough to keep most people on Windows.
Can I insert a CD and have the install routine work? In some circumstances. For instance, if you install Crossover Office on your Linux machine, a large number of Windows business applications (including Office XP and Photoshop 7) will install just like on Windows. Other apps aren't so lucky.
Are there any games yet? Some, and many are recent releases. Most, however, are purely Windows games and will never be released on Linux.
Can I develop Windows applications from within Linux now? Or at least run VS or VS.NET? If you're going to develop for Windows, do it on Windows. It's probably possible, but it makes to sense to do so.
It all comes down to two things, in my opinion:
User ineritia: Windows is the first (and so far only) OS that got widespread adoption on PCs. As a result, most people know how to use a Windows PC. Getting these people to learn a new way of doing something is against human nature: we find something that works, we tend to resist change.
Developer inertia: Related to user inertia, developers will concentrate on the platform with the most users, and create more polished work for that platform. Right now, that's Windows.
It seems that the decision to switch from Windows to Linux should be made if you have a philosophical reason to support Free software (or oppose Microsoft software), or you require your PC to do something that Windows cannot do (increased stability, thin-client capablity, etc.), or you simply can't afford to buy Microsoft's product any longer.
The only truly fair way to compare Windows and Linux is to take completely green users (never used a computer before) and sit them down in front of fully set up and configured computers. I think that you'd find that the Linux users would be just as productive or more so in such a test. But Linux, arriving long after Windows had attained dominance, is now burdened with having to satisfy not only Linux users, but hardened Windows users such as yourself. Think about it: what if Linux had been first and held 90-odd percent of the desktop market? What if it was Windows that had to not only be good at "being Windows", but also had to fight to get pre-installed on PCs, had to install easily on an existing Linux machine (without trashing the existing OS), had to perfectly open all the documents made by proprietary Linux programs, had to run all the proprietary Linux games, had to write drivers for hardware because the manufacturers refuse to release drivers for anything but Linux, etc. etc. And they'd still have it far easier than Linux actually faces, because due to the openness of L
There's a big difference between alcohol prohibition and file-swapping prohibition. In the former case there was no party (other than government trying to do law enforcement) that suffered financially as a result of trying to avoid prohibition. That is, there was no corporate stake in maintaining an artificial shortage of alcohol. However, the RIAA and MPAA represent companies that have a *big* stake in seeing the prohibition of their wares continue.
Can you blame them for trying everything they can to rake in cash while their business model is in its death throes? If the members of the RIAA are eventually going to be seriously damaged (or, if they're *really* stupid, put out of business) by our society's changing view on the sanctity of copyright, then it only makes sense that they put forward every effort to attempt to keep ahold of the power they have. In fact, they probably owe it to their shareholders to do so.
Also, I wouldn't be so sure about this being a lost cause. The U.S. is now a lot different place then it was in the 1930's. I find it completely believable that we will soon find that crimes against powerful/influential corporations will be far more severely punishable by civil and criminal law than crimes against other citizens. In some areas, this is already the case. What I'm talking about is that while existing crimes and their punishments will stay the same, "crimes" which threaten power of corporations will continue to be manufactured in new laws and further take away the rights of the citizenry.
All of this does not mean that file-sharing will stop, or will even be significantly dented. But it does mean that the RIAA and the MPAA will not lose their legitimacy, and will only get bigger and bigger hammers in their possesion with which to pound on scapegoats. The current trend of treating copyright as property will continue to be upheld as the law of the land, and no legal competitors will ever be able to make a dent.
This, from a man who considers himself a devout Christian.
I've been kind of curious about this. I myself am a Christian, and I have yet to find anyone, or any Christian literature, that finds the actions of the Bush administration since 911 to be just. Jesus taught that pacifism, love, and turning the other cheek were the way we should live our lives. Does Bush believe this?
I fully understand that the actions of his office should not necessarily be fenced in by personal beliefs that may not be shared by others in the U.S., and I support that this is the case. But has Bush ever commented on how he reconciles his actions with his religious beliefs? Does he (and the people from whom he receives religious guidance) actually believe that the actions he has taken can be morally acceptable to the Church, to Christ, and to God?
I'm glad to see that, despite starting to lean in this direction just to end this stalemate, that Prof. Felton is still not firmly in the compulsory license camp.
I have three big problems with it:
1) Unfairness in the collection - How will they possibly be able to determine a fair method of determining which bits you download are restricted from distribution by copyright, and which ones aren't? You know damned well that this will just end up being a $/mb tax that will be charged to the ISP, who will have to pass this charge on to all consumers. Workers just doing business over an encryted tunnel all day (working on no content that applies to the piracy debate) will be charged far more than the occasional Kazaa user, who is actually doing the illegal/unethical (pick your adjective) act.
2) Unfairness in the Distribution - There will never be a just method of distribution of these funds. Obviously, the MPAA/RIAA will be first in line at the trough. With them most assuredly getting the lion's share of the payments from this tax (with no reliable data to prove what percentage of their content was distributed), they will be in all the better position to put the squeeze on distributors not in their organizations (ie. the Indies). Such as regime would take away an Indie's ability to find a way to profitably distribute their content online, and receive only crumbs from the tax grab.
3) The bad precident - Once this is set up and enacted into law, how difficult do you think it would be to increase the tax rate up a few notches? Or to add more beneficiaries (think software companies, book publishers, magazine publishers, etc.) to the line-up with their hands out for free money? It will not be very long before the idea of the Internet to be used as a decentralized method of sharing information from one computer to another will be just too expensive to use in this fashion.
If you need a good idea on how bad it can be already for this kind of idea, look up information on Canada'a experience with taxing CD-Rs. Currently, there is debate over an amendment to increase this tax, and levying new taxes on removable hard drives and flash memory. As an example, the Creative Nomad player will more than double in price, and Creative has said that it will pull the product if this passes. All the while, not a penny of the money that has already been collected (millions of dollars) has been distributed because of arguments over the formulas.
That's the way I bought mine. I bought a Mitsubishi DiamondTron 21" for $200 CDN. I brought my laptop to the store and hooked it up to about a dozen screens before finding the one I bought. The rest (a collection of Mitsubishis, NECs, Sonys, and ViewSonics) had screens that had unacceptable problems (uncorrectable pincusioning, variable colour, unstable pictures, etc.)
True, mine's not perfect (the lower left corner is slightly darker than the rest), but for the money it was one of the best purchases I ever made. Man, is it ever nice being able to use 1600x1200 resolution and still be able to easily read the type!
My computer desk is not too happy, though. The thing is HEAVY (77lbs, according to the specs), and the sag of the cheap particle board is quite noticible. (keeping fingers crossed I don't hear a crack/crash in the middle of the night)
Can anyone let me know where to find a remote that is programmable (including multiple commands executed by pressing a single button), but is very simply laid out.
My father-in-law is too old (or stubborn) to learn anything beyond a simple Channel up/down, volume up/down, and power. Fine for basic cable, but we also have a digital satellite. Here are the issues:
- The power button turns on/off the satellite tuner, but not the TV (produces a loud static screen when he turns it off, doesn't turn the TV on when the system is powered off). - He presses a button on the channel keypad, gets a black audio-only channel, and can't get back to where he was. - He presses the Guide or Menu buttons and can't cancel the screen.
It seems that any remote capable of controlling a satellite receiver is horrendously complex. Seriously, I want a remote with FIVE buttons, but one that I can program what they can do. Obviously, we'll keep the real remote for ourselves. Any advice?
It WILL be made permanent. Come on, its called the "USA PATRIOT" act: how will it look for a member of Congress or Senator to vote against something like this? Regarless of which party he/she is in, in the next election his/her opponent's primary attack will be ".. VOTED AGAINST THE PATRIOT ACT!! WHAT KIND OF AMERICAN IS HE/SHE!?!? HE/SHE SUPPORTS TERRORISTS!!"
It would be political disaster to vote against this. There may be legitimate opposition to this in government, but most of the media and political enemies would be merciless in their attack. If ANYONE votes against this, it would surprise me.
I hope that this somehow manages to get tossed by the courts, but I'm somehow not optimistic.
If you want a bunch of people to work on one thing until completion, PAY THEM.
Exactly right. If no one wants to pay for the development of a desired app or feature, they shouldn't necessarily expect that the developer wants the same thing.
The author of the article DOES have point, however. We very easily could be running out of time before a great amount of functionality of desktop computing is made illegal under Free software. I'm sure that all of the developers of desktop applications don't want to have their creations made into digital contraband, so it *IS* in everyone's best interest to make a Free desktop as good as possible, as quickly as possible. I think that everyone will agree that the quickest way to "good" is to have a unified front with a common goal. That way, there is enough Free software in the wild that such laws would be untenable.
The developers see this as a long-term benefit: being able to legally use their software at some indeterminate point in the future. The short-term benefit (far more important to most people) is either being paid, or developing whatever they darened well feel like.
The author of the article neglected to address this need. Part of the effort needs to be not only setting/defining the "unified front", but also in setting up a pay structure for those who would accomplish the work.
I propose that someone (far more capable than me) lead an effort to - define the technical/functional features needed for maximum desktop penetration on both business and home desktops, - get buy-in on these features by a great number of influential OS developers, - raise funds from end users and interested corporate users (make sure it can be a tax write-off), - set up a task list, - dispurse funds to indivuals/groups/companies who accomplish these tasks.
In other words, we need someone (indiviual or foundation) to be a project manager for the payment of the development of this goal.
Of course, there is no way that the amount paid would be up to an employee's salary: this is still a largely an act of generosity on behalf of the workers. But it does allow the project manager to set a higher dollar value to the tasks that most developers tend to hate, but are necessary nonetheless (such as documentation, rigorous testing, interface cleanup, etc.).
This has probably already been proposed by someone before, but has never been implemented to a great degreee. I hope that someone would like to do this, though, and has influence with the OS community of developers. I really think this could work if planned and backed properly.
Not sure, but their page mentions something about "content-specfic encryption". This says (to me at least) that each file may be DRM'ed in a unique fashion?
Precisely! The issue is, however, that some movie houses will no longer have film projectors, but will be showing all-digital movies. If these movies were distributed to theatres in a standard (read: open) file format, it would be possible to transfer the data to a nice big hard disk and pirate a perfect copy.
For now, you'll have to ignore the fact that a) the effort to break Microsoft's DRM will probably be trivial, and b) no one really wants to make "perfect copies" of anything the **AA makes anyways! I mean, jeez, how long will they be able to keep flogging this argument? CD audio is compressed to MP3s and OGGs. DVDs are compressed to DivX. There is virtually no "perfect" copies of anything floating on the Internet.
Other than the other issues of DVDs not having enough capacity, the studios wouldn't distribute movies on disc (even a super-high capicity disc). The idea that an unscrupulous theatre employee could (*gasp*) make a copy of their precious movie is too much for their hearts to take.
However, in a nice proprietary format with controlled hardware, they get a nice buzz thinking their movies are safe.
Oh, and I think you may be on the mark on your prediction of WMP-discs becoming a reality. Oh, DVDs will be around for quite awhile, but slowly you'll find that all the extras that you find currently on DVDs (all the interviews, deleted scenes, etc.) will soon start disappearing from DVDs and exclusively appear on WMP-discs. Either that, or the extra content will not appear on standard DVD players, only on WMP enabled ones. Either way, we're on our way to fully DRM'ed content.
I really don't mind copy protection schemes (or "technological measures", in DMCA-type lingo). It pisses off consumers, and causes those who use the schemes to lose business. Forcing labelling will accelerate this attitude.
However, if there is no way of bypassing these measures (as the DMCA tries to force), then there is no incentive for publishers to be consumer-friendly. This will continue to cause the erosion of fair-use of media, since eventually the warning label (and the protections) will be on ALL major-label releases. This bill will then be irrelavent.
It also protects content not owned by the MPAA and the RIAA. Sure, in theory it does, but the whole point of the Act was to make it commercially imposible for any competion, using a new business model that utilizes digital media, to be successful.
You answer your own question there. It was to put us in complaince.. regular old US copyright law for a couple of reasons didnt meet "international" criteria. (dont get me started on how I dont care if it did or not). No, I did NOT answer my own question, and neither did you. Who, exactly, has the DMCA benefitted (other than the current media giants)? Name one. No, I'm not being pissy here, I really want to see an example, as that may help me to see your point.
Basically, the majority of the people I see bitching about the DMCA are those who want to freely pirate and rip media. Now, fair use aside, my suggestion to them is A) pay for what they want, or B) shut the hell up. Sorry to disappoint you, but I am one of the people here who finds the DMCA a crock of shit AND respects copyright. I do pay to those I use copyrighted materials. The main point IS fair use. To crimianalize the act of telling someone how to reclaim it is a horrendous mockery of justice. I do not want someone dictating to me how my DVD is to be played in my home on my equipment. I do not want to be punished for daring to print out an ebook onto my own paper because I don't have a computer to look at while I'm sitting on the toilet. And most of all I don't want this kind of corporate attitude to become more acceptable, because they will only continue to screw us harder in the future.
I agree fair use needs some work.. but then again, "fair use" is confusing in and of itself. If a school wants to use clips of "gangs of new york" to illustrate points during a class on the history of the bowery, etc, more power to em. Fair Use as far as I'm concerned. However, if it wants to play that movie in the auditorium, and charge students 2 bucks a head to see it, that is _not_ fair use. So saying "schools are paying to use it" is not clear enough. Not so confusing to me. You're right, your first example is fair use, the second is not. If I'm not mistaken, this is already defined quite clearly in the Copyright Act (pre-DMCA). Fair use is quite a simple concept: it means that there are (or at least supposed to be) certain things that the holder of a copied work can do, regardless of the copyright holders wishes. These include any use of the work for personal use (not distributed to others), and certain uses of the work that can be distributed. So under fair use, I can do ANYTHING to a copy that I legally obtained that I want, for my own use. If I want to embed violence, swearing, and nudity into a family movie for my gratification, no one should be able to say anything to me. But the DMCA is the type of law that could make the tools to do such a thing illegal.
Look, pre-DMCA copyright law said, in very broad terms, "don't copy stuff you're not allowed to." If you need to increase the penalties for actually committing this act, that's another discussion that we can persue later. But broadening the punishment to distribution of tools that enable fair use is unacceptable to me. This is the media industry saying "Boo hoo, it's too hard to catch people actually breaking the law. Let's make it easier on ourselves by buying a law that makes ROT-13 a legally-protected security device!"
By the way, catching people illegally copying their media is only the publically presented rationalle for the DMCA. Their REAL reason for wanting this law is precisely the "side effect" that you talked about in your original post: that is, the elimination of fair use! Without fair use, there is control of content, and thought truly does become "intellectual property". The notion of copyright existing for the temporary protection of authors & artists before reverting to the public domain is easily suppressed to the public when they are made to believe that fair use is bad and/or illegal. THAT is my biggest problem with the DMCA.
Slashdot Mirror
.. make sure you bring along someone who does!
In my case, it's my wife. If you get her pissed at you, look out! She is a customer service agent's worst nightmare. She will only get MORE indignant and demanding if she gets the runaround, usually to a bunch of people who "can't authorize that". She is completely unafraid of creating a scene and making sure everyone in earshot knows that the company she's dealing with is screwing her over.
In some ways, I hate it. The looks I get as the "poor husband" (or, perhaps, "asshole husband of the bitch") are quite humorous when looked at in hindsight, but very uncomfortable at the time.
But in other ways, its great. Our cable connection was down for maintenance for a couple of hours one day, and she couldn't bid on an auction she had been watching for days. You wouldn't think that a couple of hours of downtime would be worth a month's free high-speed access, but apparently she convinced them that it was, and took up a couple of hours techie and admin peoples' time to boot.
I don't even want to think about what she'd do if she were to (shudder) put a Celine Dion "CD" into an iMac, and watch the machine lock up.
The key seems to be the ability to be utterly uninterested in giving the poor schmuck who you are addressing a break. I can't really do that. Yes, I want the company to get its just desserts, but I feel for the kid I'd have to deal with (whose job depends on making my task difficult). My wife, on the other hand, really couldn't care less if she's ruined the day of someone earning minimum wage. "If some store shits on me, I'm shitting right back on whoever they send out to talk to me."
In other words, I'll just make sure that if I come across a defective CD or DVD, I'll be making sure that my wife get riled up about too. The media industry won't know what hit them!
Probably not. The suit was brought by a non-profit company, probably with no assets, formed with the specific purpose of initiating this lawsuit.
The guy who "runs" eMarketersAmerica is also the lawyer bringing forth the suit. He's also a big-time spammer's personal attorney (see the bottom comment in Spamhaus' response). You can bet that this Felstein guy has made sure that there's nothing to countersue for.
If I'm not mistaken, the DeCSS t-shirt also got lumped in to the court injuction during the trial. I don't think a T-shirt qualifies as a "device", yet got slapped as infringing by a judge. Not a threatening cease-and-desist notice (which is only one lawyer's opinion on paper), but a real judge's ruling!
.. than I am in increasing mass storage performance! The size of the drive may have increased astoundingly, but the data transfer speed has barely increased at all. The Disk I/O has become THE bottleneck on the PC.
True, with cheap RAM these days it seems like there is little reason to have to put up with applications swapping out to disk, but it does still happen.
I just wish that there was an affordable RAID setup that actually increased performance to some significant degree. I don't remember where, but I saw a study that showed that the cheap RAID adapters, when configured to RAID0 (striping), saw only negligible increase in performance. If motherboards came with a RAID setup that allowed you to install two identical disks as a single virtual drive and get close to double the performance, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
by 2005 Linux will have become a mainstream OS if it continues at this pace.
I'd like to think so, but I doubt it. Just because Linux is already the equal to (or better than) Windows in OS capability on the desktop doesn't mean that it will be anything close to mainstream in just two years. Microsoft has a lot of things that will keep themselves dominant for the foresalble future, including existing user momentum, locked-in vendors (both hardware and software), and a very loyal following. All of these advantages are only magnified when they can spend millions at the drop of a hat to reinforce them.
We've learned over and over again the the best product doesn't always win.
Now it's not all doom and gloom. I think that Windows will continue to own the home market for at least the next five years (probably longer). But the enterprise is where Linux has a much better chance. Here is where Linux's advantages of security, open code, and TCO are far more important than in the home market (who are mostly interested in games, touchy-feely simplicity, and an abundance of high-qualtiy apps that can be pirated for their personal use).
Microsoft's only chance with longhorn is to pre-install it on every machine, if they lose their monopoly there Linux and even Apple will kick their ass.
You've got it exactly correct: it WILL be pre-installed on every machine, just like today. It's obvious that the judicial system isn't going to punish Microsoft for strong-arming box makers ("Put Windows on all machines, or we won't allow you to put Windows on *any* machines"), so they will happily continue.
This is my opinion, but currently Linux is becoming easy to use. 2 years from now it may be a complete success on the desktop or a complete failure, but considering every piece is in place I dont think Microsoft can afford 2 years.
As I kind of stated above, yes they *can* wait. They have billions in reserve, and according to their numbers they continue to pull in millions in revenue every day. They have reserves to be able to stick out this fight for a *long* time, even if they make a critical mistake (a dubious assumption: we may hate MS, but they ain't stupid).
Yes, Linux is easy to use, *for what it does*. But one of the things it *doesn't* do well is replicate Windows. And, for better or for worse, "Windows" is what most people seem to want, not "an OS that is easy to use".
Enterprise-class apps, I'm not sure really what your talking about---- are you talking about things like Photoshop, or the Macromedia products? Or are you talking about esoteric server apps?
I'm talking about really expensive, really specialized client-server applications that all big businesses need to have. Stuff like products from Peoplesoft, SAP, Primavera, and a whole lot of others that make solutions that really don't enter the radar screens of folks like us. These guys don't advertise or get articles written about their products in enthusiast or consumer press. For this stuff, look to big business magazines and journals.
The client tools (even if they work through a browser) for these applications are almost always supported ONLY on a standardized Windows platform (these days W2K or XP only). Their back ends MAY be more flexible for their implementation, but generally not. They want their customers to have their systems run on a standard (read: Microsoft) platform, or they won't support it.
Thank you. The best "funny" post I've read in a long time!
The real benefits are that money can be saved using Linux if you use Linux within your enterprise for what it is: a network-centric operating system. If you try to simply make Linux work like Windows, you have just forced Linux to ignore its strengths.
The REAL impediments to moving to enterprise-wide Linux implementations are not listed as myths here, because no one ever pretends that these are easy. The big ones:
I don't doubt that these things will eventually happen: Microsoft's continuing increase in obnoxiousness is helping companies along nicely in this regard.
I really believe that one big company, with plenty of internal IT resource, and reason to want Microsoft knocked down a few pegs, could eliminate Windows systems on their own systems (hurdling the obstacles I listed above). This could serve as the benchmark that other companies can point to and see that it is possible. Are you listening, IBM? I'm talking to you!
To put it as politely as possible, you, sir, are an ass.
Hardly. He/she had it exactly correct. It is you who is wrong.
As others in this thread have pointed out, there is a fundamental difference between an idea (a creative work, or an invention) and a piece of physical property. This is how your example is flawed: you are trying to put the rules of copyright onto a real-life object (quite poorly, as well).
Just so you get it this time...
1) The idea of ownership of property is as old as humanity. If I am in possesion of land, a house, a tool, etc., I want to retain it because if someone takes it, I will no longer have that property.
2) Before the advent of copyrights and patents (both relatively new concepts), there was nothing to protect the creative work of an artist or inventor. If something useful came out of the imagination of one brilliant mind, any other person could do or copy the same thing. It's not like taking the person's property at all: the person is not deprived of anything tangible at all.
3) It can be argued that since one person's brilliance can be easily reproduced by another without brilliance, that as a result there is no incentive to be creative and share your work unless there is some means in place to get reimbursed/recognition of your work.
4) The U.S. Constitution (for one) defined copyright and patents as being vehicles by which, in the interest of cultivating the commons with knowledge, rewarded creators with limited-term artificial monopolies on their ideas, creative works, and inventions. Copyrights and patents were not created so that their creators could control these ideas forever: quite the opposite. Without these tools, it was feared that innovation would slow due to the fact new ideas would be kept secret to a select few. But with these tools, new ideas would be made public for all to see, and benefit from freely, following a period of control of the idea granted to the creator.
There is no reference in the Constitution, or its amendments, to granting property rights to non-tangible things. This is by design, not by accident. Reading the journals of the founding fathers will make this clear.
You are, no doubt, a fond user of the term "intellectual property". This term was created precisely for the mindset you hold, that an idea should be permitted to be owned and controlled more like a physical thing, and push for changes to laws to make it such. Sadly, many people (who are actually only hurt by such thinking: they don't understand the consequences of not having a rich commons of creative work) agree with you that this is a logical way of thinking about this.
No problem. Actually I too used the opportunity to rant (I'm sure you noticed), but you don't seem to have minded too much.
Hope you get from Linux what you can. It's all about freedom to me. Some people are convinced that Microsoft has to die and Linux must rule. I feel that everyone should use what their own needs and values dictate. I don't have any problem with people and companies for whom their answer is a MS product. Do what makes sense to you.
More mature in almost every way. But then, so is Windows. I'd say that the gap of end-user maturity is closing, though, and fast. It will likely never close entirely: Microsoft has, you know, revenue from which to fund improvements. But Linux is getting very close to "good enough" for a great many Newbies.
Can I install Linux and be productive in less than 5 hours?
Depends on what you mean by "productive".
Will you be able to open up a word processor that looks very much like MS Word and use it like Word? Yes you will. Will you be able to open up existing, complex MS Word documents and edit them? Not likely. Will you be able to find a program that lets you edit video and make MPEG movies? Yup. Will these programs work with the slickness and polish of Premiere or Final Cut? Nope. Can you run a web authoring tool? Sure. Will it be Dreamweaver or GoLive? Sorry.
See where I'm going here? The tools available to a Linux user are not the same as those to a power Windows user. To many, the point of a computer is to be productive, not to spend time leaning a tool. The effort to relearn techniques, accept the lack of a feature available in a Windows app, or losing the ability to open Windows app documents are more than enough to keep most people on Windows.
Can I insert a CD and have the install routine work?
In some circumstances. For instance, if you install Crossover Office on your Linux machine, a large number of Windows business applications (including Office XP and Photoshop 7) will install just like on Windows. Other apps aren't so lucky.
Are there any games yet?
Some, and many are recent releases. Most, however, are purely Windows games and will never be released on Linux.
Can I develop Windows applications from within Linux now? Or at least run VS or VS.NET?
If you're going to develop for Windows, do it on Windows. It's probably possible, but it makes to sense to do so.
It all comes down to two things, in my opinion:
It seems that the decision to switch from Windows to Linux should be made if you have a philosophical reason to support Free software (or oppose Microsoft software), or you require your PC to do something that Windows cannot do (increased stability, thin-client capablity, etc.), or you simply can't afford to buy Microsoft's product any longer.
The only truly fair way to compare Windows and Linux is to take completely green users (never used a computer before) and sit them down in front of fully set up and configured computers. I think that you'd find that the Linux users would be just as productive or more so in such a test. But Linux, arriving long after Windows had attained dominance, is now burdened with having to satisfy not only Linux users, but hardened Windows users such as yourself. Think about it: what if Linux had been first and held 90-odd percent of the desktop market? What if it was Windows that had to not only be good at "being Windows", but also had to fight to get pre-installed on PCs, had to install easily on an existing Linux machine (without trashing the existing OS), had to perfectly open all the documents made by proprietary Linux programs, had to run all the proprietary Linux games, had to write drivers for hardware because the manufacturers refuse to release drivers for anything but Linux, etc. etc. And they'd still have it far easier than Linux actually faces, because due to the openness of L
There's a big difference between alcohol prohibition and file-swapping prohibition. In the former case there was no party (other than government trying to do law enforcement) that suffered financially as a result of trying to avoid prohibition. That is, there was no corporate stake in maintaining an artificial shortage of alcohol. However, the RIAA and MPAA represent companies that have a *big* stake in seeing the prohibition of their wares continue.
Can you blame them for trying everything they can to rake in cash while their business model is in its death throes? If the members of the RIAA are eventually going to be seriously damaged (or, if they're *really* stupid, put out of business) by our society's changing view on the sanctity of copyright, then it only makes sense that they put forward every effort to attempt to keep ahold of the power they have. In fact, they probably owe it to their shareholders to do so.
Also, I wouldn't be so sure about this being a lost cause. The U.S. is now a lot different place then it was in the 1930's. I find it completely believable that we will soon find that crimes against powerful/influential corporations will be far more severely punishable by civil and criminal law than crimes against other citizens. In some areas, this is already the case. What I'm talking about is that while existing crimes and their punishments will stay the same, "crimes" which threaten power of corporations will continue to be manufactured in new laws and further take away the rights of the citizenry.
All of this does not mean that file-sharing will stop, or will even be significantly dented. But it does mean that the RIAA and the MPAA will not lose their legitimacy, and will only get bigger and bigger hammers in their possesion with which to pound on scapegoats. The current trend of treating copyright as property will continue to be upheld as the law of the land, and no legal competitors will ever be able to make a dent.
This, from a man who considers himself a devout Christian.
I've been kind of curious about this. I myself am a Christian, and I have yet to find anyone, or any Christian literature, that finds the actions of the Bush administration since 911 to be just. Jesus taught that pacifism, love, and turning the other cheek were the way we should live our lives. Does Bush believe this?
I fully understand that the actions of his office should not necessarily be fenced in by personal beliefs that may not be shared by others in the U.S., and I support that this is the case. But has Bush ever commented on how he reconciles his actions with his religious beliefs? Does he (and the people from whom he receives religious guidance) actually believe that the actions he has taken can be morally acceptable to the Church, to Christ, and to God?
I'm glad to see that, despite starting to lean in this direction just to end this stalemate, that Prof. Felton is still not firmly in the compulsory license camp.
I have three big problems with it:
1) Unfairness in the collection - How will they possibly be able to determine a fair method of determining which bits you download are restricted from distribution by copyright, and which ones aren't? You know damned well that this will just end up being a $/mb tax that will be charged to the ISP, who will have to pass this charge on to all consumers. Workers just doing business over an encryted tunnel all day (working on no content that applies to the piracy debate) will be charged far more than the occasional Kazaa user, who is actually doing the illegal/unethical (pick your adjective) act.
2) Unfairness in the Distribution - There will never be a just method of distribution of these funds. Obviously, the MPAA/RIAA will be first in line at the trough. With them most assuredly getting the lion's share of the payments from this tax (with no reliable data to prove what percentage of their content was distributed), they will be in all the better position to put the squeeze on distributors not in their organizations (ie. the Indies). Such as regime would take away an Indie's ability to find a way to profitably distribute their content online, and receive only crumbs from the tax grab.
3) The bad precident - Once this is set up and enacted into law, how difficult do you think it would be to increase the tax rate up a few notches? Or to add more beneficiaries (think software companies, book publishers, magazine publishers, etc.) to the line-up with their hands out for free money? It will not be very long before the idea of the Internet to be used as a decentralized method of sharing information from one computer to another will be just too expensive to use in this fashion.
If you need a good idea on how bad it can be already for this kind of idea, look up information on Canada'a experience with taxing CD-Rs. Currently, there is debate over an amendment to increase this tax, and levying new taxes on removable hard drives and flash memory. As an example, the Creative Nomad player will more than double in price, and Creative has said that it will pull the product if this passes. All the while, not a penny of the money that has already been collected (millions of dollars) has been distributed because of arguments over the formulas.
That's the way I bought mine. I bought a Mitsubishi DiamondTron 21" for $200 CDN. I brought my laptop to the store and hooked it up to about a dozen screens before finding the one I bought. The rest (a collection of Mitsubishis, NECs, Sonys, and ViewSonics) had screens that had unacceptable problems (uncorrectable pincusioning, variable colour, unstable pictures, etc.)
True, mine's not perfect (the lower left corner is slightly darker than the rest), but for the money it was one of the best purchases I ever made. Man, is it ever nice being able to use 1600x1200 resolution and still be able to easily read the type!
My computer desk is not too happy, though. The thing is HEAVY (77lbs, according to the specs), and the sag of the cheap particle board is quite noticible. (keeping fingers crossed I don't hear a crack/crash in the middle of the night)
The "Weemote Sr" looks PERFECT! I think I'll order it today. Thanks!!!!
Can anyone let me know where to find a remote that is programmable (including multiple commands executed by pressing a single button), but is very simply laid out.
My father-in-law is too old (or stubborn) to learn anything beyond a simple Channel up/down, volume up/down, and power. Fine for basic cable, but we also have a digital satellite. Here are the issues:
- The power button turns on/off the satellite tuner, but not the TV (produces a loud static screen when he turns it off, doesn't turn the TV on when the system is powered off).
- He presses a button on the channel keypad, gets a black audio-only channel, and can't get back to where he was.
- He presses the Guide or Menu buttons and can't cancel the screen.
It seems that any remote capable of controlling a satellite receiver is horrendously complex. Seriously, I want a remote with FIVE buttons, but one that I can program what they can do. Obviously, we'll keep the real remote for ourselves. Any advice?
It WILL be made permanent. Come on, its called the "USA PATRIOT" act: how will it look for a member of Congress or Senator to vote against something like this? Regarless of which party he/she is in, in the next election his/her opponent's primary attack will be ".. VOTED AGAINST THE PATRIOT ACT!! WHAT KIND OF AMERICAN IS HE/SHE!?!? HE/SHE SUPPORTS TERRORISTS!!"
It would be political disaster to vote against this. There may be legitimate opposition to this in government, but most of the media and political enemies would be merciless in their attack. If ANYONE votes against this, it would surprise me.
I hope that this somehow manages to get tossed by the courts, but I'm somehow not optimistic.
If you want a bunch of people to work on one thing until completion, PAY THEM.
Exactly right. If no one wants to pay for the development of a desired app or feature, they shouldn't necessarily expect that the developer wants the same thing.
The author of the article DOES have point, however. We very easily could be running out of time before a great amount of functionality of desktop computing is made illegal under Free software. I'm sure that all of the developers of desktop applications don't want to have their creations made into digital contraband, so it *IS* in everyone's best interest to make a Free desktop as good as possible, as quickly as possible. I think that everyone will agree that the quickest way to "good" is to have a unified front with a common goal. That way, there is enough Free software in the wild that such laws would be untenable.
The developers see this as a long-term benefit: being able to legally use their software at some indeterminate point in the future. The short-term benefit (far more important to most people) is either being paid, or developing whatever they darened well feel like.
The author of the article neglected to address this need. Part of the effort needs to be not only setting/defining the "unified front", but also in setting up a pay structure for those who would accomplish the work.
I propose that someone (far more capable than me) lead an effort to
- define the technical/functional features needed for maximum desktop penetration on both business and home desktops,
- get buy-in on these features by a great number of influential OS developers,
- raise funds from end users and interested corporate users (make sure it can be a tax write-off),
- set up a task list,
- dispurse funds to indivuals/groups/companies who accomplish these tasks.
In other words, we need someone (indiviual or foundation) to be a project manager for the payment of the development of this goal.
Of course, there is no way that the amount paid would be up to an employee's salary: this is still a largely an act of generosity on behalf of the workers. But it does allow the project manager to set a higher dollar value to the tasks that most developers tend to hate, but are necessary nonetheless (such as documentation, rigorous testing, interface cleanup, etc.).
This has probably already been proposed by someone before, but has never been implemented to a great degreee. I hope that someone would like to do this, though, and has influence with the OS community of developers. I really think this could work if planned and backed properly.
Not sure, but their page mentions something about "content-specfic encryption". This says (to me at least) that each file may be DRM'ed in a unique fashion?
Who here has a 35mm movie projector at home? :-)
Precisely! The issue is, however, that some movie houses will no longer have film projectors, but will be showing all-digital movies. If these movies were distributed to theatres in a standard (read: open) file format, it would be possible to transfer the data to a nice big hard disk and pirate a perfect copy.
For now, you'll have to ignore the fact that a) the effort to break Microsoft's DRM will probably be trivial, and b) no one really wants to make "perfect copies" of anything the **AA makes anyways! I mean, jeez, how long will they be able to keep flogging this argument? CD audio is compressed to MP3s and OGGs. DVDs are compressed to DivX. There is virtually no "perfect" copies of anything floating on the Internet.
Other than the other issues of DVDs not having enough capacity, the studios wouldn't distribute movies on disc (even a super-high capicity disc). The idea that an unscrupulous theatre employee could (*gasp*) make a copy of their precious movie is too much for their hearts to take.
However, in a nice proprietary format with controlled hardware, they get a nice buzz thinking their movies are safe.
Oh, and I think you may be on the mark on your prediction of WMP-discs becoming a reality. Oh, DVDs will be around for quite awhile, but slowly you'll find that all the extras that you find currently on DVDs (all the interviews, deleted scenes, etc.) will soon start disappearing from DVDs and exclusively appear on WMP-discs. Either that, or the extra content will not appear on standard DVD players, only on WMP enabled ones. Either way, we're on our way to fully DRM'ed content.
Anybody got any thoughts?
/. poster are lazy and didn't RTFA very well. The company is called "Acacia", not "Acadia".
Yeah, the submitter and
I really don't mind copy protection schemes (or "technological measures", in DMCA-type lingo). It pisses off consumers, and causes those who use the schemes to lose business. Forcing labelling will accelerate this attitude.
However, if there is no way of bypassing these measures (as the DMCA tries to force), then there is no incentive for publishers to be consumer-friendly. This will continue to cause the erosion of fair-use of media, since eventually the warning label (and the protections) will be on ALL major-label releases. This bill will then be irrelavent.
It also protects content not owned by the MPAA and the RIAA.
Sure, in theory it does, but the whole point of the Act was to make it commercially imposible for any competion, using a new business model that utilizes digital media, to be successful.
You answer your own question there. It was to put us in complaince.. regular old US copyright law for a couple of reasons didnt meet "international" criteria. (dont get me started on how I dont care if it did or not).
No, I did NOT answer my own question, and neither did you. Who, exactly, has the DMCA benefitted (other than the current media giants)? Name one. No, I'm not being pissy here, I really want to see an example, as that may help me to see your point.
Basically, the majority of the people I see bitching about the DMCA are those who want to freely pirate and rip media. Now, fair use aside, my suggestion to them is A) pay for what they want, or B) shut the hell up.
Sorry to disappoint you, but I am one of the people here who finds the DMCA a crock of shit AND respects copyright. I do pay to those I use copyrighted materials. The main point IS fair use. To crimianalize the act of telling someone how to reclaim it is a horrendous mockery of justice. I do not want someone dictating to me how my DVD is to be played in my home on my equipment. I do not want to be punished for daring to print out an ebook onto my own paper because I don't have a computer to look at while I'm sitting on the toilet. And most of all I don't want this kind of corporate attitude to become more acceptable, because they will only continue to screw us harder in the future.
I agree fair use needs some work.. but then again, "fair use" is confusing in and of itself. If a school wants to use clips of "gangs of new york" to illustrate points during a class on the history of the bowery, etc, more power to em. Fair Use as far as I'm concerned. However, if it wants to play that movie in the auditorium, and charge students 2 bucks a head to see it, that is _not_ fair use. So saying "schools are paying to use it" is not clear enough.
Not so confusing to me. You're right, your first example is fair use, the second is not. If I'm not mistaken, this is already defined quite clearly in the Copyright Act (pre-DMCA). Fair use is quite a simple concept: it means that there are (or at least supposed to be) certain things that the holder of a copied work can do, regardless of the copyright holders wishes. These include any use of the work for personal use (not distributed to others), and certain uses of the work that can be distributed. So under fair use, I can do ANYTHING to a copy that I legally obtained that I want, for my own use. If I want to embed violence, swearing, and nudity into a family movie for my gratification, no one should be able to say anything to me. But the DMCA is the type of law that could make the tools to do such a thing illegal.
Look, pre-DMCA copyright law said, in very broad terms, "don't copy stuff you're not allowed to." If you need to increase the penalties for actually committing this act, that's another discussion that we can persue later. But broadening the punishment to distribution of tools that enable fair use is unacceptable to me. This is the media industry saying "Boo hoo, it's too hard to catch people actually breaking the law. Let's make it easier on ourselves by buying a law that makes ROT-13 a legally-protected security device!"
By the way, catching people illegally copying their media is only the publically presented rationalle for the DMCA. Their REAL reason for wanting this law is precisely the "side effect" that you talked about in your original post: that is, the elimination of fair use! Without fair use, there is control of content, and thought truly does become "intellectual property". The notion of copyright existing for the temporary protection of authors & artists before reverting to the public domain is easily suppressed to the public when they are made to believe that fair use is bad and/or illegal. THAT is my biggest problem with the DMCA.