I wouldn't have described
purchasing TSR as "cherry picking." TSR
was clearly on its way out and without
Wizards
of the Coast (WotC) would have gone
under. WotC had previously failed to
turn a profit on role-playing games, and
TSR's sad state was more evidence that
role-playing games were a bad idea. It
took alot of faith to buy TSR.
I was working for Evermore
Entertainment in 1997. Evermore was
developing for TSR the concisely named
Advanced
Dungeons & Dragons Core Rules CD-ROM
2.0. I met a number of TSR and WotC
employees over the course of my
employment. I got to hear, first and
second hand, about the problems inside
the company. I visited TSR's
headquarters in Lake Geneva during the
WotC purchase. I even met, as part of a
larger group, with Peter Adkison.
I can vouch that Peter was still a
huge gaming geek in 1997. It was clear
that he wanted TSR because he loved it
too much to let it die. Whenever
Evermore met with him, he reinforced
that he wanted our software to support
as many quirk home-brew rules as
possible, after all, it needed to work
with his game. I got to hear about his
plans for the Game Centers, a gamer's
home away from home. It would have
computers built into the tables to store
and refernce notes; projector screens to
show maps and monster pictures. While
he hoped to make a profit, it was clear
that he just wanted to share great
things with all of the gamers of the
world. (I also discovered that he is the
most aggressive driver I have ever riden
with, and that he likes lots of
ketchup on his burgers.) He would be
completely welcome at my gaming table,
and I suspect most gamers would be happy
to game with him.
Just before the purchase, TSR looked
doomed. The previous owners had run the
company into the ground. I later
learned that the previous owners had
detested gamers and the entire hobby.
They had simply bought in for the money.
They viewed gamers as cattle to be
milked and treated as poorly as
possible. Garbage like Spellfire
(A tarted up version of the card game War
with badly recycled art) was released
with the belief if you make it, gamers
will buy it. Games were kept bland and
safe. Older gamers felt abandoned by
the company and stopped purchasing
products. No real effort to draw new
blood was made, so new gamers ended up
playing hipper, newer, edgier games like
Vampire:
the Masquerade. There was no new
blood. Sales were dropping every
quarter. Debts were piling up, thier
printer refused further work until
existing debt was paid. After the
buyout, employees openly cursed the
previous owners.
TSR's continued existance was an
embarrassment. I would never had
guessed that it could be saved, that its
bad name could be salvaged. It was
brave of WotC to purchase it under these
conditions. Beyond the initial buyout
of the company, WotC had to pay off
TSR's creditors. Significant time,
effort, and money were spent
revitalizing the TSR product lines. The
rescue of Dungeons
& Dragons was amazing. D&D
went from a has been contender that
gamers looked down their noses at to
relatively new and hip. Suddenly
friends who haven't played D&D in
years were back and enjoying the heck
out of it. It was alot of effort to
recover the D&D name, and I believe
Peter Adkison's love of the game was
responsible.
Given that Netscape 6.0 and beyond are tweaked and rebranded versions of Mozilla, by covering Mozilla development, Slashdot is covering the cutting edge of Netscape. Myself, I'm disappointed with Netscape 6.0, but based on the current Mozilla builds, I expect Netscape 6.1 to rock.
Netscape was the first "mainstream" browser older Slashdotter will have used. Mozilla/Netscape is cross-platform, highly standards compliant, and free software to boot. The release of the Netscape 4.x code was a highlight in the early popularization of the Open Source movement. Taken together, it's not suprising Mozilla makes the Slashdot front page as often as it does.
Perhaps because they have an effective wall between the editorial staff and the advertising staff, thus ensuring that editorial policy (as much as Slashdot has such a thing) is not tainted by advertisers?
If someone responsible can find out who is visiting a site that posts illegal information, then they can get better data on how to fight that particular crime.
From there it's not too long until someone realizes that someone "responsible" can find out who is visiting a site that posts unpopular informaiton so they can get better data on how to fight that thought crime. It's just a another step until unpopular becomes "unamerican," and suddenly your curious browsing of, say, the
World Socialism pages lead to you answering the question, "Are you now, or have you ever been a communist?" You need real privacy to listen to free speech. Without privacy, free speech is worthless.
Advertisers are very interested in connecting those anonymous statistics to real people. DoubleClick actually did so, but stopped after a public backlash. But they will try again, it's just a matter of time. In the meantime, whenever you enter contact information for a web site, that site may decide to sell that information to someone like DoubleClick. Advertisers really want this information, and they'll keep trying until they get it.
"The top 1% in this country pay 23% of the federal tax bill." Which is neat trick considering that the top 1% of the country control 38% of the wealth. (Other sources cite similar or larger numbers, it's admittedly a hard number to measure.) So, when are the rich going to pay their fair share?
That's what I don't get. I always chuckle when I see a Geo Metro driving down the road that has been souped up with those stupid
wider wheels, detailing, hydralics, custom interior, etc. For the money they spent to do that, they could have actually bought a car
instead of fixing up a go-cart.
However, they know know their car, inside and out. They can tell you exactly what each bit is for, how it worked when they got the car, how it works now, and why it's better. They know the limitations of their car intimately. They've gained real world experience in hacking on cars and enjoyed themselves to boot. What's so silly about that? It's the process that's important, not the results. What is cool is that it was done. The same holds true for computer overclockers.
1. Before MS came along, computers were
unaffordable. Now we all reap the benefits of a computer in every
home.
It was very generous of Microsoft to keep prices down on all
of those computers they sell. Oh, wait, Microsoft doesn't sell
computers. In fact, the price of computers is low enough that
the price of Windows is is a big chunk of the total cost of a new
(low-end) machine. If you want to thank someone for affordable
computers, thank Compaq for producing the first clone of the IBM
PC.
3. Believe it or not, Microsoft actually do produce good
software. Certainly Windows 3.1 wasn't very stable, but in 1992
what competition was there? Certainly not Linux. And even given
that, if you ask me if I want my secretary on the current state
of the art Linux, or on Windows 3.1 and Word 2, I'll bet you a
dollar to a hundred that she'll be more effective on Windows 3.1
What competition? How about OS/2, or DESQView?
Many people were enjoying protected memory and pre-emptive
multi-tasking before Microsoft chose to share it with us.
What is your evidence for Microsoft benefitting the economy? That they're big and everyone uses them? Standard Oil and AT&T were both big and everyone used them. The economy in both cases improved when they were broken up.
4. Microsoft have benefitted the US economy. It
really has. Compared with the UK, for instance, the strength of
the US IT industry is vast - and much of this strength is due to
Microsoft.
I trust you've tested your theory by comparing the economy
with Microsoft to the economy of an alternate universe without
Microsoft? We can't know for certain that Microsoft helped the
economy. Maybe the economy would be stronger if there were many
more companies all fighting against each other on more even
terms.
5. Nearly all opposition to MS comes from jealous competitors.
Netscape have been beaten fair-and-square by MS, for instance -
just compare Netscape 6 with MSIE, for instance.
Just compare Netscape 2 with IE 2. Microsoft didn't really
have such a clear lead then. To give themselves the lead,
Microsoft used their monopoly to take distribution channels away
from Netscape. I don't see anything "fair-and-square" about
threatening to kill Office for Mac unless Apple make IE the
default Mac browser.
Oh come on! You can't show that Microsoft "harms consumers" because some idiot wrote a worm and other idiots helped spread it by
executing a script file attachment to an email. It's not like the thing just auto-spread. There was a lot of stupidity involved. You could
as easily send a Perl script to any UNIX out there ask the users to save the attachment and then execute it. Same result. Granted
Outlook didn't have enough warnings about executing scripts but to say tht it shows that *Microsoft* has harmed consumers is just
plain stupid. I mean really, wake up!
Microsoft deserves part of the blame for ILOVEYOU and Melissa. Their dominance has created a dangerous monoculture for the virus to propogate in. A most heterogenous network of computers would make it drastically harder for a virus or worm to propogate. Microsoft's consumer level operating systems effectively have no security, meaning that once a single user is infected, everyone on the machine is infected. This assumption of little to no security created an culture of programmers that assume that users have write access everywhere. As a result, lots of programs require Administrator access under NT. As a result, lots of users run under Administrator access under NT. So NT's security features are largely ignored.
However, this doesn't really count as harm for anti-trust purposes, making bad decisions in software design isn't against the law, just frustrating.
True, if someone could come up with a method for making ICANN democratically and internationally representative and
elected, this would have beena good idea. But at the present stage of our global development, this has just not been possible.
Because they don't even know that other options exist, for the most part. Why? Because MS is a monopoly.
And thats Microsofts fault?
After all, Microsoft didn't use threats of increased prices and delayed shipments of Windows stop OEMs from making new systems start with Netscape as the default browser instead. Oh, wait, they did.
Microsoft didn't use their monopoly position to demand that ISPs remove references to competing browsers from their literature and web sites and limit the percentage of users using Netscape or risk losing access to the Windows Referral Server. Oh, wait, they did too. Well, Microsoft certainly wouldn't use their monopoly position to force the exclusion of Netscape browsers from web sites on the IE Channel Bar. Oops, I guess they did that too. Well, Microsoft couldn't have threatened to kill Microsoft Office if Apple didn't make IE the preferred brower on Macs. Oh, they did that too?
Gosh, I can't see any possible reason why customers lacking knowledge of options is Microsoft's fault. It's not like they orchestrated a campaign to deny information to consumers.
Gee, and to think I've been posting comments and submitting stories ideas all this time because I wanted to share with the community. I knew I was doing something wrong.
DeCSS isn't relevent to the discussion. The current court cases trying to restrict the distribution of DeCSS aren't based on patent or trade secret protection. DeCSS distribution is restricted under the DMCA's anti-circumvention act.
Because otherwise the knowledge would be locked away as a trade secret and nobody else would be able to benefit from it, even indirectly. And there wouldn't be any clause causing it to expire either. So yes, a patent does increase freedom. That's the whole point of them.
Encryption techniques or compression algorithms could easily be kept secret without patents.
The point of patents is to encourage the release of knowledge, not freedom. For 17 years, that knowledge protected by patents is not free, I am not free to do with it as I will. If I independently rediscover the technique, I'm still out of luck.
However, if the knowledge is protected by trade secret, I'm free to rediscover the knowledge or reverse engineer it and use it as I want. If you've sold me a product that does encryption or or compression and is protected by trade secret, I'm free to disassemble the code and figure out how it works. Large companies with incentive to gain the technique can do research to rediscover it or hire a team of hackers to reverse engineer it. I may have less knowledge of this techniques, but I have the freedom to gain that knowledge, and once gained, to use it however I want.
So, I'm still not clear on how
"by definition patents increase freedom...."
Thanks to the careful crafting of the GPL, it's next to impossible to write a Linux
application that doesn't have to be GPLed.
Ummm, no. It's quite easy to write Linux applications that aren't GPLed. You simply don't use any GPLed code. I'm paid to develop and maintain a closed source application on Linux. No problems with the GPL at all. Never had to seriously think about it. The GPL doesn't seem to have been a problem for Netscape (pre-Mozilla), Sun (StarOffice before it was released), Corel (PhotoPaint, Draw, Wordperfect), Opera, and others.
A sweatshop is factory that uses a dominant position (only work available in the area, or "owns" the local government, or employs illegal aliens) to enforce illegal work conditions.
A good summary of the problem can be found in the article "Human Rights Abuses in the Apparel Industry". Search the document for Nike. Nike is responsible for using illegal tactics to withhold pay, to enforced overtime over the legal maximum, and to pay below minimum wage pay. Nike knows about and allows physical and sexual abuse. Nike is breaking the law in these countries.
But apparently because these things happen far away, because the governments is question have problems enforcing their laws, because these workers are desperate for the work, this is acceptable. After all, it "helps keep Nike running shoes affordable for all of us." Apparently the end justifies the means. All hail Nike for abusing human rights in name of cheap sneakers.
The notion of property is fundamental to any society. Property
is in itself an intellectual idea, and as such does not just have
remit over physical objects, but can be just as well applied to
the world of ideas.
The division between physical copyright laws and intellectual
copyright laws, is then a false dichotomy.
Bzzzt, sorry. Thanks for playing. The difference between
physical property laws and intellections property laws is quite
obvious. (I'll assume you meant property above, since there
isn't such thing as a "physical copyright" law.)
Physical property laws exist to protect something that is
naturally scarce. If you take the computer desk I built, I no
longer have my desk. However, you're completely free to make
your own computer desk, and to even make your desk exactly the
same as mine. Maybe I worked hard to make it a really well
designed computer desk, but you're free to take advantage of all
my hard design work and make exact copies. If technology is
developed that lets you easily make exact copies of my desk, I'm
still out of luck. This is perfectly reasonable, since your
creation of a desk hasn't taken my desk from me.
Now let's say I create something protected by intellectual
property law. I think I'll write a novel. To an extent,
physical property law still applies. If you steal my manuscript
(and I didn't make a backup), I no longer have it. If we're
treat physical and intellectual property similarly, why can't you
make copies of my novel? After all, I'd still have my original.
Copyright law creates an artificial restriction that limits what
you can do.
We can own a physical object forever, I do not
see why we cannot own an idea, like a disney film or character,
forever too.
Why not? Because ideas tend to propogate. The common phrase
for this is "Information wants to be free." Information and
ideas aren't alive, they don't really want anything,
it's simply a quotable simplification of the fact that
information tends toward freedom. Your seeing my desk
doesn't give you a desk. However, your seeing my desk does give
you the idea of my desk. Once you've seen my desk or
novel, nothing I do can keep you from taking that idea away from
you. Trying to restrict the spread of an idea runs against the
natural tendencies of ideas (or more specifically, the natural
tendencies of the humans holding those ideas). Granting
"ownership" of an idea is granting ownership of ideas held in
other people's heads. It's granting control over what
other people can do. I, for one, don't want to live in a world
where most of the stuff in my head in "owned" by someone else.
Copyright was created in the United States dispite all of
these problems "to promote the progress of science and useful
arts...." It was decided it was worth fighting the inevitable
"for limited times" to this end. It was not an attempt to create
an eternal privledge.
I think that those who would limit intellectual copyright laws
are trying to deny our freedoms....
I think those who would extend copyright laws are trying to
deny our freedoms. Copyright law gives other people control over
what I can and cannot copy.
If the term 'Enlightenment' were trademarked, other Linux people wouldn't be able to use the term
'Enlightenment', although they would be able to distribute the window manager.
Trademark exists to protect consumers from confusion. If I'm distributing a genuine copy of Enlightenment, there isn't anything confusing me about calling it Enlightenment. I can certainly use the term "Microsoft Windows" to describe the system I'm using right now, and if I sell my computer, I can say "Comes with a licensed copy of Microsoft Windows" (assuming it actually does). You can use a trademark all you want to describe the product or service the trademark applies to. If I buy a new copy of Windows and don't open it, I can print up advertisements that I'm selling a copy of Microsoft Windows. As long as there is no possibility for confusion between the product or service the trademark applies to and something unrelated, everything is fine.
This situation has actually come up. SourceGear has trademarks on AbiWord and related Abi prefixed products. SourceGear
makes the trademarks available under certain terms. If I want to fork AbiWord and not agree to those terms, I have to give it a new name. If I didn't change the name, there might be confusion between my AbiWord and SourceGear's AbiWord. I can describe it as "Based on AbiWord," so long as I'm careful to not imply that my product is AbiWord (that is a grey area, however).
It's dangerous to second guess the web designer. The 404 page may contain useful information for the user. Sure, most pages unhelpfully state "404 File Not Found" and little more, but it's possible for a page to be much more helpful. A site could have their 404 page automatically do a search to find the requested resource. Here is a good example at Wizards of the Coast. A site could present a list of resources the site does, since one of them is likely to be helpful. Perhaps the page is gone because the client's account was terminated. I'd like to receive a message like
"This user violated our Acceptable Use Policy and has had their account terminated. The page you are looking for is gone for good."
Did you read the document? Chill out. The document starts with "This document is a Note made available by the W3C for discussion only. Publication of this Note by W3C indicates no endorsement by W3C or the W3C Team, or any
W3C Members." Put more simply, "Here's some things we thought were good ideas that we would like to share with you. Do with it what you will."
Actually, most users are confused by verbose details. If you present the information, they assume it must be important and that they should understand it. "It says it's 'negotiating connection.' Is that good or bad?" If you tell the user to ignore the messages, you're reinforcing the perception that computers are very complex and the user isn't really smart enough to use them. Hiding the unnecessary complexity makes the experience more comfortable for the user.
That said, having an option "[ ] Show me details when downloading a page" would be great for those of us who can use the information.
"If these people had direct access
to source code and could custom-compile
their own clients then it would become
virtually impossible to prevent
wide-spread cheating and
exploits.".
More accurately, it will become
impossible to prevent client
side cheating. However, it was
always impossible to prevent client side
cheating, the best you could do is make
it very hard to do. All it takes is one
skilled hacker to develop the cheat and
release it to the world. Ultimately, if
it's possible to cheat and the sort of
people who like to cheat like your game,
they will cheat.
Every game developer should strive to
reducing cheating. To reduce cheating
based on hacking the client, you simply
move information off the client and onto
the server. However, this makes writing
the game harder. In some cases, it's
not really possible to move everying
important off of the client. In these
cases you simply have to rely on
security through obscurity to make it
hard to cheat, and shuffle things around
between releases so any given cheat
doesn't stay valid for too long.
Developing such a product completely
open source means you can't rely on
this. But this doesn't mean you can't
develop a fun game. There are at least
four
solutions that will work for many
different types of games.
Build a culture around the game that
dislikes cheating, perhaps by making
cheating relatively useless. Plenty of
MUSHes have no strict rules, and player
who wants can give himself piles of
money and huge attributes. The more
serious players will simply ignore
anyone who twinks himself this way and
enjoy themselves.
Build a game where important
information simply isn't available to
the clients. Obviously this is hard,
but in many cases it's possible. RPGs
lend themselves to this state. The
server only trusts it's own numbers, so
you can't give yourself infinite power.
Rapid targetting isn't very important,
so computer aided targetting isn't very
useful (in fact, it could be explicitly
added to the client as a feature). At
the generally slow pace of an RPG,
knowing what's immediately behind a wall
using transparency or model mangling
isn't that useful.
Build a game where modifying the
client is part of the game. Obviously
the appeal of this will be limited to
fairly geeky people.
Use a blessed binaries approach like
Netrek.
The source is all open, but to play on
"secure" servers, you need to use a
binary provided by trusted developers.
"Property is the basis of the free
market....". Bzzzzt, Sorry. Please try
again. Scarcity is the basis
of the free market. There are some
things in life (computers, cars, man
hours), that are scarce. From scarcity
comes property. There are only so many
cars available. Who should I give them
to? How about whomever will pay me the
most? I want a computer. To get one,
I'll need to convince someone else to
give me their computer, so they'll no
longer have one. I suppose I'll need to
pay them for their computer. Part of
this is that there is competition. I
can purchase a computer, a car, or man
hours from any number of sources. If I
don't like your price, I'll look
elsewhere. This is a free market.
Intellectual "property" is completely
different. I can make a copy of Enya's
new album, I have not taken
away someone else's copy. Music,
software, books, and the like are
fundamentally abundent. I can easily
make copies of any of them and increase
the world's supply. Copyright, in part,
takes an abundent product and makes it
legally scarce.
A free market behaves very
differently than modern copyright driven
industries. Since you're apparently a
bit light on economic theory, let be
give you a summary. A product has a
marginal price (the price to make "just
one more"). The marginal price for a
mass produced CD is less than a dollar.
If you have a free market with
competition, the price to consumers
approaches the marginal price. If I'm
charging, say $15 for a CD, a competitor
will start producing it for $14. I'll
undercut him $13, and we'll keep doing
this until the price is just barely
above the cost to actually make the CD.
But this doesn't happen. Why?
Because of copyright. Copyright doesn't
just make music scarce, it grants me a
monopoly. There is no free
market to keep costs down, if you want
a CD of me singing, you have to purchase
it from me, directly or indirectly
(through a middle man or purchasing
used). Either way, if you want it,
you'll pay what I demand, or you won't
get it. This is not how a free
market behaves. This is a monopoly, the
enemy of the free market.
What problem does Gnutella have
that Mojo Nation solves? I have a
problem, I want to download free
music and share my music with
others. Gnutella and Napster may
not be perfect, but they solve the
problem.
Mojo Nation dwells on solving
the free rider problem.
Unfortunately, the real world
doesn't have that problem. When
I'm not using my computer and my
bandwidth, both of which I've
already paid for, why not share
them. They don't really cost me
anything more.
O'Reilly's
OpenP2P
site has the article "
In Praise of Freeloaders." It
clearly explains why Mojo Nation is
solving a problem that doesn't
really exist.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't have described purchasing TSR as "cherry picking." TSR was clearly on its way out and without Wizards of the Coast (WotC) would have gone under. WotC had previously failed to turn a profit on role-playing games, and TSR's sad state was more evidence that role-playing games were a bad idea. It took alot of faith to buy TSR.
I was working for Evermore Entertainment in 1997. Evermore was developing for TSR the concisely named Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Core Rules CD-ROM 2.0. I met a number of TSR and WotC employees over the course of my employment. I got to hear, first and second hand, about the problems inside the company. I visited TSR's headquarters in Lake Geneva during the WotC purchase. I even met, as part of a larger group, with Peter Adkison.
I can vouch that Peter was still a huge gaming geek in 1997. It was clear that he wanted TSR because he loved it too much to let it die. Whenever Evermore met with him, he reinforced that he wanted our software to support as many quirk home-brew rules as possible, after all, it needed to work with his game. I got to hear about his plans for the Game Centers, a gamer's home away from home. It would have computers built into the tables to store and refernce notes; projector screens to show maps and monster pictures. While he hoped to make a profit, it was clear that he just wanted to share great things with all of the gamers of the world. (I also discovered that he is the most aggressive driver I have ever riden with, and that he likes lots of ketchup on his burgers.) He would be completely welcome at my gaming table, and I suspect most gamers would be happy to game with him.
Just before the purchase, TSR looked doomed. The previous owners had run the company into the ground. I later learned that the previous owners had detested gamers and the entire hobby. They had simply bought in for the money. They viewed gamers as cattle to be milked and treated as poorly as possible. Garbage like Spellfire (A tarted up version of the card game War with badly recycled art) was released with the belief if you make it, gamers will buy it. Games were kept bland and safe. Older gamers felt abandoned by the company and stopped purchasing products. No real effort to draw new blood was made, so new gamers ended up playing hipper, newer, edgier games like Vampire: the Masquerade. There was no new blood. Sales were dropping every quarter. Debts were piling up, thier printer refused further work until existing debt was paid. After the buyout, employees openly cursed the previous owners.
TSR's continued existance was an embarrassment. I would never had guessed that it could be saved, that its bad name could be salvaged. It was brave of WotC to purchase it under these conditions. Beyond the initial buyout of the company, WotC had to pay off TSR's creditors. Significant time, effort, and money were spent revitalizing the TSR product lines. The rescue of Dungeons & Dragons was amazing. D&D went from a has been contender that gamers looked down their noses at to relatively new and hip. Suddenly friends who haven't played D&D in years were back and enjoying the heck out of it. It was alot of effort to recover the D&D name, and I believe Peter Adkison's love of the game was responsible.
Given that Netscape 6.0 and beyond are tweaked and rebranded versions of Mozilla, by covering Mozilla development, Slashdot is covering the cutting edge of Netscape. Myself, I'm disappointed with Netscape 6.0, but based on the current Mozilla builds, I expect Netscape 6.1 to rock.
Netscape was the first "mainstream" browser older Slashdotter will have used. Mozilla/Netscape is cross-platform, highly standards compliant, and free software to boot. The release of the Netscape 4.x code was a highlight in the early popularization of the Open Source movement. Taken together, it's not suprising Mozilla makes the Slashdot front page as often as it does.
Perhaps because they have an effective wall between the editorial staff and the advertising staff, thus ensuring that editorial policy (as much as Slashdot has such a thing) is not tainted by advertisers?
From there it's not too long until someone realizes that someone "responsible" can find out who is visiting a site that posts unpopular informaiton so they can get better data on how to fight that thought crime. It's just a another step until unpopular becomes "unamerican," and suddenly your curious browsing of, say, the World Socialism pages lead to you answering the question, "Are you now, or have you ever been a communist?" You need real privacy to listen to free speech. Without privacy, free speech is worthless.
Advertisers are very interested in connecting those anonymous statistics to real people. DoubleClick actually did so, but stopped after a public backlash. But they will try again, it's just a matter of time. In the meantime, whenever you enter contact information for a web site, that site may decide to sell that information to someone like DoubleClick. Advertisers really want this information, and they'll keep trying until they get it.
"The top 1% in this country pay 23% of the federal tax bill." Which is neat trick considering that the top 1% of the country control 38% of the wealth. (Other sources cite similar or larger numbers, it's admittedly a hard number to measure.) So, when are the rich going to pay their fair share?
However, they know know their car, inside and out. They can tell you exactly what each bit is for, how it worked when they got the car, how it works now, and why it's better. They know the limitations of their car intimately. They've gained real world experience in hacking on cars and enjoyed themselves to boot. What's so silly about that? It's the process that's important, not the results. What is cool is that it was done. The same holds true for computer overclockers.
It was very generous of Microsoft to keep prices down on all of those computers they sell. Oh, wait, Microsoft doesn't sell computers. In fact, the price of computers is low enough that the price of Windows is is a big chunk of the total cost of a new (low-end) machine. If you want to thank someone for affordable computers, thank Compaq for producing the first clone of the IBM PC.
What competition? How about OS/2, or DESQView? Many people were enjoying protected memory and pre-emptive multi-tasking before Microsoft chose to share it with us.
What is your evidence for Microsoft benefitting the economy? That they're big and everyone uses them? Standard Oil and AT&T were both big and everyone used them. The economy in both cases improved when they were broken up.
I trust you've tested your theory by comparing the economy with Microsoft to the economy of an alternate universe without Microsoft? We can't know for certain that Microsoft helped the economy. Maybe the economy would be stronger if there were many more companies all fighting against each other on more even terms.
Just compare Netscape 2 with IE 2. Microsoft didn't really have such a clear lead then. To give themselves the lead, Microsoft used their monopoly to take distribution channels away from Netscape. I don't see anything "fair-and-square" about threatening to kill Office for Mac unless Apple make IE the default Mac browser.
Microsoft deserves part of the blame for ILOVEYOU and Melissa. Their dominance has created a dangerous monoculture for the virus to propogate in. A most heterogenous network of computers would make it drastically harder for a virus or worm to propogate. Microsoft's consumer level operating systems effectively have no security, meaning that once a single user is infected, everyone on the machine is infected. This assumption of little to no security created an culture of programmers that assume that users have write access everywhere. As a result, lots of programs require Administrator access under NT. As a result, lots of users run under Administrator access under NT. So NT's security features are largely ignored.
However, this doesn't really count as harm for anti-trust purposes, making bad decisions in software design isn't against the law, just frustrating.
Yeah. Maybe they could hold elections. Like they did. Of course, then the current, unelected members chose to not yield their positions. Any actions by those board members are suspect.
After all, Microsoft didn't use threats of increased prices and delayed shipments of Windows stop OEMs from making new systems start with Netscape as the default browser instead. Oh, wait, they did. Microsoft didn't use their monopoly position to demand that ISPs remove references to competing browsers from their literature and web sites and limit the percentage of users using Netscape or risk losing access to the Windows Referral Server. Oh, wait, they did too. Well, Microsoft certainly wouldn't use their monopoly position to force the exclusion of Netscape browsers from web sites on the IE Channel Bar. Oops, I guess they did that too. Well, Microsoft couldn't have threatened to kill Microsoft Office if Apple didn't make IE the preferred brower on Macs. Oh, they did that too?
Gosh, I can't see any possible reason why customers lacking knowledge of options is Microsoft's fault. It's not like they orchestrated a campaign to deny information to consumers.
Check the Findings of Fact. Especially the section Excluding Navigator from Important Distribution Channels.
If you don't remember how consumers were hurt, reread the findings of fact, especially section VII, "The Effect on Consumers of Microsoft's Efforts to Protect the Applications Barrier to Entry. It's a remarkably readable document and the reasoning is easy to understand. In short, Microsoft took choices away from consumers and OEMs who wanted the choice.
Gee, and to think I've been posting comments and submitting stories ideas all this time because I wanted to share with the community. I knew I was doing something wrong.
DeCSS isn't relevent to the discussion. The current court cases trying to restrict the distribution of DeCSS aren't based on patent or trade secret protection. DeCSS distribution is restricted under the DMCA's anti-circumvention act.
The point of patents is to encourage the release of knowledge, not freedom. For 17 years, that knowledge protected by patents is not free, I am not free to do with it as I will. If I independently rediscover the technique, I'm still out of luck.
However, if the knowledge is protected by trade secret, I'm free to rediscover the knowledge or reverse engineer it and use it as I want. If you've sold me a product that does encryption or or compression and is protected by trade secret, I'm free to disassemble the code and figure out how it works. Large companies with incentive to gain the technique can do research to rediscover it or hire a team of hackers to reverse engineer it. I may have less knowledge of this techniques, but I have the freedom to gain that knowledge, and once gained, to use it however I want.
So, I'm still not clear on how "by definition patents increase freedom...."
Ummm, no. It's quite easy to write Linux applications that aren't GPLed. You simply don't use any GPLed code. I'm paid to develop and maintain a closed source application on Linux. No problems with the GPL at all. Never had to seriously think about it. The GPL doesn't seem to have been a problem for Netscape (pre-Mozilla), Sun (StarOffice before it was released), Corel (PhotoPaint, Draw, Wordperfect), Opera, and others.
A sweatshop is factory that uses a dominant position (only work available in the area, or "owns" the local government, or employs illegal aliens) to enforce illegal work conditions.
A good summary of the problem can be found in the article "Human Rights Abuses in the Apparel Industry". Search the document for Nike. Nike is responsible for using illegal tactics to withhold pay, to enforced overtime over the legal maximum, and to pay below minimum wage pay. Nike knows about and allows physical and sexual abuse. Nike is breaking the law in these countries.
But apparently because these things happen far away, because the governments is question have problems enforcing their laws, because these workers are desperate for the work, this is acceptable. After all, it "helps keep Nike running shoes affordable for all of us." Apparently the end justifies the means. All hail Nike for abusing human rights in name of cheap sneakers.
Bzzzt, sorry. Thanks for playing. The difference between physical property laws and intellections property laws is quite obvious. (I'll assume you meant property above, since there isn't such thing as a "physical copyright" law.)
Physical property laws exist to protect something that is naturally scarce. If you take the computer desk I built, I no longer have my desk. However, you're completely free to make your own computer desk, and to even make your desk exactly the same as mine. Maybe I worked hard to make it a really well designed computer desk, but you're free to take advantage of all my hard design work and make exact copies. If technology is developed that lets you easily make exact copies of my desk, I'm still out of luck. This is perfectly reasonable, since your creation of a desk hasn't taken my desk from me.
Now let's say I create something protected by intellectual property law. I think I'll write a novel. To an extent, physical property law still applies. If you steal my manuscript (and I didn't make a backup), I no longer have it. If we're treat physical and intellectual property similarly, why can't you make copies of my novel? After all, I'd still have my original. Copyright law creates an artificial restriction that limits what you can do.
Why not? Because ideas tend to propogate. The common phrase for this is "Information wants to be free." Information and ideas aren't alive, they don't really want anything, it's simply a quotable simplification of the fact that information tends toward freedom. Your seeing my desk doesn't give you a desk. However, your seeing my desk does give you the idea of my desk. Once you've seen my desk or novel, nothing I do can keep you from taking that idea away from you. Trying to restrict the spread of an idea runs against the natural tendencies of ideas (or more specifically, the natural tendencies of the humans holding those ideas). Granting "ownership" of an idea is granting ownership of ideas held in other people's heads. It's granting control over what other people can do. I, for one, don't want to live in a world where most of the stuff in my head in "owned" by someone else.
Copyright was created in the United States dispite all of these problems "to promote the progress of science and useful arts...." It was decided it was worth fighting the inevitable "for limited times" to this end. It was not an attempt to create an eternal privledge.
I think those who would extend copyright laws are trying to deny our freedoms. Copyright law gives other people control over what I can and cannot copy.
Trademark exists to protect consumers from confusion. If I'm distributing a genuine copy of Enlightenment, there isn't anything confusing me about calling it Enlightenment. I can certainly use the term "Microsoft Windows" to describe the system I'm using right now, and if I sell my computer, I can say "Comes with a licensed copy of Microsoft Windows" (assuming it actually does). You can use a trademark all you want to describe the product or service the trademark applies to. If I buy a new copy of Windows and don't open it, I can print up advertisements that I'm selling a copy of Microsoft Windows. As long as there is no possibility for confusion between the product or service the trademark applies to and something unrelated, everything is fine.
This situation has actually come up. SourceGear has trademarks on AbiWord and related Abi prefixed products. SourceGear makes the trademarks available under certain terms. If I want to fork AbiWord and not agree to those terms, I have to give it a new name. If I didn't change the name, there might be confusion between my AbiWord and SourceGear's AbiWord. I can describe it as "Based on AbiWord," so long as I'm careful to not imply that my product is AbiWord (that is a grey area, however).
It's dangerous to second guess the web designer. The 404 page may contain useful information for the user. Sure, most pages unhelpfully state "404 File Not Found" and little more, but it's possible for a page to be much more helpful. A site could have their 404 page automatically do a search to find the requested resource. Here is a good example at Wizards of the Coast. A site could present a list of resources the site does, since one of them is likely to be helpful. Perhaps the page is gone because the client's account was terminated. I'd like to receive a message like "This user violated our Acceptable Use Policy and has had their account terminated. The page you are looking for is gone for good."
Did you read the document? Chill out. The document starts with "This document is a Note made available by the W3C for discussion only. Publication of this Note by W3C indicates no endorsement by W3C or the W3C Team, or any W3C Members." Put more simply, "Here's some things we thought were good ideas that we would like to share with you. Do with it what you will."
That said, having an option "[ ] Show me details when downloading a page" would be great for those of us who can use the information.
Ah, the American way! Free speech. If you can afford the lawyers.
More accurately, it will become impossible to prevent client side cheating. However, it was always impossible to prevent client side cheating, the best you could do is make it very hard to do. All it takes is one skilled hacker to develop the cheat and release it to the world. Ultimately, if it's possible to cheat and the sort of people who like to cheat like your game, they will cheat.
Every game developer should strive to reducing cheating. To reduce cheating based on hacking the client, you simply move information off the client and onto the server. However, this makes writing the game harder. In some cases, it's not really possible to move everying important off of the client. In these cases you simply have to rely on security through obscurity to make it hard to cheat, and shuffle things around between releases so any given cheat doesn't stay valid for too long.
Developing such a product completely open source means you can't rely on this. But this doesn't mean you can't develop a fun game. There are at least four solutions that will work for many different types of games.
You didn't read the article, did you?
"Property is the basis of the free market....". Bzzzzt, Sorry. Please try again. Scarcity is the basis of the free market. There are some things in life (computers, cars, man hours), that are scarce. From scarcity comes property. There are only so many cars available. Who should I give them to? How about whomever will pay me the most? I want a computer. To get one, I'll need to convince someone else to give me their computer, so they'll no longer have one. I suppose I'll need to pay them for their computer. Part of this is that there is competition. I can purchase a computer, a car, or man hours from any number of sources. If I don't like your price, I'll look elsewhere. This is a free market.
Intellectual "property" is completely different. I can make a copy of Enya's new album, I have not taken away someone else's copy. Music, software, books, and the like are fundamentally abundent. I can easily make copies of any of them and increase the world's supply. Copyright, in part, takes an abundent product and makes it legally scarce.
A free market behaves very differently than modern copyright driven industries. Since you're apparently a bit light on economic theory, let be give you a summary. A product has a marginal price (the price to make "just one more"). The marginal price for a mass produced CD is less than a dollar. If you have a free market with competition, the price to consumers approaches the marginal price. If I'm charging, say $15 for a CD, a competitor will start producing it for $14. I'll undercut him $13, and we'll keep doing this until the price is just barely above the cost to actually make the CD.
But this doesn't happen. Why? Because of copyright. Copyright doesn't just make music scarce, it grants me a monopoly. There is no free market to keep costs down, if you want a CD of me singing, you have to purchase it from me, directly or indirectly (through a middle man or purchasing used). Either way, if you want it, you'll pay what I demand, or you won't get it. This is not how a free market behaves. This is a monopoly, the enemy of the free market.
Mojo Nation dwells on solving the free rider problem. Unfortunately, the real world doesn't have that problem. When I'm not using my computer and my bandwidth, both of which I've already paid for, why not share them. They don't really cost me anything more. O'Reilly's OpenP2P site has the article " In Praise of Freeloaders." It clearly explains why Mojo Nation is solving a problem that doesn't really exist.