We need to treat Microsoft as the damage they are and, in Internet fashion, route around them.
The only place I can think of to start, apart from boycotts and legal action (both of which are lost causes IMO) is to purchase cheap knock-offs that are not so encumbered.
Oh well, now that both LG and Samsung have signed this deal with the devil * I won't be buying one of their products. I guess I'll go pickup a knockoff from Dealextreme. No problem.
* Anyone who continues to give Microsoft any money, knowing what they have done, is either pathalogically thoughtless or has shares in the company.
Again we see the foolishness of copyright. If we need it to function as a society (and that is a very, very big IF), then the maximum term should be five years, no more. That is enough time for any content creator to bring their product to market and gain any recognition they deserve.
Even if this were true (I really have no idea if it is), what would Microsoft stand to gain? I mean, they already effectively control the rotting carcass of Nokia through their puppet Elop.
Oh right, they used to be a cell phone company didn't they? Then Microsoft bought them or something.
So they've concluded that your call phone, which spends what 99% of its time hidden in pockets, bags, etc, cannot be charged by the sun. They now plan to invest $10m to determine if you can fry an egg underwater.
You and I voted for this. WIth our wallets. We are the ones who gave mindshare and money to these companies that are now buying the laws we so loathe.
As for how to fix that, well I don't have a solid answer but stopping buying anything from the **AA, Monsanto, etc and buying local (and encouraging friends and family to do the same) is a good start.
It's not just the media companies. Monsanto (you know, *that* seed company) seems to be buying legislation offshore now too. Take a look at what they're trying to push through in New Zealand, not to mention what they're doing in third world countries.
This kind of nonsense should mean jail time for the BoD that authorized this.
Would you rather have the current situation where these hard working people who invent a way to use X to perform task Y are not allowed to take them to market because some CEO thought it would be a good idea to file a broad patent that covers all applications of X in the field of Y,Z and Q?
Also I hope you have never created anything, ever. Because unless you built it from first principles in total isolation then you are one of those "scum bags who just want to feed off the sweat of others" too.
I also take it you slept through or perhaps were not yet born at the time of the Rambus/JEDEC debarcle.
Fair comment. My point was that attempting to route around these silly patents is not the right way to go about it, because eventually some troll is going to come knocking on the door with a stupid patent for a core technology such as touchscreens, portable batteries or radio antennae.
The way to address these patents IMO is to fight the corrupt system that gave them validity in the first place. Yes, and I would like a pony.
I still hold onto the hope that perhaps one day, Amarok 2.x might have the feature set that Amarok 1.4 had. And chew up the same amount of memory or less. But maybe crash less often.
When 3TB drives become affordable again I'm considering going RAID1 for everything. As in three or four drives mirrored together. Debian supports this out of the box. Insanely high read performance, close to single-drive write performance and most importantly tolerance for (ARRAYSIZE-1) drives failing simultaneously.
If you don't need more than 3TB of storage I would suggest that you do away with striping entirely too.
Their "blue" series is without a doubt the worst I have ever dealt with. I'm talking a 50% failure rate, and a creeping number of bad sectors coupled with failed SMART tests.
I only ever now buy the black RAID edition and they're rock solid (so far).
Slashdot Mirror
We need to treat Microsoft as the damage they are and, in Internet fashion, route around them.
The only place I can think of to start, apart from boycotts and legal action (both of which are lost causes IMO) is to purchase cheap knock-offs that are not so encumbered.
No, that would be silly.
My car is the Defiant.
Peter Norton must be rolling in the grave of what used to be his company.
Oh well, now that both LG and Samsung have signed this deal with the devil * I won't be buying one of their products. I guess I'll go pickup a knockoff from Dealextreme. No problem.
* Anyone who continues to give Microsoft any money, knowing what they have done, is either pathalogically thoughtless or has shares in the company.
The 2012 is by every measure a better car. But it gets significantly poorer gas mileage.
I would call that a rather important measure, one that hopefully you won't neglect when you go to purchase your next car.
Again we see the foolishness of copyright. If we need it to function as a society (and that is a very, very big IF), then the maximum term should be five years, no more. That is enough time for any content creator to bring their product to market and gain any recognition they deserve.
I was with you all the way up to that MMO Quest bit.
Even if this were true (I really have no idea if it is), what would Microsoft stand to gain? I mean, they already effectively control the rotting carcass of Nokia through their puppet Elop.
Oh right, they used to be a cell phone company didn't they? Then Microsoft bought them or something.
So they've concluded that your call phone, which spends what 99% of its time hidden in pockets, bags, etc, cannot be charged by the sun. They now plan to invest $10m to determine if you can fry an egg underwater.
You and I voted for this. WIth our wallets. We are the ones who gave mindshare and money to these companies that are now buying the laws we so loathe.
As for how to fix that, well I don't have a solid answer but stopping buying anything from the **AA, Monsanto, etc and buying local (and encouraging friends and family to do the same) is a good start.
s/powerless/apathetic
It's not just the media companies. Monsanto (you know, *that* seed company) seems to be buying legislation offshore now too. Take a look at what they're trying to push through in New Zealand, not to mention what they're doing in third world countries.
This kind of nonsense should mean jail time for the BoD that authorized this.
You had the right idea of what to curtail when you mentioned campaign money.
Android tablets.
Would you rather have the current situation where these hard working people who invent a way to use X to perform task Y are not allowed to take them to market because some CEO thought it would be a good idea to file a broad patent that covers all applications of X in the field of Y,Z and Q?
Also I hope you have never created anything, ever. Because unless you built it from first principles in total isolation then you are one of those "scum bags who just want to feed off the sweat of others" too.
I also take it you slept through or perhaps were not yet born at the time of the Rambus/JEDEC debarcle.
Fair comment. My point was that attempting to route around these silly patents is not the right way to go about it, because eventually some troll is going to come knocking on the door with a stupid patent for a core technology such as touchscreens, portable batteries or radio antennae.
The way to address these patents IMO is to fight the corrupt system that gave them validity in the first place. Yes, and I would like a pony.
Hard when one of those infringing features is a touch screen.
I have no idea if that is actually the case at the moment, but just illustrating that not everything can be provided by third parties.
Have they put dynamic playlists back yet?
I still hold onto the hope that perhaps one day, Amarok 2.x might have the feature set that Amarok 1.4 had.
And chew up the same amount of memory or less.
But maybe crash less often.
Uh yeah, sorry I meant "a simple Mail Merge operation".
The name and averages are achievable by an Mail Merge operation, which has been around since the days of WordStar on MS-DOS 2.1 and probably longer.
For a couple of years now I have rated Apple equal with Microsoft on the evil tech company scale, ie right at the top.
Even Caldera (SCO) never made it to the top IMO. They were only ever Microsoft's puppet and most likely had no clue what they were doing.
+1 for the name.
I assume "unable to comply" will be the standard 404 message.
I used to have a lot of respect for Peter Norton too.
When 3TB drives become affordable again I'm considering going RAID1 for everything. As in three or four drives mirrored together. Debian supports this out of the box. Insanely high read performance, close to single-drive write performance and most importantly tolerance for (ARRAYSIZE-1) drives failing simultaneously.
If you don't need more than 3TB of storage I would suggest that you do away with striping entirely too.
Their "blue" series is without a doubt the worst I have ever dealt with. I'm talking a 50% failure rate, and a creeping number of bad sectors coupled with failed SMART tests.
I only ever now buy the black RAID edition and they're rock solid (so far).