To bootstrap the on screen interface that allows you to control the tv... To provide an interface for installing firmware updates... To provide software to decode digital video streams... A TV these days is a lot more than a dumb analog display device.
A bit foolish really... Microsoft are a competitor to Sony... Windows will always be designed to operate with the xbox, not the ps3... And profit from sales of windows goes to fund the unprofitable gaming division.. Without such a massive up front investment, the xbox would never have been able to compete effectively against the playstation models.
Really sony should be promoting linux on their computers, and promoting it's ability to interoperate with the ps3. Having a computer, a games console, a camera, a dvd player, a tv etc, all produced by sony, all running the same software and all seamlessly integrating would be a good selling point.
It is quite easy to root kit a linux system such that you could not find it with userland tools such as ls... There are plenty of pre made kits available to do exactly that, look for tools such as phalanx, adore and suckit, most of which will probably be available from packetstorm... Rootkits originated on unix not windows, that's why they are called rootkits and not administratorkits or systemkits...
But sure, with the source code it would be easy to locate such a kit on an embedded device if one were present.
It's because McDonalds is a large faceless corporation which has spread all over the place... Whereas a small kebab shop will typically be run by a family or an individual...
The staff in your local McDonald's typically couldn't care less about their job, and usually won't work there very long... They will be there to pay their way through college, or because they couldn't find anything better. Your local kebab shop on the other hand will get to know you, have a friendly chat with you and greet you in the street.
It is perhaps quite insidious, but a very effective strategy.
As for the quality of the source materials, it will vary greatly in a small kebab shop, whereas McDonald's will be consistent. Quality of preparation is likely to be higher in a family run kebab store where the staff know you compared to a McDonald's where the staff couldn't care less.
Packaging - the kebab store here hands out their kebabs wrapped in plain paper, which rots away (or burns very nicely because of the grease), McDonald's uses branded glossy packaging which will take longer to rot. But the biggest issue here is branding, McDonald's packaging is distinctively branded so it is easily noticed, plain packaging from a kebab store cannot be identified as to where it came from.
Incidentally, i don't hate proprietary software, but i do hate the behaviour of many of the companies who make it. Trying to force people to continue using their products by making them as non standard as possible is deplorable. I want the freedom to choose what software i use, what software i can use with it and regardless of what software is being used by the people i communicate or do business with. Proprietary file formats and protocols take away my freedom. However, as someone with experience in various programming languages, i would always prefer to have access to source code.
The supermarket will close, leaving a small number of people out of work, which will be offset by the new people employed by the government store, and the government store may even employ more people resulting in a net win... Meanwhile, every single person in the town benefits from the lower prices.
These monopolies are built on shaky foundations, the idea of keeping consumers locked in (effectively holding them to ransom) rather than keeping them wanting to buy your products based on them being better than the competition... Sooner or later the customers will come to realise how bad this is for them, and try to break out of the cycle, once this happens the monopoly will collapse and you will have another financial crisis.
3,
The hardest hit consumers will likely keep their existing hardware rather than buy new, if they can breathe new life into their existing hardware for free by putting an up to date version of linux on it instead of an ageing unsupported version of windows then absolutely they will care. You can also buy new computers for less than the price of a wii these days, and old ones even cheaper...
Dogwaffle isn't open source... They make a commercial version, and offer a crippled free version without source code... Gimp would have been a better comparison.
But you can actually *see* the open source projects that die, and potentially make use of them in the future, and if you were already using them you can continue to do so.
What about all the commercial projects that die, many of which never even reached the release stage.
One such example, is PostPath (http://www.postpath.com) which used to be advertised frequently on slashdot, they used to make a mail server which was a drop in replacement for ms exchange, while outperforming it by a huge margin... We had their demo version and very much liked it, it would have freed us from several niggles we have with exchange 2003, while costing significantly less than 2007 would while not necessarily fixing the issues we have. However, PostPath were bought out by Cisco... Their existing mail server product is no longer available, and future versions won't be developed... The company will in the future, as part of cisco, be doing mail as a service - which is completely unacceptable for us, as we need to maintain control over our own email for legal (not to mention performance - don't want large attachments going over our slow wan link) reasons. So now what? Our planned migration had to be cancelled, had we already completed it we would have been stuck with an ageing product that would never be updated....
If it had been open source and abandoned on sourceforge, then not only would we still be able to acquire it despite the original developers having lost interest, but there would be a chance of new developers picking up the project.
If i want to create an updated version of a dead sourceforge project, i can use the existing code as a base... If i want to create a new version of a dead closed source project i have to start from scratch, and may have to spend significant time reverse engineering binary formats or such.
Software development is an extremely small industry, which is made to look bigger by the excessively high profit margins that are possible when it costs nothing to produce and sell infinite copies... The same is true for other similar areas, like production of movies and music... How many currently active musicians, actors and ancillary support staff there are? Now compare that to the staff working to produce a car... Don't forget those who mine and refine the raw materials, and not just those working for the big car companies but also those people working for all the thousands of smaller companies who supply parts.
The government should ensure that there is a fair and competitive market, but i wouldn't go so far as to say they should enter it themselves. If the government took actions to outlaw anti consumer lock-in practices, and forced vendors to comply with existing standards or fully open up their own if nothing else yet exists, then it would create a far more level marketplace encouraging innovation and free market competition.
This should be true for any market....
And agreed wrt healthcare and internet, and other similar markets where infrastructure constraints will create unavoidable monopolies... For internet/telecoms i would say let the government own and maintain the physical infrastructure, while allowing private companies to rent access to it on an equal footing... If everyone has the same costs, then competition will emerge with value-add services...
Healthcare, and especially development of treatments should definitely not be operated by for-profit companies... Such companies primary duty is to their own profit, even if that comes at the expense of the patient's health. Someone who suffers for years with an unpleasant disease, but has drugs to mitigate the agony is far more profitable than someone who can be cured. Similarly, a disease that affects millions on an ongoing basis is far more profitable than wiping out a disease.
Why not? Companies spend billions on proprietary products, improving OpenOffice would be hugely beneficial to millions of companies and individuals.
What's more important tho, would be for the government to take a stand against proprietary formats and protocols... If you level the playing field, OpenOffice would improve far more rapidly on it's own anyway.
Have people contribute towards existing well known projects, have the existing developers judge the submissions, including assessing the quality of the code to judge who is worthy of being paid to write more.
These companies are based around the goal of harvesting a large amount of wealth and locking it up in a small place... In the case of something so easily written and distributed as software, combined with intentional anti-customer actions like creating lock-in means that this is actually very bad for everyone but the original company.
The government has a duty to all of it's people, and if you can't suit everyone (which is virtually impossible) they should aim to suit the majority. Of course, money talks and governments are universally corrupt to varying degrees, so it often looks like the government is simply working for these major corporations and against it's people.
Cars are a very different prospect... Auto makers don't benefit from the ability to lock their consumers in like software makers do, and as a result the auto market is far more competitive.
Cars also require significant resources to produce each unit, and a large up front investment in equipment to perform the manufacturing process.
Software on the other hand, requires very little equipment, a computer that people would have anyway, and some development tools which can be acquired for free... The results can be duplicated infinitely and distributed instantly over the internet. The only significant input is development time, and unlike physical goods, the results from this development time can be reused infinitely.
I think this is a great idea, the government creates jobs for programmers, who write code that everyone can make use of. Millions of taxpaying individuals and companies can save money by using the resulting free software and a competitive market is opened up for third party organizations to provide ancillary services such as support and installation services based around the government sponsored code.
The only losers are commercial software makers, who make up a tiny minority of the population, and frequently operate anti-consumer policies such as promoting or forcing lock-in to their products.
1, Shouldn't be, providing the software written is general enough... You wouldn't want people writing really niche stuff.... Speak to companies and individuals and find out where they spend most money on software, how they could save by using free software, and what they perceive as the barriers (ie missing features etc) to using the free alternatives. 2, Pay people after they have achieved noticeable results... Especially if they contribute to existing OSS projects, have the existing developers judge the worthiness of the new contributions. 3, This is what the GPL is for... Release the software under the GPL or a similar license to ensure future versions continue to be available under the same terms.
If it's stored in the audio at a frequency humans cannot hear, then re-encoding it would probably get rid of it, since music compression schemes like mp3 work by removing inaudible sounds...
As you pointed out, msword 2007 is massively different, so learning an older version in school wouldn't be much use. And what guarantee is there that the interface present in 2007 won't be changed again? What guarantee is there that ms will be so widespread in the future?
No, you should teach general concepts that apply to multiple apps, teach kids how to write documents on computers, not how to specifically use a particular version of msword.
Also, in 1994 wordperfect was still extremely common, teaching exclusively msword then on the assumption that it would be more widely used in future would be the equivalent to teaching exclusively openoffice today. The future looks bright for openoffice, with moves towards standardised formats (even ms plans to implement odf) eliminating obstacles, and tough economic conditions pushing companies to try and reduce costs.. But that's no guarantee.
In the case of a stop by police you were guilty of something (eg speeding, missing tail light)... I don't think they can stop you without a valid reason.
Only time i ever got stopped was for driving at night without headlights, it was the middle of a city with street lights everywhere, it was a rental car and the dash lights up by default in that car for some reason, and my own car has automatic headlights... The cops was quite good about it, just made me turn the lights on... I'm sure they checked the car's license plates out on their computers but didn't find anything wrong.
And this could clearly be removed by someone with a reasonable level of technical skill, just like DRM can be removed... All these measures are just to target casual copiers...
However, unlike DRM, tagging the file with your details doesn't hurt legitimate users.
If you take away the ability of people, including many non creative middle men (riaa) to make obscene levels of profit based on a work produced years ago you will only benefit the talent pool...
If the profits are lower or non existent, only people who love music will make it... You will lose all the trash produced by people who have zero interest in music and are only in it for the money... You will get rid of all the people who have one hit, and then sit around doing drugs and generally setting a bad example while not producing any worthwhile new content.
What's so wrong with a world where artists have to actually continue creating and performing in order to continue making money?
Recordable media is no substitute for a live performance, recordings should really be treated as promotional freebies, with live shows and potentially product endorsements etc as ways to make money.
You can't produce a copy of a live show, the original artist has a monopoly on their own performances, and such a system is fair because it means artists have to keep working just like everyone else.
Apple could conceivably create a private key per user account... It would prevent impersonation, but it would still be possible to remove the tracking information.
It's far less likely to happen to MP3... While Vinyl requires completely different physical equipment to play than a CD or audio cassette does, MP3 is usually decoded in software these days. Whatever replaces it, is also likely to be decoded in software, and will likely require more processing power to decode.
So putting an mp3 decoder on a device alongside whatever replaces it is a very small burden, the mp3 decoder will be tiny compared to the newer decoder and the capabilities of the hardware it's running on.
MP3 is a lossy format, it also happens to be an older more lossy (read: inferior) format than AAC... If you have devices which support AAC then you have no reason to use MP3, tho you still have that option if you really want to. You can also concert CDs to mp3 or aac, and doing so is lossy... That's just the way these compressed formats work. You could even convert them to gsm compressed files (very tiny filesize) but they would sound hideous.
Slashdot Mirror
To bootstrap the on screen interface that allows you to control the tv...
To provide an interface for installing firmware updates...
To provide software to decode digital video streams...
A TV these days is a lot more than a dumb analog display device.
A bit foolish really... Microsoft are a competitor to Sony... Windows will always be designed to operate with the xbox, not the ps3... And profit from sales of windows goes to fund the unprofitable gaming division.. Without such a massive up front investment, the xbox would never have been able to compete effectively against the playstation models.
Really sony should be promoting linux on their computers, and promoting it's ability to interoperate with the ps3. Having a computer, a games console, a camera, a dvd player, a tv etc, all produced by sony, all running the same software and all seamlessly integrating would be a good selling point.
It is quite easy to root kit a linux system such that you could not find it with userland tools such as ls...
There are plenty of pre made kits available to do exactly that, look for tools such as phalanx, adore and suckit, most of which will probably be available from packetstorm...
Rootkits originated on unix not windows, that's why they are called rootkits and not administratorkits or systemkits...
But sure, with the source code it would be easy to locate such a kit on an embedded device if one were present.
It's because McDonalds is a large faceless corporation which has spread all over the place... Whereas a small kebab shop will typically be run by a family or an individual...
The staff in your local McDonald's typically couldn't care less about their job, and usually won't work there very long... They will be there to pay their way through college, or because they couldn't find anything better.
Your local kebab shop on the other hand will get to know you, have a friendly chat with you and greet you in the street.
It is perhaps quite insidious, but a very effective strategy.
As for the quality of the source materials, it will vary greatly in a small kebab shop, whereas McDonald's will be consistent. Quality of preparation is likely to be higher in a family run kebab store where the staff know you compared to a McDonald's where the staff couldn't care less.
Packaging - the kebab store here hands out their kebabs wrapped in plain paper, which rots away (or burns very nicely because of the grease), McDonald's uses branded glossy packaging which will take longer to rot. But the biggest issue here is branding, McDonald's packaging is distinctively branded so it is easily noticed, plain packaging from a kebab store cannot be identified as to where it came from.
Incidentally, i don't hate proprietary software, but i do hate the behaviour of many of the companies who make it. Trying to force people to continue using their products by making them as non standard as possible is deplorable. I want the freedom to choose what software i use, what software i can use with it and regardless of what software is being used by the people i communicate or do business with. Proprietary file formats and protocols take away my freedom.
However, as someone with experience in various programming languages, i would always prefer to have access to source code.
The supermarket will close, leaving a small number of people out of work, which will be offset by the new people employed by the government store, and the government store may even employ more people resulting in a net win... Meanwhile, every single person in the town benefits from the lower prices.
2,
These monopolies are built on shaky foundations, the idea of keeping consumers locked in (effectively holding them to ransom) rather than keeping them wanting to buy your products based on them being better than the competition... Sooner or later the customers will come to realise how bad this is for them, and try to break out of the cycle, once this happens the monopoly will collapse and you will have another financial crisis.
3,
The hardest hit consumers will likely keep their existing hardware rather than buy new, if they can breathe new life into their existing hardware for free by putting an up to date version of linux on it instead of an ageing unsupported version of windows then absolutely they will care.
You can also buy new computers for less than the price of a wii these days, and old ones even cheaper...
Dogwaffle isn't open source... They make a commercial version, and offer a crippled free version without source code...
Gimp would have been a better comparison.
But you can actually *see* the open source projects that die, and potentially make use of them in the future, and if you were already using them you can continue to do so.
What about all the commercial projects that die, many of which never even reached the release stage.
One such example, is PostPath (http://www.postpath.com) which used to be advertised frequently on slashdot, they used to make a mail server which was a drop in replacement for ms exchange, while outperforming it by a huge margin... We had their demo version and very much liked it, it would have freed us from several niggles we have with exchange 2003, while costing significantly less than 2007 would while not necessarily fixing the issues we have.
However, PostPath were bought out by Cisco... Their existing mail server product is no longer available, and future versions won't be developed... The company will in the future, as part of cisco, be doing mail as a service - which is completely unacceptable for us, as we need to maintain control over our own email for legal (not to mention performance - don't want large attachments going over our slow wan link) reasons. So now what? Our planned migration had to be cancelled, had we already completed it we would have been stuck with an ageing product that would never be updated....
If it had been open source and abandoned on sourceforge, then not only would we still be able to acquire it despite the original developers having lost interest, but there would be a chance of new developers picking up the project.
If i want to create an updated version of a dead sourceforge project, i can use the existing code as a base... If i want to create a new version of a dead closed source project i have to start from scratch, and may have to spend significant time reverse engineering binary formats or such.
Software development is an extremely small industry, which is made to look bigger by the excessively high profit margins that are possible when it costs nothing to produce and sell infinite copies... The same is true for other similar areas, like production of movies and music... How many currently active musicians, actors and ancillary support staff there are? Now compare that to the staff working to produce a car... Don't forget those who mine and refine the raw materials, and not just those working for the big car companies but also those people working for all the thousands of smaller companies who supply parts.
Software is a key part of the Internet....
The government should ensure that there is a fair and competitive market, but i wouldn't go so far as to say they should enter it themselves. If the government took actions to outlaw anti consumer lock-in practices, and forced vendors to comply with existing standards or fully open up their own if nothing else yet exists, then it would create a far more level marketplace encouraging innovation and free market competition.
This should be true for any market....
And agreed wrt healthcare and internet, and other similar markets where infrastructure constraints will create unavoidable monopolies... For internet/telecoms i would say let the government own and maintain the physical infrastructure, while allowing private companies to rent access to it on an equal footing... If everyone has the same costs, then competition will emerge with value-add services...
Healthcare, and especially development of treatments should definitely not be operated by for-profit companies... Such companies primary duty is to their own profit, even if that comes at the expense of the patient's health. Someone who suffers for years with an unpleasant disease, but has drugs to mitigate the agony is far more profitable than someone who can be cured. Similarly, a disease that affects millions on an ongoing basis is far more profitable than wiping out a disease.
Why not? Companies spend billions on proprietary products, improving OpenOffice would be hugely beneficial to millions of companies and individuals.
What's more important tho, would be for the government to take a stand against proprietary formats and protocols... If you level the playing field, OpenOffice would improve far more rapidly on it's own anyway.
Or do it the standard government way...
Most money goes to the project who offers the biggest "incentives" to whoever is responsible for making the decision.
Have people contribute towards existing well known projects, have the existing developers judge the submissions, including assessing the quality of the code to judge who is worthy of being paid to write more.
These companies are based around the goal of harvesting a large amount of wealth and locking it up in a small place... In the case of something so easily written and distributed as software, combined with intentional anti-customer actions like creating lock-in means that this is actually very bad for everyone but the original company.
The government has a duty to all of it's people, and if you can't suit everyone (which is virtually impossible) they should aim to suit the majority. Of course, money talks and governments are universally corrupt to varying degrees, so it often looks like the government is simply working for these major corporations and against it's people.
Cars are a very different prospect...
Auto makers don't benefit from the ability to lock their consumers in like software makers do, and as a result the auto market is far more competitive.
Cars also require significant resources to produce each unit, and a large up front investment in equipment to perform the manufacturing process.
Software on the other hand, requires very little equipment, a computer that people would have anyway, and some development tools which can be acquired for free... The results can be duplicated infinitely and distributed instantly over the internet. The only significant input is development time, and unlike physical goods, the results from this development time can be reused infinitely.
I think this is a great idea, the government creates jobs for programmers, who write code that everyone can make use of. Millions of taxpaying individuals and companies can save money by using the resulting free software and a competitive market is opened up for third party organizations to provide ancillary services such as support and installation services based around the government sponsored code.
The only losers are commercial software makers, who make up a tiny minority of the population, and frequently operate anti-consumer policies such as promoting or forcing lock-in to their products.
1, Shouldn't be, providing the software written is general enough... You wouldn't want people writing really niche stuff.... Speak to companies and individuals and find out where they spend most money on software, how they could save by using free software, and what they perceive as the barriers (ie missing features etc) to using the free alternatives.
2, Pay people after they have achieved noticeable results... Especially if they contribute to existing OSS projects, have the existing developers judge the worthiness of the new contributions.
3, This is what the GPL is for... Release the software under the GPL or a similar license to ensure future versions continue to be available under the same terms.
If it's stored in the audio at a frequency humans cannot hear, then re-encoding it would probably get rid of it, since music compression schemes like mp3 work by removing inaudible sounds...
As you pointed out, msword 2007 is massively different, so learning an older version in school wouldn't be much use.
And what guarantee is there that the interface present in 2007 won't be changed again?
What guarantee is there that ms will be so widespread in the future?
No, you should teach general concepts that apply to multiple apps, teach kids how to write documents on computers, not how to specifically use a particular version of msword.
Also, in 1994 wordperfect was still extremely common, teaching exclusively msword then on the assumption that it would be more widely used in future would be the equivalent to teaching exclusively openoffice today. The future looks bright for openoffice, with moves towards standardised formats (even ms plans to implement odf) eliminating obstacles, and tough economic conditions pushing companies to try and reduce costs.. But that's no guarantee.
In the case of a stop by police you were guilty of something (eg speeding, missing tail light)... I don't think they can stop you without a valid reason.
Only time i ever got stopped was for driving at night without headlights, it was the middle of a city with street lights everywhere, it was a rental car and the dash lights up by default in that car for some reason, and my own car has automatic headlights... The cops was quite good about it, just made me turn the lights on... I'm sure they checked the car's license plates out on their computers but didn't find anything wrong.
Ipods, phones, portable hard drives, laptops...
All these devices commonly carry music, and all of these devices commonly get stolen.
And this could clearly be removed by someone with a reasonable level of technical skill, just like DRM can be removed...
All these measures are just to target casual copiers...
However, unlike DRM, tagging the file with your details doesn't hurt legitimate users.
If you take away the ability of people, including many non creative middle men (riaa) to make obscene levels of profit based on a work produced years ago you will only benefit the talent pool...
If the profits are lower or non existent, only people who love music will make it... You will lose all the trash produced by people who have zero interest in music and are only in it for the money...
You will get rid of all the people who have one hit, and then sit around doing drugs and generally setting a bad example while not producing any worthwhile new content.
What's so wrong with a world where artists have to actually continue creating and performing in order to continue making money?
Recordable media is no substitute for a live performance, recordings should really be treated as promotional freebies, with live shows and potentially product endorsements etc as ways to make money.
You can't produce a copy of a live show, the original artist has a monopoly on their own performances, and such a system is fair because it means artists have to keep working just like everyone else.
Apple could conceivably create a private key per user account... It would prevent impersonation, but it would still be possible to remove the tracking information.
And people sell old devices without erasing the drives first, how many used ipods or hard drives are on ebay full of mp3 files?
It's far less likely to happen to MP3...
While Vinyl requires completely different physical equipment to play than a CD or audio cassette does, MP3 is usually decoded in software these days. Whatever replaces it, is also likely to be decoded in software, and will likely require more processing power to decode.
So putting an mp3 decoder on a device alongside whatever replaces it is a very small burden, the mp3 decoder will be tiny compared to the newer decoder and the capabilities of the hardware it's running on.
MP3 is a lossy format, it also happens to be an older more lossy (read: inferior) format than AAC... If you have devices which support AAC then you have no reason to use MP3, tho you still have that option if you really want to.
You can also concert CDs to mp3 or aac, and doing so is lossy... That's just the way these compressed formats work. You could even convert them to gsm compressed files (very tiny filesize) but they would sound hideous.