I think it's a ploy to take attention away from the sucky fact that the only "apps" they're allowing on the iPhone are web pages. Oooh, innovative.
It's not innovative but it's ultimately correct. Why recreate Google Maps, Google Apps, Wikipedia, etc, when you could just use them? The only thing less innovative would be to do it the M$ way and have people buy yet another expensive SDK that's only useful for a single hardware platform and lets you start reinventing every wheel all over again. The only thing more innovative would be to release it all as free software so people could port what they've already done and make web pages that work. There is a zero chance the greed heads will ever agree to such a scheme as long as they control the airwaves, all recorded music and so on and so forth. The lack of an SDK is far a step into the future the phone and music companies will let Apple take.
I leave a copy of the compiled version in a directory that's accessible to anybody on the internet who knows where to look. When someone demands the source code, I tell him to go to hell because I'm not distributing anything. Can I get sued for violating the GPL?
Really, anyone who bothered to put their binaries onto a server would also put their source code there. I can't imagine someone going through the trouble for one and not the other. The only thing that's harder to imagine is someone using binaries from a person that's told them to go to hell.
in the UK I believe it is still the case that the library pays the publisher/author a royalty when a book is borrowed. It's called a public lending right.
Sounds like a public wrong to me.
In any case, it is dangerous and foolish to compare parts of different legal systems. The systems are created with different philosophies and means to achieve their ends. Comparison invites mixing and matching to "harmonize" but what you really get is all the worst restrictions of both and a hopeless confusion of philosophy that undermines the rule of law itself. Specifically, a radical Danish law from 1941 is at odds with the purpose and structure of US copyright law. It is hotly debated in the EU itself.
twitter apparently does not like the troll moderations he's gotten in this thread so far, so he's switched to his sockpuppet account.
Do you have something usefull to say about integrated features, desktop search, Google, software at all? No one gives a shit about your personal hatred of Twitter, mod points and all of that.
The problem, in all of those cases, was that M$ sabotaged the competitor from the OS. They then blame the competitor for the problem. This is a very old trick that they play again and again. The end result for the user is a platform full of intentional bugs and devoid of real competition or choice.
Your list of driven off competitors is something M$ should be ashamed of. They have never managed to match, let alone better, the program from the competitors they have destroyed this way.
The Google fight is one they are going to lose. It's not just search, which is a tool only M$ Windoze users really need, it's web search, YouTube, Google applications that M$ is unable to compete with. Given the choice between M$ and the world, users are increasingly choosing the world - GNU/Linux, Mac anything but M$.
What I want is a format that stores everything at a quieter level that maximizes it's dynamic range
That's what normalize audio does.
and software that plays it back as loud as the producers wanted it, unless the user intervenes to turn the volume down.
I'm not sure why you would give control of volume to the producer, but that's what you get from CDs now and it's pot luck. In the best cases, they maximize dynamic range and you get what the artist intended. In other cases, they use crappy tools and use some sorry subset of the whole range. Still in other cases, they "compress" distort and clip it. If that's what you want, do nothing special and you have it.
I'll stick with normalized audio. Most GNU/Linux rippers and players come with it by default. Whit it, I don't have to mess with the volume knob, the music is always loud enough to hear but never so loud that I get blasted out. Once you get used to it, stuff from inferior rippers sucks. I notice the difference when if I forget to run it on stuff I get from archive.org, tapes or albums.
Couldn't we just add a tag to every track with a floating point number by which to multiply the magnitude of all the samples in that track by default.
You already have a built in upper limit, normalizing the range to that limit fixes the problem.
Normalize-audio is a package that does this. Here's what the Debian repository says:
normalize-audio is a tool for adjusting the volume of WAV files to a
standard volume level. This is useful for things like creating mix CDs and
mp3 databases, where different recording levels on different albums can
cause the volume to vary greatly from song to song.
The package also works on ogg vorbis and mp3. You can do it on ripping, or playback. Each song can be normalized individually or as a collection. The result is that you don't have to reach for the volume knob all day.
You are SOL if the record company has already applied dumb techniques to the CD before you get it. Peak "compressing", where all of the peaks are maxed out is a real distoriton of the original sound. When you add a heavy handed turn up that clips as well, you get Californication as mentioned. As the article also notes, it's difficult to digitize clipped audio. A clipped wave is like a square wave - it has all frequencies and takes lots of bandwith.
I bet MS already has ODF compatibility ready to put on their website for download if a bill like this were to pass.
A M$ rep has bragged as much in this very thread. If it's true, I wish they would shut up about ODF being harmful to blind people.
I don't see any reason it would not be true. ODF is a sane standard and everyone else has been able to use it.
ODF is a great idea. But it is only a tiny step away from propriatary formats.
The difference between published and non published "standards" is night and day. Just ask yourself why there's no OOXML implementation for Mac or GNU/Linux.
That the roll out is going well is not a lie. Despite heavy interference from M$, it was right on schedule six months ago and the roll out was supposed to start only five months ago. Given the resignation of the CIO due to a smear and M$'s attempt to restructure their entire IT system, it's a miracle they are able to keep to their plans at all. It's the planning that takes time - roll outs happen in a week, even in the deadly inefficient world of Windoze.
Oh yeah, let's not forget the blind people FUD, which has limited deployment due to the state's "chosen accessibility technology". That's particularly irksome, considering the better stuff available in the free software world (Klaus Knopper's wife is legally blind), and bragging from M$ that ODF support would not be hard for them, but only if forced.
What, do you think Office is incapable of supporting ODF or something? That can be changed quite fast. I work on the Live Meeting team, and we are constantly working on communication/productivity tools...
Great, we all know that M$ could use ODF. The standard is complete and easy enough to implement that everyone else has already done it.
The problem is that your company would rather waste money on their own special format and propaganda so they can keep their little format franchise. Where was your bragging in Mass. when M$ was complaining that ODF would hurt blind people? If ODF is so easy to implement, was it really worth smearing Peter Quinn's out of job and reputation? It's this kind of arrogance that will cost M$ everything. People remember what you do.
The rest is all bullshit. Vendor manipulation, marketing, bogus laws are only needed by a company that lacks product. The harder they try, the weaker they look.
The tipping point is here. If Dell makes money selling GNU/Linux desktops, it's all over for M$. If they don't, someone else will. Firefox has proved free software to all the "decision makers" M$ usually courts, and it's only a matter of time before they realize Firefox and much more works better outside the M$ cage.
Perhaps this time round IBM will keep its mouth shut and the government will be able to see this isn't a battle for commercial gain...
What exactly did the IBM representative not follow though on? Unless you know, you should not repeat the smear. M$ is well known for lying with and without oath, but most of us expect more from IBM.
In any case, IBM and everyone besides M$ should come to the aid of ODF. Legislators want to see professionals who can talk about money more than they want to see idealists who might cost them. Given moral and financial arguments, it's hard to see how these bills can be defeated.
both [sides] have been criticized for promoting their own commercial interests. IBM uses ODF as a file format for its Lotus Notes 8 software, and Sun uses it in its StarOffice productivity suite. Key Microsoft rival Google also supports ODF in its Google Docs & Spreadsheets online application.
They left out KDE, Gnome, Correl.... and the rest of the world. How can anyone see this as anything but M$ pushing it's next format despite unified opposition from everyone else in the industry. Everyone but M$ and fanboys are sick of M$ only formats being used for public business.
No, the confusingly named M$ Office format, OOXML, is not Open or even a complete or standard. There are no full GNU/Linux or Mac implementations and that's not because the world outside of M$ lacks programming skill, it's because M$ is as uncooperative as they always are.
I don't think this is so much "changeing the face of the internet" as allowing the internet to grow into places where censorship has long been a part of life.... there is a long list of things that suck in most countries that censor heavily.
Don't you think that US companies have completely neutered the internet in China? That the same companies are busy planning the same thing for their own countries so that all of your future publications can be censored and participating in any way can be dangerous? That long list of things that suck is due, in part, to a complete control of information. Anywhere that happens, things get ugly but you never know just how ugly until it's your turn to have your organs harvested.
no one said you have to communicate purely via TCP in traditional ways.
You can also use a string and two tin cans to talk to your neighbor, but only because you can tell them how to listen. The problem with inventing new ways to talk is that no one else knows about it. When everyone knows about it, the network's owner can block it and you and your leet friends are back to square one, just like the "clueless users" you deride.
The whole point of the internet is to pass information back and forth so no one has to be a "clueless user".
You'd think he'd get someone to at least brief him before going to this event.
He knew enough to think Ballmer's chair throwing antics were funny, but this is M$ only joke and all of the things he said fit well within the talking points of M$. Threatening an employee and talk about "killing Google" was serious anti-competitive stuff which should have been followed up by anti-trust investigation. If all you had was broadcast news, it might have made sense to you - shiver your thoughts. The person who briefed him was well briefed by M$/ATT/MAFIAA/DisneyElectric and the Federal government is in their pocket but there is a growing disconnect with public opinion.
The AK-47 was developed under what is arguably the worst state monopoly system in history and is public domain. Specific improvements might be patented but many people paid a heavy price for it's original development and production. Ironically enough, it probably violated several western patents at the time but not even the USSR had the nerve to own ideas outside it's territory. Other nations and companies were free to make AK-47 all day long until the 1999 patent.
So yes, it was open source in a way, but real inventions should not be confused with software, business methods or grocery lists. Software patents are a bad joke and worse law.
So a presidential hopeful wants somebody who at least knows how technology works to be a technology adviser? Say it ain't so!
If "knifing the baby", "cutting off oxygen" and "fucking killing" is how technology works, McCain has his man. Ballmer knows NOTHING about technology and needs the kind of business ethics class that comes with steel bars on the door.
I hope the whole thing was a bad joke, but there is no mistaking McCain's stance on network neutrality. Love of M$ goes hand in hand with approval of ATT's tactics.
Thank you for giving me the best laugh of the day. I mean, you're the one who can't do anything *but* mention how much you hate Microsoft and Windows. I'm going to keep this link as a little treasure, and every time you spew hatred about Microsoft, Windows and non-free software in general I'm going to post it.
What an interesting moderation manipulation. You have taken a comment that was mostly informative and insightful and turned it into a "funny" comment with one or two modpoints. To prove your ability, you self modded the disgusting bile above "funny" as well. Ah, but you M$ PR flacks are enterprising. Where would you be though without M$ powered botnets? It's ironic that M$ flaws can be used to boost M$'s public image.
Pretending to be a start up is bad, but it must feel dirty to work on a tool with the usual M$ predetermined limits:
The Non-Professional tools team builds software to enable new, hobbyist, and other non-professional programmers - as well as complete non-programmers - to build and share their work. Our team's vision is to democratize development by making it approachable to an entire class of people that want to "create" without necessarily having to write code. We believe that if you can send an email, you should be able to build and personalize your own website, mashup, social networking site, or blog.
They said the same sorts of things about Basic and many other of their tools. What it means is they have no respect for your work. In the Basic case, they made so many work breaking changes that it was easier to learn C and the Windoze API.
The whole thing just drips with clueless arrogance. "Non-Professional", "hobbyist", "mashup, social networking site, or blog." It just sort of says, "thanks for the content, kid." Reasonable sites don't set limits like that and offer you a cut of advertising revenue, regardless of programming skills. The web is just another tool. Sites that come with limits like this are defective by design. In a world with many reasonable alternatives, Popfly is going to do as well as Zune.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's a ploy to take attention away from the sucky fact that the only "apps" they're allowing on the iPhone are web pages. Oooh, innovative.
It's not innovative but it's ultimately correct. Why recreate Google Maps, Google Apps, Wikipedia, etc, when you could just use them? The only thing less innovative would be to do it the M$ way and have people buy yet another expensive SDK that's only useful for a single hardware platform and lets you start reinventing every wheel all over again. The only thing more innovative would be to release it all as free software so people could port what they've already done and make web pages that work. There is a zero chance the greed heads will ever agree to such a scheme as long as they control the airwaves, all recorded music and so on and so forth. The lack of an SDK is far a step into the future the phone and music companies will let Apple take.
His lack of faith disturbs me.
I leave a copy of the compiled version in a directory that's accessible to anybody on the internet who knows where to look. When someone demands the source code, I tell him to go to hell because I'm not distributing anything. Can I get sued for violating the GPL?
Really, anyone who bothered to put their binaries onto a server would also put their source code there. I can't imagine someone going through the trouble for one and not the other. The only thing that's harder to imagine is someone using binaries from a person that's told them to go to hell.
in the UK I believe it is still the case that the library pays the publisher/author a royalty when a book is borrowed. It's called a public lending right.
Sounds like a public wrong to me.
In any case, it is dangerous and foolish to compare parts of different legal systems. The systems are created with different philosophies and means to achieve their ends. Comparison invites mixing and matching to "harmonize" but what you really get is all the worst restrictions of both and a hopeless confusion of philosophy that undermines the rule of law itself. Specifically, a radical Danish law from 1941 is at odds with the purpose and structure of US copyright law. It is hotly debated in the EU itself.
twitter apparently does not like the troll moderations he's gotten in this thread so far, so he's switched to his sockpuppet account.
Do you have something usefull to say about integrated features, desktop search, Google, software at all? No one gives a shit about your personal hatred of Twitter, mod points and all of that.
The problem, in all of those cases, was that M$ sabotaged the competitor from the OS. They then blame the competitor for the problem. This is a very old trick that they play again and again. The end result for the user is a platform full of intentional bugs and devoid of real competition or choice.
Your list of driven off competitors is something M$ should be ashamed of. They have never managed to match, let alone better, the program from the competitors they have destroyed this way.
The Google fight is one they are going to lose. It's not just search, which is a tool only M$ Windoze users really need, it's web search, YouTube, Google applications that M$ is unable to compete with. Given the choice between M$ and the world, users are increasingly choosing the world - GNU/Linux, Mac anything but M$.
What I want is a format that stores everything at a quieter level that maximizes it's dynamic range
That's what normalize audio does.
and software that plays it back as loud as the producers wanted it, unless the user intervenes to turn the volume down.
I'm not sure why you would give control of volume to the producer, but that's what you get from CDs now and it's pot luck. In the best cases, they maximize dynamic range and you get what the artist intended. In other cases, they use crappy tools and use some sorry subset of the whole range. Still in other cases, they "compress" distort and clip it. If that's what you want, do nothing special and you have it.
I'll stick with normalized audio. Most GNU/Linux rippers and players come with it by default. Whit it, I don't have to mess with the volume knob, the music is always loud enough to hear but never so loud that I get blasted out. Once you get used to it, stuff from inferior rippers sucks. I notice the difference when if I forget to run it on stuff I get from archive.org, tapes or albums.
Couldn't we just add a tag to every track with a floating point number by which to multiply the magnitude of all the samples in that track by default.
You already have a built in upper limit, normalizing the range to that limit fixes the problem.
Normalize-audio is a package that does this. Here's what the Debian repository says:
The package also works on ogg vorbis and mp3. You can do it on ripping, or playback. Each song can be normalized individually or as a collection. The result is that you don't have to reach for the volume knob all day.
You are SOL if the record company has already applied dumb techniques to the CD before you get it. Peak "compressing", where all of the peaks are maxed out is a real distoriton of the original sound. When you add a heavy handed turn up that clips as well, you get Californication as mentioned. As the article also notes, it's difficult to digitize clipped audio. A clipped wave is like a square wave - it has all frequencies and takes lots of bandwith.
I bet MS already has ODF compatibility ready to put on their website for download if a bill like this were to pass.
A M$ rep has bragged as much in this very thread. If it's true, I wish they would shut up about ODF being harmful to blind people.
I don't see any reason it would not be true. ODF is a sane standard and everyone else has been able to use it.
ODF is a great idea. But it is only a tiny step away from propriatary formats.
The difference between published and non published "standards" is night and day. Just ask yourself why there's no OOXML implementation for Mac or GNU/Linux.
That the roll out is going well is not a lie. Despite heavy interference from M$, it was right on schedule six months ago and the roll out was supposed to start only five months ago. Given the resignation of the CIO due to a smear and M$'s attempt to restructure their entire IT system, it's a miracle they are able to keep to their plans at all. It's the planning that takes time - roll outs happen in a week, even in the deadly inefficient world of Windoze.
Oh yeah, let's not forget the blind people FUD, which has limited deployment due to the state's "chosen accessibility technology". That's particularly irksome, considering the better stuff available in the free software world (Klaus Knopper's wife is legally blind), and bragging from M$ that ODF support would not be hard for them, but only if forced.
What, do you think Office is incapable of supporting ODF or something? That can be changed quite fast. I work on the Live Meeting team, and we are constantly working on communication/productivity tools...
Great, we all know that M$ could use ODF. The standard is complete and easy enough to implement that everyone else has already done it.
The problem is that your company would rather waste money on their own special format and propaganda so they can keep their little format franchise. Where was your bragging in Mass. when M$ was complaining that ODF would hurt blind people? If ODF is so easy to implement, was it really worth smearing Peter Quinn's out of job and reputation? It's this kind of arrogance that will cost M$ everything. People remember what you do.
Cool Stuff that people want.
The rest is all bullshit. Vendor manipulation, marketing, bogus laws are only needed by a company that lacks product. The harder they try, the weaker they look.
The tipping point is here. If Dell makes money selling GNU/Linux desktops, it's all over for M$. If they don't, someone else will. Firefox has proved free software to all the "decision makers" M$ usually courts, and it's only a matter of time before they realize Firefox and much more works better outside the M$ cage.
Perhaps this time round IBM will keep its mouth shut and the government will be able to see this isn't a battle for commercial gain ...
What exactly did the IBM representative not follow though on? Unless you know, you should not repeat the smear. M$ is well known for lying with and without oath, but most of us expect more from IBM.
In any case, IBM and everyone besides M$ should come to the aid of ODF. Legislators want to see professionals who can talk about money more than they want to see idealists who might cost them. Given moral and financial arguments, it's hard to see how these bills can be defeated.
From the InfoWorld article:
They left out KDE, Gnome, Correl .... and the rest of the world. How can anyone see this as anything but M$ pushing it's next format despite unified opposition from everyone else in the industry. Everyone but M$ and fanboys are sick of M$ only formats being used for public business.
No, the confusingly named M$ Office format, OOXML, is not Open or even a complete or standard. There are no full GNU/Linux or Mac implementations and that's not because the world outside of M$ lacks programming skill, it's because M$ is as uncooperative as they always are.
I don't think this is so much "changeing the face of the internet" as allowing the internet to grow into places where censorship has long been a part of life. ... there is a long list of things that suck in most countries that censor heavily.
Don't you think that US companies have completely neutered the internet in China? That the same companies are busy planning the same thing for their own countries so that all of your future publications can be censored and participating in any way can be dangerous? That long list of things that suck is due, in part, to a complete control of information. Anywhere that happens, things get ugly but you never know just how ugly until it's your turn to have your organs harvested.
no one said you have to communicate purely via TCP in traditional ways.
You can also use a string and two tin cans to talk to your neighbor, but only because you can tell them how to listen. The problem with inventing new ways to talk is that no one else knows about it. When everyone knows about it, the network's owner can block it and you and your leet friends are back to square one, just like the "clueless users" you deride.
The whole point of the internet is to pass information back and forth so no one has to be a "clueless user".
You spelled Microsoft with a dollar sign, and you linked to Richard Stallman's "blog" ...
It did not take much to blow that little mind, did it AC? What sound does a pin head make when it breaks?
You'd think he'd get someone to at least brief him before going to this event.
He knew enough to think Ballmer's chair throwing antics were funny, but this is M$ only joke and all of the things he said fit well within the talking points of M$. Threatening an employee and talk about "killing Google" was serious anti-competitive stuff which should have been followed up by anti-trust investigation. If all you had was broadcast news, it might have made sense to you - shiver your thoughts. The person who briefed him was well briefed by M$/ATT/MAFIAA/DisneyElectric and the Federal government is in their pocket but there is a growing disconnect with public opinion.
Indeed, the wikipedia article claims the design borrowed much from the US M1 rifle. The USSR no more paid royalties at the time than it demanded them.
The AK-47 was developed under what is arguably the worst state monopoly system in history and is public domain. Specific improvements might be patented but many people paid a heavy price for it's original development and production. Ironically enough, it probably violated several western patents at the time but not even the USSR had the nerve to own ideas outside it's territory. Other nations and companies were free to make AK-47 all day long until the 1999 patent.
So yes, it was open source in a way, but real inventions should not be confused with software, business methods or grocery lists. Software patents are a bad joke and worse law.
So a presidential hopeful wants somebody who at least knows how technology works to be a technology adviser? Say it ain't so!
If "knifing the baby", "cutting off oxygen" and "fucking killing" is how technology works, McCain has his man. Ballmer knows NOTHING about technology and needs the kind of business ethics class that comes with steel bars on the door.
I hope the whole thing was a bad joke, but there is no mistaking McCain's stance on network neutrality. Love of M$ goes hand in hand with approval of ATT's tactics.
Thank you for giving me the best laugh of the day. I mean, you're the one who can't do anything *but* mention how much you hate Microsoft and Windows. I'm going to keep this link as a little treasure, and every time you spew hatred about Microsoft, Windows and non-free software in general I'm going to post it.
What an interesting moderation manipulation. You have taken a comment that was mostly informative and insightful and turned it into a "funny" comment with one or two modpoints. To prove your ability, you self modded the disgusting bile above "funny" as well. Ah, but you M$ PR flacks are enterprising. Where would you be though without M$ powered botnets? It's ironic that M$ flaws can be used to boost M$'s public image.
I love it when M$ people post on Slashdot, pretending to be normal computer people. Does your boss still think Linux is a "cancer"?
If someone hadn't pointed out it was the popfly website, I would have swore I was at a linux site.
I thought I was a trailer park, I mean MySpaces. Complete with this cool pink duck. No, MySpaces is nicer than that grey on white nightmare.
Pretending to be a start up is bad, but it must feel dirty to work on a tool with the usual M$ predetermined limits:
They said the same sorts of things about Basic and many other of their tools. What it means is they have no respect for your work. In the Basic case, they made so many work breaking changes that it was easier to learn C and the Windoze API.
The whole thing just drips with clueless arrogance. "Non-Professional", "hobbyist", "mashup, social networking site, or blog." It just sort of says, "thanks for the content, kid." Reasonable sites don't set limits like that and offer you a cut of advertising revenue, regardless of programming skills. The web is just another tool. Sites that come with limits like this are defective by design. In a world with many reasonable alternatives, Popfly is going to do as well as Zune.