This announcement might kill Apple sales for a while. I am closing on a new home this Friday. I was planning on taking a little of the money I have made to buy a new iMac G5 over the weekend. However, with this news, there is no way I would waste $1,000+ on an iMac G5 when I can wait a year or so and get one based on Intel that will not become obsolete and will run faster.
I would expect Apple to have made this announcement _much_ closer to release time. How can this announcement not hurt Apple's sales?
First of all you can be legally obligated to perform in a certain way without a "USA law" saying so. For example, contracts create legal obligations without being recorded in any state or federal laws
So are you suggesting that _all_ USA corps have _all_ signed the _same_ contract requiring them to be "evil"? Strange, the programming consultant friends of mine that started their own corps have never had to sign such a contract.
That being said, I imagine that most corporate charters require that the executives act in a manner that will create profit.
Ah, yes. Because the NYSE operates by your "imagination". Every traded company on the NYSE doesn't take any action until they check with your "imagination" of what a corporation should do.
Umm, even if a company should act in a way to create profit; it doesn't give that company any rights to break laws. Get real, you sound like your are grasping for straws.
If you have any question of how a publicly traded corporation is supposed to act, just check out the NYSE.
You're right. It's not all the corporations, just the publicly traded ones that are legally obligated to take any legal action that will maximise shareholder profit without regards for how their actions affect others.
OK, shithead, please show me _one_ USA law that says a corporation _must_ "take any legal action that will maximise shareholder profit". You are talking out of your @ss. There are _no_ laws that force a publicly traded corp to do what you suggest. So get off your fairy-tale horse and stop beeing an @ss-hole.
Made my compromises just like you
Maybe you sold your self to some sh!tty corp, but I certainlly didn't, I didn't have to make _any_ compromises to work for the fortune 500 I work for. The company I work for is actually the most human focused company I have ever known. I have worked for 3 fortune 500's, and this one is the real deal. I live and work in central Florida. Last summer after we were hit _very_ hard by all the hurricanes, the company I worked for gave the most money of any private company to the victims, we are talking multi-millions. Actually, the company I work for gave more to victims than the government gave.
You are not only an @ss-hole, you are a dumb @ss-hole! Pretty sad IMO. Please show me the USA law(s) that say a publicly traded company _must_ "take any legal action that will maximise shareholder profit without regards for how their actions affect others".
There are NO SUCH LAWS you idiot. Go hug a tree and get an education!
I'd mod you +5 insightful right up until I hit your sig.
I didn't' even notice his.sig until you pointed it out. With or without his.sig, I would never have modded this +5 insightful. Why?
You already pointed it out for the most part. The GP is an idiot who is probably not married and has no family to support. Look at his blanket statement about "corporations".
It doesn't surprise me in the least that companies - which exist in a capitalist system for the sole purpose of taking money from people - are stomping all over people's rights for the purpose of fattening their wallets.
This sounds like some teeny-bopper or 20-something that has never had to live in the real world yet and raise a family. All corporations are not bad. In fact, most corps in the USA have nothing to do with the DMCA. I work for a fortune 500. The DMCA has _nothing_ to do with our line of business. However, idiots like the GP, just throw out their blanket statements and assume that all corps are like MS, RIAA or MPAA.
It doesn't take much to start a corporation. You just need to pay a small fee and you can have your own corp. Some of my fellow programmers work as independent contractors under their own corporation. I guess they are just as evil? The best thing you can do is just add idiots like the GP to your Foe list and mark them down -6 or something. Being a corporation is not bad. Many/most small businesses get a corporate license to protect their own personal finances from sue happy freaks. Being a corp is not bad, it is only _some_ of the big corps that are abusing Capitalism and the corporate title.
Wow, there are "senior" level developers out there who really think all these things?
Huh? What does that mean?
but there is also the issue of upgrades. A typical laptop can take a range of processors and some come with miniPCI. If you buy a lower-end CPU for one, make sure the board in it can support higher speed chips and you are set.
Some yes, but not your average laptop. To get one with those features and decent battery life you are going to be paying at least twice what a desktop would cost. What are the benefits? To me there are none. I am not a "road warrior". I program in my office at work on a 19" LCD or my office at home on a 21" CRT. If I need to work between the two systems, I connect in over VPN. I never have to worry about dragging around a laptop bag with all my gear. Also, read the warranty on many of those laptops, they are voided if you try to replace system parts such as a processor.
There are also 7200 rpm drives for laptops
Not standard on your average laptop so you would have to pay for an upgrade.
My laptop is only 2 years old and it is already out dated. It has only two USB 2.0 ports, and a DVD/CDRW. I need to burn DVD's so I would have to buy and external DVD burner which again, costs more. I need a a lot USB ports to connect my printer, camera and other devices. I wanted a tv tuner card, etc. All these things I can do with my home desktop without any problems and for the best cost. I don't want to have to lug around a laptop bag with two batteries, USB hub, mouse, external keyboard (I want to program with a full keyboard), external DVD burner and other USB devices and play musical wires. I have everything I need plugged into my desktop and they stay plugged in.
I have not seen any laptop in any store for several years that could only support 1024x768
Strange, because two Christmas's ago I bought a new laptop for $1,100 and it only does 1024x768. If you push the resolution higher, the desktop doesn't fit on the screen and your left scrolling around to get to what you need. No thanks.
Most of the other replies have covered discrediting most things this guy said
How can you "discredit" my _opinion_? That is just stupid. If you are a laptop fan, then by all means, go out and pay the extra money for them and enjoy. For me they do not meet my needs and thus not worth the extra money.
How much did this system cost you? I do agree with you though about desktops being obsolete in about 10 years. I just personally don't have a great need for a laptop (don't travel much). I personally would rather spend half to one quarter the price on a desktop.
Laptops are still too slow compared to desktops, especially the hard drives. Laptop drives are not only slower, but you cannot get the same large sizes and the prices are far higher. Then there is the issue of graphics cards. Laptops generall have poorer graphics cards with lower memory. You can put together a far cheaper desktop with good components than you can get in a laptop. Most of the lower end laptops have crappy video with shared memory; they get too hot and have at most 3 hours of battery time. Oh and then there is the problem with the tiny screens. As a programmer, I cannot look at any screen smaller than 17" for a long time. Also, most of those lower end laptops only go to 1024x768 (I need at least 1152x864). These limitations may be OK for Joe User, but I don't think more tech savvy people or especially geeks could put up with them.
I personally have had the "same" computer for about 4 years. I call it the "same" computer because I have changed different parts at different time to keep it current. You cannot do that with a laptop. My laptop is 2 years old and is not "bad" (1.7GHz P4, 512MB, 40GB), however I litterally have not used it for the past year. It just sits in my laptop bag on the floor of my office. After one year the battery died and cannot hold a charge so I can only use it pluged in. I don't feel like spending 100+ on a battery when I can spend that money on something else.
Go look at the link on macdailynews and read some of the comments.
Back to the user base figures.. what we now need are headlines -or advertising- along the lines of:
"ONE IN TEN COMPUTER USERS ARE FREE OF VIRUS AND SPYWARE PROBLEMS - WHY? THEY CHOSE APPLE MAC"
wooooohoooooo!:D
Them's numbers I likee!
16%. Wonder if Steve will slip that into his keynote.
OK, so 16% of computer users use Macs...
I like the {image} of 1 in 6 people using Macs though!
16% of people using macs is 1 in 6......
*applause....
Wow.. great stuff.. these numbers are so hard to find.. what really counts is installed base, an the 16% number is just incredible!
Wow.. amazing..
"Macintosh owners buy 30% more software than their Windows counterparts"
There are plenty more comments to read than the one I posted ; )
One study showed that people using Napster purchased fewer CDs the longer they used the service.
Someone need to do a "study" for that? Of course people PAYING to use Napster would purchase fewer CDs. They are already PAYING for the music, why would they go out and buy it again?
The nature of the web site is for access to our corporate intratnet (users not on our private network access it through a cross-browser SSL VPN, those on our network get to it directly) and all the applications that can be accessed through it; bean-counter type apps, average user type apps, specific dept. type apps, HR type apps, company news, hourly employee scheduling, hourly employee time off, training, etc. Our users go from college students all the way up to our top-level multi-million dollar execs. Our "corporate-type" users probably make up around 20% of the work force, the rest are really college type or Joe User type workers.
I would love to see _any_ OS/company/etc taking a large chunk out of the MS monopoly. I just don't see these numbers as being even close to reality. All the stats I see generally show that; 97% of personal computer systems sold every year run on the crappy x86 arch, 97% or so of all Internet users are running on x86. I personally would _love_ to see Apple take MS down. Heck, I am moving into a new home this Friday and right after I move, I am getting a nice new G5 iMac. However, I just don't see how these numbers can be even close to reality. I would love to see some corroborating evidence to back of that "16% of computers users are Mac users" statement.
True. However your example would still show as a Mac web request and count toward Mac user stats on the web. This whole thread was how there is no way that 16% of the worlds computer users could only represent 3% of the worlds internet users.
If there is no DRM, some one will put this on Kazaa immediately
You sound like a bean-counter. Even with DRM, people still put it right on Kazaa!
Why pay when you can get it for free?
Umm, why don't you ask "Joe Average". The majority of consumers are actually buying DVD's/Video's, sales/rentals are very high. The majority of consumers are not downloading an AVI, transcoding it to MPEG2 and then burning a DVD, they are going out and renting or buying a DVD.
I think you are way off base here Rosco. DVD/Video rentals and sales are at an all-time-high! There are plenty of people (the majority actaully) that just want to pay a fair price and be done with it. The amount of time it takes to download a movie and then transcode it and burn it to a DVD is jut not worth it. Especially if you could get a new DVD for $5 bucks or so. What could turn that majority away is restrictive DRM, high prices, and region lockout. Even Joe User will get tired of not being able to go to the menu of a DVD until he has watched 10 mins of commercials.
For an exmaple of this, go to Walmart on a Friday night or Saturday. Go near the electrontics section and look for the big bargin-bin DVD thingy. It is just filled with tons of older or lesser titles for _very_ cheap. Watch as you see people act like animals over a kill trying to get at titles. It is really pretty sad.
That is a pretty lame excuse. I haven't seen a web site that blocks you out if you are using a non-IE browser for ages. Just setting your browser to pretend to be IE will not make a site work for you if the site is coded to IE only.
What the GP was pointing out is that NONE of the web usage stats to date come even close to these numbers. There are some pretty big companies out there that track usage. I work for a fortune 500 with 140,000+ employess in across the USA (employees in every state). I always check our stats because I have been trying to get my fellow programmers to write more standards compliant web apps. Over the last 6 months, Gecko based browsers have jumped up to around 11%. Being a geek, I always look at Linux and Mac stats. Linux has always hovered around 1.4% or so and the stats for Mac users has been anywhere from 2.3% to currently 3.1%.
There is just no way that 16% of all computer users are Mac users. Do 16% of the people you know own Macs? I know that is not the case for me and I know a very diverse group of people.
The only two ways to explain these numbers that I can think of is one of the following:
16% of computer users own Mac, while only 3% or so ever use the internet
The group(s) that did this study made some very bad assumptions. For example, maybe they assumed that every Mac computer purchased in the last 5 years is still in use and counts tword the installed base
There is just no way that Mac users can represent 16% of all computer users while only representing _at most_ 3% of global internet users. Unless we are supposed to believe that Mac users do not use the internet.
That is not the main point of this test. It is a test to make sure that when a browser gets broken CSS, it breaks correctly. Go view the test and view the source HTML/CSS. There are tons of things in there to break browsers like bad comment delimiters such as , etc. Error handling is something that is defined by the CSS 2.1 specification, this test mostly focuses on handling errors and not new CSS features.
Ah, the stance of the true slashbot: when faced with anything that disturbs your worldview, step back and vent against the Man, the actual situation be damned.
I think you need to take a look at your "worldview" buddy. What "Man" did I vent against? I made a comment based on past actions of a COMPANY. Note once did I vent against this supposed "Man" of yours.
Why should they go with Red hat? SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell supports all the big name apps that Red Hat does. We have only used Red Hat for our Linux servers where I work. However, I have been trying to convince people to switch. It is not because I don't like Red Hat (I grew up on Red Hat and recently Fedora), it is because of the price. Red Hat is _way_, _way_ over priced, especially compared to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
For example, we are rolling out more than 10,000 new POS systems to a few thousand location. The main software the POS system runs is Java based and is supported under GNU/Linux or MS Windows XP Pro. The third party developers of the Java application recommended to run under a GNU/Linux desktop (they suggested SuSE). However when our PHB's looked at the total costs, it was actually cheaper to use MS Win XP Pro than Red Hat! I think Red Hat has done great things for GNU/Linux, however I believe their pricing is holding back faster Linux server adoption. This is especially true for large corporations (like where I work) that have big licensing deals with MS. We have Solaris, Linux and MS Windows servers running. We could use Linux servers for far more tasks, however the cost of Red Hat is holding our Linux expansion back.
No, I am saying I don't feel like doing the reading and explaining for you.
Don't take my word for it, take Eben Moglen's:
If he sees no problems then why does he say this:
"This is not a license that I would like to accept;..."
There must be something in the license that made him say that. MS has showed many times in the past that they do not want to work with the GPL even going as far as calling it "a cancer". Though it is funny that MS uses GPL code in their Windows Services for Unix software.
No, but I play one on TV and have a college education!
I'll take your assertion that it's incompatible with the GPL with a grain of salt
Umm, because you are not smart enough to READ? OK, I will forgive you for your faults, however, there are many of us out there that _can_ read and understand the basic license. If you could read it, you would _know_ it is incompatible with the GPL.
Note that RMS' patent diatribes have not stopped others (Nokia, for example) from offering their patents for use in GPL projects.
Note accepted. Note, I don't follow RMS and his crap. Nokia and this issue have _nothing_ to do with one another.
Now, if the GPL specifically contained a section proscribing patented formats, then your claim would have merit.
Damn dude, can you even _read_? It has nothing to do with the GPL prohibiting patented formats. MS wrote this "open" license" to be invalid with the GPL. There are a couple of areas MS could have tried to break. The most prominent one is the advertising clause.
But fortunately for the rest of us, there is now(sic) such thing (although IANAL).
Yes indeed. Also, "fortunately for the rest of us", there is something called I have an education and I took the time to RTFA which you did not. As far as you having an education, I am skeptical, your post made you sound like and idiot who posted in a few seconds instead of trying to read a little bit!
You sound like a prejudice person to me. Exactly _how_ is the GPL "restrictive"? Is it because the GPL doesn't allow you to take the code and make it proprietary and make big bucks off of it? Please tell me exactly how the GPL is "restrictive". The GPL grants you _MORE_ rights than standard copyright does. So if you use the GPL or use a program licensed under the GPL, you are actually getting _MORE_ rights than you would get with any other license.
Oh, but because you cannot take that GPL'ed coed and make it your own proprietary code, it is "restrictive". Yeah. Get a clue "I'm Don Giovanni" (are you a shill for MS?).
From your post "I'm Don Giovanni", I can tell you know _shit_ about the GPL. Calling the GPL "restrictive", is just brain-dead. Did you even graduate from high school? What is sooooo hard to understand that the GPL gives you _MORE_ rights under copyright law than current copyright law allows? How is the GPL being more "restrictive" when it allows more rights to you? Pick any of your favorite MS licenses, and compare it to the GPL. The MS licenses, try to take away your rights, while the GPL gives you more rights.
I really hope you are not _that_ slow that you cannot understand the difference!
Maybe DRM encrypted and then base64? Or maybe just a binary object dump that is not documented and then coverted to base64? Just because you can read the base64 data from an XML file doesn't mean your program will know what that data is once it is converted from base64. You could just end up with a binary blob that is not documented. I can save the state of an object to some undocumented binary format, convert it to base64 and dump it in an XML file. Would that really be an "open" format?
Or just be locked out if your using the most popular open source license?
Q. Can I distribute a licensed program under an open source software license?
A.
Yes. There are many open source licenses available in the developer community. One useful place to review the various licenses that have been approved by the open source community is at Open Source Initiative.
The terms and conditions of these licenses differ in material respects. We believe you can distribute your program under many open source software licenses so long as you include the notices described in the licenses for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas. On the other hand, some open source licenses may include specific constraints or restrictions that might preclude development under the Office 2003 XML Reference Schema licenses. You should check with your legal counsel if you have questions about a particular open source software license.
I guess it is just a coincidence that MS made their office XML patent license incompatible with the GPL?
Q. Can I distribute a licensed program under an open source software license?
A.
Yes. There are many open source licenses available in the developer community. One useful place to review the various licenses that have been approved by the open source community is at Open Source Initiative.
The terms and conditions of these licenses differ in material respects. We believe you can distribute your program under many open source software licenses so long as you include the notices described in the licenses for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas. On the other hand, some open source licenses may include specific constraints or restrictions that might preclude development under the Office 2003 XML Reference Schema licenses. You should check with your legal counsel if you have questions about a particular open source software license.
Hmmm, I wonder what open source licenses they may be? Cough...GPL...cough. So MS goes and "opens" their patent(s) for Office XML and make it so it is incompatible with the GPL. The GPL happens to be the most used open source license in the world. I guess it is just a coincidence that MS made their office XML patent license incompatible with the GPL?
Slashdot Mirror
I would expect Apple to have made this announcement _much_ closer to release time. How can this announcement not hurt Apple's sales?
Umm, even if a company should act in a way to create profit; it doesn't give that company any rights to break laws. Get real, you sound like your are grasping for straws.
If you have any question of how a publicly traded corporation is supposed to act, just check out the NYSE.
You are not only an @ss-hole, you are a dumb @ss-hole! Pretty sad IMO. Please show me the USA law(s) that say a publicly traded company _must_ "take any legal action that will maximise shareholder profit without regards for how their actions affect others".
There are NO SUCH LAWS you idiot. Go hug a tree and get an education!
You already pointed it out for the most part. The GP is an idiot who is probably not married and has no family to support. Look at his blanket statement about "corporations".
This sounds like some teeny-bopper or 20-something that has never had to live in the real world yet and raise a family. All corporations are not bad. In fact, most corps in the USA have nothing to do with the DMCA. I work for a fortune 500. The DMCA has _nothing_ to do with our line of business. However, idiots like the GP, just throw out their blanket statements and assume that all corps are like MS, RIAA or MPAA.It doesn't take much to start a corporation. You just need to pay a small fee and you can have your own corp. Some of my fellow programmers work as independent contractors under their own corporation. I guess they are just as evil? The best thing you can do is just add idiots like the GP to your Foe list and mark them down -6 or something. Being a corporation is not bad. Many/most small businesses get a corporate license to protect their own personal finances from sue happy freaks. Being a corp is not bad, it is only _some_ of the big corps that are abusing Capitalism and the corporate title.
My laptop is only 2 years old and it is already out dated. It has only two USB 2.0 ports, and a DVD/CDRW. I need to burn DVD's so I would have to buy and external DVD burner which again, costs more. I need a a lot USB ports to connect my printer, camera and other devices. I wanted a tv tuner card, etc. All these things I can do with my home desktop without any problems and for the best cost. I don't want to have to lug around a laptop bag with two batteries, USB hub, mouse, external keyboard (I want to program with a full keyboard), external DVD burner and other USB devices and play musical wires. I have everything I need plugged into my desktop and they stay plugged in.
Strange, because two Christmas's ago I bought a new laptop for $1,100 and it only does 1024x768. If you push the resolution higher, the desktop doesn't fit on the screen and your left scrolling around to get to what you need. No thanks.How can you "discredit" my _opinion_? That is just stupid. If you are a laptop fan, then by all means, go out and pay the extra money for them and enjoy. For me they do not meet my needs and thus not worth the extra money.How much did this system cost you? I do agree with you though about desktops being obsolete in about 10 years. I just personally don't have a great need for a laptop (don't travel much). I personally would rather spend half to one quarter the price on a desktop.
Laptops are still too slow compared to desktops, especially the hard drives. Laptop drives are not only slower, but you cannot get the same large sizes and the prices are far higher. Then there is the issue of graphics cards. Laptops generall have poorer graphics cards with lower memory. You can put together a far cheaper desktop with good components than you can get in a laptop. Most of the lower end laptops have crappy video with shared memory; they get too hot and have at most 3 hours of battery time. Oh and then there is the problem with the tiny screens. As a programmer, I cannot look at any screen smaller than 17" for a long time. Also, most of those lower end laptops only go to 1024x768 (I need at least 1152x864). These limitations may be OK for Joe User, but I don't think more tech savvy people or especially geeks could put up with them.
I personally have had the "same" computer for about 4 years. I call it the "same" computer because I have changed different parts at different time to keep it current. You cannot do that with a laptop. My laptop is 2 years old and is not "bad" (1.7GHz P4, 512MB, 40GB), however I litterally have not used it for the past year. It just sits in my laptop bag on the floor of my office. After one year the battery died and cannot hold a charge so I can only use it pluged in. I don't feel like spending 100+ on a battery when I can spend that money on something else.
Go look at the link on macdailynews and read some of the comments.
There are plenty more comments to read than the one I posted ; )I would love to see _any_ OS/company/etc taking a large chunk out of the MS monopoly. I just don't see these numbers as being even close to reality. All the stats I see generally show that; 97% of personal computer systems sold every year run on the crappy x86 arch, 97% or so of all Internet users are running on x86. I personally would _love_ to see Apple take MS down. Heck, I am moving into a new home this Friday and right after I move, I am getting a nice new G5 iMac. However, I just don't see how these numbers can be even close to reality. I would love to see some corroborating evidence to back of that "16% of computers users are Mac users" statement.
True. However your example would still show as a Mac web request and count toward Mac user stats on the web. This whole thread was how there is no way that 16% of the worlds computer users could only represent 3% of the worlds internet users.
For an exmaple of this, go to Walmart on a Friday night or Saturday. Go near the electrontics section and look for the big bargin-bin DVD thingy. It is just filled with tons of older or lesser titles for _very_ cheap. Watch as you see people act like animals over a kill trying to get at titles. It is really pretty sad.
That is a pretty lame excuse. I haven't seen a web site that blocks you out if you are using a non-IE browser for ages. Just setting your browser to pretend to be IE will not make a site work for you if the site is coded to IE only.
The numbers are not skewed. The numbers I gave are for HOME USERS ONLY using their own computers. They do not include any internal corporate users.
There is just no way that 16% of all computer users are Mac users. Do 16% of the people you know own Macs? I know that is not the case for me and I know a very diverse group of people.
The only two ways to explain these numbers that I can think of is one of the following:
- 16% of computer users own Mac, while only 3% or so ever use the internet
- The group(s) that did this study made some very bad assumptions. For example, maybe they assumed that every Mac computer purchased in the last 5 years is still in use and counts tword the installed base
There is just no way that Mac users can represent 16% of all computer users while only representing _at most_ 3% of global internet users. Unless we are supposed to believe that Mac users do not use the internet.That is not the main point of this test. It is a test to make sure that when a browser gets broken CSS, it breaks correctly. Go view the test and view the source HTML/CSS. There are tons of things in there to break browsers like bad comment delimiters such as , etc. Error handling is something that is defined by the CSS 2.1 specification, this test mostly focuses on handling errors and not new CSS features.
For example, we are rolling out more than 10,000 new POS systems to a few thousand location. The main software the POS system runs is Java based and is supported under GNU/Linux or MS Windows XP Pro. The third party developers of the Java application recommended to run under a GNU/Linux desktop (they suggested SuSE). However when our PHB's looked at the total costs, it was actually cheaper to use MS Win XP Pro than Red Hat! I think Red Hat has done great things for GNU/Linux, however I believe their pricing is holding back faster Linux server adoption. This is especially true for large corporations (like where I work) that have big licensing deals with MS. We have Solaris, Linux and MS Windows servers running. We could use Linux servers for far more tasks, however the cost of Red Hat is holding our Linux expansion back.
You sound like a prejudice person to me. Exactly _how_ is the GPL "restrictive"? Is it because the GPL doesn't allow you to take the code and make it proprietary and make big bucks off of it? Please tell me exactly how the GPL is "restrictive". The GPL grants you _MORE_ rights than standard copyright does. So if you use the GPL or use a program licensed under the GPL, you are actually getting _MORE_ rights than you would get with any other license.
Oh, but because you cannot take that GPL'ed coed and make it your own proprietary code, it is "restrictive". Yeah. Get a clue "I'm Don Giovanni" (are you a shill for MS?).
From your post "I'm Don Giovanni", I can tell you know _shit_ about the GPL. Calling the GPL "restrictive", is just brain-dead. Did you even graduate from high school? What is sooooo hard to understand that the GPL gives you _MORE_ rights under copyright law than current copyright law allows? How is the GPL being more "restrictive" when it allows more rights to you? Pick any of your favorite MS licenses, and compare it to the GPL. The MS licenses, try to take away your rights, while the GPL gives you more rights.
I really hope you are not _that_ slow that you cannot understand the difference!
Maybe DRM encrypted and then base64? Or maybe just a binary object dump that is not documented and then coverted to base64? Just because you can read the base64 data from an XML file doesn't mean your program will know what that data is once it is converted from base64. You could just end up with a binary blob that is not documented. I can save the state of an object to some undocumented binary format, convert it to base64 and dump it in an XML file. Would that really be an "open" format?