I believe that typefaces, for all practical effect, were not and are not copyrightable. The digital files (as a publication) and the names (as trademarks) can be protected, but take a tool akin to Fontographer, build a font that has all the advantages of a typeface you like (but with small variations), use an unrestricted name and there you are. As an example, Corel, IIRC, in the mid-90s, distributed a font called Ottawa that was a knock-off of Hermann Zapf's Optima.
This raises ethical questions -- and my sympathies are with the designers, like Zapf, who have been knocked-off. Where I'm a hypocrite is that if a Client (I was with an architectural firm then) had signage that used Optima, we'd use Ottawa for the comps and cad plans rather than buying an Optima package. If I've overlooked something with regards to copyright law regarding typefaces, I'll appreciate all corrections. And if my limited understanding of copyrights means the prior advice is against the law, then by all means, don't do it. As another thread asked, are there free software tools for font design, it can be a fun hobby.
What's really got this town (collective for Burbank, Culver City, Hollywood, West Hollywood) shaking is the fear that all the cg work will go to Canada!
IIRC, the DOJ-Microsoft settlement included release of protocol information at the one year anniversary or SP1 release. Microsoft also said late last year that it would begin implementing the settlement, even though it still was subject to the Court's review.
So I don't read this as either: Microsoft has changed its ways or Microsoft is getting brownie points with the Judge.
It is beyond the ken of the writer over at ZDNet whose article I read, but the real issues I like to see reported are: what is the relationship of the protocols released under license and open source projects near and dear to our hearts, and what are the restrictions on use for the protocols, and what are the two they didn't release about?
IMHO, the way the DOJ-Microsoft agreement ignored open source and free software developers was its most vulnable weakness. This omission was noted in the public comments released as per the Tunney Act, but I think the states' trial lawyers didn't follow up on this, as far as I can tell from the reporting I read.
I understand your point, but I also give credence to those who argue that "me-too" is not a compelling brand differentiation.
No one else at my office (small business) knows that Alt-F4 quits applications and, inconsistently, IMHO, closes a window. Is it really so important that this Windows behavior be cloned among serious competitors? Then again, I don't know if I'd say these desktops "fail" if don't achieve 30% market share. They only fail if no one finds them useful.
Regarding Lindows choices, as described in the NewsForge review, it seems to me that the machine is configured for (effectively) a single user (or single desktop) -- in a multi-user environment labelling the/home icon with c: seems to be fraught with potential misunderstandings. "But I put that file in c:\^H/dannyo152 -- can't you find it?" "I click the dannyo152 folder and nothing happens. Do we have a virus?"
Or, is everyone in Lindows running as root? This doesn't seem good. What about families with children?
No the record companies have tried to get some money from radio broadcasters for performance -- a reference was made to this in a post above -- but everyone knows that radio play sells records, so the record companies were told to go away.
I am reminded of how radio used to be, with sponsors (such as King Biscuit Flour) buying hours on clear channel (it had a meaning before it became a corporate brand) and local radio stations to broadcast, occasionally, specialty programs. This is one of the ways blues and rock 'n' roll spread in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. It sure seems to me that a webcaster could provide "sponsored" hours to independent record companies and unsigned artists who can cheaply get ears to check out their stuff. In return for this exposure, the record company and artists would waive their copyright fee and the webcaster would have programming. I think if the music is good and people hear it, people will buy it, so I think there's money to be made. With a draconian reduction of the major label music available on the web (my guess), otherwise obscure things have a chance to breathe and grow.
Here's another idea or opportunity, someone could sign up independents and form their own ASCAP-like society, where webcasters are given license to broadcast their recordings for a reasonable revenue-based fee. Otherwise, the administration of hundreds (thousands?) of webcasters and hudreds (thousands) of independent record companies and artists would be quite unwieldy.
John Carroll's argument wasn't strictly that open source vendors can't make money. His argument was that governments which are looking at including a preference for open source software in their procurement process should worry that the software writers may disappear without a market or that the code will be inferior because it's only created during off-hours.
As for software writer disapper, HCTCA (Here Come the Car Analogy): I guess we're supposed to say to a government specifying that its tranportation fleet will consist of motorized vehicles only, that unemployed blacksmiths is a problem.
Governments have an obligation to its citizens and taxpayers to provide services at the lowest cost possible. I also think that citizens, courts, legislatures, and executive branch members should be able to inspect the code and systems to ascertain that equal access and protection is de facto and de jure. But, I ineloquently paraphrase Dr. Villanueva Nunez's response to Microsoft on the issue.
But, imagine that my state California said that beginning tomorrow, all code acquired will have to be open source and is California's to use and modify as it wills. If you don't want to play because you don't like the specification, that's a lot of money to walk away from, but that's your choice. I think someone will bid the contracts. Besides code acquisition, there'll will be opportunities for service and maintenance contracts. And experiences suggests that governments change the mandate to their executive departments every legislative session, so there would seem to be a lot of work. The writer of the code will have a large advantage when bidding the service contract, since they were paid for their learning curve at the code's sale. That the code is open means another vendor has an opportunity to bid, which means the civic agency sees vendor competition which should lower costs and taxes, relative to the acquisition of propietary code. It's a large marketplace and someone will want to exploit the opportunity.
Another way to look at what I'm saying, if the demand for open source code increases, the capital and sustainable revenues for open source development, maintainence and support will also become available.
Incidentally, about the cost of maintaining the current equipment -- expect that to increase should digital projection become commonplace.
Vacuum tubes got more expensive after the (guitar) amplifier world went solid state. Phonograph needles got more expensive after the world went compact disc. When demand falls, first price falls, then supply falls, and competition decreases as suppliers get out of the business. And then prices go up as the final supplier services a niche market.
As for Hollywood, I think they would love digital, as long as the digital prints don't walk out the door! To distribute a film, you have to make prints and deliver those prints on time to the movie houses. Distributors have to make a guess at how well a film is going to open. Spiderman opened at x number of screens in its first week and sold many of them out. Would more screens have resulted in more revenues in the crucial first week? While there may not be much digital can do in this case (though what about flex scheduling the Saturday and Sunday screens based on Friday demand), a more interesting case is in secondary markets for the sleeper hit. That Metropolitan Theatres in Santa Barbara, CA, may be able to book the sleeper hit into the Goleta Cinema in week 2 or 3 of release, instead of week 5 or 6 as they wait for additional prints to be struck.
I think you misunderstand how studios and distributors make money. Exhibitors rent the film and pay the distributor a percentage of the attendence. For the first few weeks of release, that amount is the lion's share of ticket revenues. The theatre during those weeks makes money off popcorn and preview advertising. So a hit movie pays off with more popcorn sold. In effect, about the time the typical movie has played to 90% of its audience, the exhibitor begins to keep most of the ticket revenue. As for there being more theatres -- more theatres mean more rentals, so if digital lowers the cost to be an exhibitor, it's one more point for distributing digitally.
One cause of hesitation for digital, among distributors, is the worry that for the booking run, while the bits reside at the theatre, someone can steal the bits and burn high-quality bootleg DVDs. Another reason for distributors to stay with film may be that digital projection has not been embraced by exhibitors, probably because there is no noticeable demand from the audience, and no one has shown the exhibitors how they can make more money for the cost of upgrading.
Well -- hold on. Do we think that the flag icon is from an original photo or scan of a slashdot owned flag? Because, if not, then it has to be the reproduction of someone else's art. And perhaps, the terms of derived use required generalized excerption or the specific deletion of the Delaware stripe. It seems a lot of stars are missing as well.
Alternately, it may be a simile. Letting one's rights (the flag) be eroded, is just like losing Delaware.
For the struggling artist -- struggle.
on
RIAA Sues Audiogalaxy
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
How do people find bands/musicians to like? It's about accessing their ears and engaging their minds, libidos, and/or lifestyles. Releasing a cd is neither necessary nor sufficient for the engagement. Your friend needs fans. Your friend needs to distribute her best songs so that people will hear them and will show up at a nearby show. Your friend needs to book the shows, do advance work with press and radio and people/fans who will publicize the show and bring out a draw, load up a van and do the shows, put together and execute a show that kills and is unique (whether there's five or a thousand in the room), hang around after the show and make contact with any one who discovered your friend's music that night and let them know she appreciates the support.
And the thing is, that still might not work!
But the questions, as she develops her business model, are: what are her goals, how much will she give and how much is she willing to forsake. Staying in the game is the best approach to gaining opportunities.
One other comment, people trade her mp3s but don't go to the shows and buy the cd. So why no connection? Are they the wrong audience (and so they weren't going to buy the cd any way) or are they paying attention but still haven't heard "it" yet? There will always be people who want to take, and the real fans give. Go develop real fans. Indifference is the real career-killer. Someone listened -- a start was made.
(New York, NY) Sheet Music Publishers call for national registration of musical instruments.
"We find that users of musical instruments frequently reverse-engineer popular recordings and their underlying melodic and harmonic structures. This practice threatens the viability of sheet music sales and decreases royalties to artists," according to Fenster Johansen, IV, Assitant Senior Adjutant Vice President for Media Relations for a very very very obscure and virtually unfindable sheet music trade organization.
"We also have reports that musicians who have learned a piece of music, often by just listening, will then teach other musicians 'the riff'. Some musicians will write down the melody in musical notation on a piece of paper. They call it 'by ear' and transposition, we call it sheet music theft networking."
"We propose that all sales of music instruments be accompanied by a EULA in which the buyer promises to not learn any copyrighted musical compositions, except through purchase and study of that composition's legally sanctioned sheet music. Failing that we ask that legislation be enacted to tax the sales of instruments and these moneys be distributed to sheet music publishers as reimbursement for lost revenues."
When asked about sales of synthesizer sound cards which can convert a personal computer to a musical instrument, Mr. Johansen added "while we have not taken an official position regarding this, we are developing technologies to block this form of sheet music theft. Essentially a personal computer synthesizer would match against a database of controlled compositions before playing any sequence of notes. In order for this to work properly, we believe that this form of rights management must be mandatorilly included in operating systems. We need to determine how much it will cost to get such protective legislation before we take an official position."
CBS also made serious investment in engineering and r&d. Whether it was radio, music recordings, or television, technological advances were introduced, generally, with a CBS solution and an RCA/NBC solution.
Incidentally, there were issues about competing implementations of color broadcasting. IIRC in the early 60s or late 50s, the FCC reviewed proposed color technologies and selected a b&w compatible standard broadcast.
Also, it was the FCC under Congressional authority that created UHF bands for television broadcast and which licensed operators and assigned frequencies. If that isn't government involvement...
Supporters and detractors agree, I believe, that the most luscious piece of fruit in Microsoft's C#/CLR/IL/.net basket is language-independence. While many find that enticing because they believe they won't have to take a personal productivity hit while they learn and master new languages and idioms, an other, perhaps more important, advantage is that existing libraries do not need to be rewritten to move into the new platform.
Since security in most languages is presumed to be a programmer rather than language/compiler/runtime responsibility, it follows that for a platform to be language independent and secure, mechanisms must be in place to hobble unsafe code, which must penalize performance and, perhaps, scalability. One alternative would be that the security is compromised in some way to maintain reasonable performance benchmarks. Another alternative is that some language features are rejected by the platform.
I think Bill Joy was saying he would bet that the hobbling is compromised. Sun did have to deal with the leagacy/unsafe problem with JNI, so I believe he has an understanding of the implementation issues. I suspect it's more likely that performance and scalability issues will require serious adapters of the Microsoft platform to rewrite code using C#.
Broadcasters license the programs they show. For a period of time (beginning in the 60s through the Bush pere administration, IIRC) they were heavily restricted as to how much they could own of the production.
Ownership restrictions for network broacasters have been eliminated, and during the 90s network broadcasters were bought up by film studios (I think NBC is the only network not owned by a studio.) It is as producers, in which they join other producers in working to use the transition to digital broadcast as a way to introduce code which allows the producer to determine the rules for viewer copying: unrestricted, one-time-only (no derivative copies), and no copying.
Incidentally, it seems to me that there is a disconnect between what's happening on the producer side and what's happening on the consumer side. Consumers are being sold the concept of digital hubs as though it's just placing a pc at the center of a world that is like today, only ever more so: one gets something, say a cd, and one enjoys it at their convenience. Meanwhile producers are proceeding towards their ultimate vision: view, then pay; view again, then pay again. It isn't going to be pretty unless a resolution is found.
We disagree about the biographies and their relationship to Auletta's themes -- both in this book and other writing -- but, that's okay. I'll add that I'm glad someone interviewed these people and put into print their stories to give future historians a basis to, maybe, understand the events and contexts.
If it were me, I'd read the whole book before publishing a review. I think the readers deserve at least that amount of effort on my behalf. I also think that a complete reading for published review purposes is a courtesy to the author. Maybe we just disagree on these points, and that's okay, too.
b) I believe reviewers should finish the book or not review it. If the book is so abominably bad that it just cannot be finished, that should get a 0 score.
c) It is Ken Auletta's style to include biography as the linchpin of his chapters. That doesn't mean you're wrong in not liking it. I would suggest that businesses always conflict. Technology happens. Only the people provide whatever uniqueness there is to human events.
d) Auletta has an interesting thesis, that if Microsoft had proudly admitted its philosophy and practices are all or nothing, and explained the basis in the context of their experience, it would not have angered the Judge (I simplify a bit). Whether one agrees with that or not -- its veracity as a business philosophy or its effectiveness as an alternative judicial strategy -- it was Auletta's reporting of the Judge's thinking during the trial that provided the basis for the Appeals Court to remove Judge Jackson. As a primary document in the narrative that extended past the book's publication, I would rate this book more highly.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that typefaces, for all practical effect, were not and are not copyrightable. The digital files (as a publication) and the names (as trademarks) can be protected, but take a tool akin to Fontographer, build a font that has all the advantages of a typeface you like (but with small variations), use an unrestricted name and there you are. As an example, Corel, IIRC, in the mid-90s, distributed a font called Ottawa that was a knock-off of Hermann Zapf's Optima.
This raises ethical questions -- and my sympathies are with the designers, like Zapf, who have been knocked-off. Where I'm a hypocrite is that if a Client (I was with an architectural firm then) had signage that used Optima, we'd use Ottawa for the comps and cad plans rather than buying an Optima package. If I've overlooked something with regards to copyright law regarding typefaces, I'll appreciate all corrections. And if my limited understanding of copyrights means the prior advice is against the law, then by all means, don't do it. As another thread asked, are there free software tools for font design, it can be a fun hobby.
What's really got this town (collective for Burbank, Culver City, Hollywood, West Hollywood) shaking is the fear that all the cg work will go to Canada!
IIRC, the DOJ-Microsoft settlement included release of protocol information at the one year anniversary or SP1 release. Microsoft also said late last year that it would begin implementing the settlement, even though it still was subject to the Court's review.
So I don't read this as either: Microsoft has changed its ways or Microsoft is getting brownie points with the Judge.
It is beyond the ken of the writer over at ZDNet whose article I read, but the real issues I like to see reported are: what is the relationship of the protocols released under license and open source projects near and dear to our hearts, and what are the restrictions on use for the protocols, and what are the two they didn't release about?
IMHO, the way the DOJ-Microsoft agreement ignored open source and free software developers was its most vulnable weakness. This omission was noted in the public comments released as per the Tunney Act, but I think the states' trial lawyers didn't follow up on this, as far as I can tell from the reporting I read.
I understand your point, but I also give credence to those who argue that "me-too" is not a compelling brand differentiation.
/home icon with c: seems to be fraught with potential misunderstandings. "But I put that file in c:\^H/dannyo152 -- can't you find it?" "I click the dannyo152 folder and nothing happens. Do we have a virus?"
No one else at my office (small business) knows that Alt-F4 quits applications and, inconsistently, IMHO, closes a window. Is it really so important that this Windows behavior be cloned among serious competitors? Then again, I don't know if I'd say these desktops "fail" if don't achieve 30% market share. They only fail if no one finds them useful.
Regarding Lindows choices, as described in the NewsForge review, it seems to me that the machine is configured for (effectively) a single user (or single desktop) -- in a multi-user environment labelling the
Or, is everyone in Lindows running as root? This doesn't seem good. What about families with children?
No the record companies have tried to get some money from radio broadcasters for performance -- a reference was made to this in a post above -- but everyone knows that radio play sells records, so the record companies were told to go away.
I am reminded of how radio used to be, with sponsors (such as King Biscuit Flour) buying hours on clear channel (it had a meaning before it became a corporate brand) and local radio stations to broadcast, occasionally, specialty programs. This is one of the ways blues and rock 'n' roll spread in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. It sure seems to me that a webcaster could provide "sponsored" hours to independent record companies and unsigned artists who can cheaply get ears to check out their stuff. In return for this exposure, the record company and artists would waive their copyright fee and the webcaster would have programming. I think if the music is good and people hear it, people will buy it, so I think there's money to be made. With a draconian reduction of the major label music available on the web (my guess), otherwise obscure things have a chance to breathe and grow.
Here's another idea or opportunity, someone could sign up independents and form their own ASCAP-like society, where webcasters are given license to broadcast their recordings for a reasonable revenue-based fee. Otherwise, the administration of hundreds (thousands?) of webcasters and hudreds (thousands) of independent record companies and artists would be quite unwieldy.
John Carroll's argument wasn't strictly that open source vendors can't make money. His argument was that governments which are looking at including a preference for open source software in their procurement process should worry that the software writers may disappear without a market or that the code will be inferior because it's only created during off-hours.
As for software writer disapper, HCTCA (Here Come the Car Analogy): I guess we're supposed to say to a government specifying that its tranportation fleet will consist of motorized vehicles only, that unemployed blacksmiths is a problem.
Governments have an obligation to its citizens and taxpayers to provide services at the lowest cost possible. I also think that citizens, courts, legislatures, and executive branch members should be able to inspect the code and systems to ascertain that equal access and protection is de facto and de jure. But, I ineloquently paraphrase Dr. Villanueva Nunez's response to Microsoft on the issue.
But, imagine that my state California said that beginning tomorrow, all code acquired will have to be open source and is California's to use and modify as it wills. If you don't want to play because you don't like the specification, that's a lot of money to walk away from, but that's your choice. I think someone will bid the contracts. Besides code acquisition, there'll will be opportunities for service and maintenance contracts. And experiences suggests that governments change the mandate to their executive departments every legislative session, so there would seem to be a lot of work. The writer of the code will have a large advantage when bidding the service contract, since they were paid for their learning curve at the code's sale. That the code is open means another vendor has an opportunity to bid, which means the civic agency sees vendor competition which should lower costs and taxes, relative to the acquisition of propietary code. It's a large marketplace and someone will want to exploit the opportunity.
Another way to look at what I'm saying, if the demand for open source code increases, the capital and sustainable revenues for open source development, maintainence and support will also become available.
Incidentally, about the cost of maintaining the current equipment -- expect that to increase should digital projection become commonplace.
Vacuum tubes got more expensive after the (guitar) amplifier world went solid state. Phonograph needles got more expensive after the world went compact disc. When demand falls, first price falls, then supply falls, and competition decreases as suppliers get out of the business. And then prices go up as the final supplier services a niche market.
As for Hollywood, I think they would love digital, as long as the digital prints don't walk out the door! To distribute a film, you have to make prints and deliver those prints on time to the movie houses. Distributors have to make a guess at how well a film is going to open. Spiderman opened at x number of screens in its first week and sold many of them out. Would more screens have resulted in more revenues in the crucial first week? While there may not be much digital can do in this case (though what about flex scheduling the Saturday and Sunday screens based on Friday demand), a more interesting case is in secondary markets for the sleeper hit. That Metropolitan Theatres in Santa Barbara, CA, may be able to book the sleeper hit into the Goleta Cinema in week 2 or 3 of release, instead of week 5 or 6 as they wait for additional prints to be struck.
I think you misunderstand how studios and distributors make money. Exhibitors rent the film and pay the distributor a percentage of the attendence. For the first few weeks of release, that amount is the lion's share of ticket revenues. The theatre during those weeks makes money off popcorn and preview advertising. So a hit movie pays off with more popcorn sold. In effect, about the time the typical movie has played to 90% of its audience, the exhibitor begins to keep most of the ticket revenue. As for there being more theatres -- more theatres mean more rentals, so if digital lowers the cost to be an exhibitor, it's one more point for distributing digitally.
One cause of hesitation for digital, among distributors, is the worry that for the booking run, while the bits reside at the theatre, someone can steal the bits and burn high-quality bootleg DVDs. Another reason for distributors to stay with film may be that digital projection has not been embraced by exhibitors, probably because there is no noticeable demand from the audience, and no one has shown the exhibitors how they can make more money for the cost of upgrading.
Well -- hold on. Do we think that the flag icon is from an original photo or scan of a slashdot owned flag? Because, if not, then it has to be the reproduction of someone else's art. And perhaps, the terms of derived use required generalized excerption or the specific deletion of the Delaware stripe. It seems a lot of stars are missing as well.
Alternately, it may be a simile. Letting one's rights (the flag) be eroded, is just like losing Delaware.
How do people find bands/musicians to like? It's about accessing their ears and engaging their minds, libidos, and/or lifestyles. Releasing a cd is neither necessary nor sufficient for the engagement. Your friend needs fans. Your friend needs to distribute her best songs so that people will hear them and will show up at a nearby show. Your friend needs to book the shows, do advance work with press and radio and people/fans who will publicize the show and bring out a draw, load up a van and do the shows, put together and execute a show that kills and is unique (whether there's five or a thousand in the room), hang around after the show and make contact with any one who discovered your friend's music that night and let them know she appreciates the support.
And the thing is, that still might not work!
But the questions, as she develops her business model, are: what are her goals, how much will she give and how much is she willing to forsake. Staying in the game is the best approach to gaining opportunities.
One other comment, people trade her mp3s but don't go to the shows and buy the cd. So why no connection? Are they the wrong audience (and so they weren't going to buy the cd any way) or are they paying attention but still haven't heard "it" yet? There will always be people who want to take, and the real fans give. Go develop real fans. Indifference is the real career-killer. Someone listened -- a start was made.
(New York, NY) Sheet Music Publishers call for national registration of musical instruments.
"We find that users of musical instruments frequently reverse-engineer popular recordings and their underlying melodic and harmonic structures. This practice threatens the viability of sheet music sales and decreases royalties to artists," according to Fenster Johansen, IV, Assitant Senior Adjutant Vice President for Media Relations for a very very very obscure and virtually unfindable sheet music trade organization.
"We also have reports that musicians who have learned a piece of music, often by just listening, will then teach other musicians 'the riff'. Some musicians will write down the melody in musical notation on a piece of paper. They call it 'by ear' and transposition, we call it sheet music theft networking."
"We propose that all sales of music instruments be accompanied by a EULA in which the buyer promises to not learn any copyrighted musical compositions, except through purchase and study of that composition's legally sanctioned sheet music. Failing that we ask that legislation be enacted to tax the sales of instruments and these moneys be distributed to sheet music publishers as reimbursement for lost revenues."
When asked about sales of synthesizer sound cards which can convert a personal computer to a musical instrument, Mr. Johansen added "while we have not taken an official position regarding this, we are developing technologies to block this form of sheet music theft. Essentially a personal computer synthesizer would match against a database of controlled compositions before playing any sequence of notes. In order for this to work properly, we believe that this form of rights management must be mandatorilly included in operating systems. We need to determine how much it will cost to get such protective legislation before we take an official position."
Minor quibble: NBC was RCA.
CBS also made serious investment in engineering and r&d. Whether it was radio, music recordings, or television, technological advances were introduced, generally, with a CBS solution and an RCA/NBC solution.
Incidentally, there were issues about competing implementations of color broadcasting. IIRC in the early 60s or late 50s, the FCC reviewed proposed color technologies and selected a b&w compatible standard broadcast.
Also, it was the FCC under Congressional authority that created UHF bands for television broadcast and which licensed operators and assigned frequencies. If that isn't government involvement...
Pre 1962 violence was caused by comic books. Before those were widespread, I blame billiards and/or ice cream sold on Sundays.
Supporters and detractors agree, I believe, that the most luscious piece of fruit in Microsoft's C#/CLR/IL/.net basket is language-independence. While many find that enticing because they believe they won't have to take a personal productivity hit while they learn and master new languages and idioms, an other, perhaps more important, advantage is that existing libraries do not need to be rewritten to move into the new platform. Since security in most languages is presumed to be a programmer rather than language/compiler/runtime responsibility, it follows that for a platform to be language independent and secure, mechanisms must be in place to hobble unsafe code, which must penalize performance and, perhaps, scalability. One alternative would be that the security is compromised in some way to maintain reasonable performance benchmarks. Another alternative is that some language features are rejected by the platform. I think Bill Joy was saying he would bet that the hobbling is compromised. Sun did have to deal with the leagacy/unsafe problem with JNI, so I believe he has an understanding of the implementation issues. I suspect it's more likely that performance and scalability issues will require serious adapters of the Microsoft platform to rewrite code using C#.
Awesome. But maybe the sports of a sordid sort contained in torts?
Broadcasters license the programs they show. For a period of time (beginning in the 60s through the Bush pere administration, IIRC) they were heavily restricted as to how much they could own of the production.
Ownership restrictions for network broacasters have been eliminated, and during the 90s network broadcasters were bought up by film studios (I think NBC is the only network not owned by a studio.) It is as producers, in which they join other producers in working to use the transition to digital broadcast as a way to introduce code which allows the producer to determine the rules for viewer copying: unrestricted, one-time-only (no derivative copies), and no copying.
Incidentally, it seems to me that there is a disconnect between what's happening on the producer side and what's happening on the consumer side. Consumers are being sold the concept of digital hubs as though it's just placing a pc at the center of a world that is like today, only ever more so: one gets something, say a cd, and one enjoys it at their convenience. Meanwhile producers are proceeding towards their ultimate vision: view, then pay; view again, then pay again. It isn't going to be pretty unless a resolution is found.
We disagree about the biographies and their relationship to Auletta's themes -- both in this book and other writing -- but, that's okay. I'll add that I'm glad someone interviewed these people and put into print their stories to give future historians a basis to, maybe, understand the events and contexts.
If it were me, I'd read the whole book before publishing a review. I think the readers deserve at least that amount of effort on my behalf. I also think that a complete reading for published review purposes is a courtesy to the author. Maybe we just disagree on these points, and that's okay, too.
a) David Boies
b) I believe reviewers should finish the book or not review it. If the book is so abominably bad that it just cannot be finished, that should get a 0 score.
c) It is Ken Auletta's style to include biography as the linchpin of his chapters. That doesn't mean you're wrong in not liking it. I would suggest that businesses always conflict. Technology happens. Only the people provide whatever uniqueness there is to human events.
d) Auletta has an interesting thesis, that if Microsoft had proudly admitted its philosophy and practices are all or nothing, and explained the basis in the context of their experience, it would not have angered the Judge (I simplify a bit). Whether one agrees with that or not -- its veracity as a business philosophy or its effectiveness as an alternative judicial strategy -- it was Auletta's reporting of the Judge's thinking during the trial that provided the basis for the Appeals Court to remove Judge Jackson. As a primary document in the narrative that extended past the book's publication, I would rate this book more highly.