> Bottom line: this is just another attempt to head off effective legislation by pretending "industry self-regulation."
Which reminds me -- Slashdot oughta run a story on the move towards National Do-Not-Call legislation. The FTC's proposed plan involves an $11,000 kick in the teeth of every telemarketing pigfux0r who breaks the law, and would make it easier for victims to trace back and report lawbreaking telemarketers to the authorities.
The FTC is accepting public comment on the
proposal, in sextuplicate, by March 29, 2002.
Make sure that the comments they get aren't entirely from DMA lobbyists.
Due to fraudulent charity telemarketing after 9/11, the good guys have the political momentum on this one -- and the DMA is running scared on this one.
Let's put the nails into the telemarketing coffin once and for all.
> [OK, Mr. Fox] "Despite all the problems you've caused in the past, I'll go ahead and let you guard the henhouse."
Precisely.
From the article: > "If a company has conducted business with a consumer and has asked up front to send e-mail to
that customer, then the message is not spam.
"We signed up Joe Slashdotter for our list. Joe Slashdotter didn't jump through our hoops to opt-out. But since we asked him to opt-out, it's not spam. Even though his mail bounces with a '550 - known liar^H^H^H^HDMA member - permanently blocked' message, he hasn't opted-out.
There must be something wrong with his machine. Better re-send the mailing a few dozen times an hour, just to make sure at least one gets through."
> Well what i got from the article was that they wouldn't spam you unless you asked for it.
No, the DMA's position is that they will spam you until you ask them to stop.
From the article:
> "give consumers notice and choice before sending commercial e-mail "
Translation: "To continue receiving exciting offers from us, you need do nothing! Or you can opt out by jumping through hoops..."
> "...or before selling,
sharing or renting their e-mail
addresses to a third party"
All that means is that on the web site, or in the spam, there'll be a link to a "Privacy policy" that says "We reserve the right to work with partners to offer you goods and services we think may be of interest..."
> " In addition,
commercial e-mail must clearly identify
the sender, represent the subject line
accurately, and provide contact
information."
We won't forge headers. But we'll still spam you.
> " Above all, the marketer
must let consumers opt out of further
communications in every e-mail. "
"We received your request to be opted out of the FORD-OWNERS93133 mailing campaign."
But tomorrow, you'll get spam as part of the "FORD-OWNERS93134" campaign. You weren't interested in that 2002 Ford Escort with air conditioning, maybe you'll be interested in a 2002 Ford Escort without air conditioning.
Sorry, this is more of the same DMA dreck -- opt-out, not confirmed opt-in. It's spam. And they can shove it up their asses until it carves its initials in tomorrow's turd.
> > I think a death penalty for spammers is a good place to start.
> >
But with that, we'd get no more entertainment from the likes of Bernard Shifman [petemoss.com].
Not necessarily. Televise the spammer executions on pay-per-view.
> However, if say, 2 years from now Windows RG (Really Good edition) comes out and is NOT backwards compatible, now new games only come out for it. I'd presume that if anything this hypothetical WinRG will be worse then WinXP in terms of Big Brother-ness, ergo I'd be even more hesitant to upgrade. That and it'll be even more eye-candy and more dumbed-down and all that stuff. But if I want my games, I'll have to upgrade.
Three words: Removable drive racks.
As long as IDE exists (which should be good for another 2-3 years), if you must use Windows, keep an old '98, W2K, or Linux/FreeBSD install on separate a hard drive with your data and applications, and install Windows RG on another drive.
Wanna work? Use the main drive. Wanna play the l33t new game? Yank it out and boot RG. No Gatesian DRM tech or spyware will ever be capable of corrupting or leaking data stored on an unpowered hard drive that's been physically disconnected from your machine.
> Filing by telephone, however, has been available for a number of years (quite a bit longer than netfiling) and is free. Of course, punching all those numbers in by telephone is a bit irritating.
And the look on the tax auditor's face when you say "What forms? I don't have forms, I filed by telephone! Don't you have all my records?" is even better.
> Personally, I don't see how they can
get to the 80% for individual returns without getting to "If you didn't pay to prepare the return, you
don't need to pay to E-file."
Real easy. Allow things like the AMT to filter down into the middle class tax brackets, add more goofy deductions and credits, further complicate the "long-term/short-term" capital gains situation by adding an "ultra-long-term" capital gains rate, just keep patching on layer after layer of complexity to the code.
The goal is that by 2007, nobody will be capable of filing their return without the assistance of a tax preparer.
Oh no! I can already see Jon Katz with a cardboard sign around his neck that reads "Will write Slashdot articles, and use the 'l' key instead of the '1' key when writing dates in the 20th century, for food";-)
> With respect to the aging claim made, is two years enough time to detect a reasonal shorting of the chromatic telomerase?
More to the point, who cares? If I'm 45, and have 20 years' worth of use in my current cells, I can just have a bunch frozen and new organs grown from the frozen batch whenever my new parts wear out.
So what if my replacement tires are only warranted for 20,000 miles instead of the original manufacturer's 100,000 miles? I'll just grow another set after every fourth oil change.
> WOW, who would have thought that the fountain of youth, and a source of infinite free power [cnn.com] would be announced on the same day?
Fountain of youth, free power, AOL buying Red Hat, Amazon making a profit. It's been a banner week for insanity;-)
Note that the "free power" thing on CNN was bullshit. Some scientifically-illiterate Reuters boob (but I repeat myself) was impressed that the voltage measured across the terminals of a set of batteries was 48.9V at load, and 51.2V not under load, "indicating that, somehow, they had been reimbursed." The inventor told the boob that three 100W light bulbs powered for 10 minutes (and his magical device) drew 4.5 kilowatts from the batteries. And the boob, sorry, journalism major, bought it - hook, line, sinker, and copy of Angling Times.
Next thing you know, someone will apply for a Nobel Prize because of the momentous discovery that his "dead" flashlight "works" for a few seconds after being turned off for a few minutes.
> A stem cell has been found in adults that can turn into every single tissue in the body.
Oh no! Extracting and growing these cells to cure diseases would be like killing millions and millions of clones of yourself! It's like having a million abortions, or even worse, committing suicide a million times over! We must ban research immediately! If God had wanted us to be healed, He wouldn't have let us get sick in the first place!
> Hmm, fooz-ball table -or- education for my children... hmmm. You know, people my age refer to that crap as payola.
Eh? If you're making $100K/year at Microsoft or Oracle, or some other company that's successful enough to have the high-tech office with the recreation center, you can probably afford to educate your kids too. You may even have on-site daycare and preschool as part of the benefits package.
(And if you're from Toronto, your grade-school education is "free", in that it's being supplied by the government, as funded by your tax dollars.)
> > If you happen to be a veteran and under 21, the VFW bars will serve you (so I hear from Desert storm veterans). >
> So the government thinks you're responsible enough to drink, -but only at certain bars?
I can't speak for the government, but at least its bartenders are smart enough to realize that if you're old enough to get shot at for your country, the least your country can do is let you have a beer after the war's over.
> Let's build lots of empty buildings and equip them with deadly traps. Chances are that the script kiddies and the
vandals are the same. When the 1 in 500 perp walks in with a spray can, ZZAAAP! Followed by the CLUNK of the
spray can hitting the ground and the WOOSH of the collective sigh of relief from the other 499 people.
"The Self-Aware Colony", Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
Problem is, you need to develop Self-Aware Machines first. And for that, you need Advanced Spaceflight and Digital Sentience. We've still got a bit of work to go on both of those fronts. (Hell, we don't even have industrial nanorobotics or the mind/machine interface yet...)
>/. posters should consider the big picture. Workers need to come together to assure a healthy industry and future for the technology. You think Bill Gates will do that? Larry? Steve? No, they won't. Industry is created by the workers, the engineers, the scientists, not the bean counters and marketing sharks.
Last time I checked, most/.ers working for Bill, Larry and friends were doin' pretty OK in comparison to the rest of the population.
But maybe you're right.
Alla youz geeks working for Microsoft, Oracle, Sun... with your $100K salaries and your offices and your GHz desktops and 21" monitors and foosball tables and rec-centers and free coffee and snacks... y'all has gotta realize youz iz bein' exploited!
Grab that pitchfork and march, I say, march on down to the CEO's office and demand the Aeron chairs and million-dollar stock option packages that are rightfully yours!
"Hey Hey, Aerons today!
A five-hour day or we won't stay!"
> I think American minimum wage tends to run a little bit _below_ the bare subsistence level envisioned by Ricardo.
A good point, but you already raised my objection:
> We have "progressed" from a condition where the average worker could barely afford to bring home food for his family, to one where a couple hours of work will buy a day's food, but about 25% of the population can't pay for a home out of their own earnings and have enough left to get them to their job.
Ask your grandparents, if they're still alive, about what "bare subsistence level" was like? (Particularly if they're from North American and lived during the Depression)
To many people, "bare subsistence level" now appears to mean a home with a television, a cable TV subscription, air conditioning, prepackaged foods, and for about half the population in question, enough money to maintain a nicotine habit.
Cut out the luxuries and live better. Buy "cheap food" - fresh vegetables and cuts of meat.
For about $6.00, including the cost of electricity (apply spices, lightly sear in frying pan, wrap in foil and cook slowly at 300F until medium rare), I can have an 8-oz filet mignon with two vegetable side dishes in the comfort and privacy of my own home.
Or I can have a Big Mac, Large Fries, Big Shake, and a Diet Coke while sitting on plastic chairs and surrounded by screaming kids.
You tell me who's livin' at the subsistence level:-)
The biggest social problem is educational, not economic. If you know what you're doing, living at a subsistence level can be pretty damn good.
(Frugality applies to us middle-class-income folks too. If you drink coffee for the caffeine, swap the $5.00/day Starbucks habit for the free stuff in the company lunchroom. Multiply that 220 work days per year, is a $1100 vacation to wherever you wanna go. Or a GeForce 4, 160GB drive, and dual Athlon XP 2000+ box to go with it!)
> There is a legal requirement(last I heard 65% of average wage) regarding the wages of H-1B visa holders.
Correction: 100%, not 65%, of the average wage.
Granted, the "average wage" for a job the Bay Area, as supplied by the DOL, may be less than the wage offered by many companies, on the grounds that DOL's figures include the lower salaries offered in.gov jobs, but your original point is actually stronger than you'd thought it was.
(And you're absolutely correct that if the horror stories about seized passports and 12-hour workdays for 1/4 wages from the other poster were true, that the staffing company in quesiton was just begging for an INS raid.)
> MP3 R&D has been mostly abandoned. It
will be around for a very long time yet, but it's being attacked from all technological sides. Microsoft
wants to kill it for WMA, Tompson wants to kill it in favor of MP3 pro, FhG wants to kill it for AAC,
Real wants us to use Real--ermm, sorry, ATRAC3, etc. MP3's been superceeded and abandoned by
cutting edge research.
Counter-rant: So what if "research" has been abandoned on MP3. I don't need that research, 'cuz there are great MP3 encoders already out there. The work has been done.
For archive quality (as opposed to streaming audio), what do.WMA, MP3Pro, Real, and ATRAC offer over 192/256/320k MP3s?
Nothing.
They all support various copy-control schemes, which make for revenue opportunities, which might cause their respective proponents to funnel R&D bucks into them. Some sound better at low bitrates, which is fine for streaming audio, but most folks in the streaming audio are - once again - just trying to make a buck selling pay-per-listen or pay-for-subscription streams.
That's the other reason nobody's researching MP3 -- not only is it "good enough" as it stands, there's no money to be made, even if it could be improved.
Talking about the lack of "cutting-edge research" MP3 as a death knell is like talking about the lack of cutting-edge UNIX text editors as the death knell for vi and emacs.
I don't need Microsoft or Real or Sony to put a million bucks into researching the latest WMA codec, because I know it'll be DRM-crippled and useless to me. The research into other codecs is, for me, wasted. I couldn't care less.
(Likewise, the lack of "research" into cutting-edge text editors doesn't seem to have made vi or emacs go away...)
As for Ogg, as good as Ogg is, I see the odds of it replacing MP3 in terms of the.GIF vs..PNG debate -- most places that could use.PNGs still use.GIFs, despite GIF's patent issues, because.GIF was "good enough" and widely-distributed before PNG came about.
> Last I heard 2nd gen mp3 is almost ready and will have 2x compression over current mp3's but will
have built in copyright protection..
If you're referring to MP3Pro, I doubt it'll ever be used by anything outside of the streaming audio market.
I'll grant that an MP3Pro at 64kbps sounds better than an MP3 at 64kbps, but for purposes of archiving audio for quality (as opposed to streaming), the diskspace savings isn't enough to justify (a) not gaining freedom from Fraun's patents (Ogg wins here), and (b) losing the freedom that comes with a DRM-free codec like MP3 or OGG.
But if you're willing to put up with DRM in exchange for better sound at streaming rates, might as well go with Windows Media.WMA instead of MP3Pro.
I can't imagine anyone on/. who'd be willing to put up with a DRM-crippled codec in the presence of.ogg (if patent-freedom and low-bitrate quality matters) or.mp3 (for availability, archival quality at high bitrates, and a willingness to turn a blind eye to the patent issue).
> Stallman's lawyer is a Professor of Law [columbia.edu] at Columbia University [columbia.edu]. Plus,
he has tons of experience [gnu.org] enforcing the GPL. Don't judge his capabilities too quickly.
I don't mean to disparage his capabilities, but the legal standing of the GPL is, like everything else, subject to the Golden Rule.
I have yet to see any evidence that AOL/TW has insufficient gold to make whatever rules it requires.
> Sure, I can understand that view. Buy Photoshop 3.0 for $5.
> >
That still doesn't justify $5 for Photoshop 6.0
Absolutely.
If I were writing copyright law from scratch, I'd base it on an idea like "full retail price may be charged, and full copyright protection applies, for 5 years, or until the company ceases supporting the old version, whichever comes first. After that, it's fair game."
Slashdot Mirror
Which reminds me -- Slashdot oughta run a story on the move towards National Do-Not-Call legislation. The FTC's proposed plan involves an $11,000 kick in the teeth of every telemarketing pigfux0r who breaks the law, and would make it easier for victims to trace back and report lawbreaking telemarketers to the authorities.
The FTC is accepting public comment on the proposal, in sextuplicate, by March 29, 2002.
Make sure that the comments they get aren't entirely from DMA lobbyists.
Due to fraudulent charity telemarketing after 9/11, the good guys have the political momentum on this one -- and the DMA is running scared on this one.
Let's put the nails into the telemarketing coffin once and for all.
Precisely.
From the article:
> "If a company has conducted business with a consumer and has asked up front to send e-mail to that customer, then the message is not spam.
"We signed up Joe Slashdotter for our list. Joe Slashdotter didn't jump through our hoops to opt-out. But since we asked him to opt-out, it's not spam. Even though his mail bounces with a '550 - known liar^H^H^H^HDMA member - permanently blocked' message, he hasn't opted-out.
There must be something wrong with his machine. Better re-send the mailing a few dozen times an hour, just to make sure at least one gets through."
No, the DMA's position is that they will spam you until you ask them to stop.
From the article:
> "give consumers notice and choice before sending commercial e-mail "
Translation: "To continue receiving exciting offers from us, you need do nothing! Or you can opt out by jumping through hoops..."
> "...or before selling, sharing or renting their e-mail addresses to a third party"
All that means is that on the web site, or in the spam, there'll be a link to a "Privacy policy" that says "We reserve the right to work with partners to offer you goods and services we think may be of interest..."
> " In addition, commercial e-mail must clearly identify the sender, represent the subject line accurately, and provide contact information."
We won't forge headers. But we'll still spam you.
> " Above all, the marketer must let consumers opt out of further communications in every e-mail. "
"We received your request to be opted out of the FORD-OWNERS93133 mailing campaign."
But tomorrow, you'll get spam as part of the "FORD-OWNERS93134" campaign. You weren't interested in that 2002 Ford Escort with air conditioning, maybe you'll be interested in a 2002 Ford Escort without air conditioning.
Sorry, this is more of the same DMA dreck -- opt-out, not confirmed opt-in. It's spam. And they can shove it up their asses until it carves its initials in tomorrow's turd.
>
> But with that, we'd get no more entertainment from the likes of Bernard Shifman [petemoss.com].
Not necessarily. Televise the spammer executions on pay-per-view.
I'd be entertained.
Three words: Removable drive racks.
As long as IDE exists (which should be good for another 2-3 years), if you must use Windows, keep an old '98, W2K, or Linux/FreeBSD install on separate a hard drive with your data and applications, and install Windows RG on another drive.
Wanna work? Use the main drive. Wanna play the l33t new game? Yank it out and boot RG. No Gatesian DRM tech or spyware will ever be capable of corrupting or leaking data stored on an unpowered hard drive that's been physically disconnected from your machine.
Tackhead's One-Liner:
If they put 10% of today's PR budget into the next release's security budget, they might have a chance.
And the look on the tax auditor's face when you say "What forms? I don't have forms, I filed by telephone! Don't you have all my records?" is even better.
Real easy. Allow things like the AMT to filter down into the middle class tax brackets, add more goofy deductions and credits, further complicate the "long-term/short-term" capital gains situation by adding an "ultra-long-term" capital gains rate, just keep patching on layer after layer of complexity to the code.
The goal is that by 2007, nobody will be capable of filing their return without the assistance of a tax preparer.
Oh no! I can already see Jon Katz with a cardboard sign around his neck that reads "Will write Slashdot articles, and use the 'l' key instead of the '1' key when writing dates in the 20th century, for food" ;-)
More to the point, who cares? If I'm 45, and have 20 years' worth of use in my current cells, I can just have a bunch frozen and new organs grown from the frozen batch whenever my new parts wear out.
So what if my replacement tires are only warranted for 20,000 miles instead of the original manufacturer's 100,000 miles? I'll just grow another set after every fourth oil change.
Fountain of youth, free power, AOL buying Red Hat, Amazon making a profit. It's been a banner week for insanity ;-)
Note that the "free power" thing on CNN was bullshit. Some scientifically-illiterate Reuters boob (but I repeat myself) was impressed that the voltage measured across the terminals of a set of batteries was 48.9V at load, and 51.2V not under load, "indicating that, somehow, they had been reimbursed." The inventor told the boob that three 100W light bulbs powered for 10 minutes (and his magical device) drew 4.5 kilowatts from the batteries. And the boob, sorry, journalism major, bought it - hook, line, sinker, and copy of Angling Times.
Next thing you know, someone will apply for a Nobel Prize because of the momentous discovery that his "dead" flashlight "works" for a few seconds after being turned off for a few minutes.
Oh no! Extracting and growing these cells to cure diseases would be like killing millions and millions of clones of yourself! It's like having a million abortions, or even worse, committing suicide a million times over! We must ban research immediately! If God had wanted us to be healed, He wouldn't have let us get sick in the first place!
Eh? If you're making $100K/year at Microsoft or Oracle, or some other company that's successful enough to have the high-tech office with the recreation center, you can probably afford to educate your kids too. You may even have on-site daycare and preschool as part of the benefits package.
(And if you're from Toronto, your grade-school education is "free", in that it's being supplied by the government, as funded by your tax dollars.)
>
> So the government thinks you're responsible enough to drink, -but only at certain bars?
I can't speak for the government, but at least its bartenders are smart enough to realize that if you're old enough to get shot at for your country, the least your country can do is let you have a beer after the war's over.
"The Self-Aware Colony", Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
Problem is, you need to develop Self-Aware Machines first. And for that, you need Advanced Spaceflight and Digital Sentience. We've still got a bit of work to go on both of those fronts. (Hell, we don't even have industrial nanorobotics or the mind/machine interface yet...)
Last time I checked, most /.ers working for Bill, Larry and friends were doin' pretty OK in comparison to the rest of the population.
But maybe you're right.
Alla youz geeks working for Microsoft, Oracle, Sun... with your $100K salaries and your offices and your GHz desktops and 21" monitors and foosball tables and rec-centers and free coffee and snacks... y'all has gotta realize youz iz bein' exploited!
Grab that pitchfork and march, I say, march on down to the CEO's office and demand the Aeron chairs and million-dollar stock option packages that are rightfully yours!
"Hey Hey, Aerons today!
A five-hour day or we won't stay!"
A good point, but you already raised my objection:
> We have "progressed" from a condition where the average worker could barely afford to bring home food for his family, to one where a couple hours of work will buy a day's food, but about 25% of the population can't pay for a home out of their own earnings and have enough left to get them to their job.
Ask your grandparents, if they're still alive, about what "bare subsistence level" was like? (Particularly if they're from North American and lived during the Depression)
To many people, "bare subsistence level" now appears to mean a home with a television, a cable TV subscription, air conditioning, prepackaged foods, and for about half the population in question, enough money to maintain a nicotine habit.
Cut out the luxuries and live better. Buy "cheap food" - fresh vegetables and cuts of meat.
Filet mignon: $10/pound. Potatoes: $0.30/pound. Carrots: $0.30/pound. Clove of garlic: ~$0.10.
For about $6.00, including the cost of electricity (apply spices, lightly sear in frying pan, wrap in foil and cook slowly at 300F until medium rare), I can have an 8-oz filet mignon with two vegetable side dishes in the comfort and privacy of my own home.
Or I can have a Big Mac, Large Fries, Big Shake, and a Diet Coke while sitting on plastic chairs and surrounded by screaming kids.
You tell me who's livin' at the subsistence level :-)
The biggest social problem is educational, not economic. If you know what you're doing, living at a subsistence level can be pretty damn good.
(Frugality applies to us middle-class-income folks too. If you drink coffee for the caffeine, swap the $5.00/day Starbucks habit for the free stuff in the company lunchroom. Multiply that 220 work days per year, is a $1100 vacation to wherever you wanna go. Or a GeForce 4, 160GB drive, and dual Athlon XP 2000+ box to go with it!)
Correction: 100%, not 65%, of the average wage.
Granted, the "average wage" for a job the Bay Area, as supplied by the DOL, may be less than the wage offered by many companies, on the grounds that DOL's figures include the lower salaries offered in .gov jobs, but your original point is actually stronger than you'd thought it was.
(And you're absolutely correct that if the horror stories about seized passports and 12-hour workdays for 1/4 wages from the other poster were true, that the staffing company in quesiton was just begging for an INS raid.)
Counter-rant: So what if "research" has been abandoned on MP3. I don't need that research, 'cuz there are great MP3 encoders already out there. The work has been done.
For archive quality (as opposed to streaming audio), what do .WMA, MP3Pro, Real, and ATRAC offer over 192/256/320k MP3s?
Nothing.
They all support various copy-control schemes, which make for revenue opportunities, which might cause their respective proponents to funnel R&D bucks into them. Some sound better at low bitrates, which is fine for streaming audio, but most folks in the streaming audio are - once again - just trying to make a buck selling pay-per-listen or pay-for-subscription streams.
That's the other reason nobody's researching MP3 -- not only is it "good enough" as it stands, there's no money to be made, even if it could be improved.
Talking about the lack of "cutting-edge research" MP3 as a death knell is like talking about the lack of cutting-edge UNIX text editors as the death knell for vi and emacs.
I don't need Microsoft or Real or Sony to put a million bucks into researching the latest WMA codec, because I know it'll be DRM-crippled and useless to me. The research into other codecs is, for me, wasted. I couldn't care less.
(Likewise, the lack of "research" into cutting-edge text editors doesn't seem to have made vi or emacs go away...)
As for Ogg, as good as Ogg is, I see the odds of it replacing MP3 in terms of the .GIF vs. .PNG debate -- most places that could use .PNGs still use .GIFs, despite GIF's patent issues, because .GIF was "good enough" and widely-distributed before PNG came about.
>
>Like So?
>1
> 0
> [8 times per sample]
No, it's even worse!
(1-2 k of headers and track metadata deleted)
<BYTE>
<BIT>1</BIT>
<BIT>0</BIT>
<BIT>0</BIT>
<BIT>1</BIT>
<BIT>1</BIT>
<BIT>1</BIT>
<BIT>0</BIT>
<BIT>0</BIT>
</BYTE>
If you're referring to MP3Pro, I doubt it'll ever be used by anything outside of the streaming audio market.
I'll grant that an MP3Pro at 64kbps sounds better than an MP3 at 64kbps, but for purposes of archiving audio for quality (as opposed to streaming), the diskspace savings isn't enough to justify (a) not gaining freedom from Fraun's patents (Ogg wins here), and (b) losing the freedom that comes with a DRM-free codec like MP3 or OGG.
But if you're willing to put up with DRM in exchange for better sound at streaming rates, might as well go with Windows Media .WMA instead of MP3Pro.
I can't imagine anyone on /. who'd be willing to put up with a DRM-crippled codec in the presence of .ogg (if patent-freedom and low-bitrate quality matters) or .mp3 (for availability, archival quality at high bitrates, and a willingness to turn a blind eye to the patent issue).
I don't mean to disparage his capabilities, but the legal standing of the GPL is, like everything else, subject to the Golden Rule.
I have yet to see any evidence that AOL/TW has insufficient gold to make whatever rules it requires.
How many millions of dollars in legal fees are you prepared to spend to prove that?
Last time I checked, AOL's lawyers could beat up Stallman's.
>
> That still doesn't justify $5 for Photoshop 6.0
Absolutely.
If I were writing copyright law from scratch, I'd base it on an idea like "full retail price may be charged, and full copyright protection applies, for 5 years, or until the company ceases supporting the old version, whichever comes first. After that, it's fair game."