No, the difference in quality if you use a high grade A/D and balanced cables is almost zero. You cant hear it on a normal audio system. Did you know many recordings today is recorded using analog equipment because it "sounds better" ?
Then again, look at the quality of most movies on the net compared to the originals and how popular they still are. People dont care that much when its free. If you can stand watching Lord of the rings in 320x200 you can stand better quality than mp3.
One would think they had got the idea by now but no, lets keep trying to make that perpetual machine! The holy grail of the music industry is a bedtime story never to be fulfilled in real life.
1. If you can listen and see you can copy. 2. The quality isnt as important as the content. 3. Restrictions in use applies mostly to legit buyers since the not so legit users tends to use nonrestricted copies. 4. Pissing of legit customers tend to make them not pay for the goods. 5. If there are two versions of the same goods and one of them is unusable what do people choose?
They can never ever succeed in making a hackproof music or video format. All they can do is push their legit buyers over to pirating. I think that is a very stupid thing to do if you have a music business. Then again, not using the net to distribute music back in 1997 was a pretty stupid move too.
You are absolutely right. With todays A/D equipment the quality loss is less than when converting from CD to mp3/ogg when tapping into the speakers. Many soundcards have a digital output that sounds like the original, no loss there.
Simply put there are no way to technically prevent pirating. Its just a waste of consumers money (altough many companies have forgot who pays their profits).
The only way to stop pirating is getting the public to like you enough to WANT to pay.
This sounds like a scam. If the patents cover something trivial its a nobrainer to toss it out and replace it. If they cover something buried in POSIX or some wellused piping/whatever method there are surely similar functions in *BSD and MacOS X. Its perticularly interesting that they only target linux nad not the other 'nix wannabies.
Have you read the whole story about Midas? He, midas, turned people into gold when he touched them. That was profitable for midas but hardly for the ones touched by him. Not very fun being turned into gold and in the same time snuffed off?
Never ever should the abused party be the one who gets the blame. They acted in good faith wich is in my world a good thing. If Microsoft then abused this good faith that is a bad thing done from Microsofts part.
Clearly even companies need to have some sort of regulation and rules to work by. Else doing business becomes "he who is the dirtiest snekiest win" and that doesnt benefit anyone but the one with the least concious possible. Anarchy and capitalism isnt the same thing.
I actually agree totally with you. I think MS will screw Miguel de Icaza so hard that he wont sit again in years. Mono in itself is admirarble but its origin spells bad future. Microsoft is just using Mono to be able to say.net is x-platform and then when market share is anough in comes version 1.1 breaking all compability with Mono.
If you are a company with any intellectual holdings or patents, dont ever work with Microsoft. If you only manufacture things and dont know anything about what you do then its fine.
Its nearly written in stone since before. Microsoft is a midas touch to any company with any form of knowledge that works together with them. Sendo should have realized this ofcourse. Still that doesnt in any way defends what Microsoft did wich clearly fradulent behaviour and underhanded business practises. If every company behaived like Microsoft all resources would go to fighting instead of developing good products. This kind of mafia methods needs to stop now!
I know many nerds want to give MS a kick on the nose but all they do with this is helping them fine tuning the Palladium technology. If i want to play games i sure as h*ll dont buy an Xbox. If i want linux, well PS2 already have linux, why bother with the useless Xbox? Its just an old ancient PC by now, you can get one cheaply from Ebay.
Pointless and stupid projekt, do something useful instead. Build an emulator for Xbox, that would be useful atleast.
Why does people always miss out half of the equation when talking about the GPL in comercial surroundings? The GPL doesnt help people selling the same product multiple times or to take somebody elses work and make money of it. It doesnt help someone to take a project, twist it and screw the initial developers (think kerberos etc.). The GPL dont ease up the software companies ongoing efforts to screw people up with endless upgrades and "almost good, next version will work, i promise" kind of software.
The GPL is constucted to benefit users and not the vendors that want to sell you the same product with a new clownsuit ten times. All people and companies and governments use software, thats a pretty much established fact. They dont do software and they dont benefit from paying more for things than necessary.
As i see it software buisiness as it looks today is like the spinneries in england in the 1800. It is going to be raplaced sooner or later anyway. Todays constant upgrades and paid servicepacks is an artificial market not based on realworld logic.
Software companies like IBM, RedHat, Sun etc who provide services and really do something for what you pay is the future. Software compenies like Microsoft just sell the same things as many times possible and preferably without even having developed it themselves. They are moving themselves into a corner where they dont research and invent things but is merely a proxy for other peoples ideas that they "borrow". Now they even want government funded code for free to be able to sell it to the people who paid for it, the taxpayers. The GPL fosters interopability and adherence to standards because you cant hide alterations in code you have to show openly. The BSD license and others lets you screw the authors royally up the poopchute.
Overall the GPL license the license that benefit users of software the most. As a nice side effect it fosters adherance to standards witch in turn lets more people into the race even if they dont use or make GPL code themselves.
The only looser of the GPL is those who work once and want to sell the product over and over.
What strange law has been passed lately that mandates MS Windows as the OS for all computers sold? When linux picks up steam on the desktop to it will start being preloaded from the bigger computer vendors to. They dont make any money off of MS Windows so they couldnt care less what OS is preloaded.
IE a killer app, of what, security? There are plenty of browsers now that has gotten way ahead in features, adherance to standards and functioning. IE is actually lagging behind right now.
Office is something that most people use to write letters and occasionally some spreadsheets. Its overkill in 90% of the userbase. Most people could cope with notepad if they could just read what other sent them in doc format. Being able to read other peoples Office documents is the number one reason people use Office.
Open Office and a bunch of other replacements exists already and more is coming this way fast. The browser is perfect now in linux, next stop Office Applications!
I see that you demand more of something that is free than of something you pay hard cash for. Last time i checked atleast MS Windows has changed UI pretty often and shaken the icons around a bit to make it look new, no standardized interface there as far as i can see. Contrary to you i believe X11 is a wonderful thing. To ditch X11 wouldnt bring linux anywhere because it doesnt suck. Things have really gotten better the last couple of releases. A new UI would mean a whole new can'o'bugs without any significant gains. The things you ask for is already in the works. KDE and GNOME have started to cooperate on that matter.
Yes, you are obviously one of those that wants linux to be free, come with a technician 24/7 free of charge and be paid to use it.
Sorry but linux cant afford you, go on using something else.
i will reflect my own comletely honest experiences. I use linux and nothing else at home as the OS of choice for our 3 computers. It takes about as long time to learn as Windows did for someone who jumped into computers from 95 and forward. There arent one single app that i lack in linux. This is from someone who does everything on his computer. Tv, video, bills,music, drawing, developing, chatting, surfing, burning cds, and all the normal tasks to. If i can use it after having learned it so can everyone else with half a brain. I dont consider myself a genious on computers but still i havent any difficulties using linux. And i use a "hard" dist as gentoo. With Mandrake, Redhat and Lindows etc i dont even have to think, they makes most things by themselves.
Linux is most definately ready to bay the power users and people with more IQ than your average white trash this very moment. The clueless ones that holds their paper infront of the monitor and searches the [fax] button are nothing to sthrive for at this moment since they demand to much and returns nothing.
Sure they can hold back mass migration to linux but what does it bother us? If we keep this pace up in development of Linux Microsoft will be lagging behind real soon. The snowball is rolling and i dont think Microsoft has the capability to stop it anymore. Lets leave Microsoft behind and let them fight a ghost. Without something to hit they are lost. They have shown us again and again with their gorilla practices that they cant compete on engineering or quality with anyone.
With the growing capabilities of clustering even workstations no one really needs one single ultra powered workstation. The bragging value may be high but its not worth the money. No computer have ever got a nerd laid to my knowledge.
A friend of mine bought a high end state-of-the art system for about 5000$ and now its worth nothing, only two years later. The only thing worth anything is the monitor, the rest is now history.
when software comes that requires this kind of CPU power in a single workstation (Windows 2010?) the computers will jump up in spead rather fast. until then the people paying 6000$ for something they dont really need or have use for are as fooled as those who buys Porches.
PS. Atleast a Porche draws chicks, computers dont. DS
I still think the case is a winner since Windows IS a generic term in computing. That Microsoft has worked to change that after the filing doesnt change the fact.
Exactly how it became accepted would be very interesting to know indeed since it got rejected at first. No reference seems to exist as to why it suddenly became accepted.
Any form of media that goes via light or sound is impossible to protect. All you can do is play cat and mouse but in the end that is to expensive, both to the companes and the customers purchasing the products. I think most companies know this but they havent figured out how to stop widespread pirating.
One good start would be to NOT alienate customers and make it feel better to pay for the goods. That ofcourse means reasonable prices and good customer relationsships. Social protection is the only thing that helps fighting pirates in the long run.
Start working on getting better PR and treat people nicer. Work with tha customers in getting better products instead of fighting them all tooth and nail. Make it shameful to fool those nice media companies. Then pirates will exist but at a much much lower scale.
I was merely using Java as an example of a cross platform technology. There are numerous others that could emerge. The only company afraid of this is Microsoft. The applications barrier is thanks to linux and open source quickly eroding. If you make a new OS today that will compete against MS Windows it is highly beneficial to make it able to compile linux applications. Having the source code is a step towards x-platform. Now if the source was written with platform independance in mind, then open source would completely wipe out the barrier to entry,
Linux can very well win the desktop. Not diretly but if it makes even limited success in creating open standards it will open up the OS market for other players. Imagine what would happen if all applications was written in platform independant form? Applications and the barrier to entry is the single and only thing that is holding other OS from competing with MS Windows. Open standards steaming from linux could change that.
I would disagree with you on that. I find the Gnome GUI very good, stable and very easy to use. There are others that are even better. The foundation GUI is very nice, all that is left is the glue ie. the wizards and push buttons that does the simple commands.
The thing that makes the noise is that they are screwed to the metal. If you put a new HD on some rubber foam it is very silent. Its so easy to make the sound dissapear. Lazy designers should be shot but then half the PC industry would be gone tomorrow.
Given the large number of exploits that have rained upon us in recent years a hacker can pretty much choose the one he see as suitable and efficient for his purpose. The holes is there to use and just because no one has made a virus exploiting them doesnt mean that hackers doesnt use them.
Come to think about it, how could the hacker community have exploited every hole and still have had time to hack things? Maybe that is the answer? Give the hackers so many holes that they are occupied writing exploits for them. That way they dont have time using them.
I have come to the conclusion that wether Microsoft survives or not doesnt bother me a piss. One part of me would most gladly see the Borg go down in agony. The other part looks at his nice linux desktop wich does everything he did in windows and much better and feels a state of nirvana. As long as i have my linux and no one tries to destroy it i couldnt give less sh*t about windows. We need to stop looking at what Microsoft is doing and do our own stuff.
They are hurt if linux makes a success, we shouldnt care less if Microsoft do. Lets focus at linux and let Microsoft play in their own little pond by themselves.
Re:Microsoft Forced Windows Commander to change...
on
Lindows Legal Challenge
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
You shouldnt have changed your trademark. I can understand you feeling threatened but they have nothing to base their demand on legally.
They have a trademark composed of two words. That is Microsoft and Windows. They could get a trademark for a composed word of Micro and Soft, ie Microsoft. No way in jose would they have gotten approval for either soft or micro if they wore applied for by themselves. The same applies for "Microsoft Windows" wich they do have a trademark for. A trademark consisting of two worlds is only covering those two words in conjunction with eachothers. Just because they have a trademark on "Microsoft Windows" doesnt mean that they have any rights whatsoever to the world "Windows" or "Microsoft" for that matter. Microsoft is covered by its own trademark outside the "Microsoft Windows" trademark. Windows is not trademarked in its own trademark and thus Microsoft has no rights to the word Windows in any way. Thats why this trial is such a shame and shows what an extrem elitism that resides in the higher levels of Microsoft.
Microsoft did never ever get a trademark for "windows". They got a trademark for "Microsoft Windows". Even back in 1983 any apply for a trademark on a single world like "windows" would have been laughed at.
It is a very big difference between having a trademark on a word like "windows" and a product "Microsoft Windows". Their trademark of "Microsoft Windows" leaves it open for anyone to call anything "blabla windows", "BLurwindows" or anything with the word windows or derived from the word windows.
Slashdot Mirror
No, the difference in quality if you use a high grade A/D and balanced cables is almost zero. You cant hear it on a normal audio system. Did you know many recordings today is recorded using analog equipment because it "sounds better" ?
Then again, look at the quality of most movies on the net compared to the originals and how popular they still are. People dont care that much when its free. If you can stand watching Lord of the rings in 320x200 you can stand better quality than mp3.
One would think they had got the idea by now but no, lets keep trying to make that perpetual machine! The holy grail of the music industry is a bedtime story never to be fulfilled in real life.
1. If you can listen and see you can copy.
2. The quality isnt as important as the content.
3. Restrictions in use applies mostly to legit buyers since the not so legit users tends to use nonrestricted copies.
4. Pissing of legit customers tend to make them not pay for the goods.
5. If there are two versions of the same goods and one of them is unusable what do people choose?
They can never ever succeed in making a hackproof music or video format. All they can do is push their legit buyers over to pirating. I think that is a very stupid thing to do if you have a music business. Then again, not using the net to distribute music back in 1997 was a pretty stupid move too.
You are absolutely right. With todays A/D equipment the quality loss is less than when converting from CD to mp3/ogg when tapping into the speakers. Many soundcards have a digital output that sounds like the original, no loss there.
Simply put there are no way to technically prevent pirating. Its just a waste of consumers money (altough many companies have forgot who pays their profits).
The only way to stop pirating is getting the public to like you enough to WANT to pay.
This sounds like a scam. If the patents cover something trivial its a nobrainer to toss it out and replace it. If they cover something buried in POSIX or some wellused piping/whatever method there are surely similar functions in *BSD and MacOS X. Its perticularly interesting that they only target linux nad not the other 'nix wannabies.
It smells funny indeed.
Have you read the whole story about Midas? He, midas, turned people into gold when he touched them. That was profitable for midas but hardly for the ones touched by him. Not very fun being turned into gold and in the same time snuffed off?
Never ever should the abused party be the one who gets the blame. They acted in good faith wich is in my world a good thing. If Microsoft then abused this good faith that is a bad thing done from Microsofts part.
Clearly even companies need to have some sort of regulation and rules to work by. Else doing business becomes "he who is the dirtiest snekiest win" and that doesnt benefit anyone but the one with the least concious possible. Anarchy and capitalism isnt the same thing.
I actually agree totally with you. I think MS will screw Miguel de Icaza so hard that he wont sit again in years. Mono in itself is admirarble but its origin spells bad future. Microsoft is just using Mono to be able to say .net is x-platform and then when market share is anough in comes version 1.1 breaking all compability with Mono.
If you are a company with any intellectual holdings or patents, dont ever work with Microsoft. If you only manufacture things and dont know anything about what you do then its fine.
Its nearly written in stone since before. Microsoft is a midas touch to any company with any form of knowledge that works together with them. Sendo should have realized this ofcourse. Still that doesnt in any way defends what Microsoft did wich clearly fradulent behaviour and underhanded business practises. If every company behaived like Microsoft all resources would go to fighting instead of developing good products. This kind of mafia methods needs to stop now!
In my book thats bad for me and other consumers.
I know many nerds want to give MS a kick on the nose but all they do with this is helping them fine tuning the Palladium technology. If i want to play games i sure as h*ll dont buy an Xbox. If i want linux, well PS2 already have linux, why bother with the useless Xbox? Its just an old ancient PC by now, you can get one cheaply from Ebay.
Pointless and stupid projekt, do something useful instead. Build an emulator for Xbox, that would be useful atleast.
Why does people always miss out half of the equation when talking about the GPL in comercial surroundings? The GPL doesnt help people selling the same product multiple times or to take somebody elses work and make money of it. It doesnt help someone to take a project, twist it and screw the initial developers (think kerberos etc.). The GPL dont ease up the software companies ongoing efforts to screw people up with endless upgrades and "almost good, next version will work, i promise" kind of software.
The GPL is constucted to benefit users and not the vendors that want to sell you the same product with a new clownsuit ten times. All people and companies and governments use software, thats a pretty much established fact. They dont do software and they dont benefit from paying more for things than necessary.
As i see it software buisiness as it looks today is like the spinneries in england in the 1800. It is going to be raplaced sooner or later anyway. Todays constant upgrades and paid servicepacks is an artificial market not based on realworld logic.
Software companies like IBM, RedHat, Sun etc who provide services and really do something for what you pay is the future. Software compenies like Microsoft just sell the same things as many times possible and preferably without even having developed it themselves. They are moving themselves into a corner where they dont research and invent things but is merely a proxy for other peoples ideas that they "borrow". Now they even want government funded code for free to be able to sell it to the people who paid for it, the taxpayers. The GPL fosters interopability and adherence to standards because you cant hide alterations in code you have to show openly. The BSD license and others lets you screw the authors royally up the poopchute.
Overall the GPL license the license that benefit users of software the most. As a nice side effect it fosters adherance to standards witch in turn lets more people into the race even if they dont use or make GPL code themselves.
The only looser of the GPL is those who work once and want to sell the product over and over.
What strange law has been passed lately that mandates MS Windows as the OS for all computers sold? When linux picks up steam on the desktop to it will start being preloaded from the bigger computer vendors to. They dont make any money off of MS Windows so they couldnt care less what OS is preloaded.
IE a killer app, of what, security? There are plenty of browsers now that has gotten way ahead in features, adherance to standards and functioning. IE is actually lagging behind right now.
Office is something that most people use to write letters and occasionally some spreadsheets. Its overkill in 90% of the userbase. Most people could cope with notepad if they could just read what other sent them in doc format. Being able to read other peoples Office documents is the number one reason people use Office.
Open Office and a bunch of other replacements exists already and more is coming this way fast. The browser is perfect now in linux, next stop Office Applications!
I see that you demand more of something that is free than of something you pay hard cash for. Last time i checked atleast MS Windows has changed UI pretty often and shaken the icons around a bit to make it look new, no standardized interface there as far as i can see. Contrary to you i believe X11 is a wonderful thing. To ditch X11 wouldnt bring linux anywhere because it doesnt suck. Things have really gotten better the last couple of releases. A new UI would mean a whole new can'o'bugs without any significant gains. The things you ask for is already in the works. KDE and GNOME have started to cooperate on that matter.
Yes, you are obviously one of those that wants linux to be free, come with a technician 24/7 free of charge and be paid to use it.
Sorry but linux cant afford you, go on using something else.
i will reflect my own comletely honest experiences. I use linux and nothing else at home as the OS of choice for our 3 computers. It takes about as long time to learn as Windows did for someone who jumped into computers from 95 and forward. There arent one single app that i lack in linux. This is from someone who does everything on his computer. Tv, video, bills,music, drawing, developing, chatting, surfing, burning cds, and all the normal tasks to. If i can use it after having learned it so can everyone else with half a brain. I dont consider myself a genious on computers but still i havent any difficulties using linux. And i use a "hard" dist as gentoo. With Mandrake, Redhat and Lindows etc i dont even have to think, they makes most things by themselves.
Linux is most definately ready to bay the power users and people with more IQ than your average white trash this very moment. The clueless ones that holds their paper infront of the monitor and searches the [fax] button are nothing to sthrive for at this moment since they demand to much and returns nothing.
Sure they can hold back mass migration to linux but what does it bother us? If we keep this pace up in development of Linux Microsoft will be lagging behind real soon. The snowball is rolling and i dont think Microsoft has the capability to stop it anymore. Lets leave Microsoft behind and let them fight a ghost. Without something to hit they are lost. They have shown us again and again with their gorilla practices that they cant compete on engineering or quality with anyone.
Let them fight nothing but air and windmills!
With the growing capabilities of clustering even workstations no one really needs one single ultra powered workstation. The bragging value may be high but its not worth the money. No computer have ever got a nerd laid to my knowledge.
A friend of mine bought a high end state-of-the art system for about 5000$ and now its worth nothing, only two years later. The only thing worth anything is the monitor, the rest is now history.
when software comes that requires this kind of CPU power in a single workstation (Windows 2010?) the computers will jump up in spead rather fast. until then the people paying 6000$ for something they dont really need or have use for are as fooled as those who buys Porches.
PS. Atleast a Porche draws chicks, computers dont. DS
I stand corrected, i dont argue against facts.
I still think the case is a winner since Windows IS a generic term in computing. That Microsoft has worked to change that after the filing doesnt change the fact.
Exactly how it became accepted would be very interesting to know indeed since it got rejected at first. No reference seems to exist as to why it suddenly became accepted.
Any form of media that goes via light or sound is impossible to protect. All you can do is play cat and mouse but in the end that is to expensive, both to the companes and the customers purchasing the products. I think most companies know this but they havent figured out how to stop widespread pirating.
One good start would be to NOT alienate customers and make it feel better to pay for the goods. That ofcourse means reasonable prices and good customer relationsships. Social protection is the only thing that helps fighting pirates in the long run.
Start working on getting better PR and treat people nicer. Work with tha customers in getting better products instead of fighting them all tooth and nail. Make it shameful to fool those nice media companies. Then pirates will exist but at a much much lower scale.
I was merely using Java as an example of a cross platform technology. There are numerous others that could emerge. The only company afraid of this is Microsoft. The applications barrier is thanks to linux and open source quickly eroding. If you make a new OS today that will compete against MS Windows it is highly beneficial to make it able to compile linux applications. Having the source code is a step towards x-platform. Now if the source was written with platform independance in mind, then open source would completely wipe out the barrier to entry,
What is the most common complaint against new OS?
Yep, can it run application x?
Linux can very well win the desktop. Not diretly but if it makes even limited success in creating open standards it will open up the OS market for other players. Imagine what would happen if all applications was written in platform independant form? Applications and the barrier to entry is the single and only thing that is holding other OS from competing with MS Windows. Open standards steaming from linux could change that.
Why do you think MS was so afraid of JAVA?
"The GUIs for Linux plainly suck."
I would disagree with you on that. I find the Gnome GUI very good, stable and very easy to use. There are others that are even better. The foundation GUI is very nice, all that is left is the glue ie. the wizards and push buttons that does the simple commands.
The thing that makes the noise is that they are screwed to the metal. If you put a new HD on some rubber foam it is very silent. Its so easy to make the sound dissapear. Lazy designers should be shot but then half the PC industry would be gone tomorrow.
Given the large number of exploits that have rained upon us in recent years a hacker can pretty much choose the one he see as suitable and efficient for his purpose. The holes is there to use and just because no one has made a virus exploiting them doesnt mean that hackers doesnt use them.
Come to think about it, how could the hacker community have exploited every hole and still have had time to hack things? Maybe that is the answer? Give the hackers so many holes that they are occupied writing exploits for them. That way they dont have time using them.
I have come to the conclusion that wether Microsoft survives or not doesnt bother me a piss. One part of me would most gladly see the Borg go down in agony. The other part looks at his nice linux desktop wich does everything he did in windows and much better and feels a state of nirvana. As long as i have my linux and no one tries to destroy it i couldnt give less sh*t about windows. We need to stop looking at what Microsoft is doing and do our own stuff.
They are hurt if linux makes a success, we shouldnt care less if Microsoft do. Lets focus at linux and let Microsoft play in their own little pond by themselves.
You shouldnt have changed your trademark. I can understand you feeling threatened but they have nothing to base their demand on legally.
They have a trademark composed of two words. That is Microsoft and Windows. They could get a trademark for a composed word of Micro and Soft, ie Microsoft. No way in jose would they have gotten approval for either soft or micro if they wore applied for by themselves. The same applies for "Microsoft Windows" wich they do have a trademark for. A trademark consisting of two worlds is only covering those two words in conjunction with eachothers. Just because they have a trademark on "Microsoft Windows" doesnt mean that they have any rights whatsoever to the world "Windows" or "Microsoft" for that matter. Microsoft is covered by its own trademark outside the "Microsoft Windows" trademark. Windows is not trademarked in its own trademark and thus Microsoft has no rights to the word Windows in any way. Thats why this trial is such a shame and shows what an extrem elitism that resides in the higher levels of Microsoft.
You were fooled like nothing i have ever seen.
Microsoft did never ever get a trademark for "windows". They got a trademark for "Microsoft Windows". Even back in 1983 any apply for a trademark on a single world like "windows" would have been laughed at.
It is a very big difference between having a trademark on a word like "windows" and a product "Microsoft Windows". Their trademark of "Microsoft Windows" leaves it open for anyone to call anything "blabla windows", "BLurwindows" or anything with the word windows or derived from the word windows.