If you bought the CD you should be able to do with it what you want. I.E. back it up. But if you only licensed it then they should be required to replace the damaged CD since you have a right via the license to use it's contents.
They want to eat their cake and have it too and so far it's working!
"What we have here is a simple case of companies using technology to control the market, whereas normal theory states that economics should control technology."
Close. What we really have is corporations controlling the laws that affects technology.
I think to be competitive we would need to manufacturer custom chipsets. With out mega bucks that's not going to happen.
Some effort should be put into making games that run natively in Linux. My real concern in this area, however, is that Microsoft bought some of the rights to OpenGL. It may be an ace in the hole to kill future efforts.
I find it laughable whenever someone indicates that they trust corporations to look out for our best interests.
One only has to realize that the one and only goal of a corporation is to make money for it's investors. For right or wrong corporations are motivated by greed. How many CEOs would risk losing their job by doing something that, although was in the best interest of the public, lost money for the stockholders? (Well unless they could heavily pad their own bank accounts in doing so.)
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that corporations are treated like something that they are not. Individuals. No corporation should be allowed to have the same rights as an individual and no corporation should be allowed to donate money to a political campaign. ALL campaign contributions should have to be made by real people individually using their own money.
If you have ever talked to a politician, off the record just person to person, you probably realized that they are really not all that well informed about the issues. Most have only one thing that they really want and that is to be re-elected and gather more power to themselves.
Given the three points above: 1. Corporations only want to make money, 2. Corporations are allowed to donate HUGE amounts of money to political campaigns and 3. Politicians really only want to keep their jobs, it's not hard to figure out that, in order to fulfill their goal to make money, the corporations will donate enough money to self-serving politicians to ensure that their interests are first on any political agenda.
The real answer here is to remove corporate influence from politics. However being that our lawmakers benefit from not letting that happen it will be an uphill battle.
"No, its a company that has a crappy business plan..."
Wrong. It's a company that HAD a crappy business plan and to say that because they made a past mistake that we should overlook all the good work that they have done and allow them to sink into oblivion is incredibly short sited.
"A company asking for cash donations so it can survive a little longer is one of the dummest things I have ever heard."
Well, just listen to yourself.
"Maybe they should rethink their business plan instead..."
They already have. They admitted that they took some bad advice. There current business plan seems very solid.
"You are not helping out the "movement" at all- Linux does not rely on Mandrake for survival."
Linux does not depend on Mandrake alone but keeping Mandrake alive IS helping make Linux strong.
"If you want to donate your money, that is fine, but you should realize that by donating you are just throwing your cash down the toilet to enable a crappy business to survive another week."
Oh, you're just a fountain of wisdom. NOT!
"And you should leave Microsoft, DRM, and all of the other/. buzzwords out of this -- they are not relevant at all to the topic."
Taken in context is was very relevant. Maybe you just weren't able to understand the original poster's point.
"Have you considered that the number of folks who complain are so few they can't support Mandrake? That the number of people who prefer Mandrake over some other distro are too few?"
And have you considered that maybe most of the people who are screaming that they would never pay might be self-centered leaches that would do the same to any distro that needed help?
"Give the user some damn knowledge, not an invisible install mechanism."
That's fine for a computer literate person but for the hair dresser who just want's to pick up her email that's not going to work. For all of the people in the world for which the computer is not the center of their universe (And that's most people.) a set of instructions about how to manually setup a piece of hardware is a real turn-off.
As an IT professional, I spend most of my time creating programs that allow non-geeks to use computers. It's a real challenge sometimes because an interface that I as a computer geek thinks is very easy is not intuitive for non-computer types at all.
Linux use to be a geeks only OS but the times are changing and we need exactly the ?brain dead? installation utilities that you so dislike. That doesn't mean that you and I can't pop the hood and tweak to our hearts content but for Grandpa and Grandma we need to make it simple.
"Easy to install means being both network-deployable and well documented..."
No, that's YOUR idea of easy to install. Easy to install to most people means NOT having to be a techie to get it to work and Mandrake does that. Call it "braindead" if you want but the average user just wants to browse the web, send and receive email etc. They just want to use the computer not spend a life time learning how to set it up. Their use of Linux is every bit as valid as your's and mine.
"And your comment about market philosophy bullshit was unwarrented. There is a demand for quality Linux software. Mandrake is not it."
You don't have a clue about what you are talking about. Mandrake is probably the leader in making a Linux product easy to install. And as far as doing anything for the movement what have YOU done lately?
Mankind grew up trying to explain everything in a self centered way. Religions sprang up that separated God, man and animals. Christianity for example teaches that God made man in his image and all of the animals were put on Earth for man. In this belief system, mankind is very much on center stage and it is somewhat unthinkable that God would have created another race on some distant planet. I think that man's early beliefs are still with us today.
We really don't have enough information yet to tell if life is rare or abundant in the universe. Is life on our planet a one in a million or one in a trillion chance?
I liked the part in the movie 'Contact' where Jody Foster is explaining that if only one planet out of some very high number (I don't remember exactly) had life and if only one of those had intelligent life and so on that there would be millions of races in the universe.
It is a bit vain to think that we are anything special. However, even if there are millions of races in the universe, the universe is a VERY big place. Such great distances may separate us all that meeting beings from other races is impractical or even impossible.
"In summary 'Microsoft says it's opening its Office desktop software by adding support for XML--a move that should help companies free up access to shared information."
Are we talking about true standard XML is Microsoft going to "embrace and extend" it?
Let's see... The economy is in the toilet and the prices of their products are grossly inflated. Many people prefer to eat, keep a roof over their heads and close on their backs over paying 20 bucks for a couple of songs that they like.
Could this be part of the reason that their sales are down?? Nah, must be the pirating...
I understand your comment perfectly. Stop being argumentative. ElcomSoft offered the product via the internet and the DOJ's position is that because of that it is being offered for sale in the US and therefore run afoul of the DMCA.
Like I said, I do not like the DMCA. I do not support the DOJ's position or actions.
From the article:
"After much wrangling among attorneys over the definition of the word "willful," the judge told jurors that in order to find the company guilty, they must agree that company representatives knew their actions were illegal and intended to violate the law. Merely offering a product that could violate copyrights was not enough to warrant a conviction, the jury instructions said."
I'm not in favor of the DMCA but the software that this company developed does go afoul of this law. It is only the fact that it couldn't be proven that they knew it was in violation of the law that got them off.
This is not as big a win against the DMCA as some want to believe.
How long until there will be a major ISP whose plans include discounts for spam-fighters? (Help us to sue every spammer than sent mail to you and get $9.95 disount on your next bill:) )"
This is a very interesting comment. It might actually work for states that have anti-spamming laws.
ISPs would have to make sure that the requirements for each state are clearly posted as not all bulk email would be in violation of most anti-spamming laws. In Washington State for example the law focuses on fraudulent behavior. I.E. Faked heading information, misleading subject line etc.
Washington State residents who want some protection from spam must give the spammer some way to know that their email address is a Washington State email address. I believe that the state maintains an email list that one can register their email address. If registered it is expected that the spammer has checked the list for each name prior to sending the email.
Anyway, if the spammer goes afoul of the law, the individual is allowed to collect up to $500.00 per spam and I believe that the ISP is allowed to collect $1,000.00 or more per email.
It seems like if ISPs were smart about it they could bankrupt some of the really big spammers.
Many states that are adopting anti-spam laws are focusing in on the fraud, misrepresentation, etc.
Most spam does not come from businesses who are contacting potential customers with interesting information. There is a big difference between that and some jerk who finds my name on a list and emails me with: "Make Money Fast", "Find Information About Anyone" or "Increase the Size of Your Penis."
Although there are some companies who send legitimate emails to customers who have opted-in most spam comes from scammers who do not have a legitimate product, who don't honor opt-out requests and who use false header information because they know what they are doing is wrong.
A few self-centered, greedy, low-life, fuckhead bastards are ruining email for everyone and there is no flippin' reason in the world that we should allow this. I say hang 'em!
Linus does have control over the kernel but I don't think he is as dogmatic about binary only drivers as are other people. If we want Linux to become mainstream we need to have new hardware supported and if that means allowing companies to distribute binary only drivers then we need to find a way to allow that.
"Also, by the same token, Microsoft is well within their rights to say, "We will only allow you to run Microsoft sanctioned software under Windows".
This I don't agree with. It would be a blatant abuse of their monopoly power and therefore illegal.
I use to get so frustrated with Mandrake because things that would compile fine on Redhat using just the commands that you gave would bomb on Mandrake.
But at any rate the average user shouldn't have to compile anything. Most computer users just want there computer to work without jumping through any hoops.
I know my way around a computer pretty well but even I reach a point where I want to stop configuring my system and just use it. A non-geek starts off just wanting everything to work.
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Yeah, isn't it the shits.
If you bought the CD you should be able to do with it what you want. I.E. back it up. But if you only licensed it then they should be required to replace the damaged CD since you have a right via the license to use it's contents.
They want to eat their cake and have it too and so far it's working!
"What we have here is a simple case of companies using technology to control the market, whereas normal theory states that economics should control technology."
Close. What we really have is corporations controlling the laws that affects technology.
I think to be competitive we would need to manufacturer custom chipsets. With out mega bucks that's not going to happen.
Some effort should be put into making games that run natively in Linux. My real concern in this area, however, is that Microsoft bought some of the rights to OpenGL. It may be an ace in the hole to kill future efforts.
I find it laughable whenever someone indicates that they trust corporations to look out for our best interests.
One only has to realize that the one and only goal of a corporation is to make money for it's investors. For right or wrong corporations are motivated by greed. How many CEOs would risk losing their job by doing something that, although was in the best interest of the public, lost money for the stockholders? (Well unless they could heavily pad their own bank accounts in doing so.)
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that corporations are treated like something that they are not. Individuals. No corporation should be allowed to have the same rights as an individual and no corporation should be allowed to donate money to a political campaign. ALL campaign contributions should have to be made by real people individually using their own money.
If you have ever talked to a politician, off the record just person to person, you probably realized that they are really not all that well informed about the issues. Most have only one thing that they really want and that is to be re-elected and gather more power to themselves.
Given the three points above: 1. Corporations only want to make money, 2. Corporations are allowed to donate HUGE amounts of money to political campaigns and 3. Politicians really only want to keep their jobs, it's not hard to figure out that, in order to fulfill their goal to make money, the corporations will donate enough money to self-serving politicians to ensure that their interests are first on any political agenda.
The real answer here is to remove corporate influence from politics. However being that our lawmakers benefit from not letting that happen it will be an uphill battle.
"No, its a company that has a crappy business plan..."
/. buzzwords out of this -- they are not relevant at all to the topic."
Wrong. It's a company that HAD a crappy business plan and to say that because they made a past mistake that we should overlook all the good work that they have done and allow them to sink into oblivion is incredibly short sited.
"A company asking for cash donations so it can survive a little longer is one of the dummest things I have ever heard."
Well, just listen to yourself.
"Maybe they should rethink their business plan instead..."
They already have. They admitted that they took some bad advice. There current business plan seems very solid.
"You are not helping out the "movement" at all- Linux does not rely on Mandrake for survival."
Linux does not depend on Mandrake alone but keeping Mandrake alive IS helping make Linux strong.
"If you want to donate your money, that is fine, but you should realize that by donating you are just throwing your cash down the toilet to enable a crappy business to survive another week."
Oh, you're just a fountain of wisdom. NOT!
"And you should leave Microsoft, DRM, and all of the other
Taken in context is was very relevant. Maybe you just weren't able to understand the original poster's point.
"Have you considered that the number of folks who complain are so few they can't support Mandrake? That the number of people who prefer Mandrake over some other distro are too few?"
And have you considered that maybe most of the people who are screaming that they would never pay might be self-centered leaches that would do the same to any distro that needed help?
If you use Mandrake then contributing isn't giving the company a "hand-out." End of story.
"Give the user some damn knowledge, not an invisible install mechanism."
That's fine for a computer literate person but for the hair dresser who just want's to pick up her email that's not going to work. For all of the people in the world for which the computer is not the center of their universe (And that's most people.) a set of instructions about how to manually setup a piece of hardware is a real turn-off.
As an IT professional, I spend most of my time creating programs that allow non-geeks to use computers. It's a real challenge sometimes because an interface that I as a computer geek thinks is very easy is not intuitive for non-computer types at all.
Linux use to be a geeks only OS but the times are changing and we need exactly the ?brain dead? installation utilities that you so dislike. That doesn't mean that you and I can't pop the hood and tweak to our hearts content but for Grandpa and Grandma we need to make it simple.
"Easy to install means being both network-deployable and well documented..."
No, that's YOUR idea of easy to install. Easy to install to most people means NOT having to be a techie to get it to work and Mandrake does that. Call it "braindead" if you want but the average user just wants to browse the web, send and receive email etc. They just want to use the computer not spend a life time learning how to set it up. Their use of Linux is every bit as valid as your's and mine.
"And your comment about market philosophy bullshit was unwarrented. There is a demand for quality Linux software. Mandrake is not it."
You don't have a clue about what you are talking about. Mandrake is probably the leader in making a Linux product easy to install. And as far as doing anything for the movement what have YOU done lately?
Mankind grew up trying to explain everything in a self centered way. Religions sprang up that separated God, man and animals. Christianity for example teaches that God made man in his image and all of the animals were put on Earth for man. In this belief system, mankind is very much on center stage and it is somewhat unthinkable that God would have created another race on some distant planet. I think that man's early beliefs are still with us today.
We really don't have enough information yet to tell if life is rare or abundant in the universe. Is life on our planet a one in a million or one in a trillion chance?
I liked the part in the movie 'Contact' where Jody Foster is explaining that if only one planet out of some very high number (I don't remember exactly) had life and if only one of those had intelligent life and so on that there would be millions of races in the universe.
It is a bit vain to think that we are anything special. However, even if there are millions of races in the universe, the universe is a VERY big place. Such great distances may separate us all that meeting beings from other races is impractical or even impossible.
"In summary 'Microsoft says it's opening its Office desktop software by adding support for XML--a move that should help companies free up access to shared information."
Are we talking about true standard XML is Microsoft going to "embrace and extend" it?
Okay seriously. The problem with digitally enhancing something is that depending on how you "enhance" it you can make it out to be almost anything.
For example: The "face on mars." Enhanced one way and it looks like a face, enhanced another and it's just an unimpressive hill.
Just look at how helpful Microsoft's faked.. I mean digitally enhanced evidence was to their case...
Let's see... The economy is in the toilet and the prices of their products are grossly inflated. Many people prefer to eat, keep a roof over their heads and close on their backs over paying 20 bucks for a couple of songs that they like.
Could this be part of the reason that their sales are down?? Nah, must be the pirating...
"The RIAA is an industry association. It does not control its members, its members control it."
Do you not think that the heads of the major recording labels have control over the RIAA??
I understand your comment perfectly. Stop being argumentative. ElcomSoft offered the product via the internet and the DOJ's position is that because of that it is being offered for sale in the US and therefore run afoul of the DMCA.
Like I said, I do not like the DMCA. I do not support the DOJ's position or actions.
Don't shoot me, I'm only the piano player!
As I said, I am NOT in favor of the DMCA laws. And yes, "jurisdiction" means a lot to me.
Nowhere did I defend the actions of the DOJ.
From the article:
"After much wrangling among attorneys over the definition of the word "willful," the judge told jurors that in order to find the company guilty, they must agree that company representatives knew their actions were illegal and intended to violate the law. Merely offering a product that could violate copyrights was not enough to warrant a conviction, the jury instructions said."
I'm not in favor of the DMCA but the software that this company developed does go afoul of this law. It is only the fact that it couldn't be proven that they knew it was in violation of the law that got them off.
This is not as big a win against the DMCA as some want to believe.
How long until there will be a major ISP whose plans include discounts for spam-fighters? (Help us to sue every spammer than sent mail to you and get $9.95 disount on your next bill :) )"
This is a very interesting comment. It might actually work for states that have anti-spamming laws.
ISPs would have to make sure that the requirements for each state are clearly posted as not all bulk email would be in violation of most anti-spamming laws. In Washington State for example the law focuses on fraudulent behavior. I.E. Faked heading information, misleading subject line etc.
Washington State residents who want some protection from spam must give the spammer some way to know that their email address is a Washington State email address. I believe that the state maintains an email list that one can register their email address. If registered it is expected that the spammer has checked the list for each name prior to sending the email.
Anyway, if the spammer goes afoul of the law, the individual is allowed to collect up to $500.00 per spam and I believe that the ISP is allowed to collect $1,000.00 or more per email.
It seems like if ISPs were smart about it they could bankrupt some of the really big spammers.
Say it with me -- Most Spam is NOT advertising...
Many states that are adopting anti-spam laws are focusing in on the fraud, misrepresentation, etc.
Most spam does not come from businesses who are contacting potential customers with interesting information. There is a big difference between that and some jerk who finds my name on a list and emails me with: "Make Money Fast", "Find Information About Anyone" or "Increase the Size of Your Penis."
Although there are some companies who send legitimate emails to customers who have opted-in most spam comes from scammers who do not have a legitimate product, who don't honor opt-out requests and who use false header information because they know what they are doing is wrong.
A few self-centered, greedy, low-life, fuckhead bastards are ruining email for everyone and there is no flippin' reason in the world that we should allow this. I say hang 'em!
Linus does have control over the kernel but I don't think he is as dogmatic about binary only drivers as are other people. If we want Linux to become mainstream we need to have new hardware supported and if that means allowing companies to distribute binary only drivers then we need to find a way to allow that.
"Also, by the same token, Microsoft is well within their rights to say, "We will only allow you to run Microsoft sanctioned software under Windows".
This I don't agree with. It would be a blatant abuse of their monopoly power and therefore illegal.
Ah, if it were only that easy.
I use to get so frustrated with Mandrake because things that would compile fine on Redhat using just the commands that you gave would bomb on Mandrake.
But at any rate the average user shouldn't have to compile anything. Most computer users just want there computer to work without jumping through any hoops.
I know my way around a computer pretty well but even I reach a point where I want to stop configuring my system and just use it. A non-geek starts off just wanting everything to work.
Oops. Attached to the wrong story...