not to bring up a small point, but the US is NOT in a state of declared war with anybody right now. We are not "at war" with the country of Iraq.. we are engaging in a "policing action" against it's leader, and sticking around to make sure there is peace for the Iraqies. The Congress of the United States did not declare war... only they can do that. They allowed the president to use the military, but that's a different set of powers. Besides, like another reply says, the war on "terrorism" will never be won.. there will always be somebody new to "theaten us"
after reading many of these comments, an inverse system would seem to be best. Maintain the whole catalog for $1.49... but periodically have "sales" of featured artist for a limited time. Then time becomes the restraint.. and music is as much about fashion as economics. The key would be to have very low prices on a lot of stuff, but "cherry pick" to keep people interested. Put one or two hits out along with a larger percent of back catalog to get people familiar. Then rotate next month to a new group of favorites.. having spiked demand for some new artist along the way. Right now the music industry is all about the "fashion" part.. They want to sell the "rock star" stuff and then wither away. What they're missing is that they sit on a great deal of older stuff that's important for sentimantal or historical reasons. In a way, with longer copyrights they've set themselves up as "custodians" of culture.. they could remake themselves as long-term entieies.. after all, there is real value in maintaining and preserving all that culture. The same applies to movies as well... remember, the orginal starwars and snow white were mostly destroyed by age... "micropayments" would be a good incentive for the rights-holders to earn their keep and keep historical stuff alive. They've pretty much ban individiual collectors from reproducing stuff, so it falls to them to step up.. there's no reason NOT to keep the stuff alive now.
Hasn't this already been done? The only catch would be you'd have to give your account password to the new owner of the song. Right now there's no mechanism to transfer the ownership. But selling songs is entirely legal as far as I know. I suppose it would be more like selling accounts on MMORGS.. If you were willing to sell the whole account it would work.
Think of iTunes more like bottled water... Water is essensially free, it's everywhere... but not all of it is desireable and depending on where you are at in the world it may be of questionable health. Enter Water bottlers... they bottle it up and then sell it... it's all about the service of having clean water you can drink readily available. iTunes is the same way.. It's not about a "product" anymore, rather about getting music sales as quicly as possible when the demand strikes. I'm surprised more Music video places, radio stations, TV shows... aren't capitalizing on that fact. Most of the cool "teen" WB shows point out a cool song in the sound track... a whole untapped market exists in pointing out those songs on iTunes. $.99 is what somebody will buy for an "impulse" buy....the only thing I see better than iTunes would be the ability to fill up right at the mall, movie theatre, concert.. I could see a wireless iPod with a strong delivery mechanism really mopping up sales. The key is either take Cash or micropayments... get music for everybodies iPod when you're out with the gang... that's where this should be headding!
But that's the catch...particularly with business/software patents. The key to most patents is to make it broad enough that you can't get around it. With Physical patents it's easy.. go to the store and purchase a competitor's product and make a mechanism that does the same thing only differently! With software the actual code is not patented... only the results of the code... in essance they patented a "magic box" that does something.. even if they did register the source, that would be "trade secret" and also protected under copyright... put DRM on the file and now you can't even look at the binary without violating DMCA! It's the perfect Scam!!...and perfectly legal. The companies doing the suing are just lawyers... They have nothing to loose and everything to gain.
I understand the case for software patents.. stuff like MPEG, MP3, and OpenGL doesn't come for free. It's very unique and requires much hard work to get the invention working. That's what got software patents in the door in the first place, as industrial controls became "computerized" they refused to allow any patent that relied on a computer process at all... kind of silly when you think about a patent for an entire electrical generator, or fuel injection system... software is the "key" component that makes it all work.
it's a conversion from the Cold war to the "Drug War".. during the Cold War the CIA used many of the drug dealers connections as means to monitor and control other govenments... stuff totally illegal and off the books. There was great fear that an agency with that much power would turn on citizens, so the CIA was not allowed to operate in "normal" criminal affairs. Thing is now that we're done with that it'd be nice if those agents could turn those contacts in to "regular" authorities... turn over wiretap transcripts, etc. to help fight the "war on drugs". These guys know where bodies are burried, who sells the most drugs, and probably have lots of extra footage of hotel rooms of imporant people, bank account info, and other dirty laundry the "cops" would love to see.
Thing is that most of that intel was aquired on US citizens ILLEGALLY... but that's OK because it couldn't be used to prove you didn't pay taxes or like hummers from your wife. "Patriot" was around for years trying to make a grab for all that info... and letigimize the illegal means they used at the same time!!!
That's why the US is set up as a republic not a democracy. The Federal Government is not supposed to be democratic... it was intended to be entirely appoined by state/local officals not at-large elections that way your local leaders are gauranteed to be heard by the feds because THEY put them there... not the other way around! The worst amendment in that respect is the one that gauranteed popular election of senators. That removed the last foothold states had in containing the feds. What people forget is that you are supposed to elect your local people.. and they are responsible to YOU; you kow their name. They are supposed to represent your "governmental unit" to the next higher level.. in that system past the bottom levels, everybody's ass is directly accountable to somebody else that really understands the issues. When you go to an "all popular" election, the branches are not accountable to anybody else.. there's nobody in the know to reel them in or set them straight.
no, the southern boarder is where all Bush's business friends get their cheap labor from... That's why he wants "temporary permits" and not expulsions for illegals. I'm sure Mexico would like to reduce the flow of stupid US'ians with money that go there to cause trouble too. The business "class" doesn't want truely closed boarders.. it's how they justify their "rich kid" fun... because it happens out of the country [or in Vegas] but heaven forbid we allow that [whoreing, loose sex, gambling, recreational drugs, etc] at home. The northern boarder with Canada is pretty tame.. Canada doesn't geographically connect anywhere else so it's not the same thing as here... again, they'd probably prefer more restrictions to keep US'ians out...
Even if that was the case that they could be terrorists, why did we bring them back to US controlled soil? Why did we not simply detain them in the country where they committed the "crimes"? More than that it's not about whether they are or aren't terrorist! It's about the US following what we SHOULD do.. not neccessaraly what's legally allowed, but what's RIGHT. What's going on in Git'mo isn't RIGHT... even if they are monsters, we have no business allowing our citizens to decend to their level and become monsters themselves... that's why everybody is so upset about it. The thing that defined the US in the Cold War in many minds is we don't do THAT [disapearing, tourture, indefinate detention]... that's what made US different from THEM!
but Blender is missing key plugins to convert file formats...or they're really buggy. Nobody put the work into it because "GMax is free!" I've been looking for simple tools for Warcraft 3 or quake 3 and there are some import/export for blender, but nothing that can do the whole deal.
but you can't email hand drawings.... many, many small shops have to deal with autocad to get business. Sure, it's only $x,000 for a license, but it's only the smallest part of what they do.. imagine paying $3,000 to read email! I've been on the IT end of some of this stuff and it's really fustrating. Much like with Microsoft Word.. if one customer [big corp with deep pockets and cheap contract] upgrades you either fork out [at more than full price] or don't get business.
For comparison, imagine the outcry if Adobe trippled the cost of Photoshop over 5 years. Now tell people "just don't use it".
looking at other news sorces, he filed for all of these, but may not have been "pre-approved" and some people [pro microsoft] think he should have put all the sponsors of the events down.. not just the committee paying him... it's a tempest in a teapot. There's no wrongdoing here, just squibbling about whether he filled out the paperwork right or not. All of these happened AFTER the decision was made to switch to ODF too.
This was a political thing.. some reporter thinks they're smearing somebody... they waited for a long weekend to even report it when he can't respond... this is editorial abuse, heads should be rolling... and not his.
but even in the Disney situation, the Mouse is still in use by them.. so the trademark still stands.. sure you could reprint the older toons, but you still couldn't releas new "Mickey Mouse" works because Disney is still using that character... that's the key difference between trademark and copyright but it's getting lost in the noise.
it's more a tradmark dispute than anything... Lego is saying that the shape and type of their blocks should be covered under their tradmark too.. Being as they've been around 50 years!!!! now it is only fair that any patents would have worn off by now. Lego has the same problem as the Rollerblade people keeping their trademark from becoming a common noun in the dictionary. Allowing somebody to make a matching product without any challange dilutes their tradmark.
That said, Lego's QA on their product is second to none! I have blocks I got hand-me-down that still fit perfectly with new blocks off-the-shelf. The knock-off brands just don't get the quality part.. they try to make cheaper blocks or more features, but the key to Lego's success is simple quality...
they kept the whole computer silly, it's evidence so he'll never get it back again... they're to busy to make a backup copy for him to have back to use if he had important work on it after all..
one thing about using something like google to "rat out" people is that google could probably prove 100,000 people look up scary stuff like "how to kill..." but only a fraction of them actually commit a crime. If anything admitting actual Google data as evdence would prove that murders are a very small needle in a large haystack of curious, twisted, people out there.. perhaps that same data could be used to prove that lots of people search for porn, how to kill, etc. but very few molest children or murder somebody. Looking at something and actually doing it are two totally different things!!!
And actually you ARE right, google's whole business model is all about figureing out who you are and what you like so they can sell that information to advertizers. I doubt they're the point they match names with cookies, but they probably do match up your search requests to give you better ads.
to be blunt, "little people" HAVE been arrested and tried by prosecutors for much smaller infractions than that... like the School admin that installed SETI on some school computers... this is AT LEAST as bad as that so where is that prosecutor now???
and i810 was obsolete like 3-4 years ago? Why is it so imparitive to keep that information secret so long... of course because it's obsolete there's no monetary reason to give you the specs either... so they need to get in the habit of opening up stuff from the beginning!
The problem is that the vendors could get together and override half the kernel making all your hardware only work with their drivers.. and use the DMCA to stop you from writing Open Linux drivers!!! Nvidia walks a fine line with theirs trying to keep them closed, but keep them legal.. it can be done, these companies just don't want to...
The core Linux Kernel is GPL, not LGPL... if you link to it in a program, you have to abide by the GPL. That's copyright law. YES, the vendors could put their drivers as binaries in user-space, but that would make them slower, or leave "holes" to see how it connects to the standard interfaces. This is all about writing drivers that can bypass kernel functions and do their own thing.. without being open or playing by the GPL.
Lest we forget the history of the GPL, you'd understand that the whole reason RMS helped start the FSF was because of proprietary drivers!!! His pivotal moment came when he was a professor and wanted code for a mainframe printer that was "obsoleted" by the manufacturer. He had a perfectly good printer, but the server was upgraded and the company wanted them to buy a new one rather than support it.. so much that they wouldn't offer the source code to an MIT professor!!
Open Source drivers are the cornerstone of OSS... because if you can't see how something works, or even HOW to make it work then you have nothing but a plastic box on your desk. The point is that you paid for the device, printer, video card, cpu, so you should have to have anybody's permission telling you how or when you can use it.
While I'd like proprietary drivers too, some stuff is patented or secret and they don't want to share it, offically it will never happen... Linus's view is that he can't fix things if he can't see them.. and he's not going to sign a bunch of NDAs just for drivers, he's too busy. Nor, can he gaurantee what the kernel is doing if you're running a bunch of "secret" stuff that could be doing "god-knows-what" behind your back!
windows isn't free! "white box" geeks tend to buy their systems a piece at a time so windows is an extra $150 purchase. You could say the same about hardware.. I just bought a high-end cpu, mobo, and video card, why should I have to pay for an OS to run my drivers on???? Right now the ONLY thing holding me back from dumping windows are the windows-only games I've invested in... if 5.0 works as well as they say, it would seem to be what I've been waiting for.
Re:Would gaming companies target this platform?
on
Cedega 5.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
Exactly, Cedega would be better to push off to developers as extra QC rather than a whole rewrite. A game that works 100% with Cedega would definately work with window.. and probably be the better for it.
Slashdot Mirror
not to bring up a small point, but the US is NOT in a state of declared war with anybody right now. We are not "at war" with the country of Iraq.. we are engaging in a "policing action" against it's leader, and sticking around to make sure there is peace for the Iraqies. The Congress of the United States did not declare war... only they can do that. They allowed the president to use the military, but that's a different set of powers. Besides, like another reply says, the war on "terrorism" will never be won.. there will always be somebody new to "theaten us"
after reading many of these comments, an inverse system would seem to be best. Maintain the whole catalog for $1.49... but periodically have "sales" of featured artist for a limited time. Then time becomes the restraint.. and music is as much about fashion as economics. The key would be to have very low prices on a lot of stuff, but "cherry pick" to keep people interested. Put one or two hits out along with a larger percent of back catalog to get people familiar. Then rotate next month to a new group of favorites.. having spiked demand for some new artist along the way. Right now the music industry is all about the "fashion" part.. They want to sell the "rock star" stuff and then wither away. What they're missing is that they sit on a great deal of older stuff that's important for sentimantal or historical reasons. In a way, with longer copyrights they've set themselves up as "custodians" of culture.. they could remake themselves as long-term entieies.. after all, there is real value in maintaining and preserving all that culture. The same applies to movies as well... remember, the orginal starwars and snow white were mostly destroyed by age... "micropayments" would be a good incentive for the rights-holders to earn their keep and keep historical stuff alive. They've pretty much ban individiual collectors from reproducing stuff, so it falls to them to step up.. there's no reason NOT to keep the stuff alive now.
Hasn't this already been done? The only catch would be you'd have to give your account password to the new owner of the song. Right now there's no mechanism to transfer the ownership. But selling songs is entirely legal as far as I know. I suppose it would be more like selling accounts on MMORGS.. If you were willing to sell the whole account it would work.
Think of iTunes more like bottled water... Water is essensially free, it's everywhere... but not all of it is desireable and depending on where you are at in the world it may be of questionable health. Enter Water bottlers... they bottle it up and then sell it... it's all about the service of having clean water you can drink readily available. iTunes is the same way.. It's not about a "product" anymore, rather about getting music sales as quicly as possible when the demand strikes. I'm surprised more Music video places, radio stations, TV shows... aren't capitalizing on that fact. Most of the cool "teen" WB shows point out a cool song in the sound track... a whole untapped market exists in pointing out those songs on iTunes. $.99 is what somebody will buy for an "impulse" buy....the only thing I see better than iTunes would be the ability to fill up right at the mall, movie theatre, concert.. I could see a wireless iPod with a strong delivery mechanism really mopping up sales. The key is either take Cash or micropayments... get music for everybodies iPod when you're out with the gang... that's where this should be headding!
I understand the case for software patents.. stuff like MPEG, MP3, and OpenGL doesn't come for free. It's very unique and requires much hard work to get the invention working. That's what got software patents in the door in the first place, as industrial controls became "computerized" they refused to allow any patent that relied on a computer process at all... kind of silly when you think about a patent for an entire electrical generator, or fuel injection system... software is the "key" component that makes it all work.
Thing is that most of that intel was aquired on US citizens ILLEGALLY... but that's OK because it couldn't be used to prove you didn't pay taxes or like hummers from your wife. "Patriot" was around for years trying to make a grab for all that info... and letigimize the illegal means they used at the same time!!!
That's why the US is set up as a republic not a democracy. The Federal Government is not supposed to be democratic... it was intended to be entirely appoined by state/local officals not at-large elections that way your local leaders are gauranteed to be heard by the feds because THEY put them there... not the other way around! The worst amendment in that respect is the one that gauranteed popular election of senators. That removed the last foothold states had in containing the feds. What people forget is that you are supposed to elect your local people.. and they are responsible to YOU; you kow their name. They are supposed to represent your "governmental unit" to the next higher level.. in that system past the bottom levels, everybody's ass is directly accountable to somebody else that really understands the issues. When you go to an "all popular" election, the branches are not accountable to anybody else.. there's nobody in the know to reel them in or set them straight.
no, the southern boarder is where all Bush's business friends get their cheap labor from... That's why he wants "temporary permits" and not expulsions for illegals. I'm sure Mexico would like to reduce the flow of stupid US'ians with money that go there to cause trouble too. The business "class" doesn't want truely closed boarders.. it's how they justify their "rich kid" fun... because it happens out of the country [or in Vegas] but heaven forbid we allow that [whoreing, loose sex, gambling, recreational drugs, etc] at home. The northern boarder with Canada is pretty tame.. Canada doesn't geographically connect anywhere else so it's not the same thing as here... again, they'd probably prefer more restrictions to keep US'ians out...
Even if that was the case that they could be terrorists, why did we bring them back to US controlled soil? Why did we not simply detain them in the country where they committed the "crimes"? More than that it's not about whether they are or aren't terrorist! It's about the US following what we SHOULD do.. not neccessaraly what's legally allowed, but what's RIGHT. What's going on in Git'mo isn't RIGHT... even if they are monsters, we have no business allowing our citizens to decend to their level and become monsters themselves... that's why everybody is so upset about it. The thing that defined the US in the Cold War in many minds is we don't do THAT [disapearing, tourture, indefinate detention] ... that's what made US different from THEM!
but Blender is missing key plugins to convert file formats...or they're really buggy. Nobody put the work into it because "GMax is free!" I've been looking for simple tools for Warcraft 3 or quake 3 and there are some import/export for blender, but nothing that can do the whole deal.
For comparison, imagine the outcry if Adobe trippled the cost of Photoshop over 5 years. Now tell people "just don't use it".
This was a political thing.. some reporter thinks they're smearing somebody... they waited for a long weekend to even report it when he can't respond... this is editorial abuse, heads should be rolling... and not his.
Did she bring back chips?
[still playing same game when she left]
but even in the Disney situation, the Mouse is still in use by them.. so the trademark still stands.. sure you could reprint the older toons, but you still couldn't releas new "Mickey Mouse" works because Disney is still using that character... that's the key difference between trademark and copyright but it's getting lost in the noise.
That said, Lego's QA on their product is second to none! I have blocks I got hand-me-down that still fit perfectly with new blocks off-the-shelf. The knock-off brands just don't get the quality part.. they try to make cheaper blocks or more features, but the key to Lego's success is simple quality...
they kept the whole computer silly, it's evidence so he'll never get it back again... they're to busy to make a backup copy for him to have back to use if he had important work on it after all..
And actually you ARE right, google's whole business model is all about figureing out who you are and what you like so they can sell that information to advertizers. I doubt they're the point they match names with cookies, but they probably do match up your search requests to give you better ads.
to be blunt, "little people" HAVE been arrested and tried by prosecutors for much smaller infractions than that... like the School admin that installed SETI on some school computers... this is AT LEAST as bad as that so where is that prosecutor now???
but it HASN'T been proven in a court of law!!! MS has bullied or bought what they want when they accuse somebody of using "windows" in a product name.
and i810 was obsolete like 3-4 years ago? Why is it so imparitive to keep that information secret so long... of course because it's obsolete there's no monetary reason to give you the specs either... so they need to get in the habit of opening up stuff from the beginning!
The problem is that the vendors could get together and override half the kernel making all your hardware only work with their drivers.. and use the DMCA to stop you from writing Open Linux drivers!!! Nvidia walks a fine line with theirs trying to keep them closed, but keep them legal.. it can be done, these companies just don't want to...
The core Linux Kernel is GPL, not LGPL... if you link to it in a program, you have to abide by the GPL. That's copyright law. YES, the vendors could put their drivers as binaries in user-space, but that would make them slower, or leave "holes" to see how it connects to the standard interfaces. This is all about writing drivers that can bypass kernel functions and do their own thing.. without being open or playing by the GPL.
Open Source drivers are the cornerstone of OSS... because if you can't see how something works, or even HOW to make it work then you have nothing but a plastic box on your desk. The point is that you paid for the device, printer, video card, cpu, so you should have to have anybody's permission telling you how or when you can use it.
While I'd like proprietary drivers too, some stuff is patented or secret and they don't want to share it, offically it will never happen... Linus's view is that he can't fix things if he can't see them.. and he's not going to sign a bunch of NDAs just for drivers, he's too busy. Nor, can he gaurantee what the kernel is doing if you're running a bunch of "secret" stuff that could be doing "god-knows-what" behind your back!
windows isn't free! "white box" geeks tend to buy their systems a piece at a time so windows is an extra $150 purchase. You could say the same about hardware.. I just bought a high-end cpu, mobo, and video card, why should I have to pay for an OS to run my drivers on???? Right now the ONLY thing holding me back from dumping windows are the windows-only games I've invested in... if 5.0 works as well as they say, it would seem to be what I've been waiting for.
Exactly, Cedega would be better to push off to developers as extra QC rather than a whole rewrite. A game that works 100% with Cedega would definately work with window.. and probably be the better for it.