i think you totally missed the parent's point. he's not talking about market share. he's not talking about overtaking windows or ruling the world. he's talking about linux being a perfectly fine desktop system for many people today, which is true.
as to your other comments: when i'm forced to use a windows machine, i easily prefer win2k over winxp. as for mac os x... not really a fan. sure, it's pretty, and it's polished, but i feel like i'm in a jail anytime i want to do anything interesting with it. give me a linux machine instead. yes, i'm not a typical "user" - i'm a techie and a dev. i'm happy with linux as it is, and, i'll say it again: it's a perfectly viable desktop system that is "here" today for many of us. if that's not the case for you, that's a shame, but it's not my problem, and, no offence, but i don't care all that much. maybe that makes me selfish; so be it.
Copies are defined as tangible objects in section 101. If you know how to send tangible objects via the Internet, please feel free to send one to me. Just put one paperclip, say, on your server, and I'll download it, and be able to hold it in my hands when it pops out of my NIC or wherever.
But if you can't arrange that, then please admit that you cannot move an extant copy across the Internet, but can only create a new copy at the downloading end, based upon a preexisting copy at the server.
You're contradicting yourself here. If I download a song from allofmp3.com and store it on my computer (assuming I never burn it to a CD) then this entire point is moot, because you are actually asserting that no one has made a copy in the first place. A "song" is not tangible, and neither is the "data" of it that crosses over the internet or is represented by magnetic patterns on your hard drive.
Now, I haven't been following this discussion too closely, so you may just be talking about import law when you're defining a "copy" here, but if not, and what you're asserting is correct, then downloading an MP3 from a P2P service is _not_ an act of copyright infringement because a copy has not been made! So all the so-called "pirates" on the P2P services are innocent.
Now, I'm not saying I believe all this: you might recognise my argument as an example of reductio ad absurdum. What you've apparently forgotten here is the fact that copyright has _absolutely_nothing_ to do with tangibility. In fact, the entire _point_ of copyright is to protect that which is intangible.
I think the point of the parent was to illustrate the absurdity of it all. Dead people's works are still copyrighted? Why? To use your example, why does Janie Hendrix deserve money for something her stepbrother created? To play devil's advocate with myself, I can understand it in the case where the deceased was directly supporting a dependent (such as a spouse or non-independent children) with their copyrighted work when they died. But otherwise it's just silly.
Yeah, that's pretty much on target (/. crowd). Personally, I'd be fine with 99c/song (or some kind of monthly subscription), but I won't pay 99c for a DRM-encumbered file.
Give me a choice of Ogg Vorbis or FLAC, give me the choice to pay an "all you can eat"-type periodic subscription, or a per-song price (with a discount for an "album's" worth of songs). I'd like to see this store backed by artists who actually get a large chunk of my change, not by huge music conglomerates. The obvious one: I don't want any DRM on the files themselves. A supported Linux client is a must, of course (or a web interface). 30 second preview clips are good enough for me to decide if I like a song enough to buy it.
So, as you might guess, I'm not buying any online music anytime soon...
That's utter bullshit. I do agree that voting third party likely takes many many more votes away from Kerry than it does from Bush. But the reason that we perpetuate a two-party system is because of idiots like you who always pick "the lesser of the two evils". If that's ever going to change, people are going to have to start "throwing away" their votes for what they believe is right, not giving their votes away to what they believe is "not as bad as it could be".
At the very least, third-party voting numbers do infulence the policies of the two major parties. If Kerry loses in 2004 because 7% of the nation voted third-party, the leading Democratic candidates in 2008 are going to incorporate some of the issues and viewpoints of these third parties to appear more attractive.
Voting for a Republican or a Democrat when you don't believe in their views means you don't give a shit about the country. The system isn't going to change unless you work with it, a little at a time. Or start an armed revolution, but that's a bit more costly and difficult. I'd much rather start fighting now for a reasonable president in 2016 than continue the Rep and Dem crap that's been going on for so long - a situation that isn't going to change by embracing the status quo. Try having some long-term goals. They're good for you.
You'd be surprised at the crap bikes some assholes will steal. I had an old store-bought bike, rusty chain, somewhat rusty gears, probably worth less than $100, and it got stolen. From my garage. In broad daylight. (Granted, the garage door was open, but the bike was behind my car and not in easy view.)
While I do agree that mozilla.org should be more up-front about Firefox's beta nature, they _have_ been calling it a "Technology Preview" for quite a while, and the current release is advertised as a "Preview Release". The fact that it's had a 0.x version number should be enough to clue people in that it's beta. Then again, as it's become more mainstream, I suppose there may be people that don't understand version number schemes too well.
Ah, but courts (US courts, anyway) have ruled that the act of 'copying' a program into RAM for the purposes of running it does not constitute a copyright violation. I'd imagine something similar might be applied here. Regardless, if you put your sensitive banking documents on a thumb drive, and someone stole it and looked at your documents, and then used them to get at your money in some way, you'd be suing them for fraud, not for copyright infringment. The latter would get you laughed out of court.
The best thing a president can do to revitalize a sluggish economy is press for tax cuts, and President Bush did that, and it's working (for the moment).
Excuse me, but you are woefully misinformed. Tax cuts can help, but not in the way Bush has implemented them. Over the past four years, the tax breaks he's instituted have done nothing but give the richest portions of America tax breaks (reference: one of Bush's earlier tax-related actions). He may be changing his tune now that election day is coming, but it's too little, too late.
How can you say we have a global economy, when so much of the world is unequal? Cost of living is vastly lower in these outsourcing hotbeds. Labor regulations are, for the most part, more relaxed than in the US and other developed countries.
Outsourcing is not good for the US economy. It is good for the world economy as a whole, but do not mistake that as being good for the US economy. Go read some Adam Smith if you don't get it. And not just the parts that seem to jive with your personal preference - read everything he has to say. A net positive effect on the global economy does not mean a net positive effect on every participant in the global economy. A free market structure only guarantees that the world as a whole will see a net benefit. Countries such as the US are not in a position to benefit from a global economy, at least not with the current state of affairs in some of the less-developed participants.
I'm not against outsourcing, at least not in principle, but the rampant migration of wealth out of the US needs to stop.
What "next wave of domestic IT jobs"? There's nothing that seems to indicate that this is ever going to be a reality, and there's every indication that the current trend is either going to just simply continue, or will eventually level off.
I hear you. I was an EE at my school, but I took a bunch of CS classes (I wanted the minor, which I didn't end up completing anyway). The vast majority of the programming classes are done in Java. From what I understand the C++ class has now been dropped, and there's now a C# class. When I took it, the OS class was in C++, but it was all Windows-based. Who knows, it may move to C# in the next few years. A friend of mine graduated with a masters in CS from Cornell's 5-year program, and, while he knows his way around C, he's by no means an experienced C coder. Fortunately, he knows enough and has a good enough foundation that he could easily pick up everything he needs to know on his own, but it bothers me that they're not teaching C/C++ as a fundamental language. I suppose it's starting to go the way of assembly. (Amusingly, though I suppose not too surprisingly, I had more exposure to assembly in my EE classes than any CS major I knew.)
Hate to sound like an AOLer, but "me too". I've been out of college a little less than a year, and I've been doing contracting work since then. I have a little money saved up (despite college loan payments), and I'd be interested in doing something "different". I'm not sure how to go about doing any of this, but I'd like to see where this goes.
Email address is next to my/. login name, obfuscated, or you can use my real name (Brian) at the domain of my website.
Agreed. I'm no idiot, and I think I'm a damned good engineer. But I'd be a fool for thinking that the fact that I have a job now is solely because of my qualifications. A significant part of it is being lucky enough to know a few people who could get my foot in the door. I've been out of college for nine months, and if it wasn't for luck, I'd be living at home with my dad right now. Hell, I know plenty of people less lucky than I who are in that exact situation.
Trade wouldn't take place if both countries didn't benefit. Now the benefits within the country and company are unevenly distributed, but the NET is positive for both sides, or they wouldn't trade to begin with. Your argument about the distribution is true to some extent, the gains are initially taken in the form of profits rather than higher wages and lower prices, but over time higher profits tend to be reduced by competition and wage pressure, as well as inflation. This is true for all things in capitalistic enterprises, this characteristic is not unique to outsourcing. So trade is a net plus, though you can certainly argue that some individuals are less well off.
I think you're only considering an idealised situation. Trade takes place when the _parties involved_ benefit. In the current case, the party on the US side is the US-based corporation. The country as a whole (or its people) is not necessariy benefitting from the arrangement. And indeed, the average US citizen is being hurt by the trade that's occurring - at least at present. Profits for most corporations are not at a high, and the outsourcing trend seems to be more of a stopgap measure so the corps affected stop losing so much money. It's a nasty progression - overseas companies produce cheaper goods -> Americans buy these cheaper goods because there are no trade protections in place -> American companies need to cut costs and so lay of American workers and outsource -> the cheap prices seen by American consumers don't seem quite as cheap anymore due to reduced job availability and reduced wages. Overall, no one in the US is being helped out here. The American people are out of work, and those that can find work are getting paid less than they used to. American corporations are frantically downsizing and outsourcing because they're losing tons of cash to overseas competition (competition I would consider unfair, but that's another topic). In the end, America loses money, both the people and the corporations.
As for distribution of wealth, before the advent of modern financial markets, only the wealthy could own a company, since only they (or a small group of relatively wealthy people) had the money to invest in such a thing. The average person now is much more likely to be a beneficiary of higher profits than before, as more people own stocks etc, compared to before. This trend will only continue.
You're vastly overestimating the number and type of people that have strong investments. Sure, the average person is more likely to own a chunk of a corporation now than they were 100 years ago. That doesn't mean that the average person is well off, or that current economic trends are positively affecting this average person. Really, this issue is only tangentially related, and current economic trends continue to distribute greater amounts of wealth to a small percentage of the population.
As a note, the higher wages you talk about in your protectionism scenario would be almost entirely inflationary (no real improvement for the people earning them). One of the effects of outsourcing is to moderate inflation, reversing this would cause a rapid rise in inflation, totally eviscerating any gains you speak of for the average person.
I'm not sure I agree with this, but I'll admit I'm not well versed in inflationary pressures. However, the parent does note that there would probably be an initial rise in prices before the market restabilises, which makes sense. It's a short-term loss to help mitigate our current problem. But what do I know...
I don't think that's really a way to look at it. The encryption exists so people can't _view_ the stuff on it. As for making copies, sure, I wouldn't want people to do that, but I don't know that I'd call it the purpose of the encryption.
At any rate, the only people that can sue under the DMCA are the copyright holders (or their designated blah blah blah). _Lexar_ doesn't hold the copyright to the stuff any of the users put on the drives, so they can't sue based on that.
Dude, did you read it? It wasn't a "first post" post. It was a valid question as to whether or not cracking the poor encryption was a DMCA violation. Which, to actually be on topic, I don't think it is, as this encryption has nothing to do with a copyright-protection device.
C'mon mods, read the timestamps. The other post about this was sent in at the same time. Can't fault a guy for having a similar idea simultaneously. -1 Redundant is a bit much...
"You guys?" In case I'm mistaken, we're all on equal footing here with regard to comment-posting ability. You could have asked the question yourself; if it got modded up and noticed, it would have gone with the official interview.
While I'm here, it's "invoking the DMCA", not "evoking." Though you spelled "hypocrisy" correctly, which is more than I can say for most of the illiterates around here. Sorry, I know it's lame to attack someone's spelling/etc., but bad spelling and word usage really get to me.
At any rate, I'd never heard of the streambox incident you mention, and, if it is as you imply, I'd be interested in hearing Glaser's explanation as well...
It makes perfect sense to me. I don't see how the fact that Real's service doesn't run on the Mac has anything to do with it. Real is targeting iPod/iTMS/Windows users. Their market research tells them that porting to the Mac is a losing proposition, and why would it be otherwise? iPod/Mac users are generally loyal Apple customers (crazy zealots or otherwise), and would be unlikely to use Real's service (even if Real had a better reputation than it does). So you're correct in that this doesn't seem like an attractive arrangement for Apple, but it's really the only thing Real is in a position to do.
So Apple refuses the deal, and what happens? Real reverse-engineers their format, and Apple doesn't get a dime. Sure, the RE process likely cost Real more than a licensing deal would have, but it seems to me that Apple's the one that lost out here. But I suppose only time will tell.
I'm sure your cynicism is mostly deserved here (in part, I share it), but at least don't blatantly lie:
3 We use a proprietary format because if we didn't, we'd get crushed by MS and Apple. If Apple, however, figured out how to play.rm, we'd sue their asses off. They won't license to us, so we won't license to them. Nyah.
In fact, Glaser said that Real would be happy to cross-license their formats with Apple. Of course, a cross-licensing scheme at this point would be a waste, because Real would be giving Apple the specs to their format in return for something they already know. Nowhere does Glaser even hint that Apple would face legal consequences for reverse engineering Real's technology, and in fact, I'm sure Glaser is well aware of the legal futility of trying to sue them for it. After all, his legal department just finished telling him it was OK to reverse engineer Apple's DRM.
9. Based on "independent" consultants on our payroll, people want alternatives to iTunes. That must mean they want us. We lost a million dollars in 3 weeks selling music at below-cost, so it must be true.
Actually, the consultants' report was that the overwhelming majority of people want to play their music on any kind of device. It had nothing to do with iTunes alternatives. Regardless, I fail to see how the independent-ness of the consultants matters in this case. Real was paying them to do market research so Real could make a business decision, not so they could pull a Microsoft by paying a supposedly-independent firm to give their product a positive evaulation.
C'mon, we have plenty of ammo against Real already. There's no need to make up stuff.
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i think you totally missed the parent's point. he's not talking about market share. he's not talking about overtaking windows or ruling the world. he's talking about linux being a perfectly fine desktop system for many people today, which is true.
as to your other comments: when i'm forced to use a windows machine, i easily prefer win2k over winxp. as for mac os x... not really a fan. sure, it's pretty, and it's polished, but i feel like i'm in a jail anytime i want to do anything interesting with it. give me a linux machine instead. yes, i'm not a typical "user" - i'm a techie and a dev. i'm happy with linux as it is, and, i'll say it again: it's a perfectly viable desktop system that is "here" today for many of us. if that's not the case for you, that's a shame, but it's not my problem, and, no offence, but i don't care all that much. maybe that makes me selfish; so be it.
Now, I haven't been following this discussion too closely, so you may just be talking about import law when you're defining a "copy" here, but if not, and what you're asserting is correct, then downloading an MP3 from a P2P service is _not_ an act of copyright infringement because a copy has not been made! So all the so-called "pirates" on the P2P services are innocent.
Now, I'm not saying I believe all this: you might recognise my argument as an example of reductio ad absurdum. What you've apparently forgotten here is the fact that copyright has _absolutely_nothing_ to do with tangibility. In fact, the entire _point_ of copyright is to protect that which is intangible.
If you're going to argue legal terms, then remember: it's not "theft", it's "copyright infringement". They are not the same thing.
I think the point of the parent was to illustrate the absurdity of it all. Dead people's works are still copyrighted? Why? To use your example, why does Janie Hendrix deserve money for something her stepbrother created? To play devil's advocate with myself, I can understand it in the case where the deceased was directly supporting a dependent (such as a spouse or non-independent children) with their copyrighted work when they died. But otherwise it's just silly.
Yeah, that's pretty much on target (/. crowd). Personally, I'd be fine with 99c/song (or some kind of monthly subscription), but I won't pay 99c for a DRM-encumbered file.
Give me a choice of Ogg Vorbis or FLAC, give me the choice to pay an "all you can eat"-type periodic subscription, or a per-song price (with a discount for an "album's" worth of songs). I'd like to see this store backed by artists who actually get a large chunk of my change, not by huge music conglomerates. The obvious one: I don't want any DRM on the files themselves. A supported Linux client is a must, of course (or a web interface). 30 second preview clips are good enough for me to decide if I like a song enough to buy it.
So, as you might guess, I'm not buying any online music anytime soon...
That's utter bullshit. I do agree that voting third party likely takes many many more votes away from Kerry than it does from Bush. But the reason that we perpetuate a two-party system is because of idiots like you who always pick "the lesser of the two evils". If that's ever going to change, people are going to have to start "throwing away" their votes for what they believe is right, not giving their votes away to what they believe is "not as bad as it could be".
At the very least, third-party voting numbers do infulence the policies of the two major parties. If Kerry loses in 2004 because 7% of the nation voted third-party, the leading Democratic candidates in 2008 are going to incorporate some of the issues and viewpoints of these third parties to appear more attractive.
Voting for a Republican or a Democrat when you don't believe in their views means you don't give a shit about the country. The system isn't going to change unless you work with it, a little at a time. Or start an armed revolution, but that's a bit more costly and difficult. I'd much rather start fighting now for a reasonable president in 2016 than continue the Rep and Dem crap that's been going on for so long - a situation that isn't going to change by embracing the status quo. Try having some long-term goals. They're good for you.
you can learn firebolt as soon as you've learned firefox... wait, or was that firebird...? or... um... phoenix?
You'd be surprised at the crap bikes some assholes will steal. I had an old store-bought bike, rusty chain, somewhat rusty gears, probably worth less than $100, and it got stolen. From my garage. In broad daylight. (Granted, the garage door was open, but the bike was behind my car and not in easy view.)
While I do agree that mozilla.org should be more up-front about Firefox's beta nature, they _have_ been calling it a "Technology Preview" for quite a while, and the current release is advertised as a "Preview Release". The fact that it's had a 0.x version number should be enough to clue people in that it's beta. Then again, as it's become more mainstream, I suppose there may be people that don't understand version number schemes too well.
Ah, but courts (US courts, anyway) have ruled that the act of 'copying' a program into RAM for the purposes of running it does not constitute a copyright violation. I'd imagine something similar might be applied here. Regardless, if you put your sensitive banking documents on a thumb drive, and someone stole it and looked at your documents, and then used them to get at your money in some way, you'd be suing them for fraud, not for copyright infringment. The latter would get you laughed out of court.
How can you say we have a global economy, when so much of the world is unequal? Cost of living is vastly lower in these outsourcing hotbeds. Labor regulations are, for the most part, more relaxed than in the US and other developed countries.
Outsourcing is not good for the US economy. It is good for the world economy as a whole, but do not mistake that as being good for the US economy. Go read some Adam Smith if you don't get it. And not just the parts that seem to jive with your personal preference - read everything he has to say. A net positive effect on the global economy does not mean a net positive effect on every participant in the global economy. A free market structure only guarantees that the world as a whole will see a net benefit. Countries such as the US are not in a position to benefit from a global economy, at least not with the current state of affairs in some of the less-developed participants.
I'm not against outsourcing, at least not in principle, but the rampant migration of wealth out of the US needs to stop.
What "next wave of domestic IT jobs"? There's nothing that seems to indicate that this is ever going to be a reality, and there's every indication that the current trend is either going to just simply continue, or will eventually level off.
I hear you. I was an EE at my school, but I took a bunch of CS classes (I wanted the minor, which I didn't end up completing anyway). The vast majority of the programming classes are done in Java. From what I understand the C++ class has now been dropped, and there's now a C# class. When I took it, the OS class was in C++, but it was all Windows-based. Who knows, it may move to C# in the next few years. A friend of mine graduated with a masters in CS from Cornell's 5-year program, and, while he knows his way around C, he's by no means an experienced C coder. Fortunately, he knows enough and has a good enough foundation that he could easily pick up everything he needs to know on his own, but it bothers me that they're not teaching C/C++ as a fundamental language. I suppose it's starting to go the way of assembly. (Amusingly, though I suppose not too surprisingly, I had more exposure to assembly in my EE classes than any CS major I knew.)
Hate to sound like an AOLer, but "me too". I've been out of college a little less than a year, and I've been doing contracting work since then. I have a little money saved up (despite college loan payments), and I'd be interested in doing something "different". I'm not sure how to go about doing any of this, but I'd like to see where this goes.
/. login name, obfuscated, or you can use my real name (Brian) at the domain of my website.
Email address is next to my
Agreed. I'm no idiot, and I think I'm a damned good engineer. But I'd be a fool for thinking that the fact that I have a job now is solely because of my qualifications. A significant part of it is being lucky enough to know a few people who could get my foot in the door. I've been out of college for nine months, and if it wasn't for luck, I'd be living at home with my dad right now. Hell, I know plenty of people less lucky than I who are in that exact situation.
I don't think that's really a way to look at it. The encryption exists so people can't _view_ the stuff on it. As for making copies, sure, I wouldn't want people to do that, but I don't know that I'd call it the purpose of the encryption.
At any rate, the only people that can sue under the DMCA are the copyright holders (or their designated blah blah blah). _Lexar_ doesn't hold the copyright to the stuff any of the users put on the drives, so they can't sue based on that.
Dude, did you read it? It wasn't a "first post" post. It was a valid question as to whether or not cracking the poor encryption was a DMCA violation. Which, to actually be on topic, I don't think it is, as this encryption has nothing to do with a copyright-protection device.
This may sound silly, but how is the "first post" redundant? I mean... first. Mods, you do know what the word "first" means, right?
C'mon mods, read the timestamps. The other post about this was sent in at the same time. Can't fault a guy for having a similar idea simultaneously. -1 Redundant is a bit much...
"You guys?" In case I'm mistaken, we're all on equal footing here with regard to comment-posting ability. You could have asked the question yourself; if it got modded up and noticed, it would have gone with the official interview.
While I'm here, it's "invoking the DMCA", not "evoking." Though you spelled "hypocrisy" correctly, which is more than I can say for most of the illiterates around here. Sorry, I know it's lame to attack someone's spelling/etc., but bad spelling and word usage really get to me.
At any rate, I'd never heard of the streambox incident you mention, and, if it is as you imply, I'd be interested in hearing Glaser's explanation as well...
It makes perfect sense to me. I don't see how the fact that Real's service doesn't run on the Mac has anything to do with it. Real is targeting iPod/iTMS/Windows users. Their market research tells them that porting to the Mac is a losing proposition, and why would it be otherwise? iPod/Mac users are generally loyal Apple customers (crazy zealots or otherwise), and would be unlikely to use Real's service (even if Real had a better reputation than it does). So you're correct in that this doesn't seem like an attractive arrangement for Apple, but it's really the only thing Real is in a position to do.
So Apple refuses the deal, and what happens? Real reverse-engineers their format, and Apple doesn't get a dime. Sure, the RE process likely cost Real more than a licensing deal would have, but it seems to me that Apple's the one that lost out here. But I suppose only time will tell.
C'mon, we have plenty of ammo against Real already. There's no need to make up stuff.