And there are way too many patches going into an allegedly "stable" tree.
This your evaluation based on reading LKML, or secondhand?
Because, honestly, Slashdot did an article on this a bit back and it was prety negative about it, and I don't really agree with the article author's opinions there.
I personally don't see it as a problem. What most users (business and whatnot) consider "stable" is a kernel that's actually been tested with their userspace software, which means a kernel from a distro maker. Linus is supposedly adding smaller features now. With the introduction of the "RC" version numbering scheme, he's basically making a small development branch for each new stable release. I'd say that this is more about reducing the size of branches in kernels being fed to the distro manufacturers (which really isn't what you should be using anyway, if you're running a production machine) from year-long-plus beasts into two-month-long branches or so (the current "devel branch" is 2.6.8-rc3, which has been branched from 2.6.7 for about two months).
I haven't used any of these, but I think that you can get similar functionality for at least some of them (keep in mind I'm going off a quick Google for a description of each Solaris utility). Not familiar with how completely a replacement each is:
pmap
Linux pmap. If, for some reason, your system doesn't have it (can't imagine why; it's part of procps on Fedora Core 2), I imagine that you can get similar data from:/proc/<pid/maps
trapstat
oprofile
lockstat
SGI lockstat
ppgsz
I don't think that the functionality (variable page sizes) that this provides can be provided on x86 hardware, though I reckon if you're running Linux on SPARC, it's a pain.
libumem
There are a *ton* of Linux malloc() replacements and memory debugging tools. I generally use valgrind, but I've used ef, debauch, memprof, and a ton of other similar tools in the past. The standard glibc() malloc provides some basic debugging features as well.
They didn't try to do so. My guess is that it's extremely difficult to align the dish with an extremely weak signal. The point of having the boosted signal was probably to help them initially align the dish. While it might be a real pain in the ass to set up such a connection without such assistance, once the dishes are aligned, apparently it's possible to run without amplification.
I'd also like to see the challenging of patents (particularly WRT prior art) made cheaper and easier, and the *loser* pay the fees (obviously, old patent-holders would be grandfathered in). Also, I'd like to see an easy option to let a patent holder release any of their patents for free. Finally, I'd like to require a challenger to submit a warning of challenge and before they do such a challenge, along with mention of prior art.
This means that it is no longer in anyone's interest to produce bullshit patents, since someone that can simply demonstrate valid prior art can have the things invalidated. If someone has a product that is infringing, and can come up with prior art, and the holder recognizes that the prior art is legitimate, then they can simply drop the patent -- efficient, and less overhead. The only issue comes in if someone files a bullshit patent and refuses to release their patent, at which point the person who is wrong is responsible for the fees.
That does not solve the problem with obvious patents -- when I search for "computer" in the USPTO database, almost all the top hits, whether there is prior art or not, are extremely obvious to me. They are not things that required extensive research to come up with, and I'm working very hard to ignore the "hindsight makes things look obvious" mindset. This is just what any developer would come up with in less than five minutes if someone give him the problem that the patented solution attempts to solve. However, it does solve part of the problem, with prior art.
reform, including retroactive revocation of IP patents
Will never, ever happen. Congress will not decrease massive investment made by companies with the expectation that they are getting IP. The best that can be hoped for would be Congress making the review and patent revocation process easy and *free* if the challenger is correct. Unfortunately, it's probably not possible to make old patent appliers pay revocation fees, and I don't think that the USPTO can get enough budget to absorb the cost of making valid challenges free.
This trend you note came to be when unscrupulous managers discovered that employees just signed whatever was put in front of them. Why not ask to own them? We have only two ways to stop it: legislate against it, or incite all of us to stop meekly complying with employers' unfair demands.
For small companies, it might be reasonable to negotiate. At large companies, lawyers comb over the employment contracts, and the issues involved with changing the contract and legal review means that unless you are an *extremely* valuable potential employee, you are going to be turned down point blank.
Some old coworkers of mine tried this, with no luck.
The best bet is to work in a state with laws that protect against this sort of thing, like California.
What he was supposed to be working on? That's ridiculous.
Let's take a look at this.
Guy is hired to reverse-engineer code.
Guy works, in former years and in off hours, to make tool to automate reverse-engineering of code. Heck, if he wants to use this code as an asset that he has available to assist him in his work, fine.
If he isn't spending work time or resources producing such tools, Alcatel has zero reason to demand ownership of his tools, any more than someone hiring an artist to paint a mural can demand the paint formulations that the artist has developed over the years.
California prevents employers from appropriating IP produced by workers in off hours.
Pennsylvania lacks such worker protection.
Some employers (such as my last one) require you to list all the works that you claim rights to when you *come to work* there. Theoretically, you're giving them rights to everything else you've produced.
Linux almost *certainly* infringes on software patents. This is true of almost any large software product these days, including Windows. It is no longer possible to legally write a significant piece of software without infringing on software patents. I'm sure every major piece of Internet-using software I have infringes on some patents.
This is not a sign of "Linux is broken", this is a sign of "software patents are broken and it's fucking insane that the US allows them".
I'd love to see IBM lobby against them, but IBM, like all large tech companies, has their own healthy patent portfolio to keep competitors from entering their markets.
Very depressing. Every day that we continue to allow software patents is another day worth of patents that must be grandfathered in if any fix occurs -- the US legislature will never, *ever*, *ever*, even if they eliminate software patents, not grandfather in old ones. Lots of comopanies put a ton of money into getting them, and they won't yank assets from under their feet.
If we stopped allowing software patents today, we'd still have a two-decade-long software patent minefield to deal with. If you're fifteen today, you'll be thirty-five before the industry is free of software patents. If you're twenty-five today, you'll be middle-aged when the industry is patent-free again, and if you're forty-five today, you'll be retired when the industry is patent-free. Assuming software patents stopped today, which isn't going to happen.
The Mozilla Foundation isn't a charity -- they got a donation, and are going to use it. All the people that want to donate time and are already finding security bugs can already do so.
Speaking of which, $500 is probably a *lot* of money if you're working in certain countries.
Oh, and I'm hoping that the MF won't run into problems with people trying to scam the system by introducing security problems and then "discovering" them.
Seriously speaking, the Hurd does seem to have a number of very nice ideas - the translators (little programs that can be attached to directories and files, and which will then control all access to those files - so you can attach one to a directory and make the contents of an FTP site or whatever appear there - not unlike the proc filesystem on Linux), for example. I wonder if anything like them could be implemented in Linux ?
VFS, and at a user level, LUFS and fuse.
It's implemented by mounting a new filesystem at that point, not by attaching something to a directory.
The advice I got from a Canon rep was to wash it again, but don't add softner.
Normally, to avoid liability, companies only allow their customer service reps to read from a script rather than to suggest last-ditch things that might work.
Really, they should have requested evaluation cards and tested ten of each. Doing things like testing nailing to a tree depends a lot on where the nail is going through.
Sand shouldn't do anything, as there are no moving bits.
There is no reason not to fully seal CF cards, but the salt *could* corrode the contacts unless they are completely gold-plated.
2) Immersion under pressure (dropped in swimming pool)
There's no reason to have gas in the CF card, and hence the card should not be compressable.
3) Magnetic fields (accidentally taken for an MRI scan)
Unless you have a CompactFlash fetish and regularly store CF cards in your rectum, you won't be accidentally taking these into an MRI scan. MRI people are careful about this (and generally require you to switch into a hospital gown to avoid exactly this. I have a friend that got an MRI that did a good deal of metal ship work, and has metal filings embedded in his skin -- when the MRI magnets kick on, the tiny filings ripped out through his skin, leaving little droplets of blood. The MRI people won't be letting you accidentally leave anything sizeable and metal on your person.
Please keep in mind that this guy's boss is not an ordinary employee -- there are no free-market checks in place on this organization becoming wasteful. Instead, he is employeed by the taxpayers of Alabama. If 70% of his time is spent playing solitaire, and 20% checking the stock market, and 90% of his pay is being wasted, I'd say that the citizens of Alabama have a right to be a bit irritated.
I agree that the use of monitoring software makes me uncomfortable. However, as far as I can tell, no laws or policies were broken. I don't know whether the sysadmin should be allowed to keep his job, but I find it appalling that the guy's *boss*, the time-waster, is still porking on the taxpayer's dime.
This proves that software developers in general were caught flat-footed by the internet, and that they failed us as customers by claiming that their computers were now "internet ready" and only meant by that that they gave us integrated no-choice branded browsers and instant messengers to save their market share, they didn't even think about us, just themselves.
No, it proves that Microsoft had zero regard for the Internet and for their customers. The Mac OS had no problems like this. Linux had no problems like this. BSD had no problems like this. The only developers that seemed to think that allowing authentication-less control over the local environment was acceptable (and then tried to promote the view that "no desktop machines should ever exist on the Internet without being firewalled") were the developers at Microsoft. Unfortunately, for them, all their competitors did not completely ignore security when designing software, and as a result, the Microsofties came out looking rather pathetic, especially when they tried to shunt blame off onto sysadmins for not trying to patch over *their* poor design with a firewall.
You know, most of what I've seen on both sides is full of propaganda. It's kind of depressing. There's no public (and would probably have to be anonymous) forum where content publishers talk to people and find out what's up. Some people claim "this music isn't worth the money, so I'm not going to pay for it to prove a point". Some peple can't afford products (especially true with professional software -- it's a sore blow for a fifteen year old kid to pay for a copy of Photoshop or Lightwave). Some people just plain aren't interested in paying -- the very deliberately can say "I have no reason to pay for this content when I can get it for free, so why don't I do so?" Some people feel that they aren't given a good enough opportunity to preview or evaluate the content before they have to throw money down for it. A couple of people just plain like cracking software.
There may not be solutions to the current problem, but there are better compromises than the existing situation. Currently, as far as I can tell:
* The MPAA is largely ignoring the situation (well, I'm sure they're monitoring online piracy, but they aren't losing enough sales to spend time going after anyone except the people releasing rips before people have seen the movie -- plot spoilers might discourage people from watching).
* The RIAA is currently trying a combination of technical attacks on P2P networks, legal shotgunning of lawsuits to help amp up the feeling people have of risk, and lobbying for stricter and easier-to-prosecute laws to be passed.
* The BSA largely ignores individual piracy, and goes after corporate piracy tooth and nail, requiring contractual agreements and the like.
I can think of a number of fixes off-the-cuff that could solve some problems.
* A common complaint I've heard about music is that singles are overpriced, and albums contain few tracks that people are interested in. There is no reason not to sell all tracks electronically individually. The album is an artifact of packaging, the fact that people used to sell physical objects that could store enough audio for several songs, and it was necessary to include several songs to drive the value up high enough to warrant distribution costs. Just sell singles cheaply electronically.
* People complain that they're "fighting the RIAA". Not much the RIAA can do about this but improve their public image -- not sure how much this will help, as some of it is probably just rationalization.
* Content providers (especially the *AAs) have no reason, aside from a small amount of cost in funding, to fund some developers to add in features (without negative privacy or technological implications, else they really won't catch on, lobby as one might) to spread license and other metainformation about files. If they're appealing, the P2P developers will incorporate them. Make damned certain that if someone is downloading a file, they (a) know that it's illegal for the person to be distributing it in the United States (or wherever is relevant), (b) have a link to buy a legal copy.
* The *IAAs (especially RIAA) should consider the idea of providing subscription access to a full library of their content. There is little reason for them not to do this, as they can take advantage of a number of econonmies (if they have to electronically store copies of all their content in each city, it's still one copy versus hundreds of thousands). Let people have music on demand -- *any music* -- as long as they pay a monthly fee. I'm sure that there is some price point that the RIAA will be comfortable providing content at. This is particularly promising when partnered with major hardware audio players. Calculate how much the average person spends on music, and price such a service so that the users of such a service pay as much or more for their subscription. Provide value-added services like "similar artists". This is a no-brainer for the *AAs -- only a large organization with lots of rights can pull this off (so they don't have to worry about losing artists going indie) -- so they still have market with a barrier to entry.
We need a survey that lets people enter in stuff that they decided NOT to buy because they downloaded it and found out that it sucked. I'll start.
Yes, but while not buying poor products is a good idea for the consumer, it's a bad thing for publishers. It's hardly going to convince the RIAA/MPAA.
Also, keep in mind that publishers complaining about "illegal try before you buy" (even if done with the best intentions) do have at least some points in their favor:
1) It is possible (it's quite overused though) that the software being pirated gives a poorer quality experience, and hence gives people a bad impression of the product. This is more of an issue with old rips, where warez groups would commonly remove content, especially cinematics or music, from games to facilitate transfer. This not only means that the user may not buy the software, he may propagate a bad impression on. This is also a complaint from developers and publishers when it comes to leaked pre-release content.
2) Some content may well be worth the purchase price, but significantly decreases in value after a short period of use (such as your "evaluation period"). This is true of things that have a good deal of novelty value. Movies may be fun to re-watch, especially the best of the best, but they really are best the first time, when the director has the ability to spring plot twists and surprises -- the set of mechanisms that can be used that work the second time and on is much smaller. A number of video games, even if entertaining the first time though, simply lack replay value. For instance, I own copies of Myst and Riven. Both are fun games, but lack replayability.
3) Many people just don't "get around" to paying for content that they already have a copy of, even if they have a good deal of respect for the creator. At that point, it takes effort that provides no or minimal user benefit.
4) Many people, once they enjoy the benefits of content that isn't copy-protected, are not willing to pay for a copy-protected version (and publishers *would* be willing to produce non-copy-protected versions if they hadn't found that the dissuasion factor of copy protection towards piracy produces more sales than the benefits in selling more usable copy-protection-free content.
I really think that one of the best things for game developers, at least, to do, is to become personally visible to the user. That means putting in clips saying to the user "hi, hope you enjoy our software, good luck!", and such things in the intro. Publishers work really hard to de-emphasize the developers when it comes to game image -- in my eyes, this is a mistake. The main reason people buy copies of music is not to fund the *publisher* -- it's to fund the artist. Few people say "gee, I'm really disturbed by the fact that Viviendi isn't making enough money -- I'll buy another piece of software". Slap developer names and faces on the software and you have someone who loses his job and can't make more games if the software isn't paid for.
Incidently, FWIW, the Slashdot editors have chosen to disallow ed2k links. I've posted about it before on Slashdot, and there have even been filed bugs on it.
Jamie has a point -- that ed2k URLs launch external programs, and that he doesn't want to help trolls -- but man, I wish that we were able to use them, even if we lost the ability to use gopher, mailto, etc. Every time Slashdot links to a large file, we end up with some random reader having to set up a bittorrent entry (which is great for the immediate link, and keeps the server from being killed). However, inevitably that user kills the link after a couple of days, and then all the links to large files in old stories are dead. If we could just embed ed2k links, we could maintain links that would be useful months later. Adding ed2k wouldn't mean having to add any other protocols -- Gnutella and most P2P networks lack an URL format, and the only competitor, Kazaa, has a broken non-unique URL format that shouldn't be included.
It'd be especially nice if users that wanted to allow ed2k links could enable them in their preferences, and then see them (though I guess that wouldn't work well with the pre-generation approach of Slashcode -- sigh).
Slashdot Mirror
And there are way too many patches going into an allegedly "stable" tree.
This your evaluation based on reading LKML, or secondhand?
Because, honestly, Slashdot did an article on this a bit back and it was prety negative about it, and I don't really agree with the article author's opinions there.
I personally don't see it as a problem. What most users (business and whatnot) consider "stable" is a kernel that's actually been tested with their userspace software, which means a kernel from a distro maker. Linus is supposedly adding smaller features now. With the introduction of the "RC" version numbering scheme, he's basically making a small development branch for each new stable release. I'd say that this is more about reducing the size of branches in kernels being fed to the distro manufacturers (which really isn't what you should be using anyway, if you're running a production machine) from year-long-plus beasts into two-month-long branches or so (the current "devel branch" is 2.6.8-rc3, which has been branched from 2.6.7 for about two months).
Btw, when will Linux finally get tools like
/proc/<pid/maps
I haven't used any of these, but I think that you can get similar functionality for at least some of them (keep in mind I'm going off a quick Google for a description of each Solaris utility). Not familiar with how completely a replacement each is:
pmap
Linux pmap. If, for some reason, your system doesn't have it (can't imagine why; it's part of procps on Fedora Core 2), I imagine that you can get similar data from:
trapstat
oprofile
lockstat
SGI lockstat
ppgsz
I don't think that the functionality (variable page sizes) that this provides can be provided on x86 hardware, though I reckon if you're running Linux on SPARC, it's a pain.
libumem
There are a *ton* of Linux malloc() replacements and memory debugging tools. I generally use valgrind, but I've used ef, debauch, memprof, and a ton of other similar tools in the past. The standard glibc() malloc provides some basic debugging features as well.
I'm curious -- what is your source for the concept that there is a legal difference between the two WRT idea ownership?
They didn't try to do so. My guess is that it's extremely difficult to align the dish with an extremely weak signal. The point of having the boosted signal was probably to help them initially align the dish. While it might be a real pain in the ass to set up such a connection without such assistance, once the dishes are aligned, apparently it's possible to run without amplification.
I like it.
I'd also like to see the challenging of patents (particularly WRT prior art) made cheaper and easier, and the *loser* pay the fees (obviously, old patent-holders would be grandfathered in). Also, I'd like to see an easy option to let a patent holder release any of their patents for free. Finally, I'd like to require a challenger to submit a warning of challenge and before they do such a challenge, along with mention of prior art.
This means that it is no longer in anyone's interest to produce bullshit patents, since someone that can simply demonstrate valid prior art can have the things invalidated. If someone has a product that is infringing, and can come up with prior art, and the holder recognizes that the prior art is legitimate, then they can simply drop the patent -- efficient, and less overhead. The only issue comes in if someone files a bullshit patent and refuses to release their patent, at which point the person who is wrong is responsible for the fees.
That does not solve the problem with obvious patents -- when I search for "computer" in the USPTO database, almost all the top hits, whether there is prior art or not, are extremely obvious to me. They are not things that required extensive research to come up with, and I'm working very hard to ignore the "hindsight makes things look obvious" mindset. This is just what any developer would come up with in less than five minutes if someone give him the problem that the patented solution attempts to solve. However, it does solve part of the problem, with prior art.
reform, including retroactive revocation of IP patents
Will never, ever happen. Congress will not decrease massive investment made by companies with the expectation that they are getting IP. The best that can be hoped for would be Congress making the review and patent revocation process easy and *free* if the challenger is correct. Unfortunately, it's probably not possible to make old patent appliers pay revocation fees, and I don't think that the USPTO can get enough budget to absorb the cost of making valid challenges free.
Your fucked.© ® TM
And for those that think that this is implausible, remember "Think Different".
This trend you note came to be when unscrupulous managers discovered that employees just signed whatever was put in front of them. Why not ask to own them? We have only two ways to stop it: legislate against it, or incite all of us to stop meekly complying with employers' unfair demands.
For small companies, it might be reasonable to negotiate. At large companies, lawyers comb over the employment contracts, and the issues involved with changing the contract and legal review means that unless you are an *extremely* valuable potential employee, you are going to be turned down point blank.
Some old coworkers of mine tried this, with no luck.
The best bet is to work in a state with laws that protect against this sort of thing, like California.
What he was supposed to be working on? That's ridiculous.
Let's take a look at this.
Guy is hired to reverse-engineer code.
Guy works, in former years and in off hours, to make tool to automate reverse-engineering of code. Heck, if he wants to use this code as an asset that he has available to assist him in his work, fine.
If he isn't spending work time or resources producing such tools, Alcatel has zero reason to demand ownership of his tools, any more than someone hiring an artist to paint a mural can demand the paint formulations that the artist has developed over the years.
California prevents employers from appropriating IP produced by workers in off hours.
Pennsylvania lacks such worker protection.
Some employers (such as my last one) require you to list all the works that you claim rights to when you *come to work* there. Theoretically, you're giving them rights to everything else you've produced.
It's absolutely asinine.
Linux almost *certainly* infringes on software patents. This is true of almost any large software product these days, including Windows. It is no longer possible to legally write a significant piece of software without infringing on software patents. I'm sure every major piece of Internet-using software I have infringes on some patents.
This is not a sign of "Linux is broken", this is a sign of "software patents are broken and it's fucking insane that the US allows them".
I'd love to see IBM lobby against them, but IBM, like all large tech companies, has their own healthy patent portfolio to keep competitors from entering their markets.
Very depressing. Every day that we continue to allow software patents is another day worth of patents that must be grandfathered in if any fix occurs -- the US legislature will never, *ever*, *ever*, even if they eliminate software patents, not grandfather in old ones. Lots of comopanies put a ton of money into getting them, and they won't yank assets from under their feet.
If we stopped allowing software patents today, we'd still have a two-decade-long software patent minefield to deal with. If you're fifteen today, you'll be thirty-five before the industry is free of software patents. If you're twenty-five today, you'll be middle-aged when the industry is patent-free again, and if you're forty-five today, you'll be retired when the industry is patent-free. Assuming software patents stopped today, which isn't going to happen.
Bochs emulates the x86, instead of handing the code off to the x86 a la VMWare.
This makes Bochs slow -- not nearly as usable as VMWare -- but useful for producing an environment for debugging low-level code.
You wouldn't just install Bochs to run software (well, maybe if you wanted an old DOS machine where speed isn't an issue).
The Mozilla Foundation isn't a charity -- they got a donation, and are going to use it. All the people that want to donate time and are already finding security bugs can already do so.
Speaking of which, $500 is probably a *lot* of money if you're working in certain countries.
Oh, and I'm hoping that the MF won't run into problems with people trying to scam the system by introducing security problems and then "discovering" them.
Seriously speaking, the Hurd does seem to have a number of very nice ideas - the translators (little programs that can be attached to directories and files, and which will then control all access to those files - so you can attach one to a directory and make the contents of an FTP site or whatever appear there - not unlike the proc filesystem on Linux), for example. I wonder if anything like them could be implemented in Linux ?
VFS, and at a user level, LUFS and fuse.
It's implemented by mounting a new filesystem at that point, not by attaching something to a directory.
The advice I got from a Canon rep was to wash it again, but don't add softner.
Normally, to avoid liability, companies only allow their customer service reps to read from a script rather than to suggest last-ditch things that might work.
Canon gets an A+ for customer service here.
Really, they should have requested evaluation cards and tested ten of each. Doing things like testing nailing to a tree depends a lot on where the nail is going through.
1) Trip to beach (Lots of salt and sandy bits)
Sand shouldn't do anything, as there are no moving bits.
There is no reason not to fully seal CF cards, but the salt *could* corrode the contacts unless they are completely gold-plated.
2) Immersion under pressure (dropped in swimming pool)
There's no reason to have gas in the CF card, and hence the card should not be compressable.
3) Magnetic fields (accidentally taken for an MRI scan)
Unless you have a CompactFlash fetish and regularly store CF cards in your rectum, you won't be accidentally taking these into an MRI scan. MRI people are careful about this (and generally require you to switch into a hospital gown to avoid exactly this. I have a friend that got an MRI that did a good deal of metal ship work, and has metal filings embedded in his skin -- when the MRI magnets kick on, the tiny filings ripped out through his skin, leaving little droplets of blood. The MRI people won't be letting you accidentally leave anything sizeable and metal on your person.
Why are articles from the registration-only Washington Post allowed?
(Score:-1, Offtopic)
Because discussion of the format of the current story is ever so offtopic.
Why are articles from the registration-only Washington Post allowed?
Please keep in mind that this guy's boss is not an ordinary employee -- there are no free-market checks in place on this organization becoming wasteful. Instead, he is employeed by the taxpayers of Alabama. If 70% of his time is spent playing solitaire, and 20% checking the stock market, and 90% of his pay is being wasted, I'd say that the citizens of Alabama have a right to be a bit irritated.
I agree that the use of monitoring software makes me uncomfortable. However, as far as I can tell, no laws or policies were broken. I don't know whether the sysadmin should be allowed to keep his job, but I find it appalling that the guy's *boss*, the time-waster, is still porking on the taxpayer's dime.
This proves that software developers in general were caught flat-footed by the internet, and that they failed us as customers by claiming that their computers were now "internet ready" and only meant by that that they gave us integrated no-choice branded browsers and instant messengers to save their market share, they didn't even think about us, just themselves.
No, it proves that Microsoft had zero regard for the Internet and for their customers. The Mac OS had no problems like this. Linux had no problems like this. BSD had no problems like this. The only developers that seemed to think that allowing authentication-less control over the local environment was acceptable (and then tried to promote the view that "no desktop machines should ever exist on the Internet without being firewalled") were the developers at Microsoft. Unfortunately, for them, all their competitors did not completely ignore security when designing software, and as a result, the Microsofties came out looking rather pathetic, especially when they tried to shunt blame off onto sysadmins for not trying to patch over *their* poor design with a firewall.
You know, most of what I've seen on both sides is full of propaganda. It's kind of depressing. There's no public (and would probably have to be anonymous) forum where content publishers talk to people and find out what's up. Some people claim "this music isn't worth the money, so I'm not going to pay for it to prove a point". Some peple can't afford products (especially true with professional software -- it's a sore blow for a fifteen year old kid to pay for a copy of Photoshop or Lightwave). Some people just plain aren't interested in paying -- the very deliberately can say "I have no reason to pay for this content when I can get it for free, so why don't I do so?" Some people feel that they aren't given a good enough opportunity to preview or evaluate the content before they have to throw money down for it. A couple of people just plain like cracking software.
There may not be solutions to the current problem, but there are better compromises than the existing situation. Currently, as far as I can tell:
* The MPAA is largely ignoring the situation (well, I'm sure they're monitoring online piracy, but they aren't losing enough sales to spend time going after anyone except the people releasing rips before people have seen the movie -- plot spoilers might discourage people from watching).
* The RIAA is currently trying a combination of technical attacks on P2P networks, legal shotgunning of lawsuits to help amp up the feeling people have of risk, and lobbying for stricter and easier-to-prosecute laws to be passed.
* The BSA largely ignores individual piracy, and goes after corporate piracy tooth and nail, requiring contractual agreements and the like.
I can think of a number of fixes off-the-cuff that could solve some problems.
* A common complaint I've heard about music is that singles are overpriced, and albums contain few tracks that people are interested in. There is no reason not to sell all tracks electronically individually. The album is an artifact of packaging, the fact that people used to sell physical objects that could store enough audio for several songs, and it was necessary to include several songs to drive the value up high enough to warrant distribution costs. Just sell singles cheaply electronically.
* People complain that they're "fighting the RIAA". Not much the RIAA can do about this but improve their public image -- not sure how much this will help, as some of it is probably just rationalization.
* Content providers (especially the *AAs) have no reason, aside from a small amount of cost in funding, to fund some developers to add in features (without negative privacy or technological implications, else they really won't catch on, lobby as one might) to spread license and other metainformation about files. If they're appealing, the P2P developers will incorporate them. Make damned certain that if someone is downloading a file, they (a) know that it's illegal for the person to be distributing it in the United States (or wherever is relevant), (b) have a link to buy a legal copy.
* The *IAAs (especially RIAA) should consider the idea of providing subscription access to a full library of their content. There is little reason for them not to do this, as they can take advantage of a number of econonmies (if they have to electronically store copies of all their content in each city, it's still one copy versus hundreds of thousands). Let people have music on demand -- *any music* -- as long as they pay a monthly fee. I'm sure that there is some price point that the RIAA will be comfortable providing content at. This is particularly promising when partnered with major hardware audio players. Calculate how much the average person spends on music, and price such a service so that the users of such a service pay as much or more for their subscription. Provide value-added services like "similar artists". This is a no-brainer for the *AAs -- only a large organization with lots of rights can pull this off (so they don't have to worry about losing artists going indie) -- so they still have market with a barrier to entry.
We need a survey that lets people enter in stuff that they decided NOT to buy because they downloaded it and found out that it sucked. I'll start.
Yes, but while not buying poor products is a good idea for the consumer, it's a bad thing for publishers. It's hardly going to convince the RIAA/MPAA.
Also, keep in mind that publishers complaining about "illegal try before you buy" (even if done with the best intentions) do have at least some points in their favor:
1) It is possible (it's quite overused though) that the software being pirated gives a poorer quality experience, and hence gives people a bad impression of the product. This is more of an issue with old rips, where warez groups would commonly remove content, especially cinematics or music, from games to facilitate transfer. This not only means that the user may not buy the software, he may propagate a bad impression on. This is also a complaint from developers and publishers when it comes to leaked pre-release content.
2) Some content may well be worth the purchase price, but significantly decreases in value after a short period of use (such as your "evaluation period"). This is true of things that have a good deal of novelty value. Movies may be fun to re-watch, especially the best of the best, but they really are best the first time, when the director has the ability to spring plot twists and surprises -- the set of mechanisms that can be used that work the second time and on is much smaller. A number of video games, even if entertaining the first time though, simply lack replay value. For instance, I own copies of Myst and Riven. Both are fun games, but lack replayability.
3) Many people just don't "get around" to paying for content that they already have a copy of, even if they have a good deal of respect for the creator. At that point, it takes effort that provides no or minimal user benefit.
4) Many people, once they enjoy the benefits of content that isn't copy-protected, are not willing to pay for a copy-protected version (and publishers *would* be willing to produce non-copy-protected versions if they hadn't found that the dissuasion factor of copy protection towards piracy produces more sales than the benefits in selling more usable copy-protection-free content.
I really think that one of the best things for game developers, at least, to do, is to become personally visible to the user. That means putting in clips saying to the user "hi, hope you enjoy our software, good luck!", and such things in the intro. Publishers work really hard to de-emphasize the developers when it comes to game image -- in my eyes, this is a mistake. The main reason people buy copies of music is not to fund the *publisher* -- it's to fund the artist. Few people say "gee, I'm really disturbed by the fact that Viviendi isn't making enough money -- I'll buy another piece of software". Slap developer names and faces on the software and you have someone who loses his job and can't make more games if the software isn't paid for.
Incidently, FWIW, the Slashdot editors have chosen to disallow ed2k links. I've posted about it before on Slashdot, and there have even been filed bugs on it.
Jamie has a point -- that ed2k URLs launch external programs, and that he doesn't want to help trolls -- but man, I wish that we were able to use them, even if we lost the ability to use gopher, mailto, etc. Every time Slashdot links to a large file, we end up with some random reader having to set up a bittorrent entry (which is great for the immediate link, and keeps the server from being killed). However, inevitably that user kills the link after a couple of days, and then all the links to large files in old stories are dead. If we could just embed ed2k links, we could maintain links that would be useful months later. Adding ed2k wouldn't mean having to add any other protocols -- Gnutella and most P2P networks lack an URL format, and the only competitor, Kazaa, has a broken non-unique URL format that shouldn't be included.
It'd be especially nice if users that wanted to allow ed2k links could enable them in their preferences, and then see them (though I guess that wouldn't work well with the pre-generation approach of Slashcode -- sigh).
That is what one might refer to as "a gentle hint".