First up, I hope all my spelling is correct for this post. This is the WRONG topic to get your spelling worng.
Now, let's take a look at the word 'English'. It's a derivative of the word 'England'. i.e. We get the language from England (Great Britain for the uneducated) Every other country in the world (to my knowledge) that has adopted english as it's first language has managed to keep that 'u' in the word flavour, with one exception - America. Why is it that America has to do everything differently to the rest of the world? Here are some examples:
1. Flavor, Color, etc. Americans lead such busy lives that it would take too much out of their day to write or type the letter 'u' in a few of their words.
2. Imperial measurements. Everyone else in the world has adopted the metric system as their standard of measurement. Some have even outlawed the imperial system because of it's complexity. (Try ordering a quarter pounder in france and see what you get)
There are more examples, but that would make this post a little too long, and I know that our 'merican readers don't have the time to type a letter u, let alone read a long post on slashdot
i think there may just be a use for that annoying thinkpad nipple thingy after all. It would make a great replacement for a scroll wheel. No moving parts, except the obligatory button. A great idea indeed!
IANAL, but surely if a class action wins, that sets a handy precedent for those people wishing to sue on their own. If you can hand a lawyer a precedent, he'll take your case immediately cos he knows he's got a greater than average chance to win
Very true, but you are only referring to the CD. The issue at stake here, is the IP contained on said CD. The record company owns the IP on that CD and you are therefore bound by IP laws governing that IP. This is a very different ball game. This is either yet to be challenged in court, or has already been challenged, a la MP3.com
Good call. Another analogy would be owning a share of Wal-Mart and attempting to help yourself to anything off the shelves. In Australia, it was big news when our largest grocery retailer, Coles-Myer offered discounts to shareholders to grocery items. This lasted about a month or two before the company decided they had too many shareholders and their profits started taking a dive. The more comments I read, the more it seems this idea could not possibly work. But a big thumbs up to Cringely for at least having a go. It's got to be the most well thought model to a major problem since the iTunes music store!
I've already posted two comments on the pro side of the argument, and your post got me thinking a little. The company/organisation that Cringely describes does not own the recording. They merely own a license to it. The record company still owns the recording. In order for this to succeed, Cringely's 'company' must purchase a volume license for all it's members/shareholders to obtain a copy of the recording. Try making a company like this that instead of music, shares windows operating systems and see how long it takes before Microsoft sues the company and all members/shareholders into oblivion.
I know that Microsoft has very strict licensing terms, that's why a company can't purchase a single copy of win2k and install it on 500 different machines. The RIAA doesn't use such licenses, YET. I can just see every CD having a licensing contract to sign at the record store counter if this model were put into practice.
I would really like someone to reply to this and explain why I am wrong because I thought this was a brilliant model when I first read it and I'd hate it if I was the one that stuffed it for everyone. BRING ON THE BITCHING!:)
I love point 2 in your post. Perhaps not even making it a company, maybe a non-profit organisation that pays a technical and aquisition staff to maintain the organisation. Charities and other NPOs are able to purchase goods and services under the organisations name for taxation purposes, why not CDs if that is part of their operations?
This is one of the most intersting columns that Cringely has written in a long time. It may be flawed, but it is definitely interesting. He may not be right all of the time, but he doesn't profess to be. Very good food for thought though.
If I was an artist, I'd be ecstatic with half the profit compared to the piss ant 10%-minus-expenses that I'd be receiving now under the RIAA banner. Don't forget just how much the artists are screwed at the moment. Cringely even touches on that, but of course, you didn't read the artice now, did you?
Another bonus out of this model might be a lessening of the manufactured pop shite that gets plastered all over the airwaves and MTV at present
Cripple it??? It would dang near kill it. If the G5 has to have a bus speed half that of the CPU, you'd have the world's slowest G5 running at a snail's pace of 200Mhz! Forget that idea! But it would be intersting to pit against a 350Mhz iMac, just to see how it would compare
Umm... that's the whole point of the ads. To look like messages from your computer, so you click on the 'click here' or the yes button. If you use linux or a mac or some other OS, then your going to think twice about it because it doesn't look like your system. I'm on OSX myself and I laugh every time I see those messages, but for the average joe that want's a computer for their banking or something, these ads can be quite deceptive and could probably fall under false advertising guidelines
Actually, 2.4 GHz is the frequency absorbed by water. That's why it's used in microwave ovens. It's also why it requires no licence - It is unuseable for commercial, government applications. As for 5GHz, it's absorbed by oxygen, another useless frequency. That's why 802.11a gets less range than 802.11b/g - there's always oxygen in the air, but moisture isn't always as abundant as oxygen
t is true that GnomeMeeting allows you to use different codecs and is slightly more hacker-friendly. However, when I want to talk to someone, I usually don't feel like configuring loads of stuff. In some cases ease of use simply blows features away, and human communication is one of them.
Exactly. when I call someone on the phone, I don't want to be selecting different codecs or which carrier I need to use to get a hold of someone, I just dial their phone number. This is where a lot of apple's software really shines - it just works. Fair enough, it might be fun to change codecs and the sort to get a better working program for my particular setup, but this is open source's domain.
As a company providing support for their product, apple can't afford to be supporting multiple codecs and the like. I'm sure all the people reading this that work in telephone support know what I'm talking about!
If you want to be an l33t h4x0r, then use gnome meeting. If you just want to talk to a friend over the net, use iChat AV.
Footnote: I haven't said much about MSN 6.0 because I haven't used it, not because of my hatred of all things microsoft.
Re:This will be another solid update
on
Jaguar is Over
·
· Score: 1
And with a carbon app, you can't turn on the sexy brushed metal theme of a window. It can only be done using a cocoa app. have a bit of a tinker with ur dev tools (interface builder) and see what I mean. I like brushed metal print centre and terminal:)
Those images look real if they were taken on a notebook with font smoothing incorrectly used. The title bars (apart from the panther 'improvements') look exactly the way my title bars did when I first played around with jaguar, and then realised I should just leave it at default
I'd like to hack into Sen. Hatch's computer, threaten to destroy it, and watch him beg for my mercy, then hit the delete key just for the fun of it, then claim that it's perfectly legal to do so, because I live in Australia. MWAHAHAHA!
Re:linux has no features I see in the screenshots
on
Looking at Longhorn
·
· Score: 1
You've got to understand something. People buy what they believe need. Fair enough they might not need some or even most of the features in Longhorn, but he point is they will believe they need it. Until the powers holding the reigns of the various *nix flavours realise this, it will always be playing second fiddle to MS.
And BTW, if OSX is not UNIX or BSD, why the hell, does it behave so much like UNIX and BSD? Going by your logic, if darwin is not a BSD, then free/net/openBSD isn't either. If you believe that, then you're a crackpot.
Well, that's the whole point. Nothing says 'Fsck you' more that a good bout of civil disobedience. Since our wonderful (and I use that term loosely) politicians are only able to pass laws that benefit corporations, cartels and conglomerates, this is the only way for the public to fight back and be heard. The only part I don't like is, as you mentioned, those repeated settlement amounts. However, if this were to turn into a movement, alot of people would sit up and take notice
The answer here is simple. Start using layers in websites. You can achieve nearly the same effect as using frames, just ask any decent digital photogragpher who uses photoshop or the gimp. Your page might take a little longer to load sometimes, but it's a small price to pay for not getting sued.
Come on. Do you really think that MS wouldn't be using this in their OS and apps as well? Intel and AMD have already pledged their support for Palladium. You can also read up on the ins and outs of palladium here. When you do read it, pay attention to the section that reads:
Tells you who you?re dealing with?and what they?re doing. Palladium is all about deciding what?s trustworthy. It not only lets your computer know that you?re you , but also can limit what arrives (and runs on) your computer, verifying where it comes from and who created it.
Sorry about the '?'s, my HTML is still in early days. But as you can see, if AMD and Intel incorporate palladium into their chips, then the entire computer system will be at the mercy of he who wrote palladium. Now, fair enough it might not be turned on at first, but someone had an intersting comment that more and more software will require it to be turned on and I dare say MS would be one of the first. Not only for thier apps, but also to maybe kill off linux in one fell swoop. I don't think the average Joe will understand what palladium is or how to disable it
Palladium was intended to be a joint hardware and software excercise. Where you could only run signed code on your boxen. I didn't really understand how this could be benificial as it would basically halt any and all software development (new piece of code has to get signed digitally before it can be run. Can you imagine how frustrating that would be for a coder???). Also, forget about recompiling your kernel, once it's changed, you need to get it re-signed before you can use it to boot.
If MS has it's way with palladium, it will be just like the XBox now where you must pay MS for the boot key for a game to work. I dare say that not only was the XBox an attempt to get into the console market, but also a testing ground for palladium. Given the dismal failure of the XBox so far, this could also explain the truckloads of cash that MS has been burning on the XBox. They WANT Palladium to work and will do anything to make sure it DOES work. It is their final chance to secure complete market domination inside the law before linux makes it's way onto mainstream desktops.
All I can suggest with this sorry state of affairs is to change your hardware now to an etirely different platform. (gamer's won't like this) Move away from x86. There are many architecture's out there that would both benefit from incresed use and R&D funding. Names such as Alpha, SPARC, and my personal favourite, PowerPC are all perfectly good systems, and as we all know, run linux and BSD. So, choose your processor, choose your OS, GET SOME APPS COMPILED FOR THEM! and make a stand to let MS know that you own your systems and that all your boxen are NOT belong to them. Stop talking about it and do something for a change. I have I run a MS-free iBook with OSX and X11 and have never been happier
Slashdot Mirror
First up, I hope all my spelling is correct for this post. This is the WRONG topic to get your spelling worng.
Now, let's take a look at the word 'English'. It's a derivative of the word 'England'. i.e. We get the language from England (Great Britain for the uneducated) Every other country in the world (to my knowledge) that has adopted english as it's first language has managed to keep that 'u' in the word flavour, with one exception - America. Why is it that America has to do everything differently to the rest of the world? Here are some examples:
1. Flavor, Color, etc. Americans lead such busy lives that it would take too much out of their day to write or type the letter 'u' in a few of their words.
2. Imperial measurements. Everyone else in the world has adopted the metric system as their standard of measurement. Some have even outlawed the imperial system because of it's complexity. (Try ordering a quarter pounder in france and see what you get)
There are more examples, but that would make this post a little too long, and I know that our 'merican readers don't have the time to type a letter u, let alone read a long post on slashdot
Wrong was spelt wrong deliberately
i think there may just be a use for that annoying thinkpad nipple thingy after all. It would make a great replacement for a scroll wheel. No moving parts, except the obligatory button. A great idea indeed!
IANAL, but surely if a class action wins, that sets a handy precedent for those people wishing to sue on their own. If you can hand a lawyer a precedent, he'll take your case immediately cos he knows he's got a greater than average chance to win
Wow, a one-message delay. That didn't take long!
Very true, but you are only referring to the CD. The issue at stake here, is the IP contained on said CD. The record company owns the IP on that CD and you are therefore bound by IP laws governing that IP. This is a very different ball game. This is either yet to be challenged in court, or has already been challenged, a la MP3.com
Good call. Another analogy would be owning a share of Wal-Mart and attempting to help yourself to anything off the shelves. In Australia, it was big news when our largest grocery retailer, Coles-Myer offered discounts to shareholders to grocery items. This lasted about a month or two before the company decided they had too many shareholders and their profits started taking a dive. The more comments I read, the more it seems this idea could not possibly work. But a big thumbs up to Cringely for at least having a go. It's got to be the most well thought model to a major problem since the iTunes music store!
I've already posted two comments on the pro side of the argument, and your post got me thinking a little. The company/organisation that Cringely describes does not own the recording. They merely own a license to it. The record company still owns the recording. In order for this to succeed, Cringely's 'company' must purchase a volume license for all it's members/shareholders to obtain a copy of the recording. Try making a company like this that instead of music, shares windows operating systems and see how long it takes before Microsoft sues the company and all members/shareholders into oblivion.
:)
I know that Microsoft has very strict licensing terms, that's why a company can't purchase a single copy of win2k and install it on 500 different machines. The RIAA doesn't use such licenses, YET. I can just see every CD having a licensing contract to sign at the record store counter if this model were put into practice.
I would really like someone to reply to this and explain why I am wrong because I thought this was a brilliant model when I first read it and I'd hate it if I was the one that stuffed it for everyone. BRING ON THE BITCHING!
I love point 2 in your post. Perhaps not even making it a company, maybe a non-profit organisation that pays a technical and aquisition staff to maintain the organisation. Charities and other NPOs are able to purchase goods and services under the organisations name for taxation purposes, why not CDs if that is part of their operations?
This is one of the most intersting columns that Cringely has written in a long time. It may be flawed, but it is definitely interesting. He may not be right all of the time, but he doesn't profess to be. Very good food for thought though.
If I was an artist, I'd be ecstatic with half the profit compared to the piss ant 10%-minus-expenses that I'd be receiving now under the RIAA banner. Don't forget just how much the artists are screwed at the moment. Cringely even touches on that, but of course, you didn't read the artice now, did you?
Another bonus out of this model might be a lessening of the manufactured pop shite that gets plastered all over the airwaves and MTV at present
Cripple it??? It would dang near kill it. If the G5 has to have a bus speed half that of the CPU, you'd have the world's slowest G5 running at a snail's pace of 200Mhz! Forget that idea! But it would be intersting to pit against a 350Mhz iMac, just to see how it would compare
Umm... that's the whole point of the ads. To look like messages from your computer, so you click on the 'click here' or the yes button. If you use linux or a mac or some other OS, then your going to think twice about it because it doesn't look like your system. I'm on OSX myself and I laugh every time I see those messages, but for the average joe that want's a computer for their banking or something, these ads can be quite deceptive and could probably fall under false advertising guidelines
I noticed that your post had the offending pair of words. I want my $500! Gimme gimme gimme!
That's why I have an iBook. Have you tried getting the hard drive out of one of these suckers? Gimme a screensaver hack any day!
Actually, 2.4 GHz is the frequency absorbed by water. That's why it's used in microwave ovens. It's also why it requires no licence - It is unuseable for commercial, government applications. As for 5GHz, it's absorbed by oxygen, another useless frequency. That's why 802.11a gets less range than 802.11b/g - there's always oxygen in the air, but moisture isn't always as abundant as oxygen
t is true that GnomeMeeting allows you to use different codecs and is slightly more hacker-friendly. However, when I want to talk to someone, I usually don't feel like configuring loads of stuff. In some cases ease of use simply blows features away, and human communication is one of them.
Exactly. when I call someone on the phone, I don't want to be selecting different codecs or which carrier I need to use to get a hold of someone, I just dial their phone number. This is where a lot of apple's software really shines - it just works. Fair enough, it might be fun to change codecs and the sort to get a better working program for my particular setup, but this is open source's domain.
As a company providing support for their product, apple can't afford to be supporting multiple codecs and the like. I'm sure all the people reading this that work in telephone support know what I'm talking about!
If you want to be an l33t h4x0r, then use gnome meeting. If you just want to talk to a friend over the net, use iChat AV.
Footnote: I haven't said much about MSN 6.0 because I haven't used it, not because of my hatred of all things microsoft.
what an awesome website! It has...
ONE LINE OF TEXT!
And with a carbon app, you can't turn on the sexy brushed metal theme of a window. It can only be done using a cocoa app. have a bit of a tinker with ur dev tools (interface builder) and see what I mean. I like brushed metal print centre and terminal :)
Those images look real if they were taken on a notebook with font smoothing incorrectly used. The title bars (apart from the panther 'improvements') look exactly the way my title bars did when I first played around with jaguar, and then realised I should just leave it at default
I'd like to hack into Sen. Hatch's computer, threaten to destroy it, and watch him beg for my mercy, then hit the delete key just for the fun of it, then claim that it's perfectly legal to do so, because I live in Australia. MWAHAHAHA!
You've got to understand something. People buy what they believe need. Fair enough they might not need some or even most of the features in Longhorn, but he point is they will believe they need it. Until the powers holding the reigns of the various *nix flavours realise this, it will always be playing second fiddle to MS.
And BTW, if OSX is not UNIX or BSD, why the hell, does it behave so much like UNIX and BSD? Going by your logic, if darwin is not a BSD, then free/net/openBSD isn't either. If you believe that, then you're a crackpot.
How often do you see ads for letterman on NBC? (N.B. I live in Australia. I think letterman is on CBS, could be wrong though)
Well, that's the whole point. Nothing says 'Fsck you' more that a good bout of civil disobedience. Since our wonderful (and I use that term loosely) politicians are only able to pass laws that benefit corporations, cartels and conglomerates, this is the only way for the public to fight back and be heard. The only part I don't like is, as you mentioned, those repeated settlement amounts. However, if this were to turn into a movement, alot of people would sit up and take notice
The answer here is simple. Start using layers in websites. You can achieve nearly the same effect as using frames, just ask any decent digital photogragpher who uses photoshop or the gimp. Your page might take a little longer to load sometimes, but it's a small price to pay for not getting sued.
Come on. Do you really think that MS wouldn't be using this in their OS and apps as well? Intel and AMD have already pledged their support for Palladium. You can also read up on the ins and outs of palladium here. When you do read it, pay attention to the section that reads:
Tells you who you?re dealing with?and what they?re doing. Palladium is all about deciding what?s trustworthy. It not only lets your computer know that you?re you , but also can limit what arrives (and runs on) your computer, verifying where it comes from and who created it.
Sorry about the '?'s, my HTML is still in early days. But as you can see, if AMD and Intel incorporate palladium into their chips, then the entire computer system will be at the mercy of he who wrote palladium. Now, fair enough it might not be turned on at first, but someone had an intersting comment that more and more software will require it to be turned on and I dare say MS would be one of the first. Not only for thier apps, but also to maybe kill off linux in one fell swoop. I don't think the average Joe will understand what palladium is or how to disable it
Palladium was intended to be a joint hardware and software excercise. Where you could only run signed code on your boxen. I didn't really understand how this could be benificial as it would basically halt any and all software development (new piece of code has to get signed digitally before it can be run. Can you imagine how frustrating that would be for a coder???). Also, forget about recompiling your kernel, once it's changed, you need to get it re-signed before you can use it to boot.
If MS has it's way with palladium, it will be just like the XBox now where you must pay MS for the boot key for a game to work. I dare say that not only was the XBox an attempt to get into the console market, but also a testing ground for palladium. Given the dismal failure of the XBox so far, this could also explain the truckloads of cash that MS has been burning on the XBox. They WANT Palladium to work and will do anything to make sure it DOES work. It is their final chance to secure complete market domination inside the law before linux makes it's way onto mainstream desktops.
All I can suggest with this sorry state of affairs is to change your hardware now to an etirely different platform. (gamer's won't like this) Move away from x86. There are many architecture's out there that would both benefit from incresed use and R&D funding. Names such as Alpha, SPARC, and my personal favourite, PowerPC are all perfectly good systems, and as we all know, run linux and BSD. So, choose your processor, choose your OS, GET SOME APPS COMPILED FOR THEM! and make a stand to let MS know that you own your systems and that all your boxen are NOT belong to them. Stop talking about it and do something for a change. I have I run a MS-free iBook with OSX and X11 and have never been happier