Agreed. Microsoft is probably shooting themselves in the foot by being tougher on pirates. Right now I must say that they are doing a very good job on fighting pirates since Windows XP more or less requires access to Windows Update to be usable. Gone are the days when working serials were all over the place.
If people want to use an old computer but cant install Windows XP because of all of its DRM, Linux might have a very, very good opportunity to enter the market. It will be interesting to see which Linux distribution is first to be the one catching this "niche" with an easy to use and easy to aquire distribution.
I guess it makes more sense from a business perspective to improve your prodcts in the presence of a competitor instead of waiting fur the other product to surpass you and die a slow death *cough* netscape *cough*..
As usual, just because YOU don't use a technology doesn't mean that it has failed. Bluetooth is very much alive, try buying a cellphone today without it.
The decision to make Bluetooth a low bandwidth technology was a very conscious choice. This, together with many features to save energy can, and will, eventually make it ubiquitous. No commerical technology available today can even come close to the battery life of a Bluetooth device. WUSB will be great for using in your scanner or external harddrive which require an extra power source anyway, while WLAN will continue to be a replacment for the LAN and nothing else.
But for those devices that run on batteries (PDAs, cellphones, mp3 players, HIDs) Bluetooth is the manufacturers only choice.
[Apple, IBM, Novell, or RedHat] are bankrolling OSS/free software from their existing mountains of cash with the hopes that by offering it at a loss they can put some hurt on the Microsoft juggernaut
Nope. Those companies have OSS for purely commercial reasons. This is a case of complementary economics. When two products are complements of eachother you want your complement product to be cheap so that a consumer can spend more money on your product (example: gas - cars).
For IBM, a complementary product is the OS. If the OS is free their customers can spend more money buying servers. As easy as that.
This is such a common misconception about Bluetooth. If anyone would care to actually read the specification you would know that Bluetooth is built upon the USB protocol standards! This means that a Bluetooth keyboard is no different than a plugged in keyboard except that it sends it signals over the air instead of through a wire.
Suddenly everyone seems to know what the MPAA is doing wrong and why they are loosing sales.
Yes, the MPAA could do better than spreading FUD.
Yes, the MPAA could do better films.
Yes, the MPAA could do a thousand things better than they are right now.
Does that give us a reason to pirate their movies? NO! If you don't like the movies or think that they are too expensive - don't buy them and write them a letter about your opinions. But just because you think you know what they are doing wrong does NOT give you the right to pirate their movies.
Try explaining to the judge that those were not the real mp3 files but just fake music files you were sharing... you'd be lucky if he even understands what a mp3 file is.
Here is a translation of the law quoted in the magazine:
Integrity protection
Electronic communication networks may be used to store or access information that is on a subscriber or user's terminal equipment only if the user receives information about the purpose of such treatment and is given a opportunity to reject it.
This does not prevent storage or access that is necessary to accomplish or facilitate the transfer of an electronic message through an electronic communication network or that is necessary to provide a service that the user or subscriber explicitly requested.
1. Company A owns alot of CD's.
2. You buy the CD you wan't from the company for lets say $3. Being the nice guys that company A are, under fair use they send you a copy (electronically) of what you just bought but keeps the original CD locked away (noone else can buy it - hey it's yours after all). You also sign a contract saying that you will not request your original CD.
3. You are done listening to the CD you bought. Company A buys the CD from you for $2.95 and ask you to destroy your copy (after all - keeping the copy would be illegal!).
4. Company A sells the same CD to a new customer...
Lets say those 90 jobs cost the company $5,000,000 annually while they were placed in the US. After the outsourcing, the developers in India does the same job for $500,000 which means the company has saved $4,500,000 annually (this is all hypothetically figures).
Suddenly the company can lower its prices and beat its competion. Eventually it needs to expand, therby requring more people for integration and analysis. And voila, everybody wins... India gets more jobs and the Western Hemisphere has moved up the food chain.
The only real loosers are the 90 US engineers that get stuck in a structural change of the economy. They will probably have to learn some new skills to stay competitive.
Or even better, equip everything with Bluetooth. Just drop harddisks, memory, processor etc inside your box and turn the the damn thing on.
Now we just need a good way to send wireless eletricity.....
If the software developer community have raised their prices to make-up for the sales lost to piracy they should in theory be making just as much money as if their software weren't pirated (because the price would be lower then).
So the reason why software developers are chasing pirates is so that they can lower prices?
And besides nowadays much of the software available is "ripped". Back then everything was *COMPLETE* and *FINAL*. Also the companies made *WORKING* games right away instead of throwing out some crap their grandma's wrote and then later on put out a patch.
The other day i saw "Operation Flashpoint" with music and sound-effects ripped! *sigh*, imagine reading a book where the preface says:
"To make it smaller we threw chapter 1-10 away".
When BBSs dissapeared the Warez community became boring.
Slashdot Mirror
... are available here
Agreed. Microsoft is probably shooting themselves in the foot by being tougher on pirates. Right now I must say that they are doing a very good job on fighting pirates since Windows XP more or less requires access to Windows Update to be usable. Gone are the days when working serials were all over the place.
If people want to use an old computer but cant install Windows XP because of all of its DRM, Linux might have a very, very good opportunity to enter the market. It will be interesting to see which Linux distribution is first to be the one catching this "niche" with an easy to use and easy to aquire distribution.
I guess it makes more sense from a business perspective to improve your prodcts in the presence of a competitor instead of waiting fur the other product to surpass you and die a slow death *cough* netscape *cough*..
11) Profit!!!!
As usual, just because YOU don't use a technology doesn't mean that it has failed. Bluetooth is very much alive, try buying a cellphone today without it.
The decision to make Bluetooth a low bandwidth technology was a very conscious choice. This, together with many features to save energy can, and will, eventually make it ubiquitous. No commerical technology available today can even come close to the battery life of a Bluetooth device. WUSB will be great for using in your scanner or external harddrive which require an extra power source anyway, while WLAN will continue to be a replacment for the LAN and nothing else.
But for those devices that run on batteries (PDAs, cellphones, mp3 players, HIDs) Bluetooth is the manufacturers only choice.
Nope. Those companies have OSS for purely commercial reasons. This is a case of complementary economics. When two products are complements of eachother you want your complement product to be cheap so that a consumer can spend more money on your product (example: gas - cars). For IBM, a complementary product is the OS. If the OS is free their customers can spend more money buying servers. As easy as that.
This is such a common misconception about Bluetooth. If anyone would care to actually read the specification you would know that Bluetooth is built upon the USB protocol standards! This means that a Bluetooth keyboard is no different than a plugged in keyboard except that it sends it signals over the air instead of through a wire.
Yes, the MPAA could do better than spreading FUD.
Yes, the MPAA could do better films.
Yes, the MPAA could do a thousand things better than they are right now.
Does that give us a reason to pirate their movies? NO! If you don't like the movies or think that they are too expensive - don't buy them and write them a letter about your opinions. But just because you think you know what they are doing wrong does NOT give you the right to pirate their movies.
Try explaining to the judge that those were not the real mp3 files but just fake music files you were sharing... you'd be lucky if he even understands what a mp3 file is.
Integrity protection
Electronic communication networks may be used to store or access information that is on a subscriber or user's terminal equipment only if the user receives information about the purpose of such treatment and is given a opportunity to reject it.
This does not prevent storage or access that is necessary to accomplish or facilitate the transfer of an electronic message through an electronic communication network or that is necessary to provide a service that the user or subscriber explicitly requested.
1. Company A owns alot of CD's.
2. You buy the CD you wan't from the company for lets say $3. Being the nice guys that company A are, under fair use they send you a copy (electronically) of what you just bought but keeps the original CD locked away (noone else can buy it - hey it's yours after all). You also sign a contract saying that you will not request your original CD.
3. You are done listening to the CD you bought. Company A buys the CD from you for $2.95 and ask you to destroy your copy (after all - keeping the copy would be illegal!).
4. Company A sells the same CD to a new customer...
Is this flawed?
35 trillion address should be enough for everyone!
Lets say those 90 jobs cost the company $5,000,000 annually while they were placed in the US. After the outsourcing, the developers in India does the same job for $500,000 which means the company has saved $4,500,000 annually (this is all hypothetically figures). Suddenly the company can lower its prices and beat its competion. Eventually it needs to expand, therby requring more people for integration and analysis. And voila, everybody wins... India gets more jobs and the Western Hemisphere has moved up the food chain. The only real loosers are the 90 US engineers that get stuck in a structural change of the economy. They will probably have to learn some new skills to stay competitive.
Or even better, equip everything with Bluetooth. Just drop harddisks, memory, processor etc inside your box and turn the the damn thing on. Now we just need a good way to send wireless eletricity.....
OK great.. one of the actors have joined slashdot!
If the software developer community have raised their prices to make-up for the sales lost to piracy they should in theory be making just as much money as if their software weren't pirated (because the price would be lower then). So the reason why software developers are chasing pirates is so that they can lower prices?
And besides nowadays much of the software available is "ripped". Back then everything was *COMPLETE* and *FINAL*. Also the companies made *WORKING* games right away instead of throwing out some crap their grandma's wrote and then later on put out a patch. The other day i saw "Operation Flashpoint" with music and sound-effects ripped! *sigh*, imagine reading a book where the preface says: "To make it smaller we threw chapter 1-10 away". When BBSs dissapeared the Warez community became boring.
How come Microsoft never included any kind of antivirus program per default in any windows package?
As opposed to Bluetooth?