Well... this is sort of the other way around. This extension was given exactly so Disney could keep the copyright over their characters. Not wanting to argue the validity of the extension, what bothers me is the fact big business is changing the laws with no regards to the general public. The government is, after all, representative of the people, not the few large corporations.
Palladium, as a transitional metal can be very unstable. Palladium 109 (Isotope) has a half life of only 13.5 hours, which should be exactly the amount of time it would take to render any Microsoft attempts in DRM useless.
Maybe it could be an option for "posterity" type backup though even that is dubious given that the standards aren't quite there yet. Some recorders will produce disks that are not readable on different readers, etc. If you must get something, go with Pioneer. They seem to be the most "compatible". I use one for my PC along with the DVDR that came in my G4 and they both produce disks that are readable by all DVD readers I have. The media is also a problem. They tend to be rather expensive and convoluted. There are different types of recordable DVD disks. I've been buying the Apple branded disks as they are the cheapest I could find (around $25 for a box of 5, or $5 per disk + tax). Also realize that it takes "for ever" to record these disks.
If you just want to have this data available on line, I would simply stack up IDE drives as it has been suggested earlier. These drives are getting cheaper by the minute. Find yourself one of those IDE Raid cards. For the price of a DVDR you can get the controller and hook up 4 160G drives giving you 640G of disk storage. To make it secure, make it redundant. It still is cheaper (considering the time saved in recording) than the DVD route.
Are you real? The only thing resembling logic in your post is the paragraph about Gary Kildall. But hey, even that can be argued. After all, the guy had a passion for life and flying. Had that fateful day been overcast, we would be in a very different world today.
Everything else you say is a contradiction to your assumptions. Yes, Microsoft did bully their way in every one of those examples.
Borland? Go ask Phil what he thinks about this. After getting hammered over and over by not having access to the same information Microsoft had for its own development tools. After being chronically late and behind Microsoft new operating systems because most of the stuff had to be reversed engineered (while Microsoft's own tools came ahead of these releases).
Visicalc? Lotus 123 came up with something for the 8086 faster (Visicalc was CP/M only for quite a while). That turned Lotus into a winner overnight. Overtime, Microsoft turned its dreadful Multiplan into Excel, forced it down the throat of every OEM and robbed the market share (as opposed to "winning" it). Not to mention it did everything it could to make Lotus 123 not to work with Microsoft products.
I can go on and on about this. Heck! I lived though all this and I am very intimate with all these scenarios as I was directly involved with many of them.
I get you point and it could be a valid one had you chosen very different examples. As is, it feels more like a paid Microsoft drone trolling around to create confusion.
This is all pathetic. All remedies presented will require a ton of oversight, which in turn will cost us (taxpayers) lots of money. Microsoft will keep belly rolling this to the ends of the Earth and nothing will ever happen. Whatever the judge decides, all Microsoft has to do is to come up with a new Service Pack, or some new Windows 2005 and rename everything to something else. That will be more than enough to confuse these clueless lawyers. It will be another 4 years of court battle by which time they will just do it all over again. In the mean time no one will have the incentive to create anything, the competition (whatever is left) will have all but died, and we will for ever be stuck with it.
There can only be one solution. Split the freaking company. Redmond will do the OS and nothing else. Applications will have to move the barn to Florida, and development tools to Maine (or any places of your choice provided they are really far away from each other). Let the market decide what is pre-included in computers and not the OS provider. Only then you and I will have the incentive to come up with the next "killer app" without the fear that Microsoft will copy it and put it for free in the next release of their crap.
This can only be good, even to Microsoft themselves. They would not have to worry about all this legal bullshit and they could actually concentrate in "innovation". Now that's a concept. Heck, they could even come up with a Linux version of Office. The market would be healthier, everyone would benefit. Anything else is just wasted time, energy, and lots of taxpayers' money.
If you actually read the article you would know that we are not talking about dropping the hardware. The article is about dropping VHS as a video distribution media. Your logic makes no sense given that you do not need to "replace" your old VCR. You would just pay $99 for a DVD player in order to watch movies you rent.
That is not the point. I'm NOT talking about the obsolescence of a recordable device. I am talking about the obsolescence of VHS as a distribution media for pre-recorded video. Laser Disk was a [low end] flop because of the price for both the media and the player. It is, however, still available and sought after by those who demand the best possible quality. DVD beats VHS in quality but its compression losses are unacceptable compared with Laser Disks.
The low end aspect is a reference to folks who still have not "added" a DVD (as opposed to replacing a VCR).
By the way, with VTRs, VHS are nothing but dinosaurs. I see no reason to have it. But that's me. I'm sure there are still uses for it for some.
Unlike you, I don't have the habit of inserting such items up my rectum. Yes, if it was the case for one or two units, just paying the $20 or so would not be an issue. I'm talking about over 1,000 laser disks and even greater amounts of varied [obsolete] media. Think before posting. That is, if that isn't going to cause any major damage due to the strain it may cause you.
... or the fact they cater to the low end and those are still running VHS. It's a market response. They will respond to the maker demand. It just happens that most Blockbuster customers still only run VHS in their trailers. Go to www.netflix.com. It is DVD only. Why even bother with Blockbuster and its silly "censorship"?
Here is a question. Could a case be made that if you already have a collection of [prerecorded] VHS tapes (or Laser Disks for that matter) you should be able to "update" these to DVDs (or whatever comes later) for just the media fee? You already paid for the license to see the movie. I guess this is the same as going from LP to CDs. What makes up the price of a movie? I assume the production of the media and the media cost is just a fraction of the final amount paid. The rest is license fees and general FAT. Why do we have to pay for it all over again? Individually we are nothing against this industry. Wouldn't this be a case for a class action law suit?
How's that for a fatwa? So... instead of having to worry about some wacko extremist flying a fully loaded rubber-band airplane into my server towers, we should give'em directions to the RIAA's (or your favorite imbecile association) headquarters.
Re:...book review stories by the uneducated?
on
The Venture Cafe
·
· Score: 1
Not so... That would be the case if you order the battery replacements straight from the manufacturer (usually very expensive as it is the case with APC). I just bought 4 big (1250VA) UPS and all batteries were dead. It cost me $17 per battery (standard sealed lead acid 12V 17A). After 8 of those I have four, just as new UPS systems for a total cost of less than $300.
What's the difference between something that allows you to copy a DVD from a Xerox machine? Why isn't that illegal? A friend of mine sent me a couple of DVD's for Christmas. The well intentioned friend didn't realize that European DVD's don't play in the US (he's from the UK). Here I am with two DVDs I can't do a thing with. Or, I can rip it and make it work so I can watch it. Whatever I do to watch it would be considered illegal (hacking the region code in the DVD player, removing the region code from the DVD, converting the DVD to a format I can play some place else, etc.) All this for something I own. There should be a way to file a class action law suit against the movie industry for causing us so much grief! They assume everyone is a criminal.
A FAQ as a collection of questions and answers is copyrightable as any other "collection". This is not the case. Read the article and you will see that the case is about duplicating (and not even all of it) the ideas. It is the equivalent of the contents of the messages stored on/. servers (the collection of messages) versus offering another web site with similar format.
The question to be asked is how many of these pirated downloads are actual lost sales. This is a study to be made. I would guess only a very small fraction. When the industry cries out for "billions" of dollars in lost sales, one can only laugh. Not only they are using full retail price (which no one has to pay), they also count every copy stolen by 13 year-olds in China. Filter out those who would never buy it any way and you may as well end up with "thousands" of dollars instead...
How does this apply to the rest of the world (Europe to be more exact)? I have a theory that the American market will always prefer crap over quality if it is cheaper. Has anybody done a study on the cost of this "cheapness"? A WallMart chopper will buy a $10 toaster over a $25 one just because it is cheaper. That toaster will be "toast" within a year. Then they must go out and buy another one. And another... When is cheaper really cheaper? That's saying nothing about dealing with the costs of producing volumes and volumes of these cheap goods, dealing with the waste they generate, etc. It is costing YOU a buck or so in tax money to deal with the waste generated by each of this proverbial crappy toasters.
A "disruptive" technology is good in the sense it forces the established forces to adapt. On the other hand, it also creates goods and services that are not necessarily good enough and with it, the necessity to buy these things constantly. It's a chicken and the egg scenario. Is the "disruptive" technology answering the desires of new consumers or is it creating new consumers from nothing?
I'm not sure this makes sense. It works in those cases where there is no other way and the number of connected nodes is small and controlled. That's to say the least about FCC rules, which are very specific about this. To make this work for the "last mile", theoretically it would be cheaper to update the current system, especially with new VDSL systems. The problem is that it offers little return to the telcos and they don't want to invest; One way or the other.
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Well... this is sort of the other way around. This extension was given exactly so Disney could keep the copyright over their characters. Not wanting to argue the validity of the extension, what bothers me is the fact big business is changing the laws with no regards to the general public. The government is, after all, representative of the people, not the few large corporations.
Where is this list of email addresses? I have a mail box with over 10,000 of these ready to go.
>> Most savvy Mac users ... is that like military intelligence?
Palladium, as a transitional metal can be very unstable. Palladium 109 (Isotope) has a half life of only 13.5 hours, which should be exactly the amount of time it would take to render any Microsoft attempts in DRM useless.
Sure... a black hole where time and space are meaningless...
Maybe it could be an option for "posterity" type backup though even that is dubious given that the standards aren't quite there yet. Some recorders will produce disks that are not readable on different readers, etc. If you must get something, go with Pioneer. They seem to be the most "compatible". I use one for my PC along with the DVDR that came in my G4 and they both produce disks that are readable by all DVD readers I have. The media is also a problem. They tend to be rather expensive and convoluted. There are different types of recordable DVD disks. I've been buying the Apple branded disks as they are the cheapest I could find (around $25 for a box of 5, or $5 per disk + tax). Also realize that it takes "for ever" to record these disks.
If you just want to have this data available on line, I would simply stack up IDE drives as it has been suggested earlier. These drives are getting cheaper by the minute. Find yourself one of those IDE Raid cards. For the price of a DVDR you can get the controller and hook up 4 160G drives giving you 640G of disk storage. To make it secure, make it redundant. It still is cheaper (considering the time saved in recording) than the DVD route.
I don't care. As long as it slams Redmond...
Are you real? The only thing resembling logic in your post is the paragraph about Gary Kildall. But hey, even that can be argued. After all, the guy had a passion for life and flying. Had that fateful day been overcast, we would be in a very different world today.
Everything else you say is a contradiction to your assumptions. Yes, Microsoft did bully their way in every one of those examples.
Borland? Go ask Phil what he thinks about this. After getting hammered over and over by not having access to the same information Microsoft had for its own development tools. After being chronically late and behind Microsoft new operating systems because most of the stuff had to be reversed engineered (while Microsoft's own tools came ahead of these releases).
Visicalc? Lotus 123 came up with something for the 8086 faster (Visicalc was CP/M only for quite a while). That turned Lotus into a winner overnight. Overtime, Microsoft turned its dreadful Multiplan into Excel, forced it down the throat of every OEM and robbed the market share (as opposed to "winning" it). Not to mention it did everything it could to make Lotus 123 not to work with Microsoft products.
I can go on and on about this. Heck! I lived though all this and I am very intimate with all these scenarios as I was directly involved with many of them.
I get you point and it could be a valid one had you chosen very different examples. As is, it feels more like a paid Microsoft drone trolling around to create confusion.
This is all pathetic. All remedies presented will require a ton of oversight, which in turn will cost us (taxpayers) lots of money. Microsoft will keep belly rolling this to the ends of the Earth and nothing will ever happen. Whatever the judge decides, all Microsoft has to do is to come up with a new Service Pack, or some new Windows 2005 and rename everything to something else. That will be more than enough to confuse these clueless lawyers. It will be another 4 years of court battle by which time they will just do it all over again. In the mean time no one will have the incentive to create anything, the competition (whatever is left) will have all but died, and we will for ever be stuck with it.
There can only be one solution. Split the freaking company. Redmond will do the OS and nothing else. Applications will have to move the barn to Florida, and development tools to Maine (or any places of your choice provided they are really far away from each other). Let the market decide what is pre-included in computers and not the OS provider. Only then you and I will have the incentive to come up with the next "killer app" without the fear that Microsoft will copy it and put it for free in the next release of their crap.
This can only be good, even to Microsoft themselves. They would not have to worry about all this legal bullshit and they could actually concentrate in "innovation". Now that's a concept. Heck, they could even come up with a Linux version of Office. The market would be healthier, everyone would benefit. Anything else is just wasted time, energy, and lots of taxpayers' money.
If you actually read the article you would know that we are not talking about dropping the hardware. The article is about dropping VHS as a video distribution media. Your logic makes no sense given that you do not need to "replace" your old VCR. You would just pay $99 for a DVD player in order to watch movies you rent.
That is not the point. I'm NOT talking about the obsolescence of a recordable device. I am talking about the obsolescence of VHS as a distribution media for pre-recorded video. Laser Disk was a [low end] flop because of the price for both the media and the player. It is, however, still available and sought after by those who demand the best possible quality. DVD beats VHS in quality but its compression losses are unacceptable compared with Laser Disks. The low end aspect is a reference to folks who still have not "added" a DVD (as opposed to replacing a VCR). By the way, with VTRs, VHS are nothing but dinosaurs. I see no reason to have it. But that's me. I'm sure there are still uses for it for some.
Unlike you, I don't have the habit of inserting such items up my rectum. Yes, if it was the case for one or two units, just paying the $20 or so would not be an issue. I'm talking about over 1,000 laser disks and even greater amounts of varied [obsolete] media. Think before posting. That is, if that isn't going to cause any major damage due to the strain it may cause you.
... or the fact they cater to the low end and those are still running VHS. It's a market response. They will respond to the maker demand. It just happens that most Blockbuster customers still only run VHS in their trailers. Go to www.netflix.com. It is DVD only. Why even bother with Blockbuster and its silly "censorship"?
Here is a question. Could a case be made that if you already have a collection of [prerecorded] VHS tapes (or Laser Disks for that matter) you should be able to "update" these to DVDs (or whatever comes later) for just the media fee? You already paid for the license to see the movie. I guess this is the same as going from LP to CDs. What makes up the price of a movie? I assume the production of the media and the media cost is just a fraction of the final amount paid. The rest is license fees and general FAT. Why do we have to pay for it all over again? Individually we are nothing against this industry. Wouldn't this be a case for a class action law suit?
How's that for a fatwa? So... instead of having to worry about some wacko extremist flying a fully loaded rubber-band airplane into my server towers, we should give'em directions to the RIAA's (or your favorite imbecile association) headquarters.
You forgot to mention the size of your pipi...
Not so... That would be the case if you order the battery replacements straight from the manufacturer (usually very expensive as it is the case with APC). I just bought 4 big (1250VA) UPS and all batteries were dead. It cost me $17 per battery (standard sealed lead acid 12V 17A). After 8 of those I have four, just as new UPS systems for a total cost of less than $300.
Troll? Redundant maybe... but troll? Me thinks more and more people modding these are M$ employees... good grief.
Couldn't this be linked instead of transcribing the whole shebang here?
Actually, it is just one in 1,000,000. The rest are well paid "Extras" and "Stand Ins"...
What's the difference between something that allows you to copy a DVD from a Xerox machine? Why isn't that illegal? A friend of mine sent me a couple of DVD's for Christmas. The well intentioned friend didn't realize that European DVD's don't play in the US (he's from the UK). Here I am with two DVDs I can't do a thing with. Or, I can rip it and make it work so I can watch it. Whatever I do to watch it would be considered illegal (hacking the region code in the DVD player, removing the region code from the DVD, converting the DVD to a format I can play some place else, etc.) All this for something I own. There should be a way to file a class action law suit against the movie industry for causing us so much grief! They assume everyone is a criminal.
A FAQ as a collection of questions and answers is copyrightable as any other "collection". This is not the case. Read the article and you will see that the case is about duplicating (and not even all of it) the ideas. It is the equivalent of the contents of the messages stored on /. servers (the collection of messages) versus offering another web site with similar format.
The question to be asked is how many of these pirated downloads are actual lost sales. This is a study to be made. I would guess only a very small fraction. When the industry cries out for "billions" of dollars in lost sales, one can only laugh. Not only they are using full retail price (which no one has to pay), they also count every copy stolen by 13 year-olds in China. Filter out those who would never buy it any way and you may as well end up with "thousands" of dollars instead...
How does this apply to the rest of the world (Europe to be more exact)? I have a theory that the American market will always prefer crap over quality if it is cheaper. Has anybody done a study on the cost of this "cheapness"? A WallMart chopper will buy a $10 toaster over a $25 one just because it is cheaper. That toaster will be "toast" within a year. Then they must go out and buy another one. And another... When is cheaper really cheaper? That's saying nothing about dealing with the costs of producing volumes and volumes of these cheap goods, dealing with the waste they generate, etc. It is costing YOU a buck or so in tax money to deal with the waste generated by each of this proverbial crappy toasters.
A "disruptive" technology is good in the sense it forces the established forces to adapt. On the other hand, it also creates goods and services that are not necessarily good enough and with it, the necessity to buy these things constantly. It's a chicken and the egg scenario. Is the "disruptive" technology answering the desires of new consumers or is it creating new consumers from nothing?
I'm not sure this makes sense. It works in those cases where there is no other way and the number of connected nodes is small and controlled. That's to say the least about FCC rules, which are very specific about this. To make this work for the "last mile", theoretically it would be cheaper to update the current system, especially with new VDSL systems. The problem is that it offers little return to the telcos and they don't want to invest; One way or the other.