Actually, he'd been reading Nietzsche as early as the 60s. He wrote a song about the Superman (NOT the DC comics character). I personally think the song sucked compared to his other songs, but he _did_ write it:)
"Andy Walking! Andy tired. Andy take a little snooze- Tie him up when he's fast asleep Send him on a pleasant cruise. When he wake up on the sea He's sure to think of me and you And to think about paint, and to think about glue And a jolly boring thing to do."
*grin* if you hear it, you hear the contempt in it. Andy Warhol, what a plastic fellow.:)
Besides which, you have no idea how pissed off I am that you even _breathe_ the name Madison in this context. This is the man who wrote Federalist #10, and your support of Microsoft _spits_ on his memory. It's disgusting to hear you attempt to use this man's name to prop up the most corrupt and destructive faction we might ever see. A few words from Madison against you and what you stand for:
"When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. Let me add that it is the great desidiratum by which alone this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind. -Madison
You'd like Vermont, ayup. In the summer we had some storms during which the emergency broadcast services told everybody in town to unplug everything in the house and stand away from windows and walls:) that was a pretty good storm. Some of the lightning strikes were going on _right_ at ground level. If you think J. Random Storm is impressive, you ought to see what it's like when the bolt _doesn't_ originate 8 miles up in the air;) smash! wham! explode!;)
Isn't that just the same as saying the Judge is right, MS is a monopoly, has caused an immense amount of damage, most notably killing off all other browser competition, dumping their product and starving out any other browser projects then burning the ground they walk on so nothing will ever grow there again? Isn't that a more accurate statement of the situation than 'IE is better. Drat!'? Isn't that EXACTLY the point as far as the antitrust case is concerned? If there was lots of thriving competition and lots of good effective choices to use, would the Judge have hit MS as hard as he did? I don't know what he has in mind, but this only proves how right Penfield Jackson is and how much he 'gets it'. Personally, I have no problem being a 'protest vote', as the sites _I_ like work with Mac Navigator, and I've found a version (not very new) that runs pretty good for me, and decided to ignore CSS and most Java content and javascript. That's my choice. I make it because I _really_ can't stomach helping a monopoly scorch the earth. I don't expect other people to do likewise, which is why the judge was right in his findings of fact. IE is technically better in various ways than Netscape (at least on Windows) _because_ it's impossible to compete with a monopoly dumping a product they're spending billions on perfecting. All their effort has gone into making it actually work. It's possible to understand that this has happened and still remember that it is _part_ of an anticompetitive action that has also made it flat-out impossible for ANY other business venture to try and make a commercial web browser. Certain technical tricks like the ZDNet vanishing poll bug suggest that MS has also put great effort into finding ways to make it impossible for ANY venture to make ANY web browser and not be hammered by buggy problems. If IE accepts malformed HTML that seriously screws up Netscape, and then MS-supporting sites and authoring tools begin producing that malformed HTML _on_ _purpose_, what then? That becomes anticompetitive behavior against both commercial and uncommercial entities, and it's impossible to defend against within the free market system alone. It needs to be treated as a criminal act- and IE needs to be nationalised, confiscated, since Microsoft has managed to make things so that going into the new millenium, the world does not HAVE any choices, and no new choices are going to arise. All that is required is to get IE away from commercial control- it's in way too controlling a position to be any part of a free market. It's the informational equivalent of a totalitarian state- let's start treating it as one and making it exist within a structure of rules and checks and balances.
Likewise, I use Navigator Standalone on the Mac. I didn't used to- I used iCab, but was forced to stop because their betas expired and the new betas went through impossible bugridden phases. I went back to Navigator 4 and have been staying with that ever since. Maybe the government should just _seize_ IE and make it the Government Issue Web Browser for All that so many people seem to desperately want. I could cope with that, but it's no good letting any commercial entity have that kind of power. At least the government is obligated to pretend to look after its citizens. I won't _touch_ IE unless it's nationalized. I don't care if they dumped so many billions of dollars of work into it that it sucks less than Netscape. People need to understand the control implications behind handing anybody the total control of the Net.
Try reading both the findings of fact and the MS statements with the idea that every word is completely sincerely meant, and then you'll get an idea of the real situation. MS is _not_ intentionally trying to be manipulative by making false statements- they 'drink their own kool-aid', believe their own lies, and are very dangerous right now because they believe they _must_ prevail over the government for the good of the world and innovation everywhere. It doesn't matter that this is howling nonsense, they believe it anyway. It's important to remember that they believe this and consider it overwhelmingly important. Don't ever think they are mere schemers. They are more dangerous than that, and now they are basically at war with the government and truly desperate (as I said in an earlier post, I would bet money that the MS people were _convinced_ the findings of fact would exonerate them completely. These are not sane people...)
They drink their own Kool-Aid. That's a metaphor for being deceived by their own obvious lies. By now their corporate worldview is downright psychotic, bearing no resemblance to the realities of business or the law. Speculating on possible smart reasons for them to act this crazily is an error, the reality is that they are that crazy and believe every damned word they have to say, so you can't fault them for sincerity, and being done for perjury would shock them- these are people who can, literally, make up video evidence and edit it cutting in faked stuff believing that what they are doing is TRUE and HONEST. I mean it- that wasn't so much a crass attempt to cheat, it revealed the depths of insanity in MS and their legal team and the people making the tape. "Oh dear, the tape does not show us being as RIGHT as we ARE! Quick, change it so it is more honest and illustrates how RIGHT we really are! We wouldn't want to present the judge with BAD EVIDENCE, would we? Do something to make the evidence more truthful!" It's important to realise where these people are coming from, otherwise you'll constantly be tripped up trying to guess what they'll do next. Prediction: Microsoft will not give an inch. They will step up the astroturf, the attempts to get the DoJ defunded- they may try to get Judge Jackson removed by some form of pressure, or even by injuring him in some way if they're _really_ out there. If I was him I'd hire bodyguards. Within the limits of the legal struggle, they will continue to the absolute bitter end maintaining the position of wounded innocence, _ignoring_ the findings of fact that now contradict their whole case. They are arguing from a position of total brainwashed certainty that they are not only right but fighting a war for the freedom of the whole computer industry. To them, this justifies absolutely anything, and they will take the exact same actions against the government that they took against so many companies. We don't know just how far that went yet. The only thing we can be sure of is that now MS is effectively declaring war on the government, and is crazier than an emu and finally truly desperate: I would bet money that the MS people were convinced Jackson's findings of fact would _exonerate_ them completely, and that he was just trying to get them to make some concessions first...
They're bound to be much more representative because the Slashdot astroturf counters the paid MS employees astroturfing 80-hour a week shifts from Redmond, just as Nixon had people filling out postcards for days on end to astroturf _postal_ mail polls back in the early 70s.
I hardly think they are so _disorganized_ as to not astroturf these things fulltilt, considering that they've already been caught doing just that. You think they'd stop now?
This is wacked. Is anybody running a story on how the MSNBC poll won't let you vote unless you're on Windows/IE/whatever? And considering this- what _is_ the result of the poll? I'm quite curious now.
The disconcerting part is that the MS people show _no_ signs of backing down even now. They haven't changed their tune one iota. I think they're all brainwashed, they're just going to stonewall it to death (theirs).
What I care about is access to tools. Give me either access to the ENCRYPTION if there must be encryption, or make the format so you can burn DVDs with unencrypted data, AND THE CONSUMER DECKS WILL PLAY THEM. I'm serious. This isn't about piracy at all. It's 'content protection', in the sense of "You can't be an artist/filmmaker unless you're big enough to be one of the X many corps which can afford one of the encryption slots. Not many of those! If you're just some schmuck making films, you are NOT ALLOWED to produce standard media. If you try we'll sue." Does anybody see what is wrong with this picture? Who is working on making this state of affairs STOP and giving artists the right to create and distribute their artworks? This goes waaaay beyond the pale, and it really has little to do with piracy at all. It's just the same as taxes on blank media for consumers to tax independent content creators- only this time it appears that it might be possible to TOTALLY cut off every indie artist/filmmaker from the ability to reach an audience. Is this unconstitutional?
Bruce is absolutely right on about this. THAT is where we should be looking. Who really cares that much about desperately needing to make a spare copy of the Matrix, or desperately needing to play it on a Scrotely Whizzbang in ScroteOS? Now ask yourself if you want the ability in the coming millenium to make your own desktop movies, your own music CDs, and be able to go on the net and sell 'em to people on your own without going to CBS or Universal Studios? It doesn't matter that much if you're not good, do you want the _ability_ to express yourself in this way? The alternative is exactly what Bruce says, allowing commercial interests acting as trusts to make it difficult for you to be in the business unless you go through one of the established studios- and there's a LOT of evidence that this is sheer exploitation. I'm not sure how bad it is in film, but in the music industry the exploitation is very very bad, insanely so, outright fraudulent. It's brutal. The counterbalance to this is ability to produce your own artworks, at several important levels.
First, it needs to be legal and possible to do the actual artwork. This would compare to being allowed to own recording equipment at all, if you're a musician. This is tough to lose- it would be tyrannical and indefensible to eliminate it, though you'll see just this happening indirectly- you're taxed on blank media by the industries, supposedly to defend against 'pirates'.
Second, it needs to be legal and possible to distribute your artwork. There are some ways to challenge this, though it is tough. This is the level of ability to record your own work on media that is played on industry standard consumer level players, such as CD players. Soon it will be a question of making your own DVD desktop films and being able to give friends your work to play on their consumer DVD players. I _think_ DVD already punishes independents in that you can't do that yet, you have to be a licensee for huge sums or you don't have ability to record that format and play it on a consumer deck. That's bad, very bad, and it must be changed.
Third, you need to have the ability to go somewhere and get 1000 CDs/DVDs pressed. Here, CDs have traditionally been strong- there are many small outfits that will burn a case of CDs for you. I think there is a concerted effort going on to make it so no such availability will be there for DVDs. If you have a hit underground rock album and enough grassroots/net distribution to justify pressing them in the thousands, you can do that today. I'm not aware of any way to legally and practically have a hit underground _film_ and press DVDs of it in the thousands, and this is a very serious problem and concern for freedom. We are not talking about pirates here, we are talking about the voice of the artist or independent filmmaker.
Finally, you get up to extremely heavy distribution. There may be a problem in getting along with the big entertainment trusts, but if you're playing on those levels you already have your own distribution networks and can cut deals from a position of strength, by shipping X many products and saying 'There. I could move 6X as many with your distribution. You can have a cut of that, or you can sit by and I'll get someone else for it or grow until I'm doing it myself'. At this level the artist does not need that much protection as he or she has _arrived_ and is doing business effectively, with extensive distribution already.
That's basically 4 levels. Currently, with regard to CD-Roms, the levels to watch out for are second and third- if new consumer CD hardware refuses to play the existing format, it would be suicidal but would also be a way of 'taking back' control of CD authoring from the independents. More significantly, the people who can press 1000 CDs for less than a grand have to be protected- if they are harassed out of business, the independent would have to try releasing their work on blue dye-CDs pressed one at a time, and that doesn't scale. Access to the industrial duplicators _must_ remain. With regard to DVDs, it looks like the entire first three levels are at serious risk. I'm not certain you can burn the DVD format at home with your own material: THAT has got to change (rejoicing if I'm wrong here, but I kind of doubt it.). By the same token, if you can't burn it you can't give it to a friend, the datasizes are not comparable to the industry offerings, and if it's made illegal to 'pirate' defined as burn movie content onto a DVD (backing up HDs OK but video content, you're not allowed to?) then level two is shot- if you distribute your own work burned in DVD format you could get done for piracy even though it's your own work. Finally, the third level is the volume producers- if they are stamped out in the name of antipiracy it is an incredible imposition on the independent artist, because without that ability to work hard enough to earn the money to ship the commercial grade content on standard media in volume, nobody is ever going to get to stage 4, the stage of jockeying for position and making room for yourself at the table. To do that you _have_ to be able to move the units yourself and present the big distributors with a fait accompli- giving them an unsolicited tape will not cut it, you have to show them your network and the amount of units you're currently doing. Are we going to let the industry BAN us from producing artworks as independents? (insert 'poetic license' joke here!:P ) Are we going to focus so hard on the desire to run off a copy of the Matrix for personal use, that we're _blind_ to the steady erosion of our abilities to create in the digital age? How far will it get before something is done? Who is willing to consider this in terms of the rapidly approaching era of desktop filmmakers (live, CGI, cel-animated, all types) and the systematic slaughter of all of their distribution options?!? The _first_ order of business should be getting control of the ability to master consumer DVDs, just as we are able to master audio CDs legally and unharassed. If that means losing the encryption so be it- there are important issues at stake for the millenium. The technology _will_ come, and people _will_ be able to do desktop filmmaking. It's a question of whether the consumer media becomes a wholly controlled property of vast conglomerates, or whether individual artists will be allowed to pursue their artwork using common consumer media for output. You can burn a CD and play it for people (especially if they have a CD-Rom, but maybe even on their CD players.) What if you were only allowed to record on DATs and had to go to Atlantic Records to be allowed to have it made into a CD?
I've had to stand in a bread line. In my town, storefronts are going up for rent like it was property leprosy, and nobody is renting them, either. What is the figure, something like 20% of city minority groups unemployed? While I grew up, the employment rates for _my_ age group consistently were worse than those of the Great Depression my grandparents lived through. THIS IS the Depression. Suck it up and deal. And think again about quitting or coding less than 60 hours a week >:) in fact, hadn't you better up it to 80? If you don't there are about 600 starving people who would love to replace you >:)
That's disturbing. I happen to agree somewhat with their position, and in fact distrusting corporate America is one thing I actually see eye to eye with Katz on, but that's _bad_. It lowers the tone of an argument that desperately needs to be made properly. In particular, what jumped out in your words were 'trap of stock options'- I strongly agree, as this is a major abuse in many many ways- it's an accounting loophole tantamount to fraud, it's a means of paying employees in vapor, and most insidiously it's a means of getting employees to have a vested personal interest in destroying competition and capitalism, because valuation will inevitably be _lower_ in a healthy economic situation with actual choice available. It's a potent bribe to get people to do anything up to and including breaking the law in efforts to make their company eradicate all competition, and it doesn't reward honest effort disproportionately to dishonest exploits. And these book-writing clowns have not even thought of this? As for collective bargaining, in a sense that's what the GPL is. "We'll benefit you _if_ you keep to the bargain." If they don't know about this stuff they are very ill suited to writing a book on any form of labor abuse... *sigh* I think I'm turning into a small business libertarian, operative words 'small business'. There are just SO MANY mechanisms in the current state of the economy that assume a mystical trickle-down theory that fscking doesn't work, didn't in the 80s and didn't in the 90s and still doesn't. This 'prosperity' people talk of happens to be one with unemployment levels comparable to those of the Great Depression. Entire categories of Americans are simply thrown away, don't count. And guess what? The reason companies are beginning to choke and starve and savage each other is because of a lack of trickle-UP... starving homeless people _CAN'T!_ buy consumer products. They can maybe steal them, and that's even worse for the economy. The trickle has to go both ways or nothing works- you can't either give everything to the rich and expect anything to work, or give everything to the poor either. You've got to balance it out, and I see America still doing some of that, since as far back as 'New Deal' social reform, and I see idiot college randite kids arguing like mad that even that should be stopped. Well, with luck the judge will release findings of fact today. Here's hoping that he slams MS, and be ready to sell every stock you've got on Monday, because MS now is built into every major stock index, and you're looking at a crash that will take your head clean off. The fantasy is over, reality is coming to call, and the rich can now share in some of the Great Depression that they are currently ignoring completely because it only happened to the poor.
The spoken word came first, and you use it yourself, I bet. Forget this obsession with the primacy of visual text, it is nothing more than a weak paraphrasing of all the expressions, overtones and richness of the spoken word- to which a blind person might be considerably more sensitive than you are, making you the crippled one. Text is nothing. Written language is a cheap hack- anything expressible in it can be expressed with the spoken word, which was around first, and continues to see more use on a daily basis. _You_ are behaving like a loony. Perhaps you might consider not behaving that way.
OK- I won't actually do a haughty rant pretending to _believe_ that caption, I think it is as indefensible as the one it parodies- but dig it- most of the browsers out there _are_ IE, and guess what? Most of the ones that aren't are still Windows! If you (we) linux people seriously expect that you can scorn a little faction, a relatively rare special interest group just because you don't feel like making even a pretense at an effort- well, quick karma will do you in faster than you would believe possible, and who's going to speak up for you when non-Windows users are not allowed to vote or have bank accounts because all is computerised and minorities are inconvenient? Who do you expect will help you- ADA? Better get a grip on what democracy really is before you're run over yourself.
"The best way to deal with this is to stop innovation and forbid consumers from having the technology"? "Perhaps computer CD-Roms and DVD-Roms can be made to not play audio CDs and DVDs"? Balls! Who _is_ this clown? I admit I stopped reading Wired a long time ago, but DAMN... are we seriously talking about intentionally making barriers to entry to the entertainment industry for anyone not a big money-spewing corporation?? This goes waaaay beyond the pale and is the most shocking thing I've seen in weeks. WHAT? First of all, trying to remove 'consumer' ability to record 'standard' audio CDs and work with them on the computer is already way out of line. I know people who've already begun to make teeny little record companies for spare change, releasing music that's really neat music, and xeroxing off gatefold liners or whatever just to do their art. They don't make a lot of money at it, but that's not the point- they have the ability to get in at the ground floor. Given enough money there are lots of processing plants ready to press 1000 CDs for not too much money, even with inserts included, even with printing on the CDs- and that'd be _standard_ audio CDs same as any chart-topper. The means of production have never been so available- and this Wired clown sees nothing wrong with taking all that away? (You _know_ that along with 'CD-Roms cannot play audio CDs anymore' would go 'or record them') Then, on top of that: has anyone seriously considered what DVD could mean in this context? Think 'Blair Witch Project', in another sense think of all the kids playing with 3DSMax and stuff. Isn't it obvious that, where the 80s were the beginning of the home _audio_ recording studio, the new century will clearly be the beginning of *tadah* The Home Movie Studio. Think of it. Forget copying storebought movies, that's lame and not the point and they suck more and more so who cares? Just think of what access to tools could really mean. Kids in their basements, groups of people in their spare time, 'bands' of actors and student cinematographers could start using the technology, and not be limited to Blair Witch production values- hell no! You could learn from the known techniques of the greats, buy a couple good halogen floodlights, or for that matter put together entire CGI films, or do anime or Disney-style animated movies depending on the amount of effort you wanted to put in. Disney's prewar multiplane camera cost millions. Today you can do that with Photoshop for hundreds, or with POV-Ray, even more elaborately, for nada, and there's no reason the GIMP couldn't be altered into specialised tools for such purposes. And at the end of the chain? No longer demo reels of 16mm film for which nobody has a projector. Not even VHS tape that's not great in quality and few people have genlocks and things to be able to work with it extensively. Suddenly anybody can produce creative work and release in the prevalent consumer digital format, same as with the CD! Suddenly people's creativity can express itself in FILM. Unless, that is, somebody just so happens to arrange matters so the technology is withheld. Unless somebody just so happens to make things so hot for the people who'd _own_ DVD duplicators on a large scale, that there ends up being _no_ way to get from the burn-one stage to the burn-1000 stage without signing with a movie studio. Unless SOMEBODY, imagine that, decides that instead of letting people have the technology and power to create, it's better to burn all the books, outlaw unlicensed arting and filming, and lock things down for good. Doesn't this seem like something to prevent at all costs? Does it have _anything_ to do with pirates at all? Aren't pirates a really useful excuse to make sure that people in general don't end up getting the technology they need to produce their own art, music and FILMS without depending entirely on the entertainment industries for anything of that nature? DON'T BE FOOLED. This isn't about the right to pirate at all! That's a side-issue, though it has some merit. What's really going on is this: these industries are so consumed with greed and desperation to control their revenue streams, that they are effectively trying to deprive the world of the technology to _create_ with. It's like forbidding the sale of paper in the Middle Ages. It's like allowing computers and mice and joysticks but forbidding keyboards because they could be used to type incendiary words. And that's such a serious threat, such a major problem, that the plight of ripped-off consumers wanting to copy their DVDs of The Matrix- well, that pales into insignificance. Being forced to buy another copy of The Matrix is _not_ that horrible. Being forced away from the tools that you could use to make your own movie like that- _is_ horrible. It's absolutely got to be stopped, and the real issues must be known. Think of the artists, musicians, filmmakers who are so close to having amazing tools and could be denied them over this nonsense. This is unacceptable.
Look at the situation. They are clearly ready to dump the hardware. The flip side is this- they can compete in game availability by dumping access to games- the others make their money through licensing, and MS can choose to try and proliferate tools for writing the games, and set up licensing that's a lot more appealing than, say, Sony does. Then when do they make their money? They don't. This is a loss leader for the PC platform, but there are some _fatal_ problems with this approach:
people don't necessarily trust Windows and Microsoft well enough to consider them a competitor in consoles- consoles are about not having to reinstall Windows on, about being troublefree. The perception will be that it's a PC with the floppy drive welded shut:)
although they can get some development by making it appealing to develop for Windows and ship on this as well by clicking a few checkboxes in the IDE, again, this is a loss leader strategy. Why are they acting threatened in this area? It looks very much like the only way they can make it fly is to take _serious_ losses on it for the sake of proliferation- and they can't reasonably be doing that. MS can't afford to squander its money- that money is the sole source of its power.
finally, the biggie: every single one of these things made and sold, assuming a world in which all or most of the Windows games are also released for this thing (i.e. marketer's wet dream of _success_ for it), means one more reason to not run a PC with Windows on it. If you can get The Games on a little box with a CD-Rom slot in it, you don't need to beat yourself into the ground making a Windows PC do both that and email and web browsing and spreadsheets etc etc. You can specialise and use something else for the 'real computer' stuff- a Mac, Linux, Be, whatever!
Microsoft can't afford to do this. At all. Not even a little bit. I wonder if this project is even real, or if they've considered the implications: "Get Windows- you need to be able to run the games, games are only for Windows!" "But wait, I got a *whatever-it's-called*, and it can run all the Windows games, so I don't need to run Windows anymore!" "Oh." It seems unbelievable that they wouldn't clue to this problem. I guess we'll see, or not see, in the long run. Might be the purest vapor... if they know what's good for them. They _must_ maintain the PC or basically die. There are too many other things that are a lot easier to manage and keep happy than a PC for consumer computing purposes, and giving away the dominance of the PC in numbers of games is a _bad_ mistake.
Trouble is, if 99% said Windows 95/98 _wasn't_ buggy, they'd be lying or simply conned. It's not a popularity contest, people, this says nothing about Windows and everything about people's perception of Windows. Windows _IS_ buggy. Most big software projects are, and Windows is particularly buggy and people have lived with it for _years_ and gotten well used to its weird and chaotic behavior. _Journalists_ whose paychecks are heavily subsidized by MS have taken to writing articles about how buggy it is: "Hey, Windows is buggy! I can't go three days without it crashing!" "Oh yeah? When I wrote about how buggy it was, I got _buried_ in email telling me how right I was!" "Oh yeah? It crashes every day for me!" "You were lucky, for me it dies every thrrree hoours..." "_Luxury_..." It's more interesting to speculate on how many people actually understand how buggy Windows is, and what they propose to do about it, than to seriously argue about whether (ha!) Windows _is_ (hahaha!) buggy. (*ROFL*) Uh, if anybody is suggesting that Windows is _not_ buggy and that the constant and incessant reports of it being buggy are _jealousy_ or malicious lies... they should go see a mental health care specialist:) because their behavior is kind of psychotic, such a determined denial of trivially obvious reality can't be healthy:) Now, if you ask whether it's good to have people constantly making the same joke about it, that's another story- maybe you could make a case that this is a tragic situation that deserves sympathy and help and big donations to the Help Microsoft Afford To Pay For Debugging Fund. Surely it's only right to help poverty-stricken young startups like MS, who can't _afford_ to take the time to debug, help them get the tools and talent they need. With enough donations, somebody might be able to go through the source for RegEdit and take out almost a megabyte of completely unused resources that don't do anything! If only MS had the money to pay for somebody to do these little housekeeping tasks. Toss them a coin and utter a small prayer for them.;) On the other hand, since they don't want to clean up their act, why not turn the knife in it as hard as you can? It's capitalism in action- it's a window of vulnerability- they are helping potential competitors create a market space for themselves, by shipping crapware all the time. Don't let them do it unchallenged, _lean_ on that vulnerability, it might make some consumer someday, about to purchase WindowsYetAgain(tm), pause and stop and go "Damn... who needs that?" and start down some other path of computing that they would enjoy just as much or more. I'm more shocked that almost 10% _don't_ think W9* is buggy. o_O
*spends half an hour trying to get to a page on Robert Fripp's website, curses* Well anyway- Fripp put it better than I will, funnier, but he made his website badly enough that it's impossible to deal with. So I'll just paraphrase. The record companies impose a number of historical charges in the form of percentages on the cost of the albums. So if the artist is getting 5% royalty on sales, that is 5% after a 20% wastage charge, j.random other charge, and (I am NOT making this up) a charge on typical breakage of the SHELLAC the music is recorded on. I am NOT making this up. "But CDs are not made out of shellac!". As Fripp said in his lost article, "Now you're getting clever.";) Basically, we're looking at corporate pork barrel, bigtime. The artists, perhaps even the movie studios do not get _that_ much money out of these huge industries. It's the corporations taking more and more. Of course they are not passing savings on to the consumer. That would be capitalism and a desire to compete on the basis of price. Of course they are not passing vastly increased earnings on to the artists. Why should they when they can charge a percentage of CD sales to broken _shellac_ and deny it to the artist? Of course they are earning exponentially more than they were. Where do you think they get the money to bribe the government and attempt to get antipiracy legislation passed? The industry does not DESERVE protection. Whether it's the music industry (slamdunk of an argument to anyone who knows anything about how bad it is) or the film industry (Blair Witch Project, anyone? All you 3DSMax artists ever wondered exactly why you can't just make a movie and start trying to sell it?), it is so corrupt it's disgusting, and needs to be put down for its own good. It's not capitalism. The barriers for entry are too high, and they aren't all legal barriers (remember 'payola' of the 1950s?) These days there are ever more interesting ways to do that. It's out of control, and the consumer is powerless to stop it. The only sensible attack is the judo-like approach that has so often worked in the computer industry- it's time to start proliferating record companies and _film_ companies, all indy, all guerrilla businesses with low overhead and depending on the fact that, what with the big industries being the way they are, it'd actually be _more_ profitable for artists to go with an indie- even with the albums/DVDfilms/whatever being sold at fscking _bookstores_ (did you know that independent bookstores are also being choked to death by heavy corporate shifts to online selling and the constant mergers and consolidations into ever-larger corporations?). I think that's the way the future is heading. Could result in the mainstream being very glossy, very trivial, and very empty- with not many customers left to cheat. All that's required is that the actual media (CDs, DVDs) can be produced by indies in formats that work with the hardware generated for the consumers. That's all that's necessary. You don't need to _lead_ the curve, only be on it somewhere. Anyway, my two cents:)
How's the PPC version shaping up?
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Debian Freezing
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I managed to get LinuxPPC 1999 into fairly workable shape, but would like to be running Debian, the PPC version. Does anybody have any feedback on whether that architecture is in vaguely workable condition? I'd be running it on a 9500 powermac with a G3 card in it, in limited drive space. Is it something anybody is actually using, or is it still mostly hypothetical? If it matters, I would need X and ADB support (preferably ability to map missing mousebuttons to Fkeys) but will not be wanting a Linux desktop environment such as Gnome. (Tried that w. LinuxPPC1999 and didn't like it.) Any Mac potatoes out there running Debian?:)
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Actually, he'd been reading Nietzsche as early as the 60s. He wrote a song about the Superman (NOT the DC comics character). I personally think the song sucked compared to his other songs, but he _did_ write it :)
"Andy Walking! Andy tired.
:)
Andy take a little snooze-
Tie him up when he's fast asleep
Send him on a pleasant cruise.
When he wake up on the sea
He's sure to think of me and you
And to think about paint, and to think about glue
And a jolly boring thing to do."
*grin* if you hear it, you hear the contempt in it. Andy Warhol, what a plastic fellow.
A few words from Madison against you and what you stand for:
You'd like Vermont, ayup. In the summer we had some storms during which the emergency broadcast services told everybody in town to unplug everything in the house and stand away from windows and walls :) that was a pretty good storm. Some of the lightning strikes were going on _right_ at ground level. If you think J. Random Storm is impressive, you ought to see what it's like when the bolt _doesn't_ originate 8 miles up in the air ;) smash! wham! explode! ;)
Isn't that just the same as saying the Judge is right, MS is a monopoly, has caused an immense amount of damage, most notably killing off all other browser competition, dumping their product and starving out any other browser projects then burning the ground they walk on so nothing will ever grow there again?
Isn't that a more accurate statement of the situation than 'IE is better. Drat!'?
Isn't that EXACTLY the point as far as the antitrust case is concerned? If there was lots of thriving competition and lots of good effective choices to use, would the Judge have hit MS as hard as he did?
I don't know what he has in mind, but this only proves how right Penfield Jackson is and how much he 'gets it'. Personally, I have no problem being a 'protest vote', as the sites _I_ like work with Mac Navigator, and I've found a version (not very new) that runs pretty good for me, and decided to ignore CSS and most Java content and javascript. That's my choice. I make it because I _really_ can't stomach helping a monopoly scorch the earth. I don't expect other people to do likewise, which is why the judge was right in his findings of fact. IE is technically better in various ways than Netscape (at least on Windows) _because_ it's impossible to compete with a monopoly dumping a product they're spending billions on perfecting. All their effort has gone into making it actually work. It's possible to understand that this has happened and still remember that it is _part_ of an anticompetitive action that has also made it flat-out impossible for ANY other business venture to try and make a commercial web browser. Certain technical tricks like the ZDNet vanishing poll bug suggest that MS has also put great effort into finding ways to make it impossible for ANY venture to make ANY web browser and not be hammered by buggy problems. If IE accepts malformed HTML that seriously screws up Netscape, and then MS-supporting sites and authoring tools begin producing that malformed HTML _on_ _purpose_, what then? That becomes anticompetitive behavior against both commercial and uncommercial entities, and it's impossible to defend against within the free market system alone. It needs to be treated as a criminal act- and IE needs to be nationalised, confiscated, since Microsoft has managed to make things so that going into the new millenium, the world does not HAVE any choices, and no new choices are going to arise. All that is required is to get IE away from commercial control- it's in way too controlling a position to be any part of a free market. It's the informational equivalent of a totalitarian state- let's start treating it as one and making it exist within a structure of rules and checks and balances.
Likewise, I use Navigator Standalone on the Mac. I didn't used to- I used iCab, but was forced to stop because their betas expired and the new betas went through impossible bugridden phases. I went back to Navigator 4 and have been staying with that ever since.
Maybe the government should just _seize_ IE and make it the Government Issue Web Browser for All that so many people seem to desperately want. I could cope with that, but it's no good letting any commercial entity have that kind of power. At least the government is obligated to pretend to look after its citizens. I won't _touch_ IE unless it's nationalized. I don't care if they dumped so many billions of dollars of work into it that it sucks less than Netscape. People need to understand the control implications behind handing anybody the total control of the Net.
...doesn't mean you get to make the rules.
Try reading both the findings of fact and the MS statements with the idea that every word is completely sincerely meant, and then you'll get an idea of the real situation. MS is _not_ intentionally trying to be manipulative by making false statements- they 'drink their own kool-aid', believe their own lies, and are very dangerous right now because they believe they _must_ prevail over the government for the good of the world and innovation everywhere. It doesn't matter that this is howling nonsense, they believe it anyway. It's important to remember that they believe this and consider it overwhelmingly important. Don't ever think they are mere schemers. They are more dangerous than that, and now they are basically at war with the government and truly desperate (as I said in an earlier post, I would bet money that the MS people were _convinced_ the findings of fact would exonerate them completely. These are not sane people...)
They drink their own Kool-Aid. That's a metaphor for being deceived by their own obvious lies. By now their corporate worldview is downright psychotic, bearing no resemblance to the realities of business or the law.
Speculating on possible smart reasons for them to act this crazily is an error, the reality is that they are that crazy and believe every damned word they have to say, so you can't fault them for sincerity, and being done for perjury would shock them- these are people who can, literally, make up video evidence and edit it cutting in faked stuff believing that what they are doing is TRUE and HONEST. I mean it- that wasn't so much a crass attempt to cheat, it revealed the depths of insanity in MS and their legal team and the people making the tape.
"Oh dear, the tape does not show us being as RIGHT as we ARE! Quick, change it so it is more honest and illustrates how RIGHT we really are! We wouldn't want to present the judge with BAD EVIDENCE, would we? Do something to make the evidence more truthful!"
It's important to realise where these people are coming from, otherwise you'll constantly be tripped up trying to guess what they'll do next.
Prediction: Microsoft will not give an inch. They will step up the astroturf, the attempts to get the DoJ defunded- they may try to get Judge Jackson removed by some form of pressure, or even by injuring him in some way if they're _really_ out there. If I was him I'd hire bodyguards. Within the limits of the legal struggle, they will continue to the absolute bitter end maintaining the position of wounded innocence, _ignoring_ the findings of fact that now contradict their whole case. They are arguing from a position of total brainwashed certainty that they are not only right but fighting a war for the freedom of the whole computer industry. To them, this justifies absolutely anything, and they will take the exact same actions against the government that they took against so many companies. We don't know just how far that went yet. The only thing we can be sure of is that now MS is effectively declaring war on the government, and is crazier than an emu and finally truly desperate: I would bet money that the MS people were convinced Jackson's findings of fact would _exonerate_ them completely, and that he was just trying to get them to make some concessions first...
Why do you assume there are only two choices?
They're bound to be much more representative because the Slashdot astroturf counters the paid MS employees astroturfing 80-hour a week shifts from Redmond, just as Nixon had people filling out postcards for days on end to astroturf _postal_ mail polls back in the early 70s.
I hardly think they are so _disorganized_ as to not astroturf these things fulltilt, considering that they've already been caught doing just that. You think they'd stop now?
This is wacked. Is anybody running a story on how the MSNBC poll won't let you vote unless you're on Windows/IE/whatever? And considering this- what _is_ the result of the poll? I'm quite curious now.
"People won't fund or help produce an innovation by some startup that will eventually compete with Microsoft. So nobody will try anymore."
The disconcerting part is that the MS people show _no_ signs of backing down even now. They haven't changed their tune one iota. I think they're all brainwashed, they're just going to stonewall it to death (theirs).
What I care about is access to tools.
Give me either access to the ENCRYPTION if there must be encryption, or make the format so you can burn DVDs with unencrypted data, AND THE CONSUMER DECKS WILL PLAY THEM. I'm serious. This isn't about piracy at all. It's 'content protection', in the sense of "You can't be an artist/filmmaker unless you're big enough to be one of the X many corps which can afford one of the encryption slots. Not many of those! If you're just some schmuck making films, you are NOT ALLOWED to produce standard media. If you try we'll sue."
Does anybody see what is wrong with this picture? Who is working on making this state of affairs STOP and giving artists the right to create and distribute their artworks? This goes waaaay beyond the pale, and it really has little to do with piracy at all. It's just the same as taxes on blank media for consumers to tax independent content creators- only this time it appears that it might be possible to TOTALLY cut off every indie artist/filmmaker from the ability to reach an audience. Is this unconstitutional?
Now ask yourself if you want the ability in the coming millenium to make your own desktop movies, your own music CDs, and be able to go on the net and sell 'em to people on your own without going to CBS or Universal Studios? It doesn't matter that much if you're not good, do you want the _ability_ to express yourself in this way?
The alternative is exactly what Bruce says, allowing commercial interests acting as trusts to make it difficult for you to be in the business unless you go through one of the established studios- and there's a LOT of evidence that this is sheer exploitation. I'm not sure how bad it is in film, but in the music industry the exploitation is very very bad, insanely so, outright fraudulent. It's brutal.
The counterbalance to this is ability to produce your own artworks, at several important levels.
- First, it needs to be legal and possible to do the actual artwork. This would compare to being allowed to own recording equipment at all, if you're a musician. This is tough to lose- it would be tyrannical and indefensible to eliminate it, though you'll see just this happening indirectly- you're taxed on blank media by the industries, supposedly to defend against 'pirates'.
- Second, it needs to be legal and possible to distribute your artwork. There are some ways to challenge this, though it is tough. This is the level of ability to record your own work on media that is played on industry standard consumer level players, such as CD players. Soon it will be a question of making your own DVD desktop films and being able to give friends your work to play on their consumer DVD players. I _think_ DVD already punishes independents in that you can't do that yet, you have to be a licensee for huge sums or you don't have ability to record that format and play it on a consumer deck. That's bad, very bad, and it must be changed.
- Third, you need to have the ability to go somewhere and get 1000 CDs/DVDs pressed. Here, CDs have traditionally been strong- there are many small outfits that will burn a case of CDs for you. I think there is a concerted effort going on to make it so no such availability will be there for DVDs. If you have a hit underground rock album and enough grassroots/net distribution to justify pressing them in the thousands, you can do that today. I'm not aware of any way to legally and practically have a hit underground _film_ and press DVDs of it in the thousands, and this is a very serious problem and concern for freedom. We are not talking about pirates here, we are talking about the voice of the artist or independent filmmaker.
- Finally, you get up to extremely heavy distribution. There may be a problem in getting along with the big entertainment trusts, but if you're playing on those levels you already have your own distribution networks and can cut deals from a position of strength, by shipping X many products and saying 'There. I could move 6X as many with your distribution. You can have a cut of that, or you can sit by and I'll get someone else for it or grow until I'm doing it myself'. At this level the artist does not need that much protection as he or she has _arrived_ and is doing business effectively, with extensive distribution already.
That's basically 4 levels. Currently, with regard to CD-Roms, the levels to watch out for are second and third- if new consumer CD hardware refuses to play the existing format, it would be suicidal but would also be a way of 'taking back' control of CD authoring from the independents. More significantly, the people who can press 1000 CDs for less than a grand have to be protected- if they are harassed out of business, the independent would have to try releasing their work on blue dye-CDs pressed one at a time, and that doesn't scale. Access to the industrial duplicators _must_ remain.With regard to DVDs, it looks like the entire first three levels are at serious risk. I'm not certain you can burn the DVD format at home with your own material: THAT has got to change (rejoicing if I'm wrong here, but I kind of doubt it.). By the same token, if you can't burn it you can't give it to a friend, the datasizes are not comparable to the industry offerings, and if it's made illegal to 'pirate' defined as burn movie content onto a DVD (backing up HDs OK but video content, you're not allowed to?) then level two is shot- if you distribute your own work burned in DVD format you could get done for piracy even though it's your own work. Finally, the third level is the volume producers- if they are stamped out in the name of antipiracy it is an incredible imposition on the independent artist, because without that ability to work hard enough to earn the money to ship the commercial grade content on standard media in volume, nobody is ever going to get to stage 4, the stage of jockeying for position and making room for yourself at the table. To do that you _have_ to be able to move the units yourself and present the big distributors with a fait accompli- giving them an unsolicited tape will not cut it, you have to show them your network and the amount of units you're currently doing.
Are we going to let the industry BAN us from producing artworks as independents? (insert 'poetic license' joke here!
The _first_ order of business should be getting control of the ability to master consumer DVDs, just as we are able to master audio CDs legally and unharassed. If that means losing the encryption so be it- there are important issues at stake for the millenium. The technology _will_ come, and people _will_ be able to do desktop filmmaking. It's a question of whether the consumer media becomes a wholly controlled property of vast conglomerates, or whether individual artists will be allowed to pursue their artwork using common consumer media for output. You can burn a CD and play it for people (especially if they have a CD-Rom, but maybe even on their CD players.) What if you were only allowed to record on DATs and had to go to Atlantic Records to be allowed to have it made into a CD?
I've had to stand in a bread line. In my town, storefronts are going up for rent like it was property leprosy, and nobody is renting them, either. What is the figure, something like 20% of city minority groups unemployed? While I grew up, the employment rates for _my_ age group consistently were worse than those of the Great Depression my grandparents lived through.
THIS IS the Depression. Suck it up and deal. And think again about quitting or coding less than 60 hours a week >:) in fact, hadn't you better up it to 80? If you don't there are about 600 starving people who would love to replace you >:)
That's disturbing. I happen to agree somewhat with their position, and in fact distrusting corporate America is one thing I actually see eye to eye with Katz on, but that's _bad_. It lowers the tone of an argument that desperately needs to be made properly.
In particular, what jumped out in your words were 'trap of stock options'- I strongly agree, as this is a major abuse in many many ways- it's an accounting loophole tantamount to fraud, it's a means of paying employees in vapor, and most insidiously it's a means of getting employees to have a vested personal interest in destroying competition and capitalism, because valuation will inevitably be _lower_ in a healthy economic situation with actual choice available. It's a potent bribe to get people to do anything up to and including breaking the law in efforts to make their company eradicate all competition, and it doesn't reward honest effort disproportionately to dishonest exploits. And these book-writing clowns have not even thought of this?
As for collective bargaining, in a sense that's what the GPL is. "We'll benefit you _if_ you keep to the bargain." If they don't know about this stuff they are very ill suited to writing a book on any form of labor abuse...
*sigh* I think I'm turning into a small business libertarian, operative words 'small business'. There are just SO MANY mechanisms in the current state of the economy that assume a mystical trickle-down theory that fscking doesn't work, didn't in the 80s and didn't in the 90s and still doesn't. This 'prosperity' people talk of happens to be one with unemployment levels comparable to those of the Great Depression. Entire categories of Americans are simply thrown away, don't count. And guess what? The reason companies are beginning to choke and starve and savage each other is because of a lack of trickle-UP... starving homeless people _CAN'T!_ buy consumer products. They can maybe steal them, and that's even worse for the economy. The trickle has to go both ways or nothing works- you can't either give everything to the rich and expect anything to work, or give everything to the poor either. You've got to balance it out, and I see America still doing some of that, since as far back as 'New Deal' social reform, and I see idiot college randite kids arguing like mad that even that should be stopped.
Well, with luck the judge will release findings of fact today. Here's hoping that he slams MS, and be ready to sell every stock you've got on Monday, because MS now is built into every major stock index, and you're looking at a crash that will take your head clean off. The fantasy is over, reality is coming to call, and the rich can now share in some of the Great Depression that they are currently ignoring completely because it only happened to the poor.
The spoken word came first, and you use it yourself, I bet. Forget this obsession with the primacy of visual text, it is nothing more than a weak paraphrasing of all the expressions, overtones and richness of the spoken word- to which a blind person might be considerably more sensitive than you are, making you the crippled one.
Text is nothing. Written language is a cheap hack- anything expressible in it can be expressed with the spoken word, which was around first, and continues to see more use on a daily basis.
_You_ are behaving like a loony. Perhaps you might consider not behaving that way.
OK- I won't actually do a haughty rant pretending to _believe_ that caption, I think it is as indefensible as the one it parodies- but dig it- most of the browsers out there _are_ IE, and guess what? Most of the ones that aren't are still Windows! If you (we) linux people seriously expect that you can scorn a little faction, a relatively rare special interest group just because you don't feel like making even a pretense at an effort- well, quick karma will do you in faster than you would believe possible, and who's going to speak up for you when non-Windows users are not allowed to vote or have bank accounts because all is computerised and minorities are inconvenient? Who do you expect will help you- ADA? Better get a grip on what democracy really is before you're run over yourself.
"The best way to deal with this is to stop innovation and forbid consumers from having the technology"? "Perhaps computer CD-Roms and DVD-Roms can be made to not play audio CDs and DVDs"?
Balls!
Who _is_ this clown? I admit I stopped reading Wired a long time ago, but DAMN... are we seriously talking about intentionally making barriers to entry to the entertainment industry for anyone not a big money-spewing corporation?? This goes waaaay beyond the pale and is the most shocking thing I've seen in weeks. WHAT?
First of all, trying to remove 'consumer' ability to record 'standard' audio CDs and work with them on the computer is already way out of line. I know people who've already begun to make teeny little record companies for spare change, releasing music that's really neat music, and xeroxing off gatefold liners or whatever just to do their art. They don't make a lot of money at it, but that's not the point- they have the ability to get in at the ground floor. Given enough money there are lots of processing plants ready to press 1000 CDs for not too much money, even with inserts included, even with printing on the CDs- and that'd be _standard_ audio CDs same as any chart-topper. The means of production have never been so available- and this Wired clown sees nothing wrong with taking all that away? (You _know_ that along with 'CD-Roms cannot play audio CDs anymore' would go 'or record them')
Then, on top of that: has anyone seriously considered what DVD could mean in this context? Think 'Blair Witch Project', in another sense think of all the kids playing with 3DSMax and stuff. Isn't it obvious that, where the 80s were the beginning of the home _audio_ recording studio, the new century will clearly be the beginning of *tadah*
The Home Movie Studio.
Think of it. Forget copying storebought movies, that's lame and not the point and they suck more and more so who cares? Just think of what access to tools could really mean. Kids in their basements, groups of people in their spare time, 'bands' of actors and student cinematographers could start using the technology, and not be limited to Blair Witch production values- hell no! You could learn from the known techniques of the greats, buy a couple good halogen floodlights, or for that matter put together entire CGI films, or do anime or Disney-style animated movies depending on the amount of effort you wanted to put in. Disney's prewar multiplane camera cost millions. Today you can do that with Photoshop for hundreds, or with POV-Ray, even more elaborately, for nada, and there's no reason the GIMP couldn't be altered into specialised tools for such purposes.
And at the end of the chain? No longer demo reels of 16mm film for which nobody has a projector. Not even VHS tape that's not great in quality and few people have genlocks and things to be able to work with it extensively. Suddenly anybody can produce creative work and release in the prevalent consumer digital format, same as with the CD! Suddenly people's creativity can express itself in FILM.
Unless, that is, somebody just so happens to arrange matters so the technology is withheld. Unless somebody just so happens to make things so hot for the people who'd _own_ DVD duplicators on a large scale, that there ends up being _no_ way to get from the burn-one stage to the burn-1000 stage without signing with a movie studio. Unless SOMEBODY, imagine that, decides that instead of letting people have the technology and power to create, it's better to burn all the books, outlaw unlicensed arting and filming, and lock things down for good.
Doesn't this seem like something to prevent at all costs?
Does it have _anything_ to do with pirates at all?
Aren't pirates a really useful excuse to make sure that people in general don't end up getting the technology they need to produce their own art, music and FILMS without depending entirely on the entertainment industries for anything of that nature?
DON'T BE FOOLED. This isn't about the right to pirate at all! That's a side-issue, though it has some merit. What's really going on is this: these industries are so consumed with greed and desperation to control their revenue streams, that they are effectively trying to deprive the world of the technology to _create_ with. It's like forbidding the sale of paper in the Middle Ages. It's like allowing computers and mice and joysticks but forbidding keyboards because they could be used to type incendiary words. And that's such a serious threat, such a major problem, that the plight of ripped-off consumers wanting to copy their DVDs of The Matrix- well, that pales into insignificance. Being forced to buy another copy of The Matrix is _not_ that horrible. Being forced away from the tools that you could use to make your own movie like that- _is_ horrible.
It's absolutely got to be stopped, and the real issues must be known. Think of the artists, musicians, filmmakers who are so close to having amazing tools and could be denied them over this nonsense. This is unacceptable.
Then when do they make their money? They don't. This is a loss leader for the PC platform, but there are some _fatal_ problems with this approach:
- people don't necessarily trust Windows and Microsoft well enough to consider them a competitor in consoles- consoles are about not having to reinstall Windows on, about being troublefree. The perception will be that it's a PC with the floppy drive welded shut
:) - although they can get some development by making it appealing to develop for Windows and ship on this as well by clicking a few checkboxes in the IDE, again, this is a loss leader strategy. Why are they acting threatened in this area? It looks very much like the only way they can make it fly is to take _serious_ losses on it for the sake of proliferation- and they can't reasonably be doing that. MS can't afford to squander its money- that money is the sole source of its power.
- finally, the biggie: every single one of these things made and sold, assuming a world in which all or most of the Windows games are also released for this thing (i.e. marketer's wet dream of _success_ for it), means one more reason to not run a PC with Windows on it. If you can get The Games on a little box with a CD-Rom slot in it, you don't need to beat yourself into the ground making a Windows PC do both that and email and web browsing and spreadsheets etc etc. You can specialise and use something else for the 'real computer' stuff- a Mac, Linux, Be, whatever!
Microsoft can't afford to do this. At all. Not even a little bit. I wonder if this project is even real, or if they've considered the implications: "Get Windows- you need to be able to run the games, games are only for Windows!" "But wait, I got a *whatever-it's-called*, and it can run all the Windows games, so I don't need to run Windows anymore!" "Oh." It seems unbelievable that they wouldn't clue to this problem. I guess we'll see, or not see, in the long run. Might be the purest vapor... if they know what's good for them. They _must_ maintain the PC or basically die. There are too many other things that are a lot easier to manage and keep happy than a PC for consumer computing purposes, and giving away the dominance of the PC in numbers of games is a _bad_ mistake.Trouble is, if 99% said Windows 95/98 _wasn't_ buggy, they'd be lying or simply conned. It's not a popularity contest, people, this says nothing about Windows and everything about people's perception of Windows. Windows _IS_ buggy. Most big software projects are, and Windows is particularly buggy and people have lived with it for _years_ and gotten well used to its weird and chaotic behavior. _Journalists_ whose paychecks are heavily subsidized by MS have taken to writing articles about how buggy it is: "Hey, Windows is buggy! I can't go three days without it crashing!" "Oh yeah? When I wrote about how buggy it was, I got _buried_ in email telling me how right I was!" "Oh yeah? It crashes every day for me!" "You were lucky, for me it dies every thrrree hoours..." "_Luxury_..." :) because their behavior is kind of psychotic, such a determined denial of trivially obvious reality can't be healthy :) ;)
It's more interesting to speculate on how many people actually understand how buggy Windows is, and what they propose to do about it, than to seriously argue about whether (ha!) Windows _is_ (hahaha!) buggy. (*ROFL*) Uh, if anybody is suggesting that Windows is _not_ buggy and that the constant and incessant reports of it being buggy are _jealousy_ or malicious lies... they should go see a mental health care specialist
Now, if you ask whether it's good to have people constantly making the same joke about it, that's another story- maybe you could make a case that this is a tragic situation that deserves sympathy and help and big donations to the Help Microsoft Afford To Pay For Debugging Fund. Surely it's only right to help poverty-stricken young startups like MS, who can't _afford_ to take the time to debug, help them get the tools and talent they need. With enough donations, somebody might be able to go through the source for RegEdit and take out almost a megabyte of completely unused resources that don't do anything! If only MS had the money to pay for somebody to do these little housekeeping tasks. Toss them a coin and utter a small prayer for them.
On the other hand, since they don't want to clean up their act, why not turn the knife in it as hard as you can? It's capitalism in action- it's a window of vulnerability- they are helping potential competitors create a market space for themselves, by shipping crapware all the time. Don't let them do it unchallenged, _lean_ on that vulnerability, it might make some consumer someday, about to purchase WindowsYetAgain(tm), pause and stop and go "Damn... who needs that?" and start down some other path of computing that they would enjoy just as much or more.
I'm more shocked that almost 10% _don't_ think W9* is buggy. o_O
*spends half an hour trying to get to a page on Robert Fripp's website, curses* ;) :)
Well anyway- Fripp put it better than I will, funnier, but he made his website badly enough that it's impossible to deal with. So I'll just paraphrase.
The record companies impose a number of historical charges in the form of percentages on the cost of the albums. So if the artist is getting 5% royalty on sales, that is 5% after a 20% wastage charge, j.random other charge, and (I am NOT making this up) a charge on typical breakage of the SHELLAC the music is recorded on. I am NOT making this up.
"But CDs are not made out of shellac!". As Fripp said in his lost article, "Now you're getting clever."
Basically, we're looking at corporate pork barrel, bigtime. The artists, perhaps even the movie studios do not get _that_ much money out of these huge industries. It's the corporations taking more and more. Of course they are not passing savings on to the consumer. That would be capitalism and a desire to compete on the basis of price. Of course they are not passing vastly increased earnings on to the artists. Why should they when they can charge a percentage of CD sales to broken _shellac_ and deny it to the artist? Of course they are earning exponentially more than they were. Where do you think they get the money to bribe the government and attempt to get antipiracy legislation passed?
The industry does not DESERVE protection. Whether it's the music industry (slamdunk of an argument to anyone who knows anything about how bad it is) or the film industry (Blair Witch Project, anyone? All you 3DSMax artists ever wondered exactly why you can't just make a movie and start trying to sell it?), it is so corrupt it's disgusting, and needs to be put down for its own good. It's not capitalism. The barriers for entry are too high, and they aren't all legal barriers (remember 'payola' of the 1950s?) These days there are ever more interesting ways to do that. It's out of control, and the consumer is powerless to stop it.
The only sensible attack is the judo-like approach that has so often worked in the computer industry- it's time to start proliferating record companies and _film_ companies, all indy, all guerrilla businesses with low overhead and depending on the fact that, what with the big industries being the way they are, it'd actually be _more_ profitable for artists to go with an indie- even with the albums/DVDfilms/whatever being sold at fscking _bookstores_ (did you know that independent bookstores are also being choked to death by heavy corporate shifts to online selling and the constant mergers and consolidations into ever-larger corporations?).
I think that's the way the future is heading. Could result in the mainstream being very glossy, very trivial, and very empty- with not many customers left to cheat. All that's required is that the actual media (CDs, DVDs) can be produced by indies in formats that work with the hardware generated for the consumers. That's all that's necessary. You don't need to _lead_ the curve, only be on it somewhere.
Anyway, my two cents
I managed to get LinuxPPC 1999 into fairly workable shape, but would like to be running Debian, the PPC version. Does anybody have any feedback on whether that architecture is in vaguely workable condition? I'd be running it on a 9500 powermac with a G3 card in it, in limited drive space. Is it something anybody is actually using, or is it still mostly hypothetical? If it matters, I would need X and ADB support (preferably ability to map missing mousebuttons to Fkeys) but will not be wanting a Linux desktop environment such as Gnome. (Tried that w. LinuxPPC1999 and didn't like it.) :)
Any Mac potatoes out there running Debian?