All very fine except you can't trust the RIAA/MPAA like that. You can't GIVE them slack- not like give anything in return. They are trusts, monopolies, they want to stomp out any other avenues for art. You can't even trust them to be fair to their own possessions- they pay their artists less than a tenth of what I, an indie, get per download, a hundredth of what I get per CD, and they have a hundred thousand times the resources of my indie distributor (Ampcast). What they WILL do is loan money- at terms that would embarrass any self-respecting bank.
Please don't cut the RIAA any slack. You're arguing like they represent musicians. You're wrong.
Eating lots of poison may be unhealthy but that doesn't mean the goal is to figure out a MODERATE, REASONABLE amount of poison to eat...
You have to remember, though- the live electrode of living improvisation does not have to die- any more than the advent of Jimi Hendrix meant bebop improv was nothing but a relic.
I would _love_ to jam live on synthetic sounds- though my facility is much more with guitar and bass. It doesn't have to be pushing buttons to play premade loops.
Some types of music, like Techno in the strictest interpretation, may be all about calculation and forbid messy human expressiveness, but that is NOT about the technology. To me the exciting thing about technology is when it can let you project emotion beyond what traditional instruments allow...
I took an old FM synth module (Yamaha FB-01) and programmed it so it made a mellow, voicelike tone. Then I did something I couldn't do with other instruments- I mapped the modulation wheel to a really, really fast squarewave vibrato, like 50 hz maybe. That gave me a solo voice that could play notes, could pitchbend, but could ALSO pitchbend half of itself and leave the other half fixed, except instead of making a double note it made a weird composite sound like tracker 'fake chord generating'- except, THAT is done with harmonic notes...
I ended up with a solo voice where you can ride two separate 'bend' controls to produce a weird diffracted sound that can range from a moan to a prismatic spray of inharmonic tone color (and now I've told you how to make one for yourself;) )
But playing it- ahhhh. Do you want to make a note or a vocalization? Are you ready to wrestle with the pitchbend as the thing breaks up and refuses to 'diffract' to the note you're trying to hit? This is what really makes it an INSTRUMENT- yet it is totally synthetic, can't exist in nature, and doesn't even model any analog process. Technology in music can mean more than thumpa thumpa thumpa. AND it doesn't preclude alive improvisation and interaction.
If anyone is interested in hearing my take on the instrument I've described- tsk, you should be making your own music using it!;) but if you DO want to hear what it sounds like, I have this tune (always been pretty popular really) called "Rain Dragon" that uses it as a lead instrument. In that tune I make it moan and angst around like a sick animal and also do some of the twitchy diffracted-note-hitting stuff I was talking about, it's in the higher registers and you can hear it sometimes struggling to hit a note that keeps diffracting off to the sides- bit hard to describe really. But this is COMPUTER stuff. It's played as if it was some tricky acoustic instrument like a saxophone, but it's a computer process that just happens to be complex enough to give rise to unexpected and twitchy behaviors that you can use in your improv...
(by the way: gotta explain something about 'Ampcast'. The site actually will give me a nickel for each of you who goes and downloads a track completely- but if you think about it, this explains why they have you make a 'myAmp' account- doesn't cost you anything but people would cheat if there was no way to count how many NICKELS they're supposed to pay me, get it? They can't just go by server logs. I know 80% of you guys could whip up a script to fake 3,000,000 downloads if you wanted- and please don't fake downloads on my account- and that's why they gotta take note of which myAmp account DLed what. Also, not that ANYbody ever notices, but you're also allowed to RATE stuff at Ampcast, and this is pretty much the only thing that will boost people in the 'Ampcast Charts' which aren't that bad for an OMD chart system- so if you want to see ol' Slashdot User #580, the GPL-using free software writing noisy indie-supporting musician here, doing well and being listened to, then take the effort to 'rate' the tunes! If that bugs you, then stream stuff (which doesn't pay anybody anything, might not ask for a registration) until you find something of mine you HATE, then register just to give it a BAD rating. Fair enough?;D )
(since I own copyright to that one, and God knows nobody else will have written anything like that, I COULD actually license it;) or maybe "Bone Dragon" with its perky marimbas and short-circuiting electronic device solo?)
Be careful though- a program like Office can BE an installer. For years Microsoft has been working on 'self-repairing' Office on Mac. This could as easily equate to invariably putting back, say, MSNEW.NET every time Office is run.
You can't depend on strictly technical solutions to this sort of thing.
One interesting thing about this is, it's not really about money. It is about AUTHORITY. It's interesting to look at what you've just said from an anarchist perspective....
It's about what context you're in. If your neighbor builds a treehouse for the kids and it's crap and your kid breaks a leg when it falls apart, what do you do? Some people are so thoroughly trained to authority that the first and only thing they think of is suing- immediately turning to the highest available authority, to force an outcome.
What other ways of addressing the situation might arise? Well, you could talk to the person. Let's assume the person is deranged, hostile, and you'll get nothing out of them, even an apology. They'll carry on like they were doing. What can you do in absence of authority? The answer is, your context includes a community- you talk to the community. Maybe not to help yourself, but you put the word out. Maybe people will help you out in your time of need. The point is, you aren't existing in a social vacuum and neither is your neighbor- even if you cannot resort to AUTHORITY to COMPEL your neigbor to make restitution to you (and set what that restitution can fairly be), you can still take advantage of your (not-authority) community and arrive at a consensus that deals with the fact of the irresponsible treehouse-builder. There may be many adjustments made to deal with this reality.
Now, what does this have to do with software legislation? Is it an argument against ever legislating anything? Not exactly. The argument for anarchy has some underlying assumptions- which don't always hold.
It's assumed that the person you're dealing with is OF the community. They may not be. In the case of something like Microsoft, it is not: what you do and say is really of no concern to it. As it happens, Microsoft makes USE OF AUTHORITY- copyright, contracts backed by the U.S. Government- it wields authority itself while being exempt from it in the sense of being held liable. If there was no copyright, no licensing agreements and user agreements etc. then it would be less worrying that Microsoft itself is exempt from any authority.
There is also the assumption that you are capable of communicating your views to others in your community. And there are too many software vendors already who're trying to not only suppress, for instance, information about settlements (like, suing someone, settling, and part of the terms is that you cannot talk about what you'd sued about) but even negative reviews! Microsoft does some of this as well, and it is poisonous to any operating anarchy- as well it should be, since what is to enforce these requirements that information not get out there? The government, of course. So again, it is abuse of government for the purposes of obliterating the ability of a community to protect itself via communication about threats.
And this also holds for the continuing efforts to suppress bug information and security hole information- the important thing to a Microsoft is not the hole, but establishing sufficient AUTHORITY to prohibit anyone communicating information that might be unhelpful to Microsoft's goals.
So- with the situation the way we have it, it's really not feasible to have half-anarchy, with Microsoft et al running around exempt from any authority. They themselves use government as a lever to inflict authority on others, and it's pretty unlikely that this will be changed. Bringing liability to the software industry effectively wrests SOME of this authority out of Microsoft's hands again, and places the law above them instead of making the law entirely their bitch;)
The concern that Microsoft would use this to obliterate all other software companies is VERY well thought of: of course they would, it's the first thing Ballmer thought of in another context. However, malicious harassment by lawsuits IS, I think, illegal: if I'm not mistaken, this is called 'barratry'? The fact that it's not reasonable to prevent them from doing this is a problem. Who says there can't be multiple problems? In this case, Microsoft's willingness to abuse authority is a problem, not a normal condition. It's not to be taken for granted as standard operating procedure and an excuse to not use liability.
The bottom line is, liability is a structure of authority designed to supplant anarchistic negotiation between equals. It is not a superior solution- as long as such negotiation is still possible. Well, with entities like Microsoft, negotiation is NOT possible: they by design have enormously more power and authority than individuals do. As such, some structure of authority NEEDS to be worked out that will deal with them, otherwise they will simply continue to run amok. So, the anarchist viewpoint on this is ironically, "The existence of these super-powerful and authoritative entities is already so fscked up that some kind of regulation's gotta be made to deal with them. They're creatures of regulation in the first place- either disband them or come up with ways of interacting with them that are APPROPRIATE to their power and authority. Pretending they should be allowed 'anarchy' on grounds of personal liberty is intellectual wankery... if they want true lack of liability, let them be disbanded, and repeal all copyright and licensing laws while you're at it, so THEY can do nothing to YOU either!"
I think at some point it may be better to steal the CD.:D
As these penalties increase, due to the concept of ripping producing millions of bootleg CDs over the internet for which you are of course held responsible, eventually the penalty for ripping your own CD will be worse than the penalty for stealing one from a store. So if you want a copy of your CD, steal a second one from the store:)
What is so shocking about the idea that these media corporations actively want the populace to be unintelligent and ill-informed?
Why would it be profitable for the corporation to do otherwise?
The only argument to do otherwise would be the idea that it would be more profitable for the corporation if people were smarter and had better information. Corporations do not have social obligations or any requirement to preserve the health of the body politic: they are strictly on a 'trader' basis with their consumers that reduces down to the raw terms of the exchange.
It will always be more profitable to limit information, limit diversity, suppress intelligence and save money by producing 'Inside Britney Spears' Spring Mansion' in 12 different regions each priced to accurately reflect the amount of money that can be charged in the absence of market interaction and pricing pressure.
The fact that this hurts the populace in the pocketbook AND insults their intelligence is of no interest whatsoever, and if it's all you can get out of the media machinery, what else are you going to do- read an old book?
I'm not sure why you should be _scared_. This does not come from some centralised malice (it'd be more interesting if it did). It's largely an epiphenomenon of what happens with a certain kind of media structure and a certain kind of corporate activity etc etc. It is What You Get, with the particular STYLE of capitalism we practice nowadays.
Go read up on, say, social anarchism, and its roots in denial of all forms of 'archy' or authority. Then, if you find any of that making sense too, you can _really_ be scared;)
Damn straight. We are not talking about PEOPLE here. We are talking about immortal, collective entities aka 'corporations' driven solely by their interpretation of fiduciary duty.
There can be no compromise with that.
You gotta figure out what kind of limits and boundaries YOU want, and set them, and HOLD them, because the corporations will ALWAYS want more, no matter what they have. They aren't people! They aren't animals! They are like an equation written in legal documents: NextYearEarnings = ThisYearEarnings * 1.2 and implementing this is an exercise for the reader and the corporation's marketing and legal departments- I think we've seen what happens there.
There is no such thing as a for-profit publically held corporation that has 'enough'. It's impossible. They MUST take more and more until they choke and die. You can't make any sort of stable bargain with that kind of thing.
Well, since Microsoft DOESN'T pay any tax, it's rather understandable. I'm sure Microsoft will find some way to still not pay any tax, further putting pressure on Washington state services when unemployment is apparently second highest in the nation.
Since this is the home state of Microsoft, maybe it would be nice to see what it is like reduced to pure feudalism. I'm sure Microsoft would love that until the absence of police and fire departments force them to house all the employees in a secure compound, until the streets decay and become useless, until the unemployed and homeless rabble organize and try to take stuff from the 'winners' of the game. At that point they might like feudalism a bit less.
I'm just glad I don't live there, is all I can say.
Heh. I suppose this isn't really THAT funny, but I have a hard time taking it too seriously. In particular the timing after the Loki story is horrible;)
But also- there just seems to be something not right with asking directly for support like that, money crunch or no. I mean, support over and above what they produce... even though they do certainly work hard...
As it happens, I DO have a money crunch, and I too have been working my butt off. If you go to ampcast and poke around, you'll find loads of newly remastered stuff all of which is going to have proper CDs available. I understand you can stream stuff just at random- if you register w. the site (I know, but hear me out) you can download it all free and I get a nickel for each DL without you having to pay for it, and if you _rate_ the tunes I can appear on the 'charts' they have- I ask for bad ratings too if that's your honest opinion, it's all feedback and there's somebody to like everything.
Plus (and this is where the money crunch comes from) I've been placing orders for electronic parts. I'm the guy who puts out the GPLed mastering app Mastering Tools (which I use on all my stuff for Ampcast), and I've been building stompboxes and mixers and stuff for over a decade- and I'm onto a design that promises to be a _really_ slick mini-guitar DI that comes in three gain levels. Just a teeny box with two jacks on it, and you control volume from the guitar- the Anti-Line-6-POD- so I'm rationing food because buying 10 project enclosures, 50.1 polypropylene capacitors, 100 battery clips etc was of course WAY more important. (any true geek would understand this without having to be told;) )
So yeah- I'm in a money crunch too. But here's the difference: _I_ saved enough money that I can buy cat food, some boring human food, etc. I paid all my bills at the beginning of the month and I completely paid a debt that had to do with a retroactive rent hike.
So I'm not in a threatening money crunch- and I can afford to mouth off and make fun of my own foolish situation because I PLANNED IT and I'll get by even if everyone goes "God, not HIM again!" and scrolls on with an elegant shudder of geeky distaste;)
But there's a deeper level which I'm not sure if I can express. For starters- I've worked to the brink of RSI on my GPLed Mastering Tools program- but THAT is not for sale. That's free. I've got 7 finished Red Book CDs next to me, which are going to Ampcast to be duplicated on demand, and THOSE are for sale. My business is making them so good, making the packaging and the art and everything so nice that it's _worth_ having a proper one instead of some cloned thing with magic-marker label. I'm trying to make these guitar stompboxes- THAT is tangible, and my efforts of designing them are 'sunk costs' like the coding on Mastering Tools- it's what I can produce that people CAN'T just clone effortlessly, or the ways in which I can at least reward someone's good will (like in buying a CD). I'm OK with people having that good will but nothing I've done or ever will do will entitle me to it, and I refuse to ask for it without also wising off and de-hard-selling it;)
That said- it is not THAT unreasonable to encourage people to buy Mandrake dists. I'm Mac-based, and I bought the LinuxPPC dist, and kept it even though it didn't work on my main machine. Now I have another old Mac and this one will run it, so it's now installed on one of my machines. But if you asked me to donate money to LinuxPPC- well, I don't know. I'm not sure I like that as a motivation. I sure don't do my OSS work so I can ask for DONATIONS. I do it to make other stuff that I do, better. Then I share that part of the work.
Coincidentally, when I loaded this comment page, the first thing that I saw was a ThinkGeek ad. It's the one about tiny radio-controlled desktop tanks for $58.99 that can play laser tag with each other. I know, because I went STRAIGHT to ThinkGeek to look at them. And if I wasn't in a serious money crunch, that would be terribly compelling- an argument to give money to ThinkGeek because they'd come up with something to sell me that was SO COOL that I just couldn't resist it.
I don't know when or if I'll be on that level- to out-cool tiny robot tanks is quite an order, though my tiny two-jack guitar-amp effect box sounds some of the same notes (miniatureness, elegance, effectiveness, more miniatureness etc), but to me THAT is the area to emulate. That's where Mandrake should be heading... if it is even possible, with a Linux dist. It's just that 'toss a few bucks my way because _I_ am worthy' is a hell of a lot more nebulous than 'toss a few bucks my way and you can have one of THESE'... with the latter, it's a simple question of whether the thing is really cool or not, where with the former it gets into your evaluation of WHY the person is supposed to deserve support when there's a million people out there who deserve to pursue their work without money headaches...
Your problem is that your view of the world is horribly distorted, characteristic of Randites and Objectivists, by an assumption that nothing exists but cash prices and 'traders', and that there is no world outside of capitalist exchange. Thus, to you, it seems that proliferation of open source means less consumer choice. There are some colossal assumptions you're making about what software is, where it comes from, what a consumer is and so on.
Here's a mantra for you- try meditating on this instead of 'A is A'. Software is a verb.
Your whole argument assumes software as a sort of resource- a combination of a scarcity like oil or coal and a product of intense specialization like IC fabs. Two words my friend- "Visual Basic". I might also add 'GCC' and even 'Applescript'... you are flat wrong in your assumption that software has to be produced by companies in order to be relevant.
You are also flat wrong in your so-subtle remark, "when GPL projects fail to keep pace with technology". Do you want a list of the GPL projects that _set_ the pace for technology? You could have changed one word and been right- if you'd said "when GPL projects fail to keep pace with marketing". And this is relevant, how?
Software is a verb. It is the language by which PEOPLE (not 'consumers') address problems and situations, using computers. Every major software platform has means to allow people to produce software to help them interact with their problems and situations. On linux, you get a complete C/C++ development environment (but it's not easy). On Windows, you can buy Visual Studio, or you can use programming INSIDE the Office suite, with VB for Applications. On the Mac, there's Codewarrior, or you can download MPW for older systems, or use REALbasic for an environment even easier than Visual Basic, or use the OSX Developer Tools.
Software is a verb! NOT a 'market'! Addressing certain specialised problems better than ordinary people could, through software, is a way to make a software PRODUCT that's marketable, but it is NOT the software that's worth the money- it's the skill being implemented THROUGH software.
I produce a GPLed audio mastering suite (on Mac- but still GPL) that embodies specialised knowledge of digital audio processing, and sound engineer expectations and interface preferences. Let's pretend for a second that this was a commercial product. Does the fact that it's a program make it a product? Suppose I wrote a program for robotic milling-machine control, about which I know nothing- does that make the program part of the software 'market'? It does not. It would be a failed attempt at being in the milling-machine controller market. Suppose I wrote an accounting program, more of a mainstream thing- does that make me an 'entry into the software market'? No, it makes me a poser trying to fake understanding of the accounting market, and using software to express my poor ideas. Since I do know digital audio mastering, my program for that is on many levels a tough competitor, particularly in output quality. Will this hurt the middle ground of DSP software? Guess what- there isn't one! You assume a 'market' will arise for any need, and that is flat untrue- in mastering software, there's already just a few expensive 'industry standard' packages, a variety of amateur crap, and a scattering of garbage with glitzy GUIs and lousy output. When something gets half decent, the price immediately goes through the roof. Even then, you can get stuck with fatal flaws, incompatibilities, just the things you seem to expect from open source.
And this garbage 'market' is built off open scientific discovery and research- are you familiar with AES? Are you familiar with the controversy over dithering versus Sony DSD? Plus, the software itself is based off C and C++ and a host of software inventions that themselves grew extensively off 'socialist' notions like sharing ideas. Consider BSD. Consider the role played by open source in the proliferation of C.
I guess Market Capitalism always does well in the beginning, because it lives off the fat of the land that has been stored up by cooperative efforts to establish a commons. In the long run, it is cancer, and the economy grows massive exciting tumors and then dies.
No, I'd say he was drifting a good 30-40 years earlier than that. What's happening is, the groundwork (control of news media etc) is laid for propagandizing of the US populace, and certain political leaders are moving in the direction of empire, much like Imperial Japan and National Socialist Germany.
There is a difference: it's a lot harder to completely control the access of the citizenry to information. I don't know if this will amount to a significant difference. Looks like we're going to find out.
The real war is not whether Bush will bomb Afganistan with nukes- in a sense the real war is whether Bush's people can persuade the majority of US citizens that USA ruling the world and remaking it in its image is the best thing for everybody. Whether this can be spun as a benevolent empire isn't really the point...
If it can 'prevent' a biological attack, that means the biological attack has not occurred. That means it is a contingency plan.
If it is a contingency plan capable of preventing the nuking of the foreign city, by killing off the whole U.S. before it can launch the nukes, then that biological attack is self-defence too.
There certainly are a lot of unfriendly people out there and we are some of the unfriendliest, if we are prepared to nuke countries because we feel threatened.
The only way to rationalize this sort of thing is to conclude that the foreign city's inhabitants are not people- and thus don't have 'selves'- and so they cannot possibly be considered to act in self-defense.
Somewhere I read (possibly Heinlein?) about the black widow spider. A pretty little arachnid, but possessed of too much power for its size- and so people kill them on sight, because they are capable of dangerous attacks in their own interests.
At the point when these foreign countries develop attacks bigger than they are, the contingency plans are over, and our military leaders (who are not necessarily as foolish as our political leaders) must decide if it is REALLY sensible to abandon deterrence and kick off WWIII on the grounds that now we have REASON to be scared.
Re:they were undervalued
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Low-end Laptops?
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· Score: 3, Funny
If your users have a 17" screen and a 10" package, nobody will care if they look like the Borg:D
Re:Read Eric Hoffer's "True Believer"
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Penguin2Apple
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· Score: 2
...hence the great success of Windows and the behaviors involving spastic galumphing about shouting 'Give it up for meeeeee!' and leading chants of 'developers developers developers developers' and 'Microsoft, kill 'em! Microsoft, kill 'em!'.
Eric Hoffer's book is about MASS movements.
We have that. And it's certainly not Mac or Linux.
Re:It all depends on your reason ...
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Penguin2Apple
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Why would devotion to "the open source - free speech and free beer ideology" preclude OSX, either?
To me, being committed to Free Software has little to do with what you CONSUME. It's about what you produce. I write software, and that software is GPLed. I do it on MacOS, classic, with a non-free development environment because I'm NOT good enough to code straight C yet- though I did port one of my programs to C commandline and now use it in MPW. If I was on OSX, it would be running as a commandline program in a terminal window- and when I finally got my GPLed serious program ported to C, it'd be a lot closer to Linux ports and entirely free systems.
It's not about what systems _I_ choose to live in- it's about what I choose to put out there into the world. Which is better- coding on classic MacOS and adding ideas to the commons through GPL, or using entirely free systems and coding up DRM for them? Let's be clear on the concept.
Re:what's with the juvenile breast obsession?
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Penguin2Apple
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· Score: 2
I just liked how apparently Linux is a hot redhead with large, firm breasts, but insane:)
Hey, I already do that, but when they can go to my vendor and say "Kill quicktime- yes we want you to 'knife the baby', and by the way you need to kill that Cyberdog stuff and support only IE- here's a bunch of system extensions to build into your operating system to 'support' it... have them installed as default"... then trying to use another vendor is obviously not enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Please don't cut the RIAA any slack. You're arguing like they represent musicians. You're wrong.
Eating lots of poison may be unhealthy but that doesn't mean the goal is to figure out a MODERATE, REASONABLE amount of poison to eat...
I would _love_ to jam live on synthetic sounds- though my facility is much more with guitar and bass. It doesn't have to be pushing buttons to play premade loops.
Some types of music, like Techno in the strictest interpretation, may be all about calculation and forbid messy human expressiveness, but that is NOT about the technology. To me the exciting thing about technology is when it can let you project emotion beyond what traditional instruments allow...
I took an old FM synth module (Yamaha FB-01) and programmed it so it made a mellow, voicelike tone. Then I did something I couldn't do with other instruments- I mapped the modulation wheel to a really, really fast squarewave vibrato, like 50 hz maybe. That gave me a solo voice that could play notes, could pitchbend, but could ALSO pitchbend half of itself and leave the other half fixed, except instead of making a double note it made a weird composite sound like tracker 'fake chord generating'- except, THAT is done with harmonic notes...
I ended up with a solo voice where you can ride two separate 'bend' controls to produce a weird diffracted sound that can range from a moan to a prismatic spray of inharmonic tone color (and now I've told you how to make one for yourself ;) )
But playing it- ahhhh. Do you want to make a note or a vocalization? Are you ready to wrestle with the pitchbend as the thing breaks up and refuses to 'diffract' to the note you're trying to hit? This is what really makes it an INSTRUMENT- yet it is totally synthetic, can't exist in nature, and doesn't even model any analog process. Technology in music can mean more than thumpa thumpa thumpa. AND it doesn't preclude alive improvisation and interaction.
If anyone is interested in hearing my take on the instrument I've described- tsk, you should be making your own music using it! ;) but if you DO want to hear what it sounds like, I have this tune (always been pretty popular really) called "Rain Dragon" that uses it as a lead instrument. In that tune I make it moan and angst around like a sick animal and also do some of the twitchy diffracted-note-hitting stuff I was talking about, it's in the higher registers and you can hear it sometimes struggling to hit a note that keeps diffracting off to the sides- bit hard to describe really. But this is COMPUTER stuff. It's played as if it was some tricky acoustic instrument like a saxophone, but it's a computer process that just happens to be complex enough to give rise to unexpected and twitchy behaviors that you can use in your improv...
(by the way: gotta explain something about 'Ampcast'. The site actually will give me a nickel for each of you who goes and downloads a track completely- but if you think about it, this explains why they have you make a 'myAmp' account- doesn't cost you anything but people would cheat if there was no way to count how many NICKELS they're supposed to pay me, get it? They can't just go by server logs. I know 80% of you guys could whip up a script to fake 3,000,000 downloads if you wanted- and please don't fake downloads on my account- and that's why they gotta take note of which myAmp account DLed what. Also, not that ANYbody ever notices, but you're also allowed to RATE stuff at Ampcast, and this is pretty much the only thing that will boost people in the 'Ampcast Charts' which aren't that bad for an OMD chart system- so if you want to see ol' Slashdot User #580, the GPL-using free software writing noisy indie-supporting musician here, doing well and being listened to, then take the effort to 'rate' the tunes! If that bugs you, then stream stuff (which doesn't pay anybody anything, might not ask for a registration) until you find something of mine you HATE, then register just to give it a BAD rating. Fair enough? ;D )
(since I own copyright to that one, and God knows nobody else will have written anything like that, I COULD actually license it ;) or maybe "Bone Dragon" with its perky marimbas and short-circuiting electronic device solo?)
You can't depend on strictly technical solutions to this sort of thing.
Everybody has authority to fix the problem, and license to do so- hence, everybody in the world is liable.
I'm serious- think about the question, "Who has authority to fix the problem, and who DOES NOT have authority to fix it?"
If YOU are the vendor, why the hell would you want to sue yourself, be it possible or not?
The previous poster is unclear on the concept that a contract can be invalid because it's ludicrous :)
It's about what context you're in. If your neighbor builds a treehouse for the kids and it's crap and your kid breaks a leg when it falls apart, what do you do? Some people are so thoroughly trained to authority that the first and only thing they think of is suing- immediately turning to the highest available authority, to force an outcome.
What other ways of addressing the situation might arise? Well, you could talk to the person. Let's assume the person is deranged, hostile, and you'll get nothing out of them, even an apology. They'll carry on like they were doing. What can you do in absence of authority? The answer is, your context includes a community- you talk to the community. Maybe not to help yourself, but you put the word out. Maybe people will help you out in your time of need. The point is, you aren't existing in a social vacuum and neither is your neighbor- even if you cannot resort to AUTHORITY to COMPEL your neigbor to make restitution to you (and set what that restitution can fairly be), you can still take advantage of your (not-authority) community and arrive at a consensus that deals with the fact of the irresponsible treehouse-builder. There may be many adjustments made to deal with this reality.
Now, what does this have to do with software legislation? Is it an argument against ever legislating anything? Not exactly. The argument for anarchy has some underlying assumptions- which don't always hold.
It's assumed that the person you're dealing with is OF the community. They may not be. In the case of something like Microsoft, it is not: what you do and say is really of no concern to it. As it happens, Microsoft makes USE OF AUTHORITY- copyright, contracts backed by the U.S. Government- it wields authority itself while being exempt from it in the sense of being held liable. If there was no copyright, no licensing agreements and user agreements etc. then it would be less worrying that Microsoft itself is exempt from any authority.
There is also the assumption that you are capable of communicating your views to others in your community. And there are too many software vendors already who're trying to not only suppress, for instance, information about settlements (like, suing someone, settling, and part of the terms is that you cannot talk about what you'd sued about) but even negative reviews! Microsoft does some of this as well, and it is poisonous to any operating anarchy- as well it should be, since what is to enforce these requirements that information not get out there? The government, of course. So again, it is abuse of government for the purposes of obliterating the ability of a community to protect itself via communication about threats.
And this also holds for the continuing efforts to suppress bug information and security hole information- the important thing to a Microsoft is not the hole, but establishing sufficient AUTHORITY to prohibit anyone communicating information that might be unhelpful to Microsoft's goals.
So- with the situation the way we have it, it's really not feasible to have half-anarchy, with Microsoft et al running around exempt from any authority. They themselves use government as a lever to inflict authority on others, and it's pretty unlikely that this will be changed. Bringing liability to the software industry effectively wrests SOME of this authority out of Microsoft's hands again, and places the law above them instead of making the law entirely their bitch ;)
The concern that Microsoft would use this to obliterate all other software companies is VERY well thought of: of course they would, it's the first thing Ballmer thought of in another context. However, malicious harassment by lawsuits IS, I think, illegal: if I'm not mistaken, this is called 'barratry'? The fact that it's not reasonable to prevent them from doing this is a problem. Who says there can't be multiple problems? In this case, Microsoft's willingness to abuse authority is a problem, not a normal condition. It's not to be taken for granted as standard operating procedure and an excuse to not use liability.
The bottom line is, liability is a structure of authority designed to supplant anarchistic negotiation between equals. It is not a superior solution- as long as such negotiation is still possible. Well, with entities like Microsoft, negotiation is NOT possible: they by design have enormously more power and authority than individuals do. As such, some structure of authority NEEDS to be worked out that will deal with them, otherwise they will simply continue to run amok. So, the anarchist viewpoint on this is ironically, "The existence of these super-powerful and authoritative entities is already so fscked up that some kind of regulation's gotta be made to deal with them. They're creatures of regulation in the first place- either disband them or come up with ways of interacting with them that are APPROPRIATE to their power and authority. Pretending they should be allowed 'anarchy' on grounds of personal liberty is intellectual wankery... if they want true lack of liability, let them be disbanded, and repeal all copyright and licensing laws while you're at it, so THEY can do nothing to YOU either!"
As these penalties increase, due to the concept of ripping producing millions of bootleg CDs over the internet for which you are of course held responsible, eventually the penalty for ripping your own CD will be worse than the penalty for stealing one from a store. So if you want a copy of your CD, steal a second one from the store :)
Why would it be profitable for the corporation to do otherwise?
The only argument to do otherwise would be the idea that it would be more profitable for the corporation if people were smarter and had better information. Corporations do not have social obligations or any requirement to preserve the health of the body politic: they are strictly on a 'trader' basis with their consumers that reduces down to the raw terms of the exchange.
It will always be more profitable to limit information, limit diversity, suppress intelligence and save money by producing 'Inside Britney Spears' Spring Mansion' in 12 different regions each priced to accurately reflect the amount of money that can be charged in the absence of market interaction and pricing pressure.
The fact that this hurts the populace in the pocketbook AND insults their intelligence is of no interest whatsoever, and if it's all you can get out of the media machinery, what else are you going to do- read an old book?
I'm not sure why you should be _scared_. This does not come from some centralised malice (it'd be more interesting if it did). It's largely an epiphenomenon of what happens with a certain kind of media structure and a certain kind of corporate activity etc etc. It is What You Get, with the particular STYLE of capitalism we practice nowadays.
Go read up on, say, social anarchism, and its roots in denial of all forms of 'archy' or authority. Then, if you find any of that making sense too, you can _really_ be scared ;)
There can be no compromise with that.
You gotta figure out what kind of limits and boundaries YOU want, and set them, and HOLD them, because the corporations will ALWAYS want more, no matter what they have. They aren't people! They aren't animals! They are like an equation written in legal documents: NextYearEarnings = ThisYearEarnings * 1.2 and implementing this is an exercise for the reader and the corporation's marketing and legal departments- I think we've seen what happens there.
There is no such thing as a for-profit publically held corporation that has 'enough'. It's impossible. They MUST take more and more until they choke and die. You can't make any sort of stable bargain with that kind of thing.
Please, people, try and remember this...
...digging ditches beside WHAT, exactly? ;)
Since this is the home state of Microsoft, maybe it would be nice to see what it is like reduced to pure feudalism. I'm sure Microsoft would love that until the absence of police and fire departments force them to house all the employees in a secure compound, until the streets decay and become useless, until the unemployed and homeless rabble organize and try to take stuff from the 'winners' of the game. At that point they might like feudalism a bit less.
I'm just glad I don't live there, is all I can say.
But also- there just seems to be something not right with asking directly for support like that, money crunch or no. I mean, support over and above what they produce... even though they do certainly work hard...
As it happens, I DO have a money crunch, and I too have been working my butt off. If you go to ampcast and poke around, you'll find loads of newly remastered stuff all of which is going to have proper CDs available. I understand you can stream stuff just at random- if you register w. the site (I know, but hear me out) you can download it all free and I get a nickel for each DL without you having to pay for it, and if you _rate_ the tunes I can appear on the 'charts' they have- I ask for bad ratings too if that's your honest opinion, it's all feedback and there's somebody to like everything.
Plus (and this is where the money crunch comes from) I've been placing orders for electronic parts. I'm the guy who puts out the GPLed mastering app Mastering Tools (which I use on all my stuff for Ampcast), and I've been building stompboxes and mixers and stuff for over a decade- and I'm onto a design that promises to be a _really_ slick mini-guitar DI that comes in three gain levels. Just a teeny box with two jacks on it, and you control volume from the guitar- the Anti-Line-6-POD- so I'm rationing food because buying 10 project enclosures, 50 .1 polypropylene capacitors, 100 battery clips etc was of course WAY more important. (any true geek would understand this without having to be told ;) )
So yeah- I'm in a money crunch too. But here's the difference: _I_ saved enough money that I can buy cat food, some boring human food, etc. I paid all my bills at the beginning of the month and I completely paid a debt that had to do with a retroactive rent hike.
So I'm not in a threatening money crunch- and I can afford to mouth off and make fun of my own foolish situation because I PLANNED IT and I'll get by even if everyone goes "God, not HIM again!" and scrolls on with an elegant shudder of geeky distaste ;)
But there's a deeper level which I'm not sure if I can express. For starters- I've worked to the brink of RSI on my GPLed Mastering Tools program- but THAT is not for sale. That's free. I've got 7 finished Red Book CDs next to me, which are going to Ampcast to be duplicated on demand, and THOSE are for sale. My business is making them so good, making the packaging and the art and everything so nice that it's _worth_ having a proper one instead of some cloned thing with magic-marker label. I'm trying to make these guitar stompboxes- THAT is tangible, and my efforts of designing them are 'sunk costs' like the coding on Mastering Tools- it's what I can produce that people CAN'T just clone effortlessly, or the ways in which I can at least reward someone's good will (like in buying a CD). I'm OK with people having that good will but nothing I've done or ever will do will entitle me to it, and I refuse to ask for it without also wising off and de-hard-selling it ;)
That said- it is not THAT unreasonable to encourage people to buy Mandrake dists. I'm Mac-based, and I bought the LinuxPPC dist, and kept it even though it didn't work on my main machine. Now I have another old Mac and this one will run it, so it's now installed on one of my machines. But if you asked me to donate money to LinuxPPC- well, I don't know. I'm not sure I like that as a motivation. I sure don't do my OSS work so I can ask for DONATIONS. I do it to make other stuff that I do, better. Then I share that part of the work.
Coincidentally, when I loaded this comment page, the first thing that I saw was a ThinkGeek ad. It's the one about tiny radio-controlled desktop tanks for $58.99 that can play laser tag with each other. I know, because I went STRAIGHT to ThinkGeek to look at them. And if I wasn't in a serious money crunch, that would be terribly compelling- an argument to give money to ThinkGeek because they'd come up with something to sell me that was SO COOL that I just couldn't resist it.
I don't know when or if I'll be on that level- to out-cool tiny robot tanks is quite an order, though my tiny two-jack guitar-amp effect box sounds some of the same notes (miniatureness, elegance, effectiveness, more miniatureness etc), but to me THAT is the area to emulate. That's where Mandrake should be heading... if it is even possible, with a Linux dist. It's just that 'toss a few bucks my way because _I_ am worthy' is a hell of a lot more nebulous than 'toss a few bucks my way and you can have one of THESE'... with the latter, it's a simple question of whether the thing is really cool or not, where with the former it gets into your evaluation of WHY the person is supposed to deserve support when there's a million people out there who deserve to pursue their work without money headaches...
Here's a mantra for you- try meditating on this instead of 'A is A'. Software is a verb.
Your whole argument assumes software as a sort of resource- a combination of a scarcity like oil or coal and a product of intense specialization like IC fabs. Two words my friend- "Visual Basic". I might also add 'GCC' and even 'Applescript'... you are flat wrong in your assumption that software has to be produced by companies in order to be relevant.
You are also flat wrong in your so-subtle remark, "when GPL projects fail to keep pace with technology". Do you want a list of the GPL projects that _set_ the pace for technology? You could have changed one word and been right- if you'd said "when GPL projects fail to keep pace with marketing". And this is relevant, how?
Software is a verb. It is the language by which PEOPLE (not 'consumers') address problems and situations, using computers. Every major software platform has means to allow people to produce software to help them interact with their problems and situations. On linux, you get a complete C/C++ development environment (but it's not easy). On Windows, you can buy Visual Studio, or you can use programming INSIDE the Office suite, with VB for Applications. On the Mac, there's Codewarrior, or you can download MPW for older systems, or use REALbasic for an environment even easier than Visual Basic, or use the OSX Developer Tools.
Software is a verb! NOT a 'market'! Addressing certain specialised problems better than ordinary people could, through software, is a way to make a software PRODUCT that's marketable, but it is NOT the software that's worth the money- it's the skill being implemented THROUGH software.
I produce a GPLed audio mastering suite (on Mac- but still GPL) that embodies specialised knowledge of digital audio processing, and sound engineer expectations and interface preferences. Let's pretend for a second that this was a commercial product. Does the fact that it's a program make it a product? Suppose I wrote a program for robotic milling-machine control, about which I know nothing- does that make the program part of the software 'market'? It does not. It would be a failed attempt at being in the milling-machine controller market. Suppose I wrote an accounting program, more of a mainstream thing- does that make me an 'entry into the software market'? No, it makes me a poser trying to fake understanding of the accounting market, and using software to express my poor ideas. Since I do know digital audio mastering, my program for that is on many levels a tough competitor, particularly in output quality. Will this hurt the middle ground of DSP software? Guess what- there isn't one! You assume a 'market' will arise for any need, and that is flat untrue- in mastering software, there's already just a few expensive 'industry standard' packages, a variety of amateur crap, and a scattering of garbage with glitzy GUIs and lousy output. When something gets half decent, the price immediately goes through the roof. Even then, you can get stuck with fatal flaws, incompatibilities, just the things you seem to expect from open source.
And this garbage 'market' is built off open scientific discovery and research- are you familiar with AES? Are you familiar with the controversy over dithering versus Sony DSD? Plus, the software itself is based off C and C++ and a host of software inventions that themselves grew extensively off 'socialist' notions like sharing ideas. Consider BSD. Consider the role played by open source in the proliferation of C.
I guess Market Capitalism always does well in the beginning, because it lives off the fat of the land that has been stored up by cooperative efforts to establish a commons. In the long run, it is cancer, and the economy grows massive exciting tumors and then dies.
There is a difference: it's a lot harder to completely control the access of the citizenry to information. I don't know if this will amount to a significant difference. Looks like we're going to find out.
The real war is not whether Bush will bomb Afganistan with nukes- in a sense the real war is whether Bush's people can persuade the majority of US citizens that USA ruling the world and remaking it in its image is the best thing for everybody. Whether this can be spun as a benevolent empire isn't really the point...
Maybe we need you and people like you to stay...
If it is a contingency plan capable of preventing the nuking of the foreign city, by killing off the whole U.S. before it can launch the nukes, then that biological attack is self-defence too.
There certainly are a lot of unfriendly people out there and we are some of the unfriendliest, if we are prepared to nuke countries because we feel threatened.
The only way to rationalize this sort of thing is to conclude that the foreign city's inhabitants are not people- and thus don't have 'selves'- and so they cannot possibly be considered to act in self-defense.
Somewhere I read (possibly Heinlein?) about the black widow spider. A pretty little arachnid, but possessed of too much power for its size- and so people kill them on sight, because they are capable of dangerous attacks in their own interests.
At the point when these foreign countries develop attacks bigger than they are, the contingency plans are over, and our military leaders (who are not necessarily as foolish as our political leaders) must decide if it is REALLY sensible to abandon deterrence and kick off WWIII on the grounds that now we have REASON to be scared.
If your users have a 17" screen and a 10" package, nobody will care if they look like the Borg :D
Eric Hoffer's book is about MASS movements.
We have that. And it's certainly not Mac or Linux.
To me, being committed to Free Software has little to do with what you CONSUME. It's about what you produce. I write software, and that software is GPLed. I do it on MacOS, classic, with a non-free development environment because I'm NOT good enough to code straight C yet- though I did port one of my programs to C commandline and now use it in MPW. If I was on OSX, it would be running as a commandline program in a terminal window- and when I finally got my GPLed serious program ported to C, it'd be a lot closer to Linux ports and entirely free systems.
It's not about what systems _I_ choose to live in- it's about what I choose to put out there into the world. Which is better- coding on classic MacOS and adding ideas to the commons through GPL, or using entirely free systems and coding up DRM for them? Let's be clear on the concept.
Can't deny the coolness factor of THAT. whew!
For a self-perpetuating commons, you gotta have GPL.
Otherwise, players like Microsoft will suck you dry and then discard your 'spirit'.
Or Protected Computing. As you knew it, the PC. Look, see how many years people have had Protected Computing?
Hey, I already do that, but when they can go to my vendor and say "Kill quicktime- yes we want you to 'knife the baby', and by the way you need to kill that Cyberdog stuff and support only IE- here's a bunch of system extensions to build into your operating system to 'support' it... have them installed as default"... then trying to use another vendor is obviously not enough.