No it wouldn't. A "legitimate" Napster by definition would have to be a Napster that charges. Unless we are talking about Allofmp3 level pricing, which we both know would never happen, mp3 file sharing isn't going anywhere.
The machine running the peer guardian is an XP machine. It is sniffing traffic on the local network and filtering out all the results that don't originate from the vista machine. He is running remote desktop from the Vista machine to the XP machine (the one running Peer Guardian). He probably did this because of the issues that software has with Vista, or possible because he feels that Vista would hide this information from programs running locally.
The enforceability, or lack there of, of EULA's has absolutely nothing to do with whether the vendor is a monopolist or not. The reason that EULA's are not generally considered to be enforceable is that there is no consideration given by the software companies. In a contract, both parties have to give consideration (give something up to the other). When I purchase a software package, the already is a contract. I am purchasing the software in exchange for money. WHen Microsoft (or Apple) decides that I can't use the software in this or that capacity (after the purchase no less), I am giving up something (certain rights to use the software), but the software company is not giving up anything. Don't say, that they are allowing me to use the software. That right was given to me when I forked over my cash.
The only restrictions that are enforceable with regards to software are those that are protected by law, ie copyright. I can pretty much do whatever I want with software that I purchased, but I cannot make copies of the software and distribute them. I can't purchase one copy and then install it on 100 of my machines. This is the case not because the EULA said so, but because copyright says so. And thanks to the DMCA, I can't publish or distribute any workarounds for any technical restrictions that the software may include
If I figure out a way of getting Mac OS X to run on my beige box PC, I have broken no law and violated no contract. I am not allowed to distribute the OS, and under the DMCA I probably wouldn't be allowed to publish how I did it, but within the confines of my home I would be allowed to do it.
Too many are.
I have never had a problem with BJ's online rebates. No receipts to mail in, no UPC's to cut out.
Just fill out your info at their website and wait 2-3 weeks. Of course, those rebates were for only $5 so even if the rebate never did come in it would be no big loss.
Now mail-in rebates are another story. Those who say that only morons who don't fill the form correctly, don't get the rebates are lucky. Those who fault the consumer for not hounding the company to get their rebate must be unemployed.
A couple of years ago, I bought an HP monitor with a $50 mail in. I sent all the stuff in and kept copies. The fullfillment company had one of those online tracking sites, so I would check it from time to time. I saw the status go from received to processing and there it stayed. Eight weeks came and went and my rebate was still "processing". Now it was coming on 3 months, so I gave the customer service number a call. Calls were accepted only between the hours of 8 and 4 and calling after 3:30 was futile since I would be on hold until 4:00 and then disconnected. I finally had to make time to call during my lunch and finally got through after about a 20 minute hold time! Did I mention that I was wasting my lunch time with this. Apparently there was some data entry error on their end.. The rep had me confirm my info while he re-entered it. I would receive it in 2-3 weeks. I finally got it. Four months after I had made my purchase and after I spent roughly an hour making several calls. If I had not called and spent time out of my work day, I would not have received it.
My other experience was with Tiger Direct (crooks). It was for a $30 rebate on ram. I submitted all the info and of course made photocopies. I filed the copies away and sent the rebate off. Once again, I tracked the rebate online this time through ONRebate. After about 10 weeks and still no rebate, I e-mailed the onrebate support. No answer. So I called. Again we have the limited call times and of course waiting until after work means that no one will answer and I will get disconnected at 4:00 on the dot, so again I have to make time during work to call. After a 25 minute hold time I get in contact with a rep who states that I did not receive it because I did not send the UPC. This is of course bullshit, I have the photocopy to prove that I sent it. He says no problem, "just fax it attention to me" and we will take care of it. So now I have to get my stuff together and find a fax machine. I fax it and then nothing. I get no replies via e-mail and the status has not changed. I make one last call after work and am unable to get through so at this point I figure $30 is not worth this aggravation so I let it go. I know that I will never buy anything from Tiger Direct. If any of you are contemplating buying something there with a rebate don't do it. Read around. You'll see that I am hardly the only one who did not get a rebate from them. What they are doing is illegal and they should be prosecuted.
So please, those of you who say only morons don't receive rebates, please explain what I should have done differently. I am glad that Office Max is phasing out rebates. It is a crooked business and I have little doubt that fulfillment companies throw out a percentage of legitimate rebates in the hopes that most consumers will provide little or no resistance.
First, it's not a copyright issue. It's a trademark issue.
Second, it would only be a problem if Symantec was selling a neural modeling program and calling it Genesis.
This "crack" would not have cost Apple one cent (okay 99) in lost downloads.
So someone could distribute high quality AAC files stripped of DRM. So what? There are already plenty of high-quality mp3, ogg and various other audio format rips of cds on p2p. There are also tons of fakes, radio rips, decoys, trojans, and just plain crappy rips floating on these networks as well. There is nothing stopping anyone from taking a fake or crappy mp3 rip and re-encoding it as aac and distributing it via p2p.
The people that shop at itunes are not going to stop because there are now some additional aac files available on p2p. People that shop iTunes do so because of the user experience. You know you will get a fast, high quality download from iTunes. You can't be sure with P2P until you've downed the file and listened to the whole thing.
On the other hand, increasing the price of downloads and/or forced bundling will cause iTunes sales to drop.
One of these sites was advertised during the morning announcements in our school.
One teacher saw that he had a few negative comments, so what did he do? He rated himself about a dozen times and his rating went up. At lunch time that day, we discussed the site and voted each other up. We also voted a few of our more annoying "colleagues" down. I had a good rating before, but now my rating is almost perfect:)
As long as anyone can post without registering this will always be a worthless tool. Make it so that you have to register and tie that registration to an *ISP* or *university* email address (no hotmail,yahoo, etc) and you will cut down on the crap significantly. You don't even have to post identifying info, just limit who can post.
It's been said often that only the Telco's make any money with DSL. With that in mind, and with our collective hatred of MS, wouldn't it be a great idea to really stick it to them and get MSN broadband.
If MS is losing money with its overpriced for dialup $21.99 service, they must be absolutely hemorraging (SP?) it with their $39.99 to $49.99 broadband.
I know what you're all thinking, you need Windows to run MSN software and you don't want to run MS's proprietary connection software on your machine.
This is not a problem. Any true geek probably has enough spare computer parts to build a small PC. A pentium I class machine with about 128 megs or less should suffice. Install that copy of win98 se or win2k on that machine (you have paid the MS tax haven't you.) Install the Modem and software, set up Internet Connection Sharing on your "new" machine. Set it up so that it automatically dials the connection and boom you are done with windows.
Hook up your real box to it via ethernet and enjoy your surfing knowing that with every ISO you download, you're causing MS a little bit of pain, and you won't even have to go out and buy an XBOX:)
Because of course, Microsoft is known in technological circles as having a very secure product. After all Windows Xp is the most secure operating system according to Microsoft.
Please, what Video card was your comparison run on. I've seen some Pentium 4's ship with nVidia tnt or worse. Compare a P4 1.5ghz with equal vid cards and a comparable amount of ram and we will see who eats who alive.
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No it wouldn't. A "legitimate" Napster by definition would have to be a Napster that charges. Unless we are talking about Allofmp3 level pricing, which we both know would never happen, mp3 file sharing isn't going anywhere.
The machine running the peer guardian is an XP machine. It is sniffing traffic on the local network and filtering out all the results that don't originate from the vista machine. He is running remote desktop from the Vista machine to the XP machine (the one running Peer Guardian). He probably did this because of the issues that software has with Vista, or possible because he feels that Vista would hide this information from programs running locally.
The enforceability, or lack there of, of EULA's has absolutely nothing to do with whether the vendor is a monopolist or not. The reason that EULA's are not generally considered to be enforceable is that there is no consideration given by the software companies. In a contract, both parties have to give consideration (give something up to the other). When I purchase a software package, the already is a contract. I am purchasing the software in exchange for money. WHen Microsoft (or Apple) decides that I can't use the software in this or that capacity (after the purchase no less), I am giving up something (certain rights to use the software), but the software company is not giving up anything. Don't say, that they are allowing me to use the software. That right was given to me when I forked over my cash.
The only restrictions that are enforceable with regards to software are those that are protected by law, ie copyright. I can pretty much do whatever I want with software that I purchased, but I cannot make copies of the software and distribute them. I can't purchase one copy and then install it on 100 of my machines. This is the case not because the EULA said so, but because copyright says so. And thanks to the DMCA, I can't publish or distribute any workarounds for any technical restrictions that the software may include
If I figure out a way of getting Mac OS X to run on my beige box PC, I have broken no law and violated no contract. I am not allowed to distribute the OS, and under the DMCA I probably wouldn't be allowed to publish how I did it, but within the confines of my home I would be allowed to do it.
Too many are. I have never had a problem with BJ's online rebates. No receipts to mail in, no UPC's to cut out. Just fill out your info at their website and wait 2-3 weeks. Of course, those rebates were for only $5 so even if the rebate never did come in it would be no big loss.
Now mail-in rebates are another story. Those who say that only morons who don't fill the form correctly, don't get the rebates are lucky. Those who fault the consumer for not hounding the company to get their rebate must be unemployed.
A couple of years ago, I bought an HP monitor with a $50 mail in. I sent all the stuff in and kept copies. The fullfillment company had one of those online tracking sites, so I would check it from time to time. I saw the status go from received to processing and there it stayed. Eight weeks came and went and my rebate was still "processing". Now it was coming on 3 months, so I gave the customer service number a call. Calls were accepted only between the hours of 8 and 4 and calling after 3:30 was futile since I would be on hold until 4:00 and then disconnected. I finally had to make time to call during my lunch and finally got through after about a 20 minute hold time! Did I mention that I was wasting my lunch time with this. Apparently there was some data entry error on their end.. The rep had me confirm my info while he re-entered it. I would receive it in 2-3 weeks. I finally got it. Four months after I had made my purchase and after I spent roughly an hour making several calls. If I had not called and spent time out of my work day, I would not have received it.
My other experience was with Tiger Direct (crooks). It was for a $30 rebate on ram. I submitted all the info and of course made photocopies. I filed the copies away and sent the rebate off. Once again, I tracked the rebate online this time through ONRebate. After about 10 weeks and still no rebate, I e-mailed the onrebate support. No answer. So I called. Again we have the limited call times and of course waiting until after work means that no one will answer and I will get disconnected at 4:00 on the dot, so again I have to make time during work to call. After a 25 minute hold time I get in contact with a rep who states that I did not receive it because I did not send the UPC. This is of course bullshit, I have the photocopy to prove that I sent it. He says no problem, "just fax it attention to me" and we will take care of it. So now I have to get my stuff together and find a fax machine. I fax it and then nothing. I get no replies via e-mail and the status has not changed. I make one last call after work and am unable to get through so at this point I figure $30 is not worth this aggravation so I let it go. I know that I will never buy anything from Tiger Direct. If any of you are contemplating buying something there with a rebate don't do it. Read around. You'll see that I am hardly the only one who did not get a rebate from them. What they are doing is illegal and they should be prosecuted.
So please, those of you who say only morons don't receive rebates, please explain what I should have done differently. I am glad that Office Max is phasing out rebates. It is a crooked business and I have little doubt that fulfillment companies throw out a percentage of legitimate rebates in the hopes that most consumers will provide little or no resistance.
First, it's not a copyright issue. It's a trademark issue. Second, it would only be a problem if Symantec was selling a neural modeling program and calling it Genesis.
Correction Bush had more people vote against him than any other sitting President. Clinton was not a sitting President in 1992.
..One percent of a million users is a hell of a lot more sales than one hundred percent of a thousand users.
1% of a million is 10000 which is more than 1000
This "crack" would not have cost Apple one cent (okay 99) in lost downloads.
So someone could distribute high quality AAC files stripped of DRM. So what? There are already plenty of high-quality mp3, ogg and various other audio format rips of cds on p2p. There are also tons of fakes, radio rips, decoys, trojans, and just plain crappy rips floating on these networks as well. There is nothing stopping anyone from taking a fake or crappy mp3 rip and re-encoding it as aac and distributing it via p2p.
The people that shop at itunes are not going to stop because there are now some additional aac files available on p2p. People that shop iTunes do so because of the user experience. You know you will get a fast, high quality download from iTunes. You can't be sure with P2P until you've downed the file and listened to the whole thing.
On the other hand, increasing the price of downloads and/or forced bundling will cause iTunes sales to drop.
One of these sites was advertised during the morning announcements in our school.
:)
,yahoo, etc) and you will cut down on the crap significantly. You don't even have to post identifying info, just limit who can post.
One teacher saw that he had a few negative comments, so what did he do? He rated himself about a dozen times and his rating went up. At lunch time that day, we discussed the site and voted each other up. We also voted a few of our more annoying "colleagues" down. I had a good rating before, but now my rating is almost perfect
As long as anyone can post without registering this will always be a worthless tool. Make it so that you have to register and tie that registration to an *ISP* or *university* email address (no hotmail
It's been said often that only the Telco's make any money with DSL. With that in mind, and with our collective hatred of MS, wouldn't it be a great idea to really stick it to them and get MSN broadband.
:)
If MS is losing money with its overpriced for dialup $21.99 service, they must be absolutely hemorraging (SP?) it with their $39.99 to $49.99 broadband.
I know what you're all thinking, you need Windows to run MSN software and you don't want to run MS's proprietary connection software on your machine.
This is not a problem. Any true geek probably has enough spare computer parts to build a small PC. A pentium I class machine with about 128 megs or less should suffice. Install that copy of win98 se or win2k on that machine (you have paid the MS tax haven't you.) Install the Modem and software, set up Internet Connection Sharing on your "new" machine. Set it up so that it automatically dials the connection and boom you are done with windows.
Hook up your real box to it via ethernet and enjoy your surfing knowing that with every ISO you download, you're causing MS a little bit of pain, and you won't even have to go out and buy an XBOX
Because of course, Microsoft is known in technological circles as having a very secure product. After all Windows Xp is the most secure operating system according to Microsoft.
Please, what Video card was your comparison run on. I've seen some Pentium 4's ship with nVidia tnt or worse. Compare a P4 1.5ghz with equal vid cards and a comparable amount of ram and we will see who eats who alive.