There is an Americans with Disabilities Act that gives various rights and exists to promote speech-enabled applications. Machines/tools to 'read' text, via software, aloud have existed for years. Attempting to limit such software would be an attempt to discriminate against blind or sight-challenged individuals. IANAL, but it might require such a disabled person to file a complaint -- but that seems excessively anal...
Now if TomTom could just prove it is a "OpenSuSE" client...hasn't MS agreed not sue over any usage in SuSE?...Surely someone at TomTom owns a copy of OpenSuSE....;-/ ?
Asserting a patent against that is just plain stupid. What is MS thinking? Do they think?
According to some beta testers, applications that worked fine under Vista became unlicensable (their licensing mechanism deactivated and wouldn't reactivate due to Win7 changes).
In one case it involved a file that was missing or renamed under Vista because it had caused some compatibility problems -- but the product (and Adobe product) ran 'fine', but on Win7, the renaming of the file was detected as a license violation.
It's like Windows "System File Protection" mechanism that attempts to replace system files that are deleted or modified with backup copies (first trying its backup cache, then asking for the source disk/DVDs), then putting up a threatening message about system instability if you continue without replacing or fixing the file (this is under XP).
Under Win7, any licensed product can be similarly monitored and will disable itself if tampering is detected.
In Vista, it was mostly multimedia content that was to be protected -- and checks were put in over the entire hardware layer to detect hardware tampering or OS tampering so that output streams of Hi Fidelity video could be disabled or downgraded. Initially, most content providers have disabled the checks because they want people to adopt Vista and the process has been hard enough with all the driver problems. Still, NBC blocked one of their prime-time evening serials a few months back to test the DRM-recording block feature. Tons of viewers called into complain when their Vista-backed Media Center's didn't properly record the show as they had expected. NBC later issued a statement saying that somehow the "block-recording"/"block-timeshifting" flag had been set on that program by accident.
Only Vista-Media edition recorders were affected. Apparently Tivo and other digital recording products were not affected.
Win7 is moving up the DRM ladder to extend full protection to software programs. If you rename or move or delete any files that you don't think you need or that cause you problems, or don't allow run-time licensing managers to be constantly running in background, you may easily find your products no longer work.
It's being rolled out as a feature to software vendors to automatically have their software "self-check" it's health and can allow an attempt at repair, revalidation of authorization over the internet, or disabling the software.
People complained about "Mass Effects" DRM requiring activation and reactivation upon hardware changes -- and the fact that it would periodically check back in to be sure its activation code had not been listed as compromised (revoked). With Vista 7, those features will be built into the OS so people won't have to complain about this game or that game's DRM -- it will just be the OS enforcing the DRM issues.
I recently triggered revalidation on my Word2002 installation when I changed the path to the office installation -- I renamed all the links and registry entries, but the path had been encrypted into the license state. Worse -- it would require validation -- but not STAY validated -- it said it needed to be revalidated each time you ran it (had "N" number of runs before it would only operate in reduced mode -- or I could revalidate it on each use. I eventually figured out that it really wanted the original path to exist again. A "NTFS hard-link" from the old-directory-name to the new-directory name solved the problem -- I could then have it in the new location, but it was happy in finding the old-path functioning correctly as well.
I shiver to think of what I may have to go through in Win7.
I think there should be a concerted effort to have WinXP released as open source -- for the public good. If MS doesn't want to maintain it, then have it open-sourced, so it can be used on lower-powered machines or people who don't want the 10-15% slowdown in applications due to DRM checks, or have another Gig of memory swallowed up by OS-DRM code.
Sounds like a good Monopoly-OS remedy -- split off the old OS as it's own user-supportable product.
Sounds like another shining example of Chicago (and Illinois) corrupt politics. Interestingly, it seems much of it can be traced back to organized crime getting its fingers into government during prohibition. Obama, in some ways, seems to have skirted much of the "Machine's" corruption -- time will tell if he'll continue the same corruption and violence causing prohibition that was redirected to Cannabis, or if he'll considering ending another major financial force of corruption that may end up toppling Mexico's government. The worst example of Mexico's government failing before their organized crime: last week a chief of police had to resign to comply with a blackmail request by Drug Lords, who were executing 2 cops every other day until he resigned. It was either after the 4th or 2nd death that he decided to give in -- they are unable to protect there own police force, let alone deal with the prohibition caused crime there.
Understand this: conservative religion is the enemy of education just as advanced education is the enemy of ignorance. The state of Utah (people and government) are dominated by one of the largest conservative churches in the United States.
This doesn't mean everyone in Utah or in the LDS are ignorant or unintelligent. The leadership is likely as sharp as any top CEO's, but the rank & file? Why do they need to be educated beyond the minimum necessary to shuffle their papers? It's a waste of tax-payer money and it is dangerous (they might ask questions about the status quo).
This is true of nearly all conservative religions. The more conservative the religion, the more they oppose higher levels of education for all. Only a few "elite" need education to rule over the rest. Prime example is Amish, where their kids are exempt from state education requirements beyond eight grade because it would harm the Amish's community and religion. Their religion depends on their children blindly accepting their lot in life and education beyond and eighth grade level would threaten that. The children (think of the children!) must have their potentials permanently "nipped" for the benefit of the Amish religion. Of course now the Amish are becoming a larger and larger tax drain on the state as they cannot support their medical costs as they age -- none of them have any skills beyond 1800's farming and barn-building 'technology'. But it's "O.K." -- this is America, where withholding medical and education benefits from children is considered a "religious right" -- and education of children in a nationally standardized _minimum_ curriculum is considered a violation of "religious freedom".
Some countries call that child abuse. In the US it passes for religious freedom, where 1 in 5 adults believe man walked the earth at the same time as dinosaurs and over 50% of those with a high-school education, only, believe man was created in the form he exists today.
Unfortunately, for a democracy to work, education about the issues is essential. Otherwise votes are made on whichever opinion gets the best funding for marketing to the ignorant masses who then go out and vote the way the best-funded media campaign as told them to vote.
Every once in a while, a 'hole' in the education of the thrall masses results in an embarrassment to the elite. It happens. Makes for good "ammo" as to why they (the elite) need to censor the internet: to protect them.
The citizenry needs to fight back. IP laws are completely artificial for the supposed benefit of society. Jailing the citizenry to benefit them is an obvious example of a corrupt government.
It's not a privilege. It's a necessary tool of government to spread the concept of 'normal' culture and to spread government propaganda.
The airwaves are not free. They are controlled by government. The government owns the medium -- so of course they want to be able to use it to reach the citizenry.
If IP law is "good for our country" or "our society", then the average citizen should be able to see the benefits. If the average citizen can't see any benefits or sees only benefits for corporations, but none for the citizenry/society, then it's a 'one-way' deal only benefiting a select group.
That is inherently unfair in a free and equal society.
I assert that the problem is the "Mickey-Mouse" copyright extension and a similar problem with patent-life in relation to the useful life of technology and technological ideas.
The purpose of copyright and patent was to encourage invention/creation to the benefit of the public good. Unfortunately, with copyright terms like 75 years after death of artist -- the public will never see any benefits of honoring copyright. Therefore -- the entire idea of "copyright" is "void". The benefit is all "one-way" for giving the artist a monopoly on copying and distributing his work just as with technology patents -- by the time patent term ends, at least in the computer industry, the technology is usually obsolete -- and again the original purpose of benefiting society is voided.
Given the long length of copyrights and the long life of technology patents (vs. their useful life), I assert the concepts are antithetical to benefiting society as a whole or its citizenry.
I think this is a perfectly good explanation for the increase in 'piracy' -- piracy is the only way to return the benefit to the citizens in the absence of a just government.
What, exactly is strafe-jumping down the stairs that "real people" don't do?
I remember in a real emergency, I was out of my 2nd story office and in the front parking lot in about 17 seconds. That was after about a 5-7 second pause before deciding it was the real thing and the building might not be left standing. I'm pretty sure I went down the stairwell and not out the window...:-)...amazing what adrenaline can do when it kicks in.
Say everyone has one of those Star Trek replicators. Someone goes to the grocery store, and buys an item. Said someone then puts that in his replicator and then uploads the "recipe" for that item. Everyone else who wants to, downloads the recipe and creates a copy of that item (from their own raw materials). I do not see how this is clearly unethical or wrong.
On one level I agree with you. But something is gnawing at me. The knowledge of how to convert something from raw ingredients into the finished good isn't in any computer. For every recipe that produces something tasting good, there are thousands of recipes to produce junk. The 1 good recipe or song isn't worth the price of 1 success -- it's worth:
the price of (price of a success) * (cost of all successes)/(cost of all failures**).
Now cost of all failures also includes all the time wasted by unsuccessful artists -- not just the failures produced by the successful artist.
So the price to produce 1 'great recipe' might include 10's of thousands of dollars of "overhead". That artist will never be able to sell their one song for... say $200,000. But they might get 50 cents from 400,000 people. That's the essence of why he needs to sell 400,000 copies. Then you add in distribution, advertising...all the overhead and it gets blown into the stratosphere -- and certainly, there is more than a little profit taking by the large corporations who buy the artists (but that's a different problem related to greed and corporate excess). Despite the overhead issue -- it doesn't negate the basic model -- the artist needs to sell 400,000 copies of their recipe in order to 'break even' -- else, it isn't worth them to be a cook, sweating away over bad recipes. They might as well go produce wooden widgets that can't be easily reproduced because they can't be digitally copied.
Now ideally, after the artist sells their 400,000 copies, the recipe goes into the public domain -- and THEN everyone can put it in their replicators and use it to their hearts' content -- the entire society is enriched. The part of "works moving into the public domain" is currently *broken*. This leads to some class of people saying "the heck with this system. It's never benefiting the common good. Let's ignore the bogus fat-cat enrichment system and benefit ourselves right now".
Massive piracy, is the other side of the Mickey-Mouse Copyright Perpetual Extension system. If copyright and patent terms were considered 'reasonable' by the average person, then the average person wouldn't be so tempted by piracy.
The downside of piracy is that people who produce intangible works...the poets, artists, and programmers of the world -- will be pauper's in their own time and only a few master's will find their work valued -- probably after they are dead. As our general 'minimum wage' increases, artists and such, in the society will find themselves unable to exist.... or make subsistence at the minimum wage. So...they will tend toward extinction. The question becomes -- do we value the output of those paid for 'intellectual' or 'creative' output? That's where the system comes into play. The problem is that the compensation to the 'authors' or artists is now dwarfed by the fat-cats distributing profits to stockholders and the CEO-types...
That's going to take some major revising of our capitalist system that I doubt even Obama can perform.
You are over-reacting... We don't need to ban all replica's... we can just require that all replica's have the tips painted with day-glo orange paint so they can be quickly determined to be replicas or real...
Sony installed a rootkit as part of DRM. MS is adding a.NET helper to FF -- in a way we can run around and look at what they could do "wrong"...like (any paranoid conservative)... I mean they could install a FF addon that installs a rootkit FF addon to allow specific content to trigger the rootkit via any normal string of HTML -- while deleting the original addon with the MS signature on it. That would make it difficult to track the root kit back to the source (though not impossible, obviously).
HOWEVER, you could also look at the positive side -- Microsoft is, maybe, trying to SUPPORT Firefox by adding.NET compatibility code.
FWIW, it looks related to a patent lawsuit I think MS lost a while back concerning automatic execution of plugins embedded in a webpage - vs. being forced to "push" a button to activate the plugin. It was a bogus patent that MS should not have been required to honor, but hey...that didn't stop some court system from mucking it up.
What part of the US government system do you not understand? The part where it is to be of the people or the part that it is supposed to be FOR us? It's not supposed to be for foreigners.
It would be protectionism if we put up barriers to private businesses using private investment funds to hire or buy foreigners. But using public money (government money) to only fund those for whom the government is instituted, is sound and prudent policy.
_If_ our government has an excess, they it might be a moral question of distribution to other countries vs. lowering taxes on our people -- however, if our own people are the ones who are financially bankrupt or impaired -- it makes sense to focus the money collected from *US* on *US*, FIRST.
Go find a clue...or stop shilling for you and your foreign brethren.
As long as he doesn't support petafiles, he'll be just fine...
Who's been bought off by MS?
on
Less Is Moore
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· Score: 2, Insightful
"If so, it will be the first version of Windows that makes computers run faster than the previous version."
This is the 2nd bit of falseness -- WinXP was faster than WinME.
Second -- WinXP is still quite a bit faster than Win7.
The article states that Win7 improves in areas where Windows was "OS-bound" over Vista. However, it says there is NO IMPROVEMENT in Win7 for applications. It was applications that noticed a 10-15% performance hit in Vista vs. XP due to the overhead of the DRM'd drivers. As near as I can tell from everything that has been leaked out about Vista before, during and after its development was that MS added (not replaced), but added a whole new abstraction layer. They tried to make it transparent where they could, but this was the basic reason why nearly all drivers that actually touched hardware had to be rewritten -- the USER has to be completely isolated from the real hardware -- so DRM can detect hardware/software work-arounds or unauthorized modifications or "taps" into the unencrypted data stream. This goes down to the level of being able to tell if something is plugged into a jack due to impedance changes -- if impedance or electrical specs don't match exactly with what the circuit is supposed to produce -- the OS is supposed to assume tampering and mark the OS-state as "compromised". Think of it being similar to the Linux - Kernel's tainted bit. Once it's set, it is supposed to be irreversible unless you reboot -- because the integrity of the kernel has been compromised. The DRM in Vista-Win7 was spec'ed to be similar but with finer level sensors -- so if anything -- a code path takes too long to execute, or circuits don't return their expected values, it's to assume the box is unsecure, so content can be disabled or downgraded at the content-providers option.
All this is still in Win7 -- the only difference it all the drivers that were broken during the switch to Vista won't be rebroken -- so you won't get anywhere near the OEM flack and Blog-reports about incompatibilities -- those will all be buried with Vista -- along with your memories -- so hopes MS. But MS has already made it clear that you won't be able to upgrade an XP machine to Win7 -- so they can control the experience from the start -- either by starting with corrupted Vista drivers, or Win7 drivers -- take your pick. Both are designed to ensure your compliance, but more importantly -- both cause performance degradation that everyone pays for by needing a bigger machine than they needed for XP.
The whole planet will be paying an excess carbon tax -- forever -- all to add in content-producer's demanded wish list.
This whole bit about the IT industry warming up to Win7 because it's not so bad compared to Vista just makes me want to puke. It's still corrupt and slow.
The government should require MS to open-source WinXP -- so it can be supported apart from MS -- who's obviously going for a "content-control" OS (like the next Gen Apple's are slated for). This will be the beginning of the end for non-commercial, open-source OS's or media boxes. It will be all pay-to-play -- just like Washington.
Comcast and AT&T have both been accused of using the digital transition to push their digital services -- and both have been cutting their analog offerings as well as jacking the price up. But they've both been cutting stations and moving national-cable-network stations up to the digital-only spectrum to increase it's "attractiveness".
In two years, my local comcast offering has gone from $29 to $49, and they added a "Family Friendly" digital package at $45. Of course, I still have an option of sub-basic at $23, I think it carries about 5 broadcast stations with the rest being public access such: basically less than what I could get in 1980 without cable in an urban market.
Supposedly the FCC is launching an investigation -- it will probably be done in a couple of years...
I thought about Dish -- it was cheaper, then I found out that with their basic package, only about 10-20% were channels I would want to watch -- they carry about 10 religious-only channels and about 10-15 alternate language offerings in their basic, low-res service -- it was basically another 'family friendly' -- a new euphemism for "junk and worthless TV offerings".
All the reviews I've seen seem only to compare it to Vista, but it sounds like the speedup from Vista is minor -- nothing like the downgrade from XP.
So is this the new MS approach -- to put out a really bad product (Vista), then give us something 5% better and watch all the reviews "Oooh" and "Ahh" over how much better it is than Vista?
This sounds like Windows ME all over again. Though XP did eventually come up to speed and was worth it because of the extra HW it supported. Win64-XP should be able to handle all the new HW (except HW deliberately disabled by manufacturers to not work with legacy systems)....;->
It sounds like they refuse to prosecute small-damage cases where no monetary gain was at issue -- they will prosecute crimes for commercial gain, but not for example, go after individual file sharers.
Sounds like China has more common sense than our RIAA-paid legislators, but this isn't surprising given the insanity of suing users for $220K damages over ~$16 dollars or less of damage.
I dunno what web browser you are using, but if you run Firefox, with standard script and visual-spam control, you don't see any images on that page except three, 2x2cm thumbnails for some videos on the lower part of the right column.
It was a case of releasing a product years before the competition that would have sustained part of the company's business model, vs. a fear that the company wouldn't be able to sustain their business model (due to not being able to provide superior products as they had in the past) and wouldn't be able to find jobs after the company folded.
By acting on the fear, they brought the action they feared upon the company, costing 100's of millions over the succeeding 5-6 years. More often than not, I have felt it would be unethical to not give my loyalty to my current employer -- especially when my failure to act might cost them millions of dollars. Others choose to put their careers first and let companies die.
I don't feel that the latter are best for a company wishing to excel in a competitive environment. They may do better as contractors -- "hired-guns", but not permanent employees.
I suppose its a case of competing values and having a conflict of interest.
Normally -- in fields where ethics matter, if one has a conflict of interest in doing their job for their employer, it is ethical to remove one from the position of conflict. In some fields, it is mandatory. I don't believe it is ethical to quietly keep such conflicts of interest -- quiet at the expense of ones employer.
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There is an Americans with Disabilities Act that gives various rights and exists to promote speech-enabled applications. Machines/tools to 'read' text, via software, aloud have existed for years. Attempting to limit such software would be an attempt to discriminate against blind or sight-challenged individuals. IANAL, but it might require such a disabled person to file a complaint -- but that seems excessively anal...
Now if TomTom could just prove it is a "OpenSuSE" client...hasn't MS agreed not sue over any usage in SuSE?...Surely someone at TomTom owns a copy of OpenSuSE.... ;-/ ?
Asserting a patent against that is just plain stupid. What is MS thinking? Do they think?
According to some beta testers, applications that worked fine under Vista became unlicensable (their licensing mechanism deactivated and wouldn't reactivate due to Win7 changes).
In one case it involved a file that was missing or renamed under Vista because it had caused some compatibility problems -- but the product (and Adobe product) ran 'fine', but on Win7, the renaming of the file was detected as a license violation.
It's like Windows "System File Protection" mechanism that attempts to replace system files that are deleted or modified with backup copies (first trying its backup cache, then asking for the source disk/DVDs), then putting up a threatening message about system instability if you continue without replacing or fixing the file (this is under XP).
Under Win7, any licensed product can be similarly monitored and will disable itself if tampering is detected.
In Vista, it was mostly multimedia content that was to be protected -- and checks were put in over the entire hardware layer to detect hardware tampering or OS tampering so that output streams of Hi Fidelity video could be disabled or downgraded. Initially, most content providers have disabled the checks because they want people to adopt Vista and the process has been hard enough with all the driver problems. Still, NBC blocked one of their prime-time evening serials a few months back to test the DRM-recording block feature. Tons of viewers called into complain when their Vista-backed Media Center's didn't properly record the show as they had expected. NBC later issued a statement saying that somehow the "block-recording"/"block-timeshifting" flag had been set on that program by accident.
Only Vista-Media edition recorders were affected. Apparently Tivo and other digital recording products were not affected.
Win7 is moving up the DRM ladder to extend full protection to software programs. If you rename or move or delete any files that you don't think you need or that cause you problems, or don't allow run-time licensing managers to be constantly running in background, you may easily find your products no longer work.
It's being rolled out as a feature to software vendors to automatically have their software "self-check" it's health and can allow an attempt at repair, revalidation of authorization over the internet, or disabling the software.
People complained about "Mass Effects" DRM requiring activation and reactivation upon hardware changes -- and the fact that it would periodically check back in to be sure its activation code had not been listed as compromised (revoked). With Vista 7, those features will be built into the OS so people won't have to complain about this game or that game's DRM -- it will just be the OS enforcing the DRM issues.
I recently triggered revalidation on my Word2002 installation when I changed the path to the office installation -- I renamed all the links and registry entries, but the path had been encrypted into the license state. Worse -- it would require validation -- but not STAY validated -- it said it needed to be revalidated each time you ran it (had "N" number of runs before it would only operate in reduced mode -- or I could revalidate it on each use. I eventually figured out that it really wanted the original path to exist again. A "NTFS hard-link" from the old-directory-name to the new-directory name solved the problem -- I could then have it in the new location, but it was happy in finding the old-path functioning correctly as well.
I shiver to think of what I may have to go through in Win7.
I think there should be a concerted effort to have WinXP released as open source -- for the public good. If MS doesn't want to maintain it, then have it open-sourced, so it can be used on lower-powered machines or people who don't want the 10-15% slowdown in applications due to DRM checks, or have another Gig of memory swallowed up by OS-DRM code.
Sounds like a good Monopoly-OS remedy -- split off the old OS as it's own user-supportable product.
Sounds like another shining example of Chicago (and Illinois) corrupt politics. Interestingly, it seems much of it can be traced back to organized crime getting its fingers into government during prohibition. Obama, in some ways, seems to have skirted much of the "Machine's" corruption -- time will tell if he'll continue the same corruption and violence causing prohibition that was redirected to Cannabis, or if he'll considering ending another major financial force of corruption that may end up toppling Mexico's government. The worst example of Mexico's government failing before their organized crime: last week a chief of police had to resign to comply with a blackmail request by Drug Lords, who were executing 2 cops every other day until he resigned. It was either after the 4th or 2nd death that he decided to give in -- they are unable to protect there own police force, let alone deal with the prohibition caused crime there.
Understand this: conservative religion is the enemy of education just as advanced education is the enemy of ignorance. The state of Utah (people and government) are dominated by one of the largest conservative churches in the United States.
This doesn't mean everyone in Utah or in the LDS are ignorant or unintelligent. The leadership is likely as sharp as any top CEO's, but the rank & file? Why do they need to be educated beyond the minimum necessary to shuffle their papers? It's a waste of tax-payer money and it is dangerous (they might ask questions about the status quo).
This is true of nearly all conservative religions. The more conservative the religion, the more they oppose higher levels of education for all. Only a few "elite" need education to rule over the rest. Prime example is Amish, where their kids are exempt from state education requirements beyond eight grade because it would harm the Amish's community and religion. Their religion depends on their children blindly accepting their lot in life and education beyond and eighth grade level would threaten that. The children (think of the children!) must have their potentials permanently "nipped" for the benefit of the Amish religion. Of course now the Amish are becoming a larger and larger tax drain on the state as they cannot support their medical costs as they age -- none of them have any skills beyond 1800's farming and barn-building 'technology'. But it's "O.K." -- this is America, where withholding medical and education benefits from children is considered a "religious right" -- and education of children in a nationally standardized _minimum_ curriculum is considered a violation of "religious freedom".
Some countries call that child abuse. In the US it passes for religious freedom, where 1 in 5 adults believe man walked the earth at the same time as dinosaurs and over 50% of those with a high-school education, only, believe man was created in the form he exists today.
Unfortunately, for a democracy to work, education about the issues is essential. Otherwise votes are made on whichever opinion gets the best funding for marketing to the ignorant masses who then go out and vote the way the best-funded media campaign as told them to vote.
Every once in a while, a 'hole' in the education of the thrall masses results in an embarrassment to the elite. It happens. Makes for good "ammo" as to why they (the elite) need to censor the internet: to protect them.
[blockquote]Unfortunately, violence is the ultimate form of control.[/blockquote]
Morons who believe that also believe that torture is the ultimate way to get the truth out of detainee's.
Violence is the tool to eliminate that which one has no control over.
The citizenry needs to fight back. IP laws are completely artificial for the supposed benefit of society.
Jailing the citizenry to benefit them is an obvious example of a corrupt government.
It's not a privilege. It's a necessary tool of government to spread the concept of 'normal' culture and to spread government propaganda.
The airwaves are not free. They are controlled by government. The government owns the medium -- so of course they want to be able to use it to reach the citizenry.
If IP law is "good for our country" or "our society", then the average citizen should be able to see the benefits. If the average citizen can't see any benefits or sees only benefits for corporations, but none for the citizenry/society, then it's a 'one-way' deal only benefiting a select group.
That is inherently unfair in a free and equal society.
I assert that the problem is the "Mickey-Mouse" copyright extension and a similar problem with patent-life in relation to the useful life of technology and technological ideas.
The purpose of copyright and patent was to encourage invention/creation to the benefit of the public good. Unfortunately, with copyright terms like 75 years after death of artist -- the public will never see any benefits of honoring copyright. Therefore -- the entire idea of "copyright" is "void". The benefit is all "one-way" for giving the artist a monopoly on copying and distributing his work just as with technology patents -- by the time patent term ends, at least in the computer industry, the technology is usually obsolete -- and again the original purpose of benefiting society is voided.
Given the long length of copyrights and the long life of technology patents (vs. their useful life), I assert the concepts are antithetical to benefiting society as a whole or its citizenry.
I think this is a perfectly good explanation for the increase in 'piracy' -- piracy is the only way to return the benefit to the citizens in the absence of a just government.
If you vote with your feet, be sure to let the company know WHY you are leaving and tell them where they can contact if/when they change their policy.
Just 10 people giving active feedback about what is 'wrong', is worth 1000 people quitting for no reason.
What, exactly is strafe-jumping down the stairs that "real people" don't do?
I remember in a real emergency, I was out of my 2nd story office and in the front parking lot in about 17 seconds. :-)...amazing what adrenaline can do when it kicks in.
That was after about a 5-7 second pause before deciding it was the real thing and the building might not be left standing. I'm pretty sure I went down the stairwell and not out the window...
Say everyone has one of those Star Trek replicators.
Someone goes to the grocery store, and buys an item.
Said someone then puts that in his replicator and then uploads the "recipe" for that item.
Everyone else who wants to, downloads the recipe and creates a copy of that item (from their own raw materials).
I do not see how this is clearly unethical or wrong.
On one level I agree with you. But something is gnawing at me. The knowledge of how to convert something from raw ingredients into the finished good isn't in any computer. For every recipe that produces something tasting good, there are thousands of recipes to produce junk. The 1 good recipe or song isn't worth the price of 1 success -- it's worth:
the price of (price of a success) * (cost of all successes)/(cost of all failures**).
Now cost of all failures also includes all the time wasted by unsuccessful artists -- not just the failures produced by the successful artist.
So the price to produce 1 'great recipe' might include 10's of thousands of dollars of "overhead". That artist will never be able to sell their one song for ... say $200,000. But they might get 50 cents from 400,000 people. That's the essence of why he needs to sell 400,000 copies. Then you add in distribution, advertising...all the overhead and it gets blown into the stratosphere -- and certainly, there is more than a little profit taking by the large corporations who buy the artists (but that's a different problem related to greed and corporate excess). Despite the overhead issue -- it doesn't negate the basic model -- the artist needs to sell 400,000 copies of their recipe in order to 'break even' -- else, it isn't worth them to be a cook, sweating away over bad recipes. They might as well go produce wooden widgets that can't be easily reproduced because they can't be digitally copied.
Now ideally, after the artist sells their 400,000 copies, the recipe goes into the public domain -- and THEN everyone can put it in their replicators and use it to their hearts' content -- the entire society is enriched. The part of "works moving into the public domain" is currently *broken*. This leads to some class of people saying "the heck with this system. It's never benefiting the common good. Let's ignore the bogus fat-cat enrichment system and benefit ourselves right now".
Massive piracy, is the other side of the Mickey-Mouse Copyright Perpetual Extension system. If copyright and patent terms were considered 'reasonable' by the average person, then the average person wouldn't be so tempted by piracy.
The downside of piracy is that people who produce intangible works...the poets, artists, and programmers of the world -- will be pauper's in their own time and only a few master's will find their work valued -- probably after they are dead. As our general 'minimum wage' increases, artists and such, in the society will find themselves unable to exist .... or make subsistence at the minimum wage. So...they will tend toward extinction. The question becomes -- do we value the output of those paid for 'intellectual' or 'creative' output? That's where the system comes into play. The problem is that the compensation to the 'authors' or artists is now dwarfed by the fat-cats distributing profits to stockholders and the CEO-types...
That's going to take some major revising of our capitalist system that I doubt even Obama can perform.
You are over-reacting... We don't need to ban all replica's... we can just require that all replica's have the tips painted with day-glo orange paint so they can be quickly determined to be replicas or real...
Sony installed a rootkit as part of DRM. MS is adding a .NET helper to FF -- in a way we can run around and look at what they could do "wrong"...like (any paranoid conservative) ... I mean they could install a FF addon that installs a rootkit FF addon to allow specific content to trigger the rootkit via any normal string of HTML -- while deleting the original addon with the MS signature on it. That would make it difficult to track the root kit back to the source (though not impossible, obviously).
HOWEVER, you could also look at the positive side -- Microsoft is, maybe, trying to SUPPORT Firefox by adding .NET compatibility code.
FWIW, it looks related to a patent lawsuit I think MS lost a while back concerning automatic execution of plugins embedded in a webpage - vs. being forced to "push" a button to activate the plugin. It was a bogus patent that MS should not have been required to honor, but hey...that didn't stop some court system from mucking it up.
What part of the US government system do you not understand? The part where it is to be of the people or the part that it is supposed to be FOR us? It's not supposed to be for foreigners.
It would be protectionism if we put up barriers to private businesses using private investment funds to hire or buy foreigners. But using public money (government money) to only fund those for whom the government is instituted, is sound and prudent policy.
_If_ our government has an excess, they it might be a moral question of distribution to other countries vs. lowering taxes on our people -- however, if our own people are the ones who are financially bankrupt or impaired -- it makes sense to focus the money collected from *US* on *US*, FIRST.
Go find a clue...or stop shilling for you and your foreign brethren.
As long as he doesn't support petafiles, he'll be just fine...
"If so, it will be the first version of Windows that makes computers run faster than the previous version."
This is the 2nd bit of falseness -- WinXP was faster than WinME.
Second -- WinXP is still quite a bit faster than Win7.
The article states that Win7 improves in areas where Windows was "OS-bound" over Vista. However, it says there is NO IMPROVEMENT in Win7 for applications. It was applications that noticed a 10-15% performance hit in Vista vs. XP due to the overhead of the DRM'd drivers. As near as I can tell from everything that has been leaked out about Vista before, during and after its development was that MS added (not replaced), but added a whole new abstraction layer. They tried to make it transparent where they could, but this was the basic reason why nearly all drivers that actually touched hardware had to be rewritten -- the USER has to be completely isolated from the real hardware -- so DRM can detect hardware/software work-arounds or unauthorized modifications or "taps" into the unencrypted data stream. This goes down to the level of being able to tell if something is plugged into a jack due to impedance changes -- if impedance or electrical specs don't match exactly with what the circuit is supposed to produce -- the OS is supposed to assume tampering and mark the OS-state as "compromised". Think of it being similar to the Linux - Kernel's tainted bit. Once it's set, it is supposed to be irreversible unless you reboot -- because the integrity of the kernel has been compromised. The DRM in Vista-Win7 was spec'ed to be similar but with finer level sensors -- so if anything -- a code path takes too long to execute, or circuits don't return their expected values, it's to assume the box is unsecure, so content can be disabled or downgraded at the content-providers option.
All this is still in Win7 -- the only difference it all the drivers that were broken during the switch to Vista won't be rebroken -- so you won't get anywhere near the OEM flack and Blog-reports about incompatibilities -- those will all be buried with Vista -- along with your memories -- so hopes MS. But MS has already made it clear that you won't be able to upgrade an XP machine to Win7 -- so they can control the experience from the start -- either by starting with corrupted Vista drivers, or Win7 drivers -- take your pick. Both are designed to ensure your compliance, but more importantly -- both cause performance degradation that everyone pays for by needing a bigger machine than they needed for XP.
The whole planet will be paying an excess carbon tax -- forever -- all to add in content-producer's demanded wish list.
This whole bit about the IT industry warming up to Win7 because it's not so bad compared to Vista just makes me want to puke. It's still corrupt and slow.
The government should require MS to open-source WinXP -- so it can be supported apart from MS -- who's obviously going for a "content-control" OS (like the next Gen Apple's are slated for). This will be the beginning of the end for non-commercial, open-source OS's or media boxes. It will be all pay-to-play -- just like Washington.
Comcast and AT&T have both been accused of using the digital transition to push their digital services -- and both have been cutting their analog offerings as well as jacking the price up. But they've both been cutting stations and moving national-cable-network stations up to the digital-only spectrum to increase it's "attractiveness".
In two years, my local comcast offering has gone from $29 to $49, and they added a "Family Friendly" digital package at $45. Of course, I still have an option of sub-basic at $23, I think it carries about 5 broadcast stations with the rest being public access such: basically less than what I could get in 1980 without cable in an urban market.
Supposedly the FCC is launching an investigation -- it will probably be done in a couple of years...
I thought about Dish -- it was cheaper, then I found out that with their basic package, only about 10-20% were channels I would want to watch -- they carry about 10 religious-only channels and about 10-15 alternate language offerings in their basic, low-res service -- it was basically another 'family friendly' -- a new euphemism for "junk and worthless TV offerings".
All the reviews I've seen seem only to compare it to Vista, but it sounds like the speedup from Vista is minor -- nothing like the downgrade from XP.
So is this the new MS approach -- to put out a really bad product (Vista), then give us something 5% better and watch all the reviews "Oooh" and "Ahh" over how much better it is than Vista?
This sounds like Windows ME all over again. Though XP did eventually come up to speed and was worth it because of the extra HW it supported. Win64-XP should be able to handle all the new HW (except HW deliberately disabled by manufacturers to not work with legacy systems).... ;->
It sounds like they refuse to prosecute small-damage cases where no monetary gain was at issue -- they will prosecute crimes for commercial gain, but not for example, go after individual file sharers.
Sounds like China has more common sense than our RIAA-paid legislators, but this isn't surprising given the insanity of suing users for $220K damages over ~$16 dollars or less of damage.
FAT32 has always been 2-5x faster than NTFS....its just that FAT32 limited you to 4GB file sizes...
NTFS would put premature wear on a memory disk since it would uselessly keep a transaction log for file I/O's.
I try to be careful and use GB for 1024 and GdB. Has to be the right audience I suppose... :-)
I dunno what web browser you are using, but if you run Firefox, with standard script and visual-spam control, you don't see any images on that page except three, 2x2cm thumbnails for some videos on the lower part of the right column.
What browser are you using?
It was a case of releasing a product years before the competition that would have sustained part of the company's business model, vs. a fear that the company wouldn't be able to sustain their business model (due to not being able to provide superior products as they had in the past) and wouldn't be able to find jobs after the company folded.
By acting on the fear, they brought the action they feared upon the company, costing 100's of millions over the succeeding 5-6 years. More often than not, I have felt it would be unethical to not give my loyalty to my current employer -- especially when my failure to act might cost them millions of dollars. Others choose to put their careers first and let companies die.
I don't feel that the latter are best for a company wishing to excel in a competitive environment. They may do better as contractors -- "hired-guns", but not permanent employees.
I suppose its a case of competing values and having a conflict of interest.
Normally -- in fields where ethics matter, if one has a conflict of interest in doing their job for their employer, it is ethical to remove one from the position of conflict. In some fields, it is mandatory. I don't believe it is ethical to quietly keep such conflicts of interest -- quiet at the expense of ones employer.
XP=100*.85=Vista*1.1=Win7 Win7 != XP
I haven't seen anyone benching XP against Win7.