Every SCO-related story now has tens of comments that are modded '+5 insightful' or '+5 interesting' that say nothing more than "SCO is evil, IBM will/should crush them, Linux is safe, and everyone who disagrees is in league with the devil (MS)". Frankly, this is neither 'insightful' nor 'interesting' any longer.
Linux is in trouble. The SCO litigation obviously has enough bite to warrant a significant SCO stock response, a reassessment by IT consulting firms, and some hesitation by the corporate world. These are all self- and cross-enforcing mechanisms and if not dealt with, they'll get worse in the next couple of years while this whole matter moves through the court system. The damage to Linux at the end, even if SCO loses, may be irreparable.
And the reponse of Linux advocates so far? 'Underwhelming' is the word I'd use to describe it. There's no shortage of outraged comments about 'SCO FUD' on Slashdot, but the big Linux players (IBM, Red Hat, the Kernel developers and maintainers) seem to have decided that ignoring or belittling the SCO threat is the best approach. Well, it's not working!
Here's a suggestion: start an audit of the kernel. If SCO won't say which code is infringing, then the auditors can certify which code is *not* infringing. It may take months, even years, to complete the task, but that's how long the SCO matter will continue anyway. In the end, an audit like this would be an insurance policy against any further attacks on Linux's integrity.
Even if the audit suggestion above is unrealistic (I'm really not qualified to judge this), my larger point stands: Linux advocates need to stop being dismissive and start being proactive. Beyond a certain threshold, dismissing FUD becomes a sign of weakness rather than a sign of confidence. I thing we've just passed that threshold.
discussing his recent experiences testing a few consumer DVD recorders. He notes that the current contenders in the non-PC market are DVD-RAM/-R and DVD+RW/+R, while DVD-RW is outside contention "thanks to still-insane prices". He notes that even though DVD-RAM has better features, "The most important factor, however, is compatibility, and here DVD+RW beats DVD-RAM soundly".
So are we going to end up with consumers buying +RW/+R standalone recorders, while computer users line up behind -RW/-R based on comparisons like CDR-Info's? I really thought this coming christmas would bring DVD recording to the masses, but with this standards war continuing, I'm not so sure anymore...
This looks very promising although there's very little written about it on the Loki page. For example, it's not clear if/how it could handle missing dependencies. Also, what sort of uninstall options does it offer?
In a sense, I'm fairly certain that once the point I'm making is recognized as a legitimate issue, a solution will be found (along the lines of the Loki installer or some other concept). But judging from many of the replies I've gotten, the issue doesn't even exist to many people's minds. Too bad.
My point is simple. Forget money, forget porting, and forget market share. Go to Mozilla.org. There's a single binary release for Win32 that'll work on every version of Windows released in the past 8 years. It installs by double clicking it. Where's the Linux equivalent?! I'm sorry, but the tarball is not an acceptable alternative for the average user.
You think Mozilla is unique? Go to OpenOffice.org, another premiere FOSS application, and compare the install process for Win32 (again, single executable for all versions that installs by double-clicking) and Linux (again, tarball).
Arguing by analogy is pointless in this case. I can think of at least two reasons why your argument about cars is not relevant to OS's (there's no defacto standard car manufacturer with 90%+ market share, and cars don't need third-party upgrades, just maintenance). Or I could continue the argument by analogy and say that recommending Linux to an average user is like recommending an esoteric import car to a typical driver; it performs great and comes with good manuals, but good luck picking up a pair of windshield wipers at pepboys and expecting them to fit out of the box!
Linux will not break into the average user desktop until *third party* software and drivers are easily installable and distro-independent. That is, until third party developers have download links that say "Click here to download Linux (kernel 2.4 or later) binary, or here for earlier versions of the kernel". And that's only necessary but not sufficient for success on the average desktop.
As the AC reply above notes, secure multi-user environments are becoming the norm on desktops, so that can't be the barrier to Linux adoption.
I upgrade hardware and reinstall/update OSs for friends all the time, and I always ask myself whether I could honestly recommend Linux for their desktops. At this point in time, I can't. And there's one major reason: the lack of a distribution-independent and *easy* (read GUI) method of installing and updating third party software. There are other reasons (immature GUIs for some distros and possible lack of some apps and hardware drivers) but this is the big one IMO.
Yes, I'm aware of the wonders of apt-get and synaptic and I know many distributions have very easy ways of keeping your core system current, but that's not really the issue. Central repositories for OS updates make sense, but expecting your distro to 'repackage' every piece of third-party software out there is extremely inefficient (and impossible anyway!).
Given the way Linux is developed and the whole idea of 'dependencies', I don't really know what a soultion to this problem would look like. Maybe one or two distros will dominate all the others and allow third-party developers to standardize on them, but of course you'd lose the diversity or bazaar-style develpoment which is one of Linux's strengths. If anyone else has ideas, or knows what direction Linux developers are taking on this, I'd be curious to know...
Re:Redhat does not represent all GNU/Linux's
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Linux on the Desktop
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Surely Redhat 9 does not represent all GNU/Linux distributions
Of course. And neither do Debian and SuSE. And this is exactly the point I'm trying to make!
First, let me clarify that when I claimed a 'fact', I was just emphasizing that I'm not trying to tell Linux developers what to do, but rather emphasizing what I view to be a genuine dilemma for OSS development. I apologize if I came across as a know-it-all:)
I'm certainly no expert programmer, but regardless of how many grandmas and businesses run linux, I just don't see how third party software and driver developers can offer distribution-independent binaries unless the distributions themselves converge and standardize. There are always efforts in this direction, like the LSB and even things like Red Hat Bluecurve (even that pissed off many developers!), but there are also trends in the oppostite direction. DistroWatch adds something like 2 new distros every week on average. Even within distributions, different binaries are needed for different versions (see the situation with Mozilla RPMs for RedHat as an example).
Diversity *is* good. Competition drives innovation and Linux wouldn't be where it is today if developers hadn't forked projects or tried to reinvent a better wheel. But software also benefits from what economists call 'network externalities', where the benefits from using a particular program increase with the number of users. There's an unavoidable tension here between decentralized innovation and convergence (which I think, and you seem to agree, is necessary for desktop success), and I don't really know how it can be resolved.
I've been using Wintel for over 15 years and have just recently installed Red Hat 9 on an older K6-2 550. Here are a couple of points I think are worth mentioning (ubergeeks can exclude themselves from the classifications below):
1. Linux is ready for *some* desktops only, namely ones where users won't be constantly tweaking and installing new software and hardware. You want a computer for grandma to browse the web, send email and view a few grandkid photos? Linux is great! You want to roll out corporate desktops where employees don't really need to be able to download and install the latest version of KaZaA? Linux is a godsend (provided the business software you need is supported).
2. Linux is *not* ready for the average user desktop. The average user wants to do everything grandma wants to do, but they also want to be able to install or upgrade software and hardware *easily*. In addition, they want a fully functional GUI, with no *necessity* of dropping to a CLI for everyday tasks. They want to be able to go to a third party software/driver website, follow the 'click here for Linux version' hyperlink, download the file, then double-click to install it.
Needless to say, as long as Linux distributions and desktop managers continue to proliferate, the average user's requirements will never be met. I say this as a *fact* not a *prescription*, so spare me the Linux-strength-in-diversity comments. I just think you can't have your cake (freedom/diversity) and eat it too (Linux on average desktop).
One item missing from the review and that I haven't seen in the comments yet: Martin's use of 'magic' is very restrained. Don't get me wrong, this *is* a fantasy series, with many supernatural events and characters with interesting 'powers', but this is not what drives the story at all.
This series reads more like historical fiction than sowrd-and-sorcery fantasy. It's set in a medeival world where magic exists but is not part of every day life, and the protagonists' secret weapons turn out to be only their physical skills or brains as often as some magical power.
To be fair, I think Martin announced early on that there are to be six books in the series. The first three are out and the fourth is expected later this year. The first three books constitute one long novel (although Martin is good at giving each of the three its own structure - beginning, middle, end). The remaining three are to be set sometime in the current three books' future (a decade later?), which gives the readers the chance to see many of the protagonists - currently children - as adults.
Unlike some currently popular fantasy authors (Goodkind, Jordan) who have transformed their series into episodic soap operas, Martin looks to be on track to stick to his announcement.
People will disagree whether this is the greatest fantasy since Tolkien, but not many will disagree that this is in the top five of all time. Get the first three books and read them!
what can be explained by stupidity alone". Is it possible this is just some third-party advertising configuration or software upgrade gone awry rather than a 'sneak attack'? The 'hijacking' IPs seem benign enough...
[The movie doesn't portray anything remotly relating to Jewidism or Christanity, it just uses names we're familiar with to give it a "religious effect."]
I agree. The Bible, and the long historical plight of Jews are both well-embedded ideas/concepts in Western culture, so it's no surprise that movies (like tMR) *use them* to generate effects and make points. But in a country like Egypt, with much less familiarity with these concepts, the perception will be that the 'proponents' of these concepts/ideas are *using movies* to further their goals.
Probably too late for this to get noticed (7 hours is an eternity in slashdot time), but here goes:
Regardless of what the official reason for the ban is (religion, etc.), the real reason is the constant and sympathetic reference to 'Zion' in the movie. In the real world, 'Zion' refers either to the "Jewish people" or "the Jewish homeland that is symbolic of Judaism or of Jewish national aspiration" [Merriam-Webster] (i.e., Israel in modern times). The (very real, 100+ year old) ideology of 'Zionism' didn't get that name for nothing.
So this has little to do with pissing off fundamentalists or offending religious sensibilities, and a lot to do with pissing off the general population of Egypt, who are already susceptible to conspiracy theories of Jews controlling Hollywood (and the White House).
As evidence of my explanation, I'd like to point out that Speilberg's excellent _Schindler's List_ was also banned in Egypt, ostensibly on the grounds that 'editing out the sex scenes would endanger the artistic integrity of the movie', or some such bull, when of course the real reason was the sympathetic portrayal of Jews.
Finally, I'd like to point out that the movie will probably be widely available in VCD/DivX format, and will be watched by many on computer screens in Egypt. The government doesn't really bother enforcing censorship at that level, because all they want is to have *their* hands clean of officially permitting the showing of a 'pro-Israel' movie.
With decent (not great!) 27" TVs dipping below $200, the median size of TVs in US households must be significantly higher than it was a few years ago. This tends to resolve the tradeoff between letterbox and fullscreen in favor of letterbox.
1. The massive, much publicized, 1998 States tobacco settlement amounted to approx. $250 Billion over 25 years.
2. The GDP of a country like Egypt, approximately the total value of output by its 70 million inhabitants in a year, is $100 Billion
3. The net worth of Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, is approximately $30 Billion
After you consider this, think about the effects of the 'McDonald's Hot Coffee' judgement on people's opinions of punitive damages. Then my Subject line will make sense!
It never was, isn't, and never will be about the thousands who will "wardrive" or "ip-spoof" or whatever. it's about the tens of millions who disovered that they can get anything they want with a few mouseclicks and from the comfort of their homes.
ISP behavior is the most important factor left after the de-facto failure of the xxAA's 'legal strategy' (e.g. Napster) and new legislation going very slowly or nowhere (e.g. CBDTPA); it's extremely hard to do something that your ISP doesn't want you to do without being caught. Given the dearth of competition in broadband in most (all?) places, if the xxAA succeed in controlling ISP behavior, then they have succeeded, period!
Actually, Amazon does have a similar meta-moderation scheme: "x of y people found the following review helpful". You can view reviews in order of "most helpful" first if you want.
I actually find this more useful and less time-consuming than the 'web of trust' thing. YMMV.
Sure. IIRC, Project Mayo was the open source start to the legitimate version of DivX. It was abandoned about a year ago, and the people behind it started DivXNetworks in order to commercialize the codec. All the improvements to DivX in the past year (which have been substantial) have *not* been released as open source.
The only open source MPEG4 codec around is Xvid. They may have used the Project Mayo code base to start, but they really don't have anything to do with DivX anymore.
The problem with your analogy is that the situation between a rapist and a child is almost certainly a zero-sum game. The child's gain (in terms of safety) is the rapists loss, and vice versa. In that scenario, any self-interest motivated action by the rapist is automatically suspect as it will hurt the child.
Zero-sum games are not useful for describing the relationship between commercial software developers and users. The primary goal of commercial developers is to make money, not to screw consumers (sometimes they *do* screw consumers in their attempt to make money, but that is mostly incidental and tends to be punished by the market, as the near-demise of Real itself demonstrates). The actions of Real here are most certainly motivated by commercial self-interest, but that in no way implies that they will harm users (or the OS community). As a matter of fact, it is plain that Real's actions here are beneficial to users and the OS community (how beneficial remains to be seen) as I tried to point out in the parent post.
I really don't understand why a large number of the comments here are negative. Simply stated, Real has released a significant piece of software under what appears to be a free/open source license (The RPSL has been submitted to the OSI for certification). The open source community is certainly no worse off and probably significantly better off because of this.
So the Real codecs aren't open sourced. Well, neither is DivX nor Quicktime, but that doesn't stop DivXNetworks or Apple from being darlings of the geek community. It's true that Real clients have been extremely intrusive, but their current actions should be judged independently.
In fact, the open source community has a vested interest in the success of Real's Helix since that would demonstrate that open sourcing can be a successful *business* strategy. Open source commercial successes are few and far between, so it doesn't make sense to beat up on Real just as they are starting to do something right!
The cause of the decline in CD sales could be rip-and-burn. On The Other Hand, it could be the economy. It may be that P2P sharing *helps* music sales and it may be that it doesn't. It's possible competition from console games is responsible and it's possible it's not...
Anyone familiar with Economics knows that it's trivially easy to come up with multiple *plausible* explanations for the same observed statistics. What is not easy is to come up with is a *correct* explanation. There *is* a way to do it, but you're not likely to see it except in an article written by an applied econometrician published in a peer-reviewed economics journal. The rest are just *opinions* pretending to be *studies* behind a mask of percentages and statisitcs.
Let me suggest two facts that I think are indisputable:
1. Regardless of what's causing the decline in CD sales in the past couple of years, "Rip, Share and Burn" *will* kill CD sales within 5 years if it's legally unrestricted. If you don't believe me, just project the technology underlying "Rip, Share and Burn" a little into the future and ask yourself why anyone would bother buying a CD when it'll become a matter of a couple of mouseclicks and a few minutes wait to burn one. Even those with moral qualms will find a way to compensate the artists directly through online payments. The RIAA is *correct* in predicting its own demise if there's no legal intervention.
2. People, including politicians, understand point one above. If you want to fight the RIAA, it's a non-starter to accuse them of being Chicken Little, because they're not, and people understand this. The only sensible argument is the one I've seen in some.sigs here attributed to Robert Heinlein; that no person or corporation should be able to go to court and demand that the clock of progress be stopped. That makes sense to me, and it may make sense to the public and the politicians they send to DC.
That's actually a really hard question to answer based on simple exchange rate and income statistics because Egyptians have different spending priorities. For example, rent or mortgage payments are a significant part of most US middle income budgets, but they're not in Egypt because middle class people either live in rent-controlled housing, or already own the place they live in (paid for in full and in advance).
Egyptians treat phone expenses the same way Americans treat heat and electric expenses; nobody's going to think twice about picking up the phone and making a call, but you might yell at your kids for yapping with their friends for hours. In that sense, internet access costs (now, under the 'free' model, or before with a monthly fee structure) are not the obstacle to internet access. PC hardware expenses are. That probably also accounts for the huge popularity of internet cafes in Egypt.
Re:What Lessig Doesn't Point Out.
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Lessig @ OSCON
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Who said *anything* about stealing?! I don't even like to use the term "intellectual property" because I believe the word "property" is misleading when dealing with information goods.
And I think you missed the point of my example. It's not about whether artists are compensated or not. It's about the complete absence of the content distributors from the picture.
Re:What Lessig Doesn't Point Out.
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Lessig @ OSCON
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I agree that Lessig says that "law + technology" expand the red circle to cover the white background (I really like the circle-background metaphor, so I'm sticking with it:-)). What he doesn't say is exactly what role Law and Technology play separately in this process.
Technology is *solely* responsible for erasing the circle, making the world all background. Changes in Law have nothing to do with this. Changes in Law have something to do, however, with the color of the resulting background (red vs. white). With no changes in Law, the background (world) becomes effectively white.
Viewing the situation this way is important because it shows the DMCA, the Hollings chip, etc. for the last ditch *defensive* effort they represent. Without these bills, the content distributors are going the way of the buggy-whip makers in a few years. Telling them that they only lost 5% in CD sales last year is completely besides the point; it is simply telling them something about how fast they're dying in the absence (or even presence!) of new legislation.
It is because of this very point that the content distributors are winning the war in Washington. They are *correct* to note that unless legislation is enacted they are *dead* in a few years. And they are also *correct* to point out that no proven alternatives to the current system have been proposed.
Slashdot Mirror
Every SCO-related story now has tens of comments that are modded '+5 insightful' or '+5 interesting' that say nothing more than "SCO is evil, IBM will/should crush them, Linux is safe, and everyone who disagrees is in league with the devil (MS)". Frankly, this is neither 'insightful' nor 'interesting' any longer.
Linux is in trouble. The SCO litigation obviously has enough bite to warrant a significant SCO stock response, a reassessment by IT consulting firms, and some hesitation by the corporate world. These are all self- and cross-enforcing mechanisms and if not dealt with, they'll get worse in the next couple of years while this whole matter moves through the court system. The damage to Linux at the end, even if SCO loses, may be irreparable.
And the reponse of Linux advocates so far? 'Underwhelming' is the word I'd use to describe it. There's no shortage of outraged comments about 'SCO FUD' on Slashdot, but the big Linux players (IBM, Red Hat, the Kernel developers and maintainers) seem to have decided that ignoring or belittling the SCO threat is the best approach. Well, it's not working!
Here's a suggestion: start an audit of the kernel. If SCO won't say which code is infringing, then the auditors can certify which code is *not* infringing. It may take months, even years, to complete the task, but that's how long the SCO matter will continue anyway. In the end, an audit like this would be an insurance policy against any further attacks on Linux's integrity.
Even if the audit suggestion above is unrealistic (I'm really not qualified to judge this), my larger point stands: Linux advocates need to stop being dismissive and start being proactive. Beyond a certain threshold, dismissing FUD becomes a sign of weakness rather than a sign of confidence. I thing we've just passed that threshold.
Coincidentally, the Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro has an article in today's web edition at
1 45 34-2003Jul19.html
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A
discussing his recent experiences testing a few consumer DVD recorders. He notes that the current contenders in the non-PC market are DVD-RAM/-R and DVD+RW/+R, while DVD-RW is outside contention "thanks to still-insane prices". He notes that even though DVD-RAM has better features, "The most important factor, however, is compatibility, and here DVD+RW beats DVD-RAM soundly".
So are we going to end up with consumers buying +RW/+R standalone recorders, while computer users line up behind -RW/-R based on comparisons like CDR-Info's? I really thought this coming christmas would bring DVD recording to the masses, but with this standards war continuing, I'm not so sure anymore
This looks very promising although there's very little written about it on the Loki page. For example, it's not clear if/how it could handle missing dependencies. Also, what sort of uninstall options does it offer?
In a sense, I'm fairly certain that once the point I'm making is recognized as a legitimate issue, a solution will be found (along the lines of the Loki installer or some other concept). But judging from many of the replies I've gotten, the issue doesn't even exist to many people's minds. Too bad.
I won't argue by analogy. It's pointless.
My point is simple. Forget money, forget porting, and forget market share. Go to Mozilla.org. There's a single binary release for Win32 that'll work on every version of Windows released in the past 8 years. It installs by double clicking it. Where's the Linux equivalent?! I'm sorry, but the tarball is not an acceptable alternative for the average user.
You think Mozilla is unique? Go to OpenOffice.org, another premiere FOSS application, and compare the install process for Win32 (again, single executable for all versions that installs by double-clicking) and Linux (again, tarball).
Is my point clear yet?
Arguing by analogy is pointless in this case. I can think of at least two reasons why your argument about cars is not relevant to OS's (there's no defacto standard car manufacturer with 90%+ market share, and cars don't need third-party upgrades, just maintenance). Or I could continue the argument by analogy and say that recommending Linux to an average user is like recommending an esoteric import car to a typical driver; it performs great and comes with good manuals, but good luck picking up a pair of windshield wipers at pepboys and expecting them to fit out of the box!
Linux will not break into the average user desktop until *third party* software and drivers are easily installable and distro-independent. That is, until third party developers have download links that say "Click here to download Linux (kernel 2.4 or later) binary, or here for earlier versions of the kernel". And that's only necessary but not sufficient for success on the average desktop.
As the AC reply above notes, secure multi-user environments are becoming the norm on desktops, so that can't be the barrier to Linux adoption.
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I upgrade hardware and reinstall/update OSs for friends all the time, and I always ask myself whether I could honestly recommend Linux for their desktops. At this point in time, I can't. And there's one major reason: the lack of a distribution-independent and *easy* (read GUI) method of installing and updating third party software. There are other reasons (immature GUIs for some distros and possible lack of some apps and hardware drivers) but this is the big one IMO.
Yes, I'm aware of the wonders of apt-get and synaptic and I know many distributions have very easy ways of keeping your core system current, but that's not really the issue. Central repositories for OS updates make sense, but expecting your distro to 'repackage' every piece of third-party software out there is extremely inefficient (and impossible anyway!).
Given the way Linux is developed and the whole idea of 'dependencies', I don't really know what a soultion to this problem would look like. Maybe one or two distros will dominate all the others and allow third-party developers to standardize on them, but of course you'd lose the diversity or bazaar-style develpoment which is one of Linux's strengths. If anyone else has ideas, or knows what direction Linux developers are taking on this, I'd be curious to know
Surely Redhat 9 does not represent all GNU/Linux distributions Of course. And neither do Debian and SuSE. And this is exactly the point I'm trying to make!
First, let me clarify that when I claimed a 'fact', I was just emphasizing that I'm not trying to tell Linux developers what to do, but rather emphasizing what I view to be a genuine dilemma for OSS development. I apologize if I came across as a know-it-all :)
I'm certainly no expert programmer, but regardless of how many grandmas and businesses run linux, I just don't see how third party software and driver developers can offer distribution-independent binaries unless the distributions themselves converge and standardize. There are always efforts in this direction, like the LSB and even things like Red Hat Bluecurve (even that pissed off many developers!), but there are also trends in the oppostite direction. DistroWatch adds something like 2 new distros every week on average. Even within distributions, different binaries are needed for different versions (see the situation with Mozilla RPMs for RedHat as an example).
Diversity *is* good. Competition drives innovation and Linux wouldn't be where it is today if developers hadn't forked projects or tried to reinvent a better wheel. But software also benefits from what economists call 'network externalities', where the benefits from using a particular program increase with the number of users. There's an unavoidable tension here between decentralized innovation and convergence (which I think, and you seem to agree, is necessary for desktop success), and I don't really know how it can be resolved.
I've been using Wintel for over 15 years and have just recently installed Red Hat 9 on an older K6-2 550. Here are a couple of points I think are worth mentioning (ubergeeks can exclude themselves from the classifications below):
1. Linux is ready for *some* desktops only, namely ones where users won't be constantly tweaking and installing new software and hardware. You want a computer for grandma to browse the web, send email and view a few grandkid photos? Linux is great! You want to roll out corporate desktops where employees don't really need to be able to download and install the latest version of KaZaA? Linux is a godsend (provided the business software you need is supported).
2. Linux is *not* ready for the average user desktop. The average user wants to do everything grandma wants to do, but they also want to be able to install or upgrade software and hardware *easily*. In addition, they want a fully functional GUI, with no *necessity* of dropping to a CLI for everyday tasks. They want to be able to go to a third party software/driver website, follow the 'click here for Linux version' hyperlink, download the file, then double-click to install it.
Needless to say, as long as Linux distributions and desktop managers continue to proliferate, the average user's requirements will never be met. I say this as a *fact* not a *prescription*, so spare me the Linux-strength-in-diversity comments. I just think you can't have your cake (freedom/diversity) and eat it too (Linux on average desktop).
One item missing from the review and that I haven't seen in the comments yet: Martin's use of 'magic' is very restrained. Don't get me wrong, this *is* a fantasy series, with many supernatural events and characters with interesting 'powers', but this is not what drives the story at all.
This series reads more like historical fiction than sowrd-and-sorcery fantasy. It's set in a medeival world where magic exists but is not part of every day life, and the protagonists' secret weapons turn out to be only their physical skills or brains as often as some magical power.
To be fair, I think Martin announced early on that there are to be six books in the series. The first three are out and the fourth is expected later this year. The first three books constitute one long novel (although Martin is good at giving each of the three its own structure - beginning, middle, end). The remaining three are to be set sometime in the current three books' future (a decade later?), which gives the readers the chance to see many of the protagonists - currently children - as adults. Unlike some currently popular fantasy authors (Goodkind, Jordan) who have transformed their series into episodic soap operas, Martin looks to be on track to stick to his announcement. People will disagree whether this is the greatest fantasy since Tolkien, but not many will disagree that this is in the top five of all time. Get the first three books and read them!
what can be explained by stupidity alone". Is it possible this is just some third-party advertising configuration or software upgrade gone awry rather than a 'sneak attack'? The 'hijacking' IPs seem benign enough ...
[The movie doesn't portray anything remotly relating to Jewidism or Christanity, it just uses names we're familiar with to give it a "religious effect."] I agree. The Bible, and the long historical plight of Jews are both well-embedded ideas/concepts in Western culture, so it's no surprise that movies (like tMR) *use them* to generate effects and make points. But in a country like Egypt, with much less familiarity with these concepts, the perception will be that the 'proponents' of these concepts/ideas are *using movies* to further their goals.
Probably too late for this to get noticed (7 hours is an eternity in slashdot time), but here goes: Regardless of what the official reason for the ban is (religion, etc.), the real reason is the constant and sympathetic reference to 'Zion' in the movie. In the real world, 'Zion' refers either to the "Jewish people" or "the Jewish homeland that is symbolic of Judaism or of Jewish national aspiration" [Merriam-Webster] (i.e., Israel in modern times). The (very real, 100+ year old) ideology of 'Zionism' didn't get that name for nothing. So this has little to do with pissing off fundamentalists or offending religious sensibilities, and a lot to do with pissing off the general population of Egypt, who are already susceptible to conspiracy theories of Jews controlling Hollywood (and the White House). As evidence of my explanation, I'd like to point out that Speilberg's excellent _Schindler's List_ was also banned in Egypt, ostensibly on the grounds that 'editing out the sex scenes would endanger the artistic integrity of the movie', or some such bull, when of course the real reason was the sympathetic portrayal of Jews. Finally, I'd like to point out that the movie will probably be widely available in VCD/DivX format, and will be watched by many on computer screens in Egypt. The government doesn't really bother enforcing censorship at that level, because all they want is to have *their* hands clean of officially permitting the showing of a 'pro-Israel' movie.
With decent (not great!) 27" TVs dipping below $200, the median size of TVs in US households must be significantly higher than it was a few years ago. This tends to resolve the tradeoff between letterbox and fullscreen in favor of letterbox.
Consider:
1. The massive, much publicized, 1998 States tobacco settlement amounted to approx. $250 Billion over 25 years.
2. The GDP of a country like Egypt, approximately the total value of output by its 70 million inhabitants in a year, is $100 Billion
3. The net worth of Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, is approximately $30 Billion
After you consider this, think about the effects of the 'McDonald's Hot Coffee' judgement on people's opinions of punitive damages. Then my Subject line will make sense!
It never was, isn't, and never will be about the thousands who will "wardrive" or "ip-spoof" or whatever. it's about the tens of millions who disovered that they can get anything they want with a few mouseclicks and from the comfort of their homes. ISP behavior is the most important factor left after the de-facto failure of the xxAA's 'legal strategy' (e.g. Napster) and new legislation going very slowly or nowhere (e.g. CBDTPA); it's extremely hard to do something that your ISP doesn't want you to do without being caught. Given the dearth of competition in broadband in most (all?) places, if the xxAA succeed in controlling ISP behavior, then they have succeeded, period!
Actually, Amazon does have a similar meta-moderation scheme: "x of y people found the following review helpful". You can view reviews in order of "most helpful" first if you want.
I actually find this more useful and less time-consuming than the 'web of trust' thing. YMMV.
Sure. IIRC, Project Mayo was the open source start to the legitimate version of DivX. It was abandoned about a year ago, and the people behind it started DivXNetworks in order to commercialize the codec. All the improvements to DivX in the past year (which have been substantial) have *not* been released as open source.
The only open source MPEG4 codec around is Xvid. They may have used the Project Mayo code base to start, but they really don't have anything to do with DivX anymore.
The problem with your analogy is that the situation between a rapist and a child is almost certainly a zero-sum game. The child's gain (in terms of safety) is the rapists loss, and vice versa. In that scenario, any self-interest motivated action by the rapist is automatically suspect as it will hurt the child.
Zero-sum games are not useful for describing the relationship between commercial software developers and users. The primary goal of commercial developers is to make money, not to screw consumers (sometimes they *do* screw consumers in their attempt to make money, but that is mostly incidental and tends to be punished by the market, as the near-demise of Real itself demonstrates). The actions of Real here are most certainly motivated by commercial self-interest, but that in no way implies that they will harm users (or the OS community). As a matter of fact, it is plain that Real's actions here are beneficial to users and the OS community (how beneficial remains to be seen) as I tried to point out in the parent post.
I really don't understand why a large number of the comments here are negative. Simply stated, Real has released a significant piece of software under what appears to be a free/open source license (The RPSL has been submitted to the OSI for certification). The open source community is certainly no worse off and probably significantly better off because of this.
So the Real codecs aren't open sourced. Well, neither is DivX nor Quicktime, but that doesn't stop DivXNetworks or Apple from being darlings of the geek community. It's true that Real clients have been extremely intrusive, but their current actions should be judged independently.
In fact, the open source community has a vested interest in the success of Real's Helix since that would demonstrate that open sourcing can be a successful *business* strategy. Open source commercial successes are few and far between, so it doesn't make sense to beat up on Real just as they are starting to do something right!
The cause of the decline in CD sales could be rip-and-burn. On The Other Hand, it could be the economy. It may be that P2P sharing *helps* music sales and it may be that it doesn't. It's possible competition from console games is responsible and it's possible it's not ...
.sigs here attributed to Robert Heinlein; that no person or corporation should be able to go to court and demand that the clock of progress be stopped. That makes sense to me, and it may make sense to the public and the politicians they send to DC.
Anyone familiar with Economics knows that it's trivially easy to come up with multiple *plausible* explanations for the same observed statistics. What is not easy is to come up with is a *correct* explanation. There *is* a way to do it, but you're not likely to see it except in an article written by an applied econometrician published in a peer-reviewed economics journal. The rest are just *opinions* pretending to be *studies* behind a mask of percentages and statisitcs.
Let me suggest two facts that I think are indisputable:
1. Regardless of what's causing the decline in CD sales in the past couple of years, "Rip, Share and Burn" *will* kill CD sales within 5 years if it's legally unrestricted. If you don't believe me, just project the technology underlying "Rip, Share and Burn" a little into the future and ask yourself why anyone would bother buying a CD when it'll become a matter of a couple of mouseclicks and a few minutes wait to burn one. Even those with moral qualms will find a way to compensate the artists directly through online payments. The RIAA is *correct* in predicting its own demise if there's no legal intervention.
2. People, including politicians, understand point one above. If you want to fight the RIAA, it's a non-starter to accuse them of being Chicken Little, because they're not, and people understand this. The only sensible argument is the one I've seen in some
That's actually a really hard question to answer based on simple exchange rate and income statistics because Egyptians have different spending priorities. For example, rent or mortgage payments are a significant part of most US middle income budgets, but they're not in Egypt because middle class people either live in rent-controlled housing, or already own the place they live in (paid for in full and in advance).
Egyptians treat phone expenses the same way Americans treat heat and electric expenses; nobody's going to think twice about picking up the phone and making a call, but you might yell at your kids for yapping with their friends for hours. In that sense, internet access costs (now, under the 'free' model, or before with a monthly fee structure) are not the obstacle to internet access. PC hardware expenses are. That probably also accounts for the huge popularity of internet cafes in Egypt.
Who said *anything* about stealing?! I don't even like to use the term "intellectual property" because I believe the word "property" is misleading when dealing with information goods.
And I think you missed the point of my example. It's not about whether artists are compensated or not. It's about the complete absence of the content distributors from the picture.
I agree that Lessig says that "law + technology" expand the red circle to cover the white background (I really like the circle-background metaphor, so I'm sticking with it :-)). What he doesn't say is exactly what role Law and Technology play separately in this process.
Technology is *solely* responsible for erasing the circle, making the world all background. Changes in Law have nothing to do with this. Changes in Law have something to do, however, with the color of the resulting background (red vs. white). With no changes in Law, the background (world) becomes effectively white.
Viewing the situation this way is important because it shows the DMCA, the Hollings chip, etc. for the last ditch *defensive* effort they represent. Without these bills, the content distributors are going the way of the buggy-whip makers in a few years. Telling them that they only lost 5% in CD sales last year is completely besides the point; it is simply telling them something about how fast they're dying in the absence (or even presence!) of new legislation.
It is because of this very point that the content distributors are winning the war in Washington. They are *correct* to note that unless legislation is enacted they are *dead* in a few years. And they are also *correct* to point out that no proven alternatives to the current system have been proposed.