ooops... silly slashdot:)
to clarify...
Thank you! Well said... let's axe this whole DRM B.S. before it gets a chance to spread. I'm very disapointed in this slashdot post... it seems to root for apple when the whole damn drm thing is evil... I don't know about you but I'm not going to participate in anything that requires me to "buy" or "licensce" protection. It's fundamentally evil. It's called racketeering.
1) Law doesn't have any business in code
2) Especially if it's protections are not accessible to everyone
Protection is NOT a commodity to be bought and sold and licesnced.
Equall protection under the law is a fundamental of society.
Thank you! I'm very disapointed in this post... it seems to root for apple when the whole damn drm thing is evil... I don't know about you but I'm not going to participate in anything that requires me to "buy" or "licensce" protection. It's fundamentally evil. It's called racketeering.
We don't need blogs for this to happen. This already happens. Some cool, funny, or interesting video on the web has its URL emailed around the globe several times before it dies out. Mirrors/copies of the video spring up everywhere.
Great point... vlogging is not something entirely new... but while at it's center it may be exlusive in it's pursuit of sharing video many, many of the benifits will come in simply enhancing the ability to work with that that already is bountiful on the web... There is already tremendous amounts of great content out there... what we learn from vlogging will help this stuff move more prolifically through the web to find it's audience... to bubble up the good stuff faster... this includes all sorts of animation and media that ISN'T someone sitting in front of a camera talking.
I hate to burst your bubble but this has about as much to do with vlogging as your an article on "Why slashdot sucks... studies prove monkeyes don't like to read other monkeys long driveling and boring B.S."
Vlogging is... I say to whatever moronic and jaded hypocrite wrote this crap... is no more about talking heads than slashdot is about spanking one's monkey.
What in the hell is wrong with you? Have you forgotten what Slashdot stands for? Suddenly you're successful and around for a couple years and have barely just finished turning out your critics and you think you're the N.Y. Times... poo-pooing the next step in the inevitable evolution of freedom of expression... wait... I'm sorry... that's not fair to the N.Y. Times... they may not get exactly what's going on in new media... but at least they don't sh-t where they get their dinner.
I'm not saying you should jump on the band wagon... just pull your head out of your own butt and take a look around... a/v podcasting is a direct result of blogging and self expression... something slashdot has been a part of and stood for.
It's part of a larger movement of open and accessible culture... first there was open source... then blogging... and now open access media... and I hardly think any hype or silly anti-hype here is going to change the fact that self expression in media is an idea whose time has come... Argue with 20,000 podcasts... and now over 4,000 vlogs... argue with the fact that everyone from Tivo to the ipod... to the psp... and even cellular platforms are starting to open up to the fact that every piece of content that crosses their platforms will not be owned and or controlled by them through exclusive deals.
That in fact the way to legitimize their platforms in the near and long term future means creating platforms everyone can openly access. This doesn't mean every damn piece of media is for you... but I think we've heard enough tales about the "long tail" to know that everything is not the O.C. that in fact a vlog with an audience of two might be the best vlog in the world... when you're living half way around the world and your audience of two is your two parents... your wife and child with whom you're not traveling... your children... your business associates... what is the value on that? Is that just another 'stupid talking head'?
So next time you're thinking about firing up that new cell phone gadget that allows you to 'watch video' that you're paying $15 a month extra for and you browse through a tiny little interface looking at "premium content" from exclusive deals your cellular provider has brokered on your behalf so you can watch Night Rider on your phone... perhaps you'll clue in on the fact... "heh, what if instead of Mitch Bucanan(sp?) this was my favorite slashdot editor... or one of my many digital friends... or my sister, uncle... cousin... associate" what would be the value in that?"... then maybe when you have your own head out of your own ass... breathing fresh air and and stop thinking that everything in video should be "entertainment" then you'll think... heh... now why doesn't my cellular provider pull their head out of their ass and instead of brokering useless exclusive deals to content which really has no value to me... why don't they just open up the platform to everyone and just make it up on charging for bandwidth... the value would be infinitely more relevant... and heh... perhaps the difference of open access video vs. "premiums exclusive video"... is more like allowing anyone to exchange SMS vs. the early days of SMS when only my cell phone provider allowed "premium exclusive news alerts" to go to my phone.
So yes... there is a wind of change... call it Web freaking 2.0 and hype it an poo poo it and stick a fork in it... Whatever you like but the wind of change much like this flatulence you call Slashdot is blowing toward open and accessible media... the 'two way web' as some call it.
So... think about that next time you can't play a CD in your computer... or find you c
Yeah, you have found one "good" use for DRM. Congratulations, now let me total up the bad reasons... oh, wait... I lost track some where in the millions.
Sure, Pick the one rant that anyone brings up morals and call us all a bunch of "entitlement" bigots. This is about many, many things. But I'd like to think it's about business and innovation and that's what 99.99% of posts I'm seeing are about. But I will indulge you on the moral issue.
"When did the freeloading teenagers take over?"
Oh, btw, there's your moral entitlement... you stuck your foot in it, or mouth. A culture has a duty to make itself available in some way shape or form to all members of society, without some sort of balance of equality democracy stands no chance. I live in this country where we believe in people, and therefore I want the people who control my future to be well educated to have access to all form of IP, not to be treated like second class citizens... Cars are good, computers are good... but if our society becomes overly dependent on things that not all the the world has access to than we break down... and I do mean world... because increasingly we recognize that not only in this country is this true, but in the world at large... we suffer when South America and South Africa struggle. We hurt when regions are destabilized... So... we think about these global issues and then we act locally by "stealing" IP.
So playing the devils advocate, let's just exclude the poor, the children, or arbitrarily the rest of the world, places our brilliant companies have decided are to poor to bother releasing material... but it's not DVD's and CD's, it's books and software too... So how long has slashdot been full of entitled bigots you say, well since they had to break the law in order to play DVD's on linux. Since yiddish was no longer a viable language for inclusion in the Microsoft operating system. Since because we used this operation system or hat operating system we couldn't play this media or that software. Since we had to reverse engineer codecs, software, formats and all manner of technology in order to function as humane beings.
Do you use linux and play DVD's you hypocrite? How would you like it if some corporation determined that you were no longer an economically viable being. Because you spoke the wrong language, used the wrong operating system or lived in the wrong country or because you were in some way physically, mentally, or economically challenged.
Yeah, that's fucking moral entitlement. You bet your ass it is.
We're not talking about "everything should be free" this exactly the sort of polar/extreme B.S. framing of the debate that creates the problem. On the one hand they (the corporations we most like to bitch about) are talking codified law including regional encoding, DRM (digital rights management)... a "perfect world" where technology goes beyond law and determines exactly how content can be used in every worldly situation. Like ANYONE can fucking determine that stuff and put it into code... no amount of genius can. None. Are you noticing some similarity with fascism and communism here?
What kind of absolute B.S. is it that we should have so much faith in those at the center to do what is right!? Why should we sit around and let them build systems and infrastructure that allow them to carry out "perfect law" when history has proven all such attempts to be tyranny as is so clearly visible right now.
Make no mistake about it that's what they're talking about, that's what apple's fair-play is, or Real media or Microsoft's DRM... these are the topics of the new DVD formats.
On the other hand what we're saying we absolutely MUST break these format's in order for the culture to stay humane and law to stay in the hands of human beings accessible to the human beings.. to encode it in technology is to remove the accessibility of law from the people.
Their road is tyranny and our road is NOT anarchy, not by any stretch. So keep spreading around the "everything should be free B.S." Keep mischaracterizing the debate. It does all the good.
So, we're fighting tyranny, only in this tyranny of capitalism (our new modern
Think about this, what computer is "safe" enough and cool enough and cheap enough to buy for your kid.
What computer is going to sit in a kids bedroom. What can you throw a few bucks at without worrying to much about where it's going to be in a year... without worrying about viruses, without worrying about maintence. Something your kid can IM on, send email to their friends, play with photos and video, do their homework, watch a movie. What computer can give a reasonable amount of control to the parent and freedom to the kid? What computer not only will look good in every kids room in america but is safe enough to go in every kids room in america.
You might need to disable software downloads and get some nanny blocker software on the web browser, but that's it! I think you're looking at the first computer that can and will make it into the rooms of every kid in america.
It's got the garage band and all the editing software you need for music, photo and video. It can come with the.mac account, with web hosting, and the email, the blogging software. It can even burn DVDs at $599. Throw in the cheap digital still/video camera, wireless keyboard and mouse, a nice little flat pannel, don't forget the iPod Shiffle. What about a Music Store allowance! Not all at one time, a birthday here, christmas, whenever. We're still talking well under a grand.
Dude kids are going to grow up on this shit the way we grew up on atari and nintendo and I'm fuscking jealous!
- a giant and ridiculous treatise and philosophical debate
"In place of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen! Not dark, but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Treacherous as the sea! Stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me, and despair!"
A fitting quote, from a fitting source, the Lord of the Rings, Two Towers movie. Not as good as that of the original words written by Tolkien, but good none the less.
Tolkien was speaking of the ability of power to corrupt absolutely. Many have theorize that the ring represented the misplaced faith of man in the "wheels of industry" and the evils of industry. An observation by Tolkien during the industrial revolution? Truly the only thing greater than men's ability to create or seize power is our ability to abuse that power. The only thing that has changed is now we seek power not from industrial technology but information technology, and through the mechanisms of our great capitalist economy.
I've been an avid apple / mac user since since the Apple IIc and yet I know the score. If Apple had as much power as Microsoft they'd be twice as evil. For the only thing more certain than the fact that corporations (and humans) seek out power is their willingness to abuse it.
Make no mistake about it anti-competitive practices are anti-competitive practices. The real reason why no one gave a crap in the past is because Apple seemed irrelevant and small, but thank god the general population realizes even a relatively small company can be damage the public good and abuse law to enforce anti-competitive copyrights, patents, and trademarks.
Not only does our government and law need to strike down monopolies like M$, but it needs to better scrutinize patents, trademarks and copyrights that create these monopolies and are used by them to stifle competition and innovation.
Really!? Can you substatiate that with online documentation references? If they crack down on me I'l just leave them. I'm late to these threads, but I just made a large review post of exactly this sprint voice/data solution. The url follows.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=87287&threshol d=4&commentsort=3&tid=137&tid=193&mode=nested&cid= 7580470
OK, I have been using the Sprint Vision on my mac since the week it came out. That's been about a year and a few months. Somewhere around there. It was initially not supported on the mac. I went and bought the Merlin card and signed up for a data plan. The first thing that they did was shut off my regular cell phone within 3 hours. This is typical Sprint crap. I hate their customer service, it just sucks and always has. Something about "well the purchase of the new plan and hardware was first "credited" on your account before your credit card was processed and it put you over your theoretical credit limit with us, so the system turned off your service." In other words "It's not our fault that's the way our system works", their typical response. To which I get to respond, "Well you created your own system and it's fucking broken, I don't claim my car ran you over not me, so fix the damn thing." Anyway, it's a hell of a way to treat a customer who just dropped $300+. There customer service has always sucked I try to deal with them as little as possible.
So, enough rhetoric (to much rhetoric, just want to like service, just can't avoid company, arrr.), the tech stuff... I played with it for 2-3 days with no success, had to create my own modem script by dinking around modifying other scripts. I had an idea it would work it was just a matter of time, but I really didn't want two plans and two devices and I knew at this point it wasn't something that was going to be worth it for the occasional use, among other things... so, I just returned it and got a Sanyo 4900 to do voice and data and went to Radio shack and bought the USB cable to plug it into my Mac. Sprint was originally planning on supporting this but killed it after realizing they couldn't track data usage on voice/data plans. After dinking around with it for a couple more days. I had a working solution. Yeah!
My initial report over a year ago (I don't believe it's online anywhere now, but will repost to my journal if requested) is that I was getting about 8k a second of real world download, an average ping of 400ms, but rather erratic. One time a web page would load in a couple seconds, the next not at all for 30 minutes or until I restarted the connection. Anyway, it worked for me in a pinch, if I needed to check mail, or needed to pull up map-quest while traveling or just dink around at an airport.
So, I've used it in Phoenix, Chicago, Mich, San Diego, and numerous places near and far with a very high success rate and without to much frustration. My first time connection rate was nearly 90%. I was pleased. Oh, btw, I did notice when using it with Windows I was able to get about 16k/sec in real download situations. About twice as fast. I always assumed it was my crappy hack modem script. I'm sure several others could have been found online in the last 9 months if you really dug, but I never really bothered to check.
So!! Here is the great news. I installed 10.3 a couple months ago and I don't know if sprint supports it or what, (as mentioned I find it best to have as little interaction with them as possible to reduce frustration) but the pcs vision modem script is included in 10.3! Yeah. Upon my first trial I found it was incredibly improved. In fact it was just not the mac support, but I should mention I have noticed improvements in Sprint's systems as they updated their networks and in my phone when I upgraded the phone software. Anyway, it is now very reliable over the last few weeks and I've been using it much more. Getting an average of 16k/sec in realtime situations although still the 400ms ping times. My first time online with it in OS 10.3 i went over and downloaded the newest alpha of Mitch Kapor's and the OSAF's Chandler (about 20mb) in less than 30 minutes. Of course the latency goes completely to hell when you're maxing out the pipe on a large download and you can barely load a web page, but even being able to download a 20mb file at 16k a second is way better than expected.
Nah they are just forcing upgrades by not putting new features in the standalone IE. Longhorn already has popup blocking in IE.
I know this is off topic and I appologize, but that's an interesting point, very interesting. I can't believe I overlooked it. Obviously MS's biggest competition is Win 95/98/2000. If they don't leave some obvious oppotunities for improvement to encourage upgrades then they're just perpetuating the proplem. Of course by not implimenting these important features now they're offending their own clients (users).
I love that idea, "microsoft will eat itself." They're so large they collapse back upon themselves like a black whole.
Of course none of this will ever happen because of mitigating factors. Microsuck WILL find a way to FORCE people to upgrade. Probably in some evil document compatibility / DRM war or licensing mandate. Of course Open Office type projects should marginalize the effectiveness of this evil plague.
Anything that starts out claiming that one corporation is stupid and another smart should be reason for ending a post. How did this get modded up? Microsoft is hella' not stupid. They, having a monopoly, just don't need to worry about useability. It has been obvious from their refuseal to impliment features like tabs that they don't care for their clients, are out of touch, and it has been further demonstrated clearly by their refuseal to put in a basic pop-up ad blocking feature in IE that they are not even making their software for their users but to server other special interests.
BTW, being as nice as possible, the whole application switching concept came from Windows, so please don't dredge up some stupid/smart dogma from 1995 here. We're well beyond that. Microsoft is EVIL, not stupid, damit! : P
Is this suppose to be a joke? Because I'm laughing my butt off.
If you look on Proteron's site here stated in really large type is "Dear Apple: You forgot some important features" and showing in particular the "switch and hide others" feature. This is pretty funny unto itself, but you see the entire design of the Proteron site is completely ripped off from Apple!
Was this just a brilliant last minute stroke of inspiration, or planned publicity stunt? Either way it's well earned and well deserved. Bless you Proteron and I hope everyone buys a copy of their MaxMenu's.
So, "switch and hide others"? I'd love to see this as part of Apple's Switch Advertising Campaign? I'd love to make Windows disappear!
If I could mod you up more I would. (already at 5) This is perfectly stated.
So true about apple not needing to dominate the market. Right now they are in the best market position possible. Microsoft can't destroy them, can't even take them on for fear of anti-trust issues. Apple's got great profit, if this causes an increase in market share of overall apple from 2% or 3% to 5% they'll turn a billion dollars in profit.
iTunes is a huge and immediate threat to Microsoft's DRM dominance plan.
Of course this is all great, but let's not forget that Open Source (represented by linux) and Apple are allies at this early game, and I believe OpenSource will land the biggest blow.
Let's also remember, though this is a step in the right direction for the future of IP. However it's still DEFINITELY NOT RIGHT FOR THE PEOPLE.
The moment you give up freedom on your computer and your home YOU WILL NEVER GET IT BACK!
iTunes DRM is an immediate threat to my personal freedom. My freedom to own the contents in my hand and the contents within my home and I will not be buying from the iTunes music store because I will not have corporations dictate rights to me in my most personal of places and spaces. DRM, even ubiquitous as Apple's is will not come between myself and my friends and family. DRM belongs in the corporate sector, between corporations, perhaps on file sharing, perhaps between me an the masses just as I have security between myself and the masses, but not on my VCR, my TV, or my music player!
Furthermore if I want to give someone the keys to my car, lend them a CD, or invite them into my house that means I decide, and I won't settle for inviting someone in my house and having to then (because some corporation dictated it) give them individual access to these AAC files or that WMP file. I determine the rights within my home, NOT a corporation. That's fair use, and DRM is an invasion of privacy. You cannot take away someone's freedom unless that individual has been convicted of a crime in a court of law, and DRM is a guilty until proven innocent technology. You can not enjoy the content on your own computer until you prove it's yours. ENOUGH!
AAC is a good step, but ultimately a dead end, because it tackles the problem from just the wrong side of a thin line, sure it's nice now, but you're still letting a corporation determine your usage within your own home and space. What happens when they decide to change those rules!?...and they will.
We've gotten to bound up with property because of our free market. We're commodity centric. Remember it is not about yours, mine, his, hers! It's about personal, private, and public space and boundaries. These don't all have to exist simultaneously in your house. We need to focus on regulating copyright in public space not private space. In file-sharing, not my computer!
Also, DRM on music WILL ALWAYS BE DEFEAT-ABLE. If you can here it you can record it. Always will. It's idiotic to try control copyright within the home! and will be a huge annoyance for consumers no matter what. Copyright should be controlled in the public forum. Ok, redundant, but important, but I will move on.
I don't claim to have the answers for music yet, but books are a primary example of a balance met. They have a natural state. Even if you could download every book in the world online you would still pay the publisher $5.99 for the paperback for doing any more reading than just perusing. More sales would happen in this scenario, because suddenly people in China can find out about some small time US authors new book and then order it off Amazon. Wear-as right now, there's little to no chance the publisher has publicized the book in China. Perhaps the recording industry should stop focusing so much on DRM and start looking at "adding value" to their product so it still has a legitimate reason for existing. May I suggest they start with a multimedia video/music disc that you can play like CD
All I really want is to watch market share. Does anyone know of any standard market share reports for IM. Something like Netcrafts marketshare server reports, but for IM. I read some stuff on something like a 90% drop in traffic in the last 24 hours, but that sound's a little improbable, and their is much more to the story than the last 24 hours.
Having the single button "print to PDF" technology fully integrated and standard in OSX is all most people will ever need. In fact I'm a professional designer and outside of needing the full version of Acrobat for Quark Express and using the built in PDF technology in Illustrator and Indesign, which I use for print jobs" I have never needed anything more than the pure beutiful and simple "print to PDF" functionality built into the OSX system. I use it for invoices, PDF'ing and sharing website articles of interest, resume's, bios or most any collateral with clients and have NEVER had a complaint or compatibility issue. I'm still leary of such have support for a proprietary standard, but Adobe seems to be doing right by PDF, as long as they don't impliment some sort of DRM I don't see any problem.
I will say though that if you're going to PDF a 30 page and heavily graphical Powerpoint presentation you're really going to need the feature rich and configurable Acrobat. I can't believe that OO has such a good implimentation, I'll have to check it out as soon as I upgrade OO. I'm really stoked that it's included in Open Office because it solves and problems I might have ensuring that clients get my documents without corruption in formating. The sooner I can get the last microsoft apps off my computer the happier I'll be, and the less suseptible to viruses.
Furthermore, office for Mac OSX is seriously behind the ball, it's 2 years old, 2 versions behind Windows, and beginning to suffers some SERIOUS compatibility issues with windows word docs. I was trying to show a client how to do a mail merge with a new label and i had to show up and show him on HIS MS Word because not only were the mac and latest Win office NOTHING alike in interface, but we couldn't even open each other's word docs because the layout templates were shifting all over the place.
My point here is that I expect Open Office will be the savior for the mac just the same as mozilla saved us from the poor IE for OSX. (Yeah Safari rocks too) Open Office should rapidly surpase MS Office in full mac support and finally most of us will any longer have to put up with being penalized on compatibility for not paying the MS tax and not running Windows. Although I'll always have to run it to make sure my web projects are compatible on Win.
Side note, I've moved virtual pc (which I have to run ONLY for compatibility issues) to an issolated box that I VNC into and have had to limit all file shares between it and the OS since running VirtPC on my mac has become a serious achiles heal.
Side note two, I'm really hoping this year will be the year of the Outlook killers. IBM and the Lotus people are working on an "outlook" killer, but I haven't seen anything more, but Mac Entourage certainly is a stale attempt by Microsoft to support Outlook Exchange functionality on the mac.
In summary there may be some small compatibility issues and performance issues yet with OO on OSX, but it rocks and has arrived! Especially when you consider cost savings over MS Office.
It's more likely that eventually millions of people will get sick of having to open 3 or 4 IM programs to stay in touch with friends and if Yahoo and MSN keep closing and changing their standards users will just DROP MSN and Yahoo and move to an open standards leaving all the money put into these proprietary apps and non-standards and the cost of creating a vertical market monopoly a mute point so we don't have to constantly suffer our time dealing with this crap and talking about this crap and wasting our time doing what we're doing right now. But right now it's important we do. Otherwise who's going to learn.
So... all these IM wars, web browser wars, all these vertical market monopolies the market, and the corporations who abuse their users by utilizing such techniques can burn in hell as they should, so we can stop having stupid conversations about cracking their damn closed standards and which one is best when none of them are.
Vertical market monopolies are a modern problem. This is not just coke vs. pepsi. God I wish it were, the cola wars were so much fun. What this is, is Coke if Coke owned refrigerators vs. Pepsi who owned the other half of the refrigerators and you couldn't put coke in pepsi's fridge and pepsi in coke's fridge. You as a consumer are not going to run out and buy one of each. Suddenly because the technology, IM-ware in this case, is "free" it's alright? No.
This is buying an Epson printer when their ink costs Epson.0001 an ounce, but costs you more per ounce that Dom Perignon because they OWN exclusive rights to the ink. Epson spends 20 times the price of the ink to actually implement the patented proprietary controlled crap which manufactures cracked, which Epson has sued over and courts dismissed. This why Microsoft IE is the only browser that doesn't have a prominent feature to block popup ads. This is why Verisign better never get the right to redirect miss-typed urls, this is Bell telephone owning the phones and the lines and you having to "rent" your phone from them, this is Standard Oil buying the train lines to force out it's competitors. You we can't allow the owners of the distribution channels and the content, the protocol and the program, the operating system and the software. The radio station and the record label, the tv station and the movie house. It fundamentally corrupts.
Open source and open standards can't fail here because Open Source developers ARE the users and represent the users needs best and provide the best experience.
They fill a very real need. The very fact that this IM thing is such an issue is proof that Yahoo and MSN's IM-ware are evil and deserve to DIE.
So , NO, open source developers will not bother to stop cracking the standards of proprietary technology until the issue ceases to be a mute point because it's what the client wants. Open Source is not fundamentally the great equalizer, that's not it's purpose, but within it is the space to fill a need to create standards and infrastructures like the national road system, but without the government picking up the tab. This infrastructure will have a tremendous and fundamental long term impact.
As long as the demand for collaboration and standards are there the need will be met. This is open source 101. I am a monkey and this is slashdot. Goo goo g' joob
I hope we can all picture a future where the information, particularly educational material is free as its distribution has no cost. (MIT's online coursework is a good example of things moving in that direction.) The cost of outfitting a study will likewise be increasingly more desirable, and increasingly more expensive. It's not a stretch by any means.
But it is hard to guess how it will change other aspects of life and indeed that will be the greater impact. Suddenly a society with truly equal opportunity, being rich or of a geographic local like the US may not distinguish between the have and have nots of knowledge, information, and hence opportunity as is now specifically the case in institutions of higher learning and modern media. Perhaps literature becomes free while physical books might become more sought of as tokens, tomes, and symbols of knowledge by increasingly eclectic collectors and keepers. Their real value is that they can be referenced and referred to as frozen snapshots of a state knowledge at a given point in history. A slice of the cerebral cortex while the cerebral cortex continues to think and evolve.
The primary texts are free to change and develop, free of traditional copyright, until someone again takes a snapshot or captures a state of the literature that is particularly poignant or relative. What living texts will mean to educational texts is one thing (in fact it's well underway specifically making leaps in the study of the human genome), but what it means to fiction could be quite amazing. Will arts and literature cease to sustain a living? Will all those facets of life beyond basic existence (food, shelter, water) separate from from the higher exploits of culture, like art, literature and music. A separation of culture and commerce similar to the separation of church and state?
Would this truly make culture open and finally end the corruption and exploitation of culture by commerce. (Yes your identity and your need to belong in culture are being exploitatiously sold back to you, don't buy in, don't further fuel it.) It's a given that commerce has driven a wedge between the population and it's own culture and identity. It's given that further alienation of the individual and their society through commerce will increase suicide, bulimia, and and infinite amount of other social illnesses.
Will a separation of culture and commerce allow for greater opportunity and interest in non-commercial success through exploits in knowledge and arts without some sort of mandate for commercial success first. Perhaps in the near future someone might happily flip burgers and be a world renowned expert and lecturer on 1950's movie posters, or 14th century history of the city of Florence though they may live in Boise Idaho.
...or perhaps the silent majority of us may live in caves, stripped of our identities and culture and left eating rice while shelling out the bulk of our income for the latest pop artist is a vain and desperate attempt to fill a need we failed to understand when we had the chance... burying our children because they couldn't buy their way into society.
Microsoft can have it's damn monopoly and my rights with it.
No not really. That's just apathy talking, do to the day in day out suffering do to the MS monopoly.
I write this in the hope that some aspect of this might shed light on the situation or help someone in the media write a clearer synopsis of the MS issue to spread the understanding.
Microsoft obviously can't handle the "god like" responsibility (and illegal monopoly) it has given itself, but still they proceed to try and exercise more and more control. If Microsoft wants the monopolistic control they'll have to take responsibility for the legal ramifications.
Microsoft seems to think it knows more than the individual about what is right for that individual. Point being, if mom and pop home user want to take place in the new economy and computing they invariable need Microsoft do to monopolistic dependancies of Microsoft products. Furthermore Microsoft mandates that they relinquish an ever increasing amount of their self control to Microsoft so that Microsoft can make those decisions for the individual which they deem necessary.
Point being Microsoft has completely F'd the whole concept of personal user boundaries. You know that old concept of "personal space" and "personal rights" (snicker)... well Microsoft has destroyed it, walked all over it, and betrayed it so far as Microsoft's monopoly reaches and has extended in the computing world. Interestingly enough outside of the Microsoft's influence people are getting more ruthless about their personal rights than ever.
To use a metaphor Microsoft holds a monopoly on the car, sell 90% of all cars, and even unfairly leverages it's monopoly out onto the roads, the gas stations, the speed limits, and the laws governing the roads. How can we determine proper user safety and user rights? Is it that Microsoft hasn't provided adequate seat belts, that people aren't using the seat belts, that the speed limit is to high, or we need better laws governing roadway usage.
When a single monopoly dominates the landscape of an industry what it says is the problem and what the problem is actually are very hard to distinguish, but you can bet they are not one in the same. Right now Microsoft says that problem is mom and pop home user. They're not using their seat belts. That is to say mom and pop aren't patching their systems to prevent viruses. No precedent can be established otherwise because Microsoft has to much control and to many conflicting interests. However it is in the computing industry in the auto industry people still die and responsibly has to be reasonably determined. In the computing world no one dies, we just lose time, money and data.
Microsoft needs to start paying back some of those billions it's made to mom and pop home user who will never be able to keep their computer up to date with virus updates. Microsoft made a general promise to them and Microsoft has exercised far to much control to negate all responsibility. Imagine the collective wasted time, frustration, and loss of personal materials due to reinstalling and recovering of files by home users. Home users burned by the recent onslaught of computer viruses in the last month. Microsoft sold them the car but without the seat-belts, perhaps they weren't necessary when the road outside your front door was dirt and cars only went 10 mph, but now the cars go 65 mph, there are infinitely more people on the road, and there are still no seat belts. It's highly unlikely anyone will die in the computing world, but people will lose their jobs do to lost time, data, and money, and the collective costs are tremendous. If you want to be monopolize computing Microsoft you have to take the responsibility.
Despite what Microsoft says the vast majority and most damaging of viruses are purely Windows problems.
As the previous post mentions nothing will happen unless someone does die, that is to say unless something increasingly catastrophic happens.
Instead of taking the resp
Cut out the fat
on
RIAA Bits
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Will somone just do a nationwide media campaign.
Cut out the fat!
The point being the music industry has turned into such a rich, self indulgent and all to powerful middle man. Let's just cut them out! Artist meet audience, audience meet artist. Screw the overindulgent and ungracious middleman! It's quite clear their lawsuits don't represent the artists at all, they're just trying to protect their big fat lucartive middle man position.
But some very good ISP like Speakeasy.net encourage community networks and broadband sharing. Hence our outbound connection is shared through our neighborhood and building with wifi. We have experienced no bothersome abuse, but could the RIAA sue or hold us reponsible if it can not be known for sure who behind our firewall was sharing or downloading music?
Give me one justifiable reason you should be permitted to walk down the sidewalk in front of my house. The whole issue is lame and you're lame for arguing it, but I much enjoy your input. To the point where I feel compelled to join in.
I have an Apple tiBook. When I open it it automatically jumps on any open wireless network.
Hey stupid. Turn the WEP on and quit bitching.
If people really cared about this issue that's what they'd do, but by all means lets contune to amuse ourselves.
Slashdot Mirror
ooops... silly slashdot :)
to clarify...
Thank you! Well said... let's axe this whole DRM B.S. before it gets a chance to spread. I'm very disapointed in this slashdot post... it seems to root for apple when the whole damn drm thing is evil... I don't know about you but I'm not going to participate in anything that requires me to "buy" or "licensce" protection. It's fundamentally evil. It's called racketeering.
1) Law doesn't have any business in code
2) Especially if it's protections are not accessible to everyone
Protection is NOT a commodity to be bought and sold and licesnced.
Equall protection under the law is a fundamental of society.
Thank you! I'm very disapointed in this post... it seems to root for apple when the whole damn drm thing is evil... I don't know about you but I'm not going to participate in anything that requires me to "buy" or "licensce" protection. It's fundamentally evil. It's called racketeering.
I hate to burst your bubble but this has about as much to do with vlogging as your an article on "Why slashdot sucks... studies prove monkeyes don't like to read other monkeys long driveling and boring B.S."
Vlogging is... I say to whatever moronic and jaded hypocrite wrote this crap... is no more about talking heads than slashdot is about spanking one's monkey.
What in the hell is wrong with you? Have you forgotten what Slashdot stands for? Suddenly you're successful and around for a couple years and have barely just finished turning out your critics and you think you're the N.Y. Times... poo-pooing the next step in the inevitable evolution of freedom of expression... wait... I'm sorry... that's not fair to the N.Y. Times... they may not get exactly what's going on in new media... but at least they don't sh-t where they get their dinner.
I'm not saying you should jump on the band wagon... just pull your head out of your own butt and take a look around... a/v podcasting is a direct result of blogging and self expression... something slashdot has been a part of and stood for.
It's part of a larger movement of open and accessible culture... first there was open source... then blogging... and now open access media... and I hardly think any hype or silly anti-hype here is going to change the fact that self expression in media is an idea whose time has come... Argue with 20,000 podcasts... and now over 4,000 vlogs... argue with the fact that everyone from Tivo to the ipod... to the psp... and even cellular platforms are starting to open up to the fact that every piece of content that crosses their platforms will not be owned and or controlled by them through exclusive deals.
That in fact the way to legitimize their platforms in the near and long term future means creating platforms everyone can openly access. This doesn't mean every damn piece of media is for you... but I think we've heard enough tales about the "long tail" to know that everything is not the O.C. that in fact a vlog with an audience of two might be the best vlog in the world... when you're living half way around the world and your audience of two is your two parents... your wife and child with whom you're not traveling... your children... your business associates... what is the value on that? Is that just another 'stupid talking head'?
So next time you're thinking about firing up that new cell phone gadget that allows you to 'watch video' that you're paying $15 a month extra for and you browse through a tiny little interface looking at "premium content" from exclusive deals your cellular provider has brokered on your behalf so you can watch Night Rider on your phone... perhaps you'll clue in on the fact... "heh, what if instead of Mitch Bucanan(sp?) this was my favorite slashdot editor... or one of my many digital friends... or my sister, uncle... cousin... associate" what would be the value in that?"... then maybe when you have your own head out of your own ass... breathing fresh air and and stop thinking that everything in video should be "entertainment" then you'll think... heh... now why doesn't my cellular provider pull their head out of their ass and instead of brokering useless exclusive deals to content which really has no value to me... why don't they just open up the platform to everyone and just make it up on charging for bandwidth... the value would be infinitely more relevant... and heh... perhaps the difference of open access video vs. "premiums exclusive video"... is more like allowing anyone to exchange SMS vs. the early days of SMS when only my cell phone provider allowed "premium exclusive news alerts" to go to my phone.
So yes... there is a wind of change... call it Web freaking 2.0 and hype it an poo poo it and stick a fork in it... Whatever you like but the wind of change much like this flatulence you call Slashdot is blowing toward open and accessible media... the 'two way web' as some call it.
So... think about that next time you can't play a CD in your computer... or find you c
Yeah, you have found one "good" use for DRM. Congratulations, now let me total up the bad reasons... oh, wait... I lost track some where in the millions.
Sure, Pick the one rant that anyone brings up morals and call us all a bunch of "entitlement" bigots. This is about many, many things. But I'd like to think it's about business and innovation and that's what 99.99% of posts I'm seeing are about. But I will indulge you on the moral issue.
"When did the freeloading teenagers take over?"
Oh, btw, there's your moral entitlement... you stuck your foot in it, or mouth. A culture has a duty to make itself available in some way shape or form to all members of society, without some sort of balance of equality democracy stands no chance. I live in this country where we believe in people, and therefore I want the people who control my future to be well educated to have access to all form of IP, not to be treated like second class citizens... Cars are good, computers are good... but if our society becomes overly dependent on things that not all the the world has access to than we break down... and I do mean world... because increasingly we recognize that not only in this country is this true, but in the world at large... we suffer when South America and South Africa struggle. We hurt when regions are destabilized... So... we think about these global issues and then we act locally by "stealing" IP.
So playing the devils advocate, let's just exclude the poor, the children, or arbitrarily the rest of the world, places our brilliant companies have decided are to poor to bother releasing material... but it's not DVD's and CD's, it's books and software too... So how long has slashdot been full of entitled bigots you say, well since they had to break the law in order to play DVD's on linux. Since yiddish was no longer a viable language for inclusion in the Microsoft operating system. Since because we used this operation system or hat operating system we couldn't play this media or that software. Since we had to reverse engineer codecs, software, formats and all manner of technology in order to function as humane beings.
Do you use linux and play DVD's you hypocrite? How would you like it if some corporation determined that you were no longer an economically viable being. Because you spoke the wrong language, used the wrong operating system or lived in the wrong country or because you were in some way physically, mentally, or economically challenged.
Yeah, that's fucking moral entitlement. You bet your ass it is.
We're not talking about "everything should be free" this exactly the sort of polar/extreme B.S. framing of the debate that creates the problem. On the one hand they (the corporations we most like to bitch about) are talking codified law including regional encoding, DRM (digital rights management)... a "perfect world" where technology goes beyond law and determines exactly how content can be used in every worldly situation. Like ANYONE can fucking determine that stuff and put it into code... no amount of genius can. None. Are you noticing some similarity with fascism and communism here?
What kind of absolute B.S. is it that we should have so much faith in those at the center to do what is right!? Why should we sit around and let them build systems and infrastructure that allow them to carry out "perfect law" when history has proven all such attempts to be tyranny as is so clearly visible right now.
Make no mistake about it that's what they're talking about, that's what apple's fair-play is, or Real media or Microsoft's DRM... these are the topics of the new DVD formats.
On the other hand what we're saying we absolutely MUST break these format's in order for the culture to stay humane and law to stay in the hands of human beings accessible to the human beings.. to encode it in technology is to remove the accessibility of law from the people.
Their road is tyranny and our road is NOT anarchy, not by any stretch. So keep spreading around the "everything should be free B.S." Keep mischaracterizing the debate. It does all the good.
So, we're fighting tyranny, only in this tyranny of capitalism (our new modern
Think about this, what computer is "safe" enough and cool enough and cheap enough to buy for your kid.
.mac account, with web hosting, and the email, the blogging software. It can even burn DVDs at $599. Throw in the cheap digital still/video camera, wireless keyboard and mouse, a nice little flat pannel, don't forget the iPod Shiffle. What about a Music Store allowance! Not all at one time, a birthday here, christmas, whenever. We're still talking well under a grand.
What computer is going to sit in a kids bedroom. What can you throw a few bucks at without worrying to much about where it's going to be in a year... without worrying about viruses, without worrying about maintence. Something your kid can IM on, send email to their friends, play with photos and video, do their homework, watch a movie. What computer can give a reasonable amount of control to the parent and freedom to the kid? What computer not only will look good in every kids room in america but is safe enough to go in every kids room in america.
You might need to disable software downloads and get some nanny blocker software on the web browser, but that's it! I think you're looking at the first computer that can and will make it into the rooms of every kid in america.
It's got the garage band and all the editing software you need for music, photo and video. It can come with the
Dude kids are going to grow up on this shit the way we grew up on atari and nintendo and I'm fuscking jealous!
"In place of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen! Not dark, but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Treacherous as the sea! Stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me, and despair!"
A fitting quote, from a fitting source, the Lord of the Rings, Two Towers movie. Not as good as that of the original words written by Tolkien, but good none the less.
Tolkien was speaking of the ability of power to corrupt absolutely. Many have theorize that the ring represented the misplaced faith of man in the "wheels of industry" and the evils of industry. An observation by Tolkien during the industrial revolution? Truly the only thing greater than men's ability to create or seize power is our ability to abuse that power. The only thing that has changed is now we seek power not from industrial technology but information technology, and through the mechanisms of our great capitalist economy.
I've been an avid apple / mac user since since the Apple IIc and yet I know the score. If Apple had as much power as Microsoft they'd be twice as evil. For the only thing more certain than the fact that corporations (and humans) seek out power is their willingness to abuse it.
Make no mistake about it anti-competitive practices are anti-competitive practices. The real reason why no one gave a crap in the past is because Apple seemed irrelevant and small, but thank god the general population realizes even a relatively small company can be damage the public good and abuse law to enforce anti-competitive copyrights, patents, and trademarks.
Not only does our government and law need to strike down monopolies like M$, but it needs to better scrutinize patents, trademarks and copyrights that create these monopolies and are used by them to stifle competition and innovation.
Really!? Can you substatiate that with online documentation references? If they crack down on me I'l just leave them. I'm late to these threads, but I just made a large review post of exactly this sprint voice/data solution. The url follows. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=87287&threshol d=4&commentsort=3&tid=137&tid=193&mode=nested&cid= 7580470
So, enough rhetoric (to much rhetoric, just want to like service, just can't avoid company, arrr.), the tech stuff... I played with it for 2-3 days with no success, had to create my own modem script by dinking around modifying other scripts. I had an idea it would work it was just a matter of time, but I really didn't want two plans and two devices and I knew at this point it wasn't something that was going to be worth it for the occasional use, among other things... so, I just returned it and got a Sanyo 4900 to do voice and data and went to Radio shack and bought the USB cable to plug it into my Mac. Sprint was originally planning on supporting this but killed it after realizing they couldn't track data usage on voice/data plans. After dinking around with it for a couple more days. I had a working solution. Yeah!
My initial report over a year ago (I don't believe it's online anywhere now, but will repost to my journal if requested) is that I was getting about 8k a second of real world download, an average ping of 400ms, but rather erratic. One time a web page would load in a couple seconds, the next not at all for 30 minutes or until I restarted the connection. Anyway, it worked for me in a pinch, if I needed to check mail, or needed to pull up map-quest while traveling or just dink around at an airport.
So, I've used it in Phoenix, Chicago, Mich, San Diego, and numerous places near and far with a very high success rate and without to much frustration. My first time connection rate was nearly 90%. I was pleased. Oh, btw, I did notice when using it with Windows I was able to get about 16k/sec in real download situations. About twice as fast. I always assumed it was my crappy hack modem script. I'm sure several others could have been found online in the last 9 months if you really dug, but I never really bothered to check.
So!! Here is the great news. I installed 10.3 a couple months ago and I don't know if sprint supports it or what, (as mentioned I find it best to have as little interaction with them as possible to reduce frustration) but the pcs vision modem script is included in 10.3! Yeah. Upon my first trial I found it was incredibly improved. In fact it was just not the mac support, but I should mention I have noticed improvements in Sprint's systems as they updated their networks and in my phone when I upgraded the phone software. Anyway, it is now very reliable over the last few weeks and I've been using it much more. Getting an average of 16k/sec in realtime situations although still the 400ms ping times. My first time online with it in OS 10.3 i went over and downloaded the newest alpha of Mitch Kapor's and the OSAF's Chandler (about 20mb) in less than 30 minutes. Of course the latency goes completely to hell when you're maxing out the pipe on a large download and you can barely load a web page, but even being able to download a 20mb file at 16k a second is way better than expected.
Anyway, my recommendations are th
I know this is off topic and I appologize, but that's an interesting point, very interesting. I can't believe I overlooked it. Obviously MS's biggest competition is Win 95/98/2000. If they don't leave some obvious oppotunities for improvement to encourage upgrades then they're just perpetuating the proplem. Of course by not implimenting these important features now they're offending their own clients (users).
I love that idea, "microsoft will eat itself." They're so large they collapse back upon themselves like a black whole.
Of course none of this will ever happen because of mitigating factors. Microsuck WILL find a way to FORCE people to upgrade. Probably in some evil document compatibility / DRM war or licensing mandate. Of course Open Office type projects should marginalize the effectiveness of this evil plague.
BTW, being as nice as possible, the whole application switching concept came from Windows, so please don't dredge up some stupid/smart dogma from 1995 here. We're well beyond that. Microsoft is EVIL, not stupid, damit! : P
If you look on Proteron's site here stated in really large type is "Dear Apple: You forgot some important features" and showing in particular the "switch and hide others" feature. This is pretty funny unto itself, but you see the entire design of the Proteron site is completely ripped off from Apple!
Was this just a brilliant last minute stroke of inspiration, or planned publicity stunt? Either way it's well earned and well deserved. Bless you Proteron and I hope everyone buys a copy of their MaxMenu's.
So, "switch and hide others"? I'd love to see this as part of Apple's Switch Advertising Campaign? I'd love to make Windows disappear!
So true about apple not needing to dominate the market. Right now they are in the best market position possible. Microsoft can't destroy them, can't even take them on for fear of anti-trust issues. Apple's got great profit, if this causes an increase in market share of overall apple from 2% or 3% to 5% they'll turn a billion dollars in profit.
iTunes is a huge and immediate threat to Microsoft's DRM dominance plan.
Of course this is all great, but let's not forget that Open Source (represented by linux) and Apple are allies at this early game, and I believe OpenSource will land the biggest blow.
Let's also remember, though this is a step in the right direction for the future of IP. However it's still DEFINITELY NOT RIGHT FOR THE PEOPLE.
The moment you give up freedom on your computer and your home YOU WILL NEVER GET IT BACK!
iTunes DRM is an immediate threat to my personal freedom. My freedom to own the contents in my hand and the contents within my home and I will not be buying from the iTunes music store because I will not have corporations dictate rights to me in my most personal of places and spaces. DRM, even ubiquitous as Apple's is will not come between myself and my friends and family. DRM belongs in the corporate sector, between corporations, perhaps on file sharing, perhaps between me an the masses just as I have security between myself and the masses, but not on my VCR, my TV, or my music player!
Furthermore if I want to give someone the keys to my car, lend them a CD, or invite them into my house that means I decide, and I won't settle for inviting someone in my house and having to then (because some corporation dictated it) give them individual access to these AAC files or that WMP file. I determine the rights within my home, NOT a corporation. That's fair use, and DRM is an invasion of privacy. You cannot take away someone's freedom unless that individual has been convicted of a crime in a court of law, and DRM is a guilty until proven innocent technology. You can not enjoy the content on your own computer until you prove it's yours. ENOUGH!
AAC is a good step, but ultimately a dead end, because it tackles the problem from just the wrong side of a thin line, sure it's nice now, but you're still letting a corporation determine your usage within your own home and space. What happens when they decide to change those rules!? ...and they will.
We've gotten to bound up with property because of our free market. We're commodity centric. Remember it is not about yours, mine, his, hers! It's about personal, private, and public space and boundaries. These don't all have to exist simultaneously in your house. We need to focus on regulating copyright in public space not private space. In file-sharing, not my computer!
Also, DRM on music WILL ALWAYS BE DEFEAT-ABLE. If you can here it you can record it. Always will. It's idiotic to try control copyright within the home! and will be a huge annoyance for consumers no matter what. Copyright should be controlled in the public forum. Ok, redundant, but important, but I will move on.
I don't claim to have the answers for music yet, but books are a primary example of a balance met. They have a natural state. Even if you could download every book in the world online you would still pay the publisher $5.99 for the paperback for doing any more reading than just perusing. More sales would happen in this scenario, because suddenly people in China can find out about some small time US authors new book and then order it off Amazon. Wear-as right now, there's little to no chance the publisher has publicized the book in China. Perhaps the recording industry should stop focusing so much on DRM and start looking at "adding value" to their product so it still has a legitimate reason for existing. May I suggest they start with a multimedia video/music disc that you can play like CD
All I really want is to watch market share. Does anyone know of any standard market share reports for IM. Something like Netcrafts marketshare server reports, but for IM. I read some stuff on something like a 90% drop in traffic in the last 24 hours, but that sound's a little improbable, and their is much more to the story than the last 24 hours.
Well put. Simply put.
I will say though that if you're going to PDF a 30 page and heavily graphical Powerpoint presentation you're really going to need the feature rich and configurable Acrobat. I can't believe that OO has such a good implimentation, I'll have to check it out as soon as I upgrade OO. I'm really stoked that it's included in Open Office because it solves and problems I might have ensuring that clients get my documents without corruption in formating. The sooner I can get the last microsoft apps off my computer the happier I'll be, and the less suseptible to viruses.
Furthermore, office for Mac OSX is seriously behind the ball, it's 2 years old, 2 versions behind Windows, and beginning to suffers some SERIOUS compatibility issues with windows word docs. I was trying to show a client how to do a mail merge with a new label and i had to show up and show him on HIS MS Word because not only were the mac and latest Win office NOTHING alike in interface, but we couldn't even open each other's word docs because the layout templates were shifting all over the place.
My point here is that I expect Open Office will be the savior for the mac just the same as mozilla saved us from the poor IE for OSX. (Yeah Safari rocks too) Open Office should rapidly surpase MS Office in full mac support and finally most of us will any longer have to put up with being penalized on compatibility for not paying the MS tax and not running Windows. Although I'll always have to run it to make sure my web projects are compatible on Win.
Side note, I've moved virtual pc (which I have to run ONLY for compatibility issues) to an issolated box that I VNC into and have had to limit all file shares between it and the OS since running VirtPC on my mac has become a serious achiles heal.
Side note two, I'm really hoping this year will be the year of the Outlook killers. IBM and the Lotus people are working on an "outlook" killer, but I haven't seen anything more, but Mac Entourage certainly is a stale attempt by Microsoft to support Outlook Exchange functionality on the mac.
In summary there may be some small compatibility issues and performance issues yet with OO on OSX, but it rocks and has arrived! Especially when you consider cost savings over MS Office.
Vertical market monopolies are a modern problem. This is not just coke vs. pepsi. God I wish it were, the cola wars were so much fun. What this is, is Coke if Coke owned refrigerators vs. Pepsi who owned the other half of the refrigerators and you couldn't put coke in pepsi's fridge and pepsi in coke's fridge. You as a consumer are not going to run out and buy one of each. Suddenly because the technology, IM-ware in this case, is "free" it's alright? No.
This is buying an Epson printer when their ink costs Epson .0001 an ounce, but costs you more per ounce that Dom Perignon because they OWN exclusive rights to the ink. Epson spends 20 times the price of the ink to actually implement the patented proprietary controlled crap which manufactures cracked, which Epson has sued over and courts dismissed. This why Microsoft IE is the only browser that doesn't have a prominent feature to block popup ads. This is why Verisign better never get the right to redirect miss-typed urls, this is Bell telephone owning the phones and the lines and you having to "rent" your phone from them, this is Standard Oil buying the train lines to force out it's competitors. You we can't allow the owners of the distribution channels and the content, the protocol and the program, the operating system and the software. The radio station and the record label, the tv station and the movie house. It fundamentally corrupts.
Open source and open standards can't fail here because Open Source developers ARE the users and represent the users needs best and provide the best experience.
They fill a very real need. The very fact that this IM thing is such an issue is proof that Yahoo and MSN's IM-ware are evil and deserve to DIE.
So , NO, open source developers will not bother to stop cracking the standards of proprietary technology until the issue ceases to be a mute point because it's what the client wants. Open Source is not fundamentally the great equalizer, that's not it's purpose, but within it is the space to fill a need to create standards and infrastructures like the national road system, but without the government picking up the tab. This infrastructure will have a tremendous and fundamental long term impact.
As long as the demand for collaboration and standards are there the need will be met. This is open source 101. I am a monkey and this is slashdot. Goo goo g' joob
But it is hard to guess how it will change other aspects of life and indeed that will be the greater impact. Suddenly a society with truly equal opportunity, being rich or of a geographic local like the US may not distinguish between the have and have nots of knowledge, information, and hence opportunity as is now specifically the case in institutions of higher learning and modern media. Perhaps literature becomes free while physical books might become more sought of as tokens, tomes, and symbols of knowledge by increasingly eclectic collectors and keepers. Their real value is that they can be referenced and referred to as frozen snapshots of a state knowledge at a given point in history. A slice of the cerebral cortex while the cerebral cortex continues to think and evolve.
The primary texts are free to change and develop, free of traditional copyright, until someone again takes a snapshot or captures a state of the literature that is particularly poignant or relative. What living texts will mean to educational texts is one thing (in fact it's well underway specifically making leaps in the study of the human genome), but what it means to fiction could be quite amazing. Will arts and literature cease to sustain a living? Will all those facets of life beyond basic existence (food, shelter, water) separate from from the higher exploits of culture, like art, literature and music. A separation of culture and commerce similar to the separation of church and state?
Would this truly make culture open and finally end the corruption and exploitation of culture by commerce. (Yes your identity and your need to belong in culture are being exploitatiously sold back to you, don't buy in, don't further fuel it.) It's a given that commerce has driven a wedge between the population and it's own culture and identity. It's given that further alienation of the individual and their society through commerce will increase suicide, bulimia, and and infinite amount of other social illnesses.
Will a separation of culture and commerce allow for greater opportunity and interest in non-commercial success through exploits in knowledge and arts without some sort of mandate for commercial success first. Perhaps in the near future someone might happily flip burgers and be a world renowned expert and lecturer on 1950's movie posters, or 14th century history of the city of Florence though they may live in Boise Idaho.
No not really. That's just apathy talking, do to the day in day out suffering do to the MS monopoly.
I write this in the hope that some aspect of this might shed light on the situation or help someone in the media write a clearer synopsis of the MS issue to spread the understanding.
Microsoft obviously can't handle the "god like" responsibility (and illegal monopoly) it has given itself, but still they proceed to try and exercise more and more control. If Microsoft wants the monopolistic control they'll have to take responsibility for the legal ramifications.
Microsoft seems to think it knows more than the individual about what is right for that individual. Point being, if mom and pop home user want to take place in the new economy and computing they invariable need Microsoft do to monopolistic dependancies of Microsoft products. Furthermore Microsoft mandates that they relinquish an ever increasing amount of their self control to Microsoft so that Microsoft can make those decisions for the individual which they deem necessary.
Point being Microsoft has completely F'd the whole concept of personal user boundaries. You know that old concept of "personal space" and "personal rights" (snicker)... well Microsoft has destroyed it, walked all over it, and betrayed it so far as Microsoft's monopoly reaches and has extended in the computing world. Interestingly enough outside of the Microsoft's influence people are getting more ruthless about their personal rights than ever.
To use a metaphor Microsoft holds a monopoly on the car, sell 90% of all cars, and even unfairly leverages it's monopoly out onto the roads, the gas stations, the speed limits, and the laws governing the roads. How can we determine proper user safety and user rights? Is it that Microsoft hasn't provided adequate seat belts, that people aren't using the seat belts, that the speed limit is to high, or we need better laws governing roadway usage.
When a single monopoly dominates the landscape of an industry what it says is the problem and what the problem is actually are very hard to distinguish, but you can bet they are not one in the same. Right now Microsoft says that problem is mom and pop home user. They're not using their seat belts. That is to say mom and pop aren't patching their systems to prevent viruses. No precedent can be established otherwise because Microsoft has to much control and to many conflicting interests. However it is in the computing industry in the auto industry people still die and responsibly has to be reasonably determined. In the computing world no one dies, we just lose time, money and data.
Microsoft needs to start paying back some of those billions it's made to mom and pop home user who will never be able to keep their computer up to date with virus updates. Microsoft made a general promise to them and Microsoft has exercised far to much control to negate all responsibility. Imagine the collective wasted time, frustration, and loss of personal materials due to reinstalling and recovering of files by home users. Home users burned by the recent onslaught of computer viruses in the last month. Microsoft sold them the car but without the seat-belts, perhaps they weren't necessary when the road outside your front door was dirt and cars only went 10 mph, but now the cars go 65 mph, there are infinitely more people on the road, and there are still no seat belts. It's highly unlikely anyone will die in the computing world, but people will lose their jobs do to lost time, data, and money, and the collective costs are tremendous. If you want to be monopolize computing Microsoft you have to take the responsibility.
Despite what Microsoft says the vast majority and most damaging of viruses are purely Windows problems.
As the previous post mentions nothing will happen unless someone does die, that is to say unless something increasingly catastrophic happens.
Instead of taking the resp
But some very good ISP like Speakeasy.net encourage community networks and broadband sharing. Hence our outbound connection is shared through our neighborhood and building with wifi. We have experienced no bothersome abuse, but could the RIAA sue or hold us reponsible if it can not be known for sure who behind our firewall was sharing or downloading music?
yes it is wrong and the person leaving the bike on the driveway is once again and idiot. That's my only point.
And this leads to the FBI chasing you down and blowing up your backpack. : )
Give me one justifiable reason you should be permitted to walk down the sidewalk in front of my house. The whole issue is lame and you're lame for arguing it, but I much enjoy your input. To the point where I feel compelled to join in. I have an Apple tiBook. When I open it it automatically jumps on any open wireless network. Hey stupid. Turn the WEP on and quit bitching. If people really cared about this issue that's what they'd do, but by all means lets contune to amuse ourselves.