Oh please. Apple *threatens* to sue all the time, even against BLOGGERS for crying out loud! The fact is, Microsoft is always on the defense of these idiotic patent suits. And they indemnify other parties to protect them from such suits. The 1.5 billion mp3 suit wasn't originally against MS, it was against Dell and Gateway, but MS indemnified them to protect them from the suit, so MS took the brunt of it themselves. Let me know when any OSS company does such for the good of the industry.
The percentage of 360s that have been modded compared to the percentage of PCs that can play pirated games (i.e. 100% of PCs) is the difference to which id refers.
Gears of War has sold over 3 million copies, despite the fact that the 360 can be modded. The fact is, pirating console games isn't done by casual pirates, only the hardcore (and they're going to pirate anything and everything anyway). But PC games can be pirated with zero effort, which tempts people into casual piracy that they wouldn't engage in were it not so easy.
How about simple common courtesy? Someone (a game developer or film maker) spent many hours and many resources to develop a game or movie. They offer the use of the product to the public under certain terms (e.g. payment). You, deciding to help yourself to the product without abiding by those terms is basically giving them the middle finger, showing zero respect for them and the effort that they invested in creating the product.
I don't think there's any question that higher forms of life are self-aware. I'd say that all mammals are, all birds, and most reptiles. Insects, and the like, it's debatable.
Whether some animals have a higher level of self-awareness than others, I guess that's so, though my family has had dogs and cats, and I've no doubt that they've been as self-aware as I (though they have lower reasoning power). Then again, there may be some alien race that would consider us to be mindless automotons.
Microsoft is supporting XP thru at least 2014. Microsoft supports their OSes longer than does any other OS vendor. Red Hat isn't even supporting the distro they released 3 years ago.
I'm surprised that slashdotters, of all people, would advocate software/hardware "appliances". It would be impossible to modify the code and distribute it to others, since it would be a piece of hardware. How is this in the spirit of OSS?
But such advantages are fleeting. Kleenex is the generic noun for tissue paper, but when someone goes to a drugstore and intending to buy "Kleenex" and walks out with some other brand, yet still referring to it as "Kleenex", it doesn't do much for Kleenex's bottome line. Generic noun/verbs are an advantage to the corresponding company for about 10 years, at the most.
Exactly. This is the EU desperately looking for some reason, any reason, to levy a hefty fine, not so much for the revenue, but to show how "tough" they are. This is a joke. Fining someone because you don't think their patents are innovative? The EU is really scraping the bottom of the barrel on this one.
Too bad (for your scenario), that Microsoft's own sponsored open-source ODF plugin works with Office XP, 2003, and 2007. Oh, and it works better, as it converts between two public standards (ODF and OOXML) rather than between ODF and OO.o's best guess as to what the binary Office formats are.
You're assuming that "wipe out all of your important data" == deleting the files. But it can also mean altering the files, such that the user would never know about it (until he opened that file again, perhaps). In which case, the next time you did a backup, you're backing up altered (i.e. corrupt) files. So your system isn't fullproof at all.
OSS generally stomps all over patents held by many companies. The only reason they've gotten away with it is that they have no money, so suing is useless. Hell, VLC violates MPEG2. MPEG2 software players require a per-installation license to the MPEG2 consortium (whatever its called), which is why one needs to pay Apple $10 for an MPEG2 codec for their QuickTime player and why Microsoft makes you pay a third party for an MPEG2 codec for WMP (and those third parties generally charge $10). (This doesn't apply for Windows MCE, for which MS does include an MPEG2 codec.) Yet OSS players simply play MPEG2, and don't bother paying for any license. This is just one example.
LOL I like how neary every post (up to this point) is trying to defend this criminal or belittle his crimes. This is just one more example of slashdotters trying to have it both ways: On the one hand, they decry DRM, then on the other they defend/condone/excuse piracy. Those who want to get rid of DRM should be the same that want to get rid of piracy, as that would remove the excuse/reason for the industry to have DRM.
And the elitism of slashdotters is on display, as they defend white collar crime as lesser than "blue collar crime" (pose that to the Enron investors that were taken to the cleaners to the tune of billions of dollars). White collar crime can be just as destructive as "blue collar", and normally affects a larger number of people.
Under US law, if you limit your piracy to less than $1000 worth of works over 180 days, then it's only a civil violation. This guy went way over that (with most slashdotters cheering him on like he's Martin Luther King or Gandhi, fighting for civil rights, when he's nothing more than a facilitator for freeloaders).
Next time any one of you spouts off about Microsoft being a "convicted criminal", despite having never been charged with a "crime", look at yourself in the mirror and remember that you defended a real "criminal", who committed real "crimes" (not just civil offenses).
Pure FUD. You have ZERO evidence that there is a security risk here, yet that didn't stop you from spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Complain about *real* issues, not your delusional fantasies.
"The problem is, if consumers saw their memory usage at 100% all the time, they would freak out."
Actually, "consumers" don't care. They don't know what memory usage is, much less how to check the actual usage. Tech geeks care (or claim to; I'm a tech-geek ad I don't launch Task Manager very often, and only do so to kill a hung app, not to check memory usage).
Jobs, as the largest shareholder of Disney, can try to get Disney to release its movies on unprotected BR discs, unprotected DVD discs, and unprotected online formats. Has he done so? No? Then who the hell is he to demand that others release their content unprotected when he refuses to do so with his own?
The OpenDoc idea was that the user experience would be document centric, and vendors would provide various capabilities users could employ on the documents. This was a beautiful idea: instead of builing lots of boiler plate capabilities, you as a developer would create only the bit you wanted to add to the software universe. OpenDoc never got past beta, and the OLE model, based on heavyweight applications, won.
Um no. First, OpenDoc get get past the beta stage. Apple had a browser based on it called CyberDog. It's true that the Windows version never went anywhere because IBM and WordPerfect dropped the ball.
Regarding the "OLE" model, OLE allows for inproc components (dlls) as well as full app components (exes), and had that ability long before OpenDoc. "OLE Controls" (.ocx dlls) were a refinement of this, and lots and lots of VB components were released with that model (abandoning the old.vbx controls in favor of.ocx controls), and these are not "heavyweight" and were very successful; probably the most successful component model ever. ActiveX controls were introduced as simply the web-version of OLE Controls, and later, the non-web version of "OLE Controls" were renamed "ActvieX" controls too.
Now, if someone wants to write an app that does only what is specializes in and relies on OLE/ActiveX controls, the can do so. IE itself is such an app. It simply hosts the IE ActiveX control (shdocvw.dll), which hosts the MSHTML.dll control, which renders HTML and hosts other controls on demand (Flash, QT, WMP, even the JVM are all ActiveX controls in IE).
You can alter the UAC settings such that a password is required even for admins. Maybe that should be the default. I don't know; Microsoft's done more usability studies than I or all slashdotters put together.
"I love how slashdotters continue to rationalize their piracy. Regardless of the effect, it's still illegal."
In other news, legality and morality are still unconnected concepts. Film at 11.
So you claim that "piracy" is "illegal" yet is "moral", is that your game? OK, please explain how piracy is "moral". If I create content of some kind and offer it to the public for use thru payment, how is it "moral" for you to make use of it without payment? You don't have an inalienable right to use the content, so who are you to use it outside of the terms that I specify? You'd be all up in arms if someone used GPL code without abiding by the GPL terms, yet you claim that it's "moral" to pirate? You only have the right to use something for "free" if the provider says so. Period. (notwithstanding a copyright expiring in accordance with copyright law of the day).
They could simply stop making HD-DVDs and BR discs altogether. DVDs still make plenty of money for them anyway, and would continue to do so. Which would be a sad event. Especially since there was no legit need to "crack" this DRM in the first place. Buy a disc, and it plays in any HD-DVD or BR player. Why was there a need to crack the DRM (besides piracy)?
I love how slashdotters continue to rationalize their piracy. Regardless of the effect, it's still illegal. If someone creates media content and offers it to the public for use according to specific terms regarding authorization (which normally means, monetary payment), then you do NOT have the right to make use of said content outside the bounds of those terms. You can rationalize it all you want, "It has no effect on purchases!! It actually INCREASES purchases!!!!11!!!", but it makes no difference. The content creators don't agree, and you have to abide by their terms.
We wouldn't have to put up with DRM if it weren't for pirates, yet slashdot derides DRM but at the same time condones, or at least excuses, piracy.
(There's also the subplot: Slashdotters buy into RMS's doctrine that software be "free", so they want to apply that to all IP regardless of the feelings of the creators.)
If Jobs is sincere regarding a DRM-free world, let him, as the largest Disney shareholder, provide DRM-free Disney content: Let all Disney BluRay discs be DRM-free. Let all Disney DVDs be unprotected. Let all Disney online content be DRM-free.
He can talk all he wants about DRM-free music, but let's see him make his own company's created content available in DRM-free form. Until then, his words regarding DRM-free music are simply a PR play, nothing more.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh please.
Apple *threatens* to sue all the time, even against BLOGGERS for crying out loud!
The fact is, Microsoft is always on the defense of these idiotic patent suits.
And they indemnify other parties to protect them from such suits. The 1.5 billion mp3 suit wasn't originally against MS, it was against Dell and Gateway, but MS indemnified them to protect them from the suit, so MS took the brunt of it themselves. Let me know when any OSS company does such for the good of the industry.
Don't worry. In the future, you'll have Google as the evil Goliath and innovation will arise from everyone trying to outdo them.
Is that why 95% of projects on SourceForge are moribund?
Games 4 Windows has nothing to do with whether a game is ported to another platform or not.
Where are you getting this crap from?
The percentage of 360s that have been modded compared to the percentage of PCs that can play pirated games (i.e. 100% of PCs) is the difference to which id refers.
Gears of War has sold over 3 million copies, despite the fact that the 360 can be modded. The fact is, pirating console games isn't done by casual pirates, only the hardcore (and they're going to pirate anything and everything anyway). But PC games can be pirated with zero effort, which tempts people into casual piracy that they wouldn't engage in were it not so easy.
How about simple common courtesy?
Someone (a game developer or film maker) spent many hours and many resources to develop a game or movie. They offer the use of the product to the public under certain terms (e.g. payment). You, deciding to help yourself to the product without abiding by those terms is basically giving them the middle finger, showing zero respect for them and the effort that they invested in creating the product.
I don't think there's any question that higher forms of life are self-aware. I'd say that all mammals are, all birds, and most reptiles. Insects, and the like, it's debatable.
Whether some animals have a higher level of self-awareness than others, I guess that's so, though my family has had dogs and cats, and I've no doubt that they've been as self-aware as I (though they have lower reasoning power). Then again, there may be some alien race that would consider us to be mindless automotons.
Microsoft is supporting XP thru at least 2014. Microsoft supports their OSes longer than does any other OS vendor. Red Hat isn't even supporting the distro they released 3 years ago.
I'm surprised that slashdotters, of all people, would advocate software/hardware "appliances". It would be impossible to modify the code and distribute it to others, since it would be a piece of hardware. How is this in the spirit of OSS?
PowerPoint is the common noun for presentations.
But such advantages are fleeting. Kleenex is the generic noun for tissue paper, but when someone goes to a drugstore and intending to buy "Kleenex"
and walks out with some other brand, yet still referring to it as "Kleenex", it doesn't do much for Kleenex's bottome line. Generic noun/verbs are an advantage to the corresponding company for about 10 years, at the most.
Exactly.
This is the EU desperately looking for some reason, any reason, to levy a hefty fine, not so much for the revenue, but to show how "tough" they are. This is a joke. Fining someone because you don't think their patents are innovative? The EU is really scraping the bottom of the barrel on this one.
Too bad (for your scenario), that Microsoft's own sponsored open-source ODF plugin works with Office XP, 2003, and 2007. Oh, and it works better, as it converts between two public standards (ODF and OOXML) rather than between ODF and OO.o's best guess as to what the binary Office formats are.
You're assuming that "wipe out all of your important data" == deleting the files. But it can also mean altering the files, such that the user would never know about it (until he opened that file again, perhaps). In which case, the next time you did a backup, you're backing up altered (i.e. corrupt) files. So your system isn't fullproof at all.
OSS generally stomps all over patents held by many companies. The only reason they've gotten away with it is that they have no money, so suing is useless. Hell, VLC violates MPEG2. MPEG2 software players require a per-installation license to the MPEG2 consortium (whatever its called), which is why one needs to pay Apple $10 for an MPEG2 codec for their QuickTime player and why Microsoft makes you pay a third party for an MPEG2 codec for WMP (and those third parties generally charge $10). (This doesn't apply for Windows MCE, for which MS does include an MPEG2 codec.) Yet OSS players simply play MPEG2, and don't bother paying for any license. This is just one example.
LOL
I like how neary every post (up to this point) is trying to defend this criminal or belittle his crimes. This is just one more example of slashdotters trying to have it both ways: On the one hand, they decry DRM, then on the other they defend/condone/excuse piracy. Those who want to get rid of DRM should be the same that want to get rid of piracy, as that would remove the excuse/reason for the industry to have DRM.
And the elitism of slashdotters is on display, as they defend white collar crime as lesser than "blue collar crime" (pose that to the Enron investors that were taken to the cleaners to the tune of billions of dollars). White collar crime can be just as destructive as "blue collar", and normally affects a larger number of people.
Under US law, if you limit your piracy to less than $1000 worth of works over 180 days, then it's only a civil violation. This guy went way over that (with most slashdotters cheering him on like he's Martin Luther King or Gandhi, fighting for civil rights, when he's nothing more than a facilitator for freeloaders).
Next time any one of you spouts off about Microsoft being a "convicted criminal", despite having never been charged with a "crime", look at yourself in the mirror and remember that you defended a real "criminal", who committed real "crimes" (not just civil offenses).
Pure FUD.
You have ZERO evidence that there is a security risk here, yet that didn't stop you from spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Complain about *real* issues, not your delusional fantasies.
"The problem is, if consumers saw their memory usage at 100% all the time, they would freak out."
Actually, "consumers" don't care. They don't know what memory usage is, much less how to check the actual usage. Tech geeks care (or claim to; I'm a tech-geek ad I don't launch Task Manager very often, and only do so to kill a hung app, not to check memory usage).
Jobs, as the largest shareholder of Disney, can try to get Disney to release its movies on unprotected BR discs, unprotected DVD discs, and unprotected online formats. Has he done so? No? Then who the hell is he to demand that others release their content unprotected when he refuses to do so with his own?
Um no.
First, OpenDoc get get past the beta stage. Apple had a browser based on it called CyberDog. It's true that the Windows version never went anywhere because IBM and WordPerfect dropped the ball.
Regarding the "OLE" model, OLE allows for inproc components (dlls) as well as full app components (exes), and had that ability long before OpenDoc. "OLE Controls" (.ocx dlls) were a refinement of this, and lots and lots of VB components were released with that model (abandoning the old
Now, if someone wants to write an app that does only what is specializes in and relies on OLE/ActiveX controls, the can do so. IE itself is such an app. It simply hosts the IE ActiveX control (shdocvw.dll), which hosts the MSHTML.dll control, which renders HTML and hosts other controls on demand (Flash, QT, WMP, even the JVM are all ActiveX controls in IE).
You can alter the UAC settings such that a password is required even for admins.
Maybe that should be the default. I don't know; Microsoft's done more usability studies than I or all slashdotters put together.
So you claim that "piracy" is "illegal" yet is "moral", is that your game?
OK, please explain how piracy is "moral". If I create content of some kind and offer it to the public for use thru payment, how is it "moral" for you to make use of it without payment? You don't have an inalienable right to use the content, so who are you to use it outside of the terms that I specify?
You'd be all up in arms if someone used GPL code without abiding by the GPL terms, yet you claim that it's "moral" to pirate? You only have the right to use something for "free" if the provider says so. Period. (notwithstanding a copyright expiring in accordance with copyright law of the day).
Bah!
:p
IF they really cared about the consumers, they would offer ALL of their books for free and make money from donations!!
They could simply stop making HD-DVDs and BR discs altogether. DVDs still make plenty of money for them anyway, and would continue to do so. Which would be a sad event. Especially since there was no legit need to "crack" this DRM in the first place. Buy a disc, and it plays in any HD-DVD or BR player. Why was there a need to crack the DRM (besides piracy)?
I love how slashdotters continue to rationalize their piracy.
Regardless of the effect, it's still illegal.
If someone creates media content and offers it to the public for use according to specific terms regarding authorization (which normally means, monetary payment), then you do NOT have the right to make use of said content outside the bounds of those terms. You can rationalize it all you want, "It has no effect on purchases!! It actually INCREASES purchases!!!!11!!!", but it makes no difference. The content creators don't agree, and you have to abide by their terms.
We wouldn't have to put up with DRM if it weren't for pirates, yet slashdot derides DRM but at the same time condones, or at least excuses, piracy.
(There's also the subplot: Slashdotters buy into RMS's doctrine that software be "free", so they want to apply that to all IP regardless of the feelings of the creators.)
If Jobs is sincere regarding a DRM-free world, let him, as the largest Disney shareholder, provide DRM-free Disney content:
Let all Disney BluRay discs be DRM-free.
Let all Disney DVDs be unprotected.
Let all Disney online content be DRM-free.
He can talk all he wants about DRM-free music, but let's see him make his own company's created content available in DRM-free form. Until then, his words regarding DRM-free music are simply a PR play, nothing more.