"The commercial says it works with your MP3 player, and I assume that means works exclusively with Zune."
You assume wrong. It works with both iPod and Zune, as well as other players and devices. See the "Media Players" section of http://syncmyride.com. (I'm having trouble linking directly to the "Media Players" page.)
Now if it had been made by Apple, then yes it would only work with iPods, as they'd require the special iPod-only connectors that all iPod accessories use. Apple is all about the lock-in.
BTW, Xbox360 works with iPods too, so Microsoft makes sure their stuff works with iPods.
The article doesn't say the bugs were found by going through the code. They could've been found using the tried and true techniques that have been used to find bugs in closed-source codecs.
It's interesting that it took years longer to find the bugs in a FOSS codec. The FOSS propaganda implies that such bugs would be found more quickly than in closed-source codecs. But in this case, I'd *guess* that nobody really bothered to do security tests on FLAC until now, and that's the reason it took so long to find the bugs. Whatever the case, the fact that FLAC is OSS didn't lead to the bugs being found quickly.
And yet these bugs have been there for years and years. What happened to the peer-review by "one million eyes"?
BTW, you know how many people "audit" the typical OSS project as SourceForge? ONE ( or however many active developers there are on the project). So get off of it.
"If you rip a Audio CD to MP3,AAC,WMA or OGG that is lossy compression."
Well, you can rip an Audio CD to WMA Lossless or Apple Lossless (OK, the latter isn't actually AAC, but a user will see it and treat it as such), which give about the same compression ratio as FLAC.
On Vista, admin accounts to run under "admin" rights, which is why you still get UAC whenever an app tries to do something that required admin rights. The difference between admin and standard accounts is that when a standard account gets a UAC prompt, the user must enter and admin password, but an admin only has to OK the dialog. And there are other things an admin can do that standard user can't, but still only after OKing UAC prompt.
The default account on Mac OS X is an "admin" account too, and it's been that way since it was released in 2001. But Apple's dlg may be considered more robust because someone logged in as admin still must enter an admin password to dismiss an authorization dlg. Then again, Apple's dlg is more easily spoofed.
"MS had the opportunity to fix their wizard so that it creates -both- an admin and non-admin user and tell the user to use the non-admin account, but for some unfathomable reason they didn't."
I reckon that Apple and Microsoft did a hell of a lot more analysis on whether the default account should be admin or not than you did. Do you think that these companies just decide things on whim? You may find the reasons "unfathomable", but maybe it's due to your own tunnel vision.
Most people want to be able to do certain things without switching accounts, and an authorization dialog serves the same purpose and is faster. Apple and Microsoft understand that.
As many have already said, this wasn't a "C# memory leak", but an app bug, and solutions have already been offered (use weak references, or just remember to deregister event listener at the same time as the app deletes the event listener object from the collection).
But I think people have been missing what the real problem was. From what I'm reading in TFA, the problem wasn't really a "running out of memory" issue, it was that more and more event listeners were being registered, so every time an event occurred it took more and more time for the event to fire. They say that after 40 minutes or so, the system began to get slower and slower and slower, and would eventually grind to a halt. I think the problem wasn't lack of memory, but that eventually gazillions of event listeners were registered so it took forever to call them all.
"As much as I wanted it to be a bug in the C# runtime,..."
Um, why would you *want* the bug to be in the runtime such that it would be a widespread issue? This is what I don't understand about slashdotters. True tech geeks would want *all* technologies to work and succeed. Rooting for technologies to be bad or to fail seems backward. Yet I see it all the time here: people rooting for certain video games to be bad/fail, certain mp3 players to be bad/fail, rooting for certain OSes, apps, programming languages, programming frameworks, web services, phones, robots, optical disc formats, etc to be bad/fail.
A concrete example is that many iPod fanboys root for all other mp3 players to fail in the marketplace, and I have to scratch my head and wonder why?
Why not instead root for everything to be good? It gives you more options. For example, if all games are good, that's more games one can enjoy. But many root for certain games to be bad instead. I guess it's a geek thing.
Yeah, according to TFA, that was the entire problem. A couple of the comments to TFA say that.NET 3.5 addresses that problem with "weak references", and more specifically, the WeakEvent/WeakEventManager.
"In.NET 3.5 you can use WeakEvent and the WeakEventManager to avoid this problem. "
I'm risking getting modded down into the abyss, but what the heck.:)
Since you asked, I assume you want both sides of the issue, so I'm going to offer a view that's outside of the slashdot doctrine. Meaning, I'm going to present a more neutral stance, but somewhat from MS's perspective, since you'll get the "MS is evil" perspective from the other posts.;) But make what you will of it.
Many OSS devs put the burden of paying patent license fees on their users. For example, this is what VideoLAN has to say about their use of pattented MPEG2-LA technology in their VLC Media Plater: http://wiki.videolan.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#What_about_personal.2Fcommercial_usage.3F
Some of the codecs distributed with VLC are patented and require you to pay royalties to their licensors. These are mostly the MPEG style codecs.
With many products the producer pays the license body (in this case MPEG LA) so the user (commercial or personal) does not have to take care of this. VLC (and ffmpeg and libmpeg2 which it uses in most of these cases) cannot do this because they are Free and Open Source implementations of these codecs. The software is not sold and therefore the end-user becomes responsible for complying to the licensing and royalty requirements. You will need to contact the licensor on how to comply to these licenses.
This goes for playing a DVD with VLC for your personal joy ($2.50 one time payment to MPEG LA) as well as for using VLC for streaming a live event in MPEG-4 over the Internet. In essence, VideoLAN is saying, "Because we are free and open source, we can't and/or don't pay MPEG LA the license fees, so it's up to our users to do so; so MPEG LA, if you want license fees, then sue our users, not us." Now, VideoLAN can take that stance since their software is free as in beer, and MPEG LA won't sue their users. And many OSS devs take that stance. But Red Hat, unlike VideoLAN, makes big bucks on support contracts for its distros. A patent holder that suspects that Red Hat is shipping software that violates its patents would be less forgiving of Red Hat than of VideoLAN because Red Hat is making huge bucks while VideoLAN is not.
Now, Microsoft claims that Linux itself or software shipped by Linux distros (particularly Red Hat) violates some 235 Microsoft patents. Red Hat, in particular, refuses to make a patent licensing deal, which theoretically puts their users at risk of being sued, like VideoLAN puts its own users at risk for being sued by MPEG LA. But that's only in theory, as Microsoft hasn't disclosed (publicly at least) the patents in question. Microsoft is being underhanded by not being upfront about the patents in question, at least not publicly, and many say that the patents are bullshit. Red Hat, on the other hand, as a member of OIN is using its own threats that they'd sue Microsoft (and presumably any one else that comes after them for patent infringement) using OIN's gargantuous patent portfolio. Of course, OIN hasn't publicly disclosed which of their patents Microsoft or anyone else is infringing. (Taking the OIN threats to their logical conclusion, OIN members could very well use their portfolio to violate others' patents at will, even if the patents are legit, daring the patent holders to come after them on risk of being sued into oblivion; but for now OIN uses it's patents defensively (as does Microsoft, for that matter).)
So there's a patent cold war between Microsoft and RedHat/OIN.
Microsoft has made patent deals with Novell regarding SuSE and a few small-time distros, all of which have been ostracised by the FLOSS community as traitors and sellouts.
To be fair, I think the reason so many slashdotters are of the "information wants to be free", "copyrights suck" mindset is not necessarily that they've never created anything of worth themselves but that RMS has convinced them that all software should be "free" and slashdotters go on to extend that to anything that can be stores as bytes.
Many slashdotters seem to not understand that just because they write programs and give them away for free, that authors, music makers, movie makers, etc don't feel the same way (and are not wrong or evil or greedy for that).
"There's something very basic in humans that less us understand the concept of "mine" and "yours", and apply it to physical objects. But what about ideas? Intellectual property is much more difficult for most people to wrap their minds around."
You label intellectual property as "ideas". Patents may be "ideas", but music, movies, video games, software, books, are concrete implementations of ideas, that took time, money, resources to create. The idea of a spreadsheet isn't the same as Excel. The idea for a video game taking place on a ring-world fighting alien religious zealots and parasites is not the same as Halo. The idea for a song about a man telling his lady that he'll be home late because he's busy rehearsing with his band is not the same as "Beth" (I used that example, since we're talking about Gene Simmons:p)). There's a huge differnce between ideas and implementations of those ideas, even if those implementations can be stored as bytes. And it's not difficult to wrap one's head around, most people understand the difference, otherwise they wouldn't download the stuff in the first place, they'd just be satisfied with the "idea" for a particular song, movie, game, etc. (I doubt most people downloading songs would be satisfied with merely downloading the sheet music (though even that is beyond the "idea" stage for a song, but you get the point).)
""Downloading stuff that you didn't pay for" is not stealing. Stealing is a criminal act where you deprive someone of the use or enjoyment of property. Making a copy of a work is not criminal, nor does it deprive the copyright owner of anything. It can be against the wishes of the copyright owner, and the copyright owner can assert that you inflicted damages, but it is not stealing, just as hijacking an aircraft is not committing insurance fraud."
So, if I hack into my business competitor's computer system and copy trade secrets, but leave them intact on his computer system, I've not "stolen trade secrets"? Sorry, but colloquially speaking, it is "stealing", and it's called that. Maybe in court it'd be called something else, but let's get real here. Colloqually, "stealing" is obtaining something without proper authorization. Downloading a copy of music outside of the terms of the "creator" is obtaining a copy of music without proper authorization. (One of the example sentences for "steal" at dictionary.com is "This author stole entire paragraphs from my dissertation".)
Even if you don't consider it "stealing", it's certainly "cheating" (you're cheating the "creator" by making use of his work outside the terms he provided for its use), so it's still one of the classic wrongs (lie, cheat, steal, kill).
I think those that celebrate the demise of the "Album" are short-sighted nincumpoops.:)
A-la-carte means that every song must have the characterstics of a hit single: catchy, short, etc. Albums have those songs, but have other songs that don't have those charateristics, but are as good or better. Hell, the Beatles' Abbey Road is one of the best albums ever made, and while it does have three great singles, the best part of the album is the second half which is entirely made up songs that would never be released as singles, and indeed, don't even work as singles, as they flow together as one complete piece. I'd hate for stuff like that to go away for good. And the White Album has plenty of great songs, almost none of which would work as singles. None of those songs would have been released under an al-a-carte model, as nobody would have bought them as singles. But taken as a whole work, they're better than almost any "Greatest Hits" album, which is the only kind of "album" we'd be left with under your model, as all songs would have to be "hit"-like songs.
And I keep seeing people talk about buying a CD filled with crap to get one song. That's almost NEVER happened to me. I generally like nearly every song on albums, even if I don't like them at first, they grow on me and I end up liking them more than the "hit" single. But that's just me, I guess.:)
Speaking as an owner of an iPod, a Rios, and a Sandisk (I bought them over the years), but no Zune (yet), one reason that I'd prefer a Zune over an iPod is that I prefer the music-subscription model over the purchase model. Zune offers both models, while iPod only offers one. That's at least one advantage. It doesn't necessarily apply to me since I can use subscription models with my Rios and Sandisk (but Zune does have other advantages over those devices).
" to promote choice and innovation and be an advocate for the non-commercial aspects of the Web and the people using the Web, is just stupid."
An advocate for the "non-commercial aspects of the Web"? Are you for real? I think you've drank too much of your own Kool-Aid. Hello! Google epitomizes the very commercial aspects of the Web! And you're in bed with them. Are you blind to your own business?
"I'm sure they have a hand in, but let me know when then donate $50M."
"Donate" suggests giving money with no strings attached. This money isn't donated, it's *payment* to lock in Google's services. Just like Google pays dozens of software companies to include Google Desktop and Toolbar in the various installation procedures of software. Even Sun's JVM security updates try to foist Google Toolbar and Desktop onto the user. Disgusting, but Google paid for that. You're VERY naive if you think Google expects nothing back from its 56 million dollar per year bankrolling of Firefox.
While I agree with the thrust of your argument, you misread or misheard the salary of Mozilla's CEO. It's 500 thousand, not 500 million.;) Google casts a shadow as Firefox plans for the future
"According to Mozilla's 2006 financial records, which were recently released, the foundation had $70 million in assets, largely invested in mutual funds, and last year collected $66 million in revenue. Eighty-five percent came from a single source - Google. But, despite a pledge to use Firefox revenue to support new open-source projects, the foundation gave away less than $100,000 in grants, according to the audited statement, or $287,000, according to Mozilla, in 2006. In the same year, it paid its chief executive, Mitchell Baker, more than $500,000 in salary and benefits."
It's clear that Google pays Firefox's bills and Firefox is indeed Google's lapdog. But at least in Firefox you can change the default search engine and also add secondary engines.
That's a lot better than Apple's Safari. Safari search engine is Google, lock, stock, and barrel so you can't even change the default or add secondary search engines. And since Safari is the default browser on OSX, Google is *locked* in as the default engine for OSX itself (and no, you can't say the same for Windows, since its default browser (IE) allows the user to change the default and add secondary engines).
So I'd say that Firefox has more integrity on this matter than Apple. (But not much. Safari at least has its own Apple home page, phishing page, etc, while Firefox uses Google for all of that.)
I've noticed that every time a new product/service is announced, the media's prime focus is that it's a "competitor" of some earlier product? It's like, who cares about what it actually does, let's just talk about the "competition', "horse race", etc.
Maybe a company releases a product/service just to make money, not to compete or kill something else. Hell, I have multilple gmail, yahoo, and hotmail email accounts; I don't think of them as competitors (even though they are), they are just services to me. Sometime I buy Coke, sometimes Pepsi. I don't give a damn about the competition between the two.
So here we have the story, "Microsoft Plans Flickr Competitor (or 'Clone' as TFA says)" rather than "Microsoft Plans Online Photo Service" as the headline. Because all we care about is the competition aspect. *yawn*
Apple/Jobs has been doing this for years and years. It's called "style over substance". It's just fine and dandy to have products with less and/or worse functionality than competing products, as long as it "looks good". Brings to mind Billy Crystal's Saturday Night Live "Fernando" character, whose trademark phrase was, "It is better to look good than to feel good." iPhone is most respects is less featurful and in some ways less usable than other phones, but it looks good. (Same goes for the iPod, TimeMachine, etc.)
But Jobs' style over substance strategy works. People flock to the dazzle/flash like flies to feces.
Regarding the malware/spyware-style installation process of Google Toolbar and Desktop, I've seen both Google Toolbar and Desktop riding the installation procedures of Roxio's video editing software, Sun's JVM security updates (a security update has NO business installing unrelated software), Maxtor's and Western Digital's harddrives, and on and on.
And it's gotten much worse, not just how pervasive this is, but because in the past I would only see Google Toolbar pre-checked, while Google Desktop would be unchecked by default. But in the past year, I've noticed that both Google Toolbar and Desktop are pre-checked. My mom keeps asking me why Google's crapware keeps getting installed on her computer and asking me to remove it over and over.
Safari? The browser whose web-search box is the most limited of any modern browser because it's locked into Google? (Safari not only locks in Google as the default/primary search provider, but Safari's search box doesn't allow for secondary search providers at all either.)
To extend my previous remarks, go watch some videos at http://channel9.msdn.com./ You'll see many people very happy with their jobs working on very interesting things (much more interesting than ad/search stuff that Google wastes PhDs on, IMO), and no hint of any of them lacking ethics and morality.
" I don't have to sacrifice my sense of ethics and morality at my job."
Wow, talk about arrogance and self-righteousness. You are calling every one of Microsoft's 80 thousand employees unethical and immoral? Microsoft employees give more to charity per employee than any other company (I'm not including Gates in that figure either). Just what evidence do you have that every one of Microsoft's employees is unethical and immoral? Oh, because someone decided to bundle a browser in an OS? Are you for real? Grow up.
I know that 99% of slashdotters desperately want the MS/Novell deal to flop, but you're going to have to accept the fact that it's here to stay. And it's causing companies to switch to Novell at Red Hat's expense. Know that.
Slashdot Mirror
"The commercial says it works with your MP3 player, and I assume that means works exclusively with Zune."
You assume wrong.
It works with both iPod and Zune, as well as other players and devices.
See the "Media Players" section of http://syncmyride.com. (I'm having trouble linking directly to the "Media Players" page.)
Now if it had been made by Apple, then yes it would only work with iPods, as they'd require the special iPod-only connectors that all iPod accessories use. Apple is all about the lock-in.
BTW, Xbox360 works with iPods too, so Microsoft makes sure their stuff works with iPods.
The article doesn't say the bugs were found by going through the code. They could've been found using the tried and true techniques that have been used to find bugs in closed-source codecs.
It's interesting that it took years longer to find the bugs in a FOSS codec. The FOSS propaganda implies that such bugs would be found more quickly than in closed-source codecs. But in this case, I'd *guess* that nobody really bothered to do security tests on FLAC until now, and that's the reason it took so long to find the bugs. Whatever the case, the fact that FLAC is OSS didn't lead to the bugs being found quickly.
And yet these bugs have been there for years and years. What happened to the peer-review by "one million eyes"?
BTW, you know how many people "audit" the typical OSS project as SourceForge? ONE ( or however many active developers there are on the project). So get off of it.
"If you rip a Audio CD to MP3,AAC,WMA or OGG that is lossy compression."
Well, you can rip an Audio CD to WMA Lossless or Apple Lossless (OK, the latter isn't actually AAC, but a user will see it and treat it as such), which give about the same compression ratio as FLAC.
On Vista, admin accounts to run under "admin" rights, which is why you still get UAC whenever an app tries to do something that required admin rights. The difference between admin and standard accounts is that when a standard account gets a UAC prompt, the user must enter and admin password, but an admin only has to OK the dialog. And there are other things an admin can do that standard user can't, but still only after OKing UAC prompt.
The default account on Mac OS X is an "admin" account too, and it's been that way since it was released in 2001. But Apple's dlg may be considered more robust because someone logged in as admin still must enter an admin password to dismiss an authorization dlg. Then again, Apple's dlg is more easily spoofed.
"MS had the opportunity to fix their wizard so that it creates -both- an admin and non-admin user and tell the user to use the non-admin account, but for some unfathomable reason they didn't."
I reckon that Apple and Microsoft did a hell of a lot more analysis on whether the default account should be admin or not than you did. Do you think that these companies just decide things on whim? You may find the reasons "unfathomable", but maybe it's due to your own tunnel vision.
Most people want to be able to do certain things without switching accounts, and an authorization dialog serves the same purpose and is faster. Apple and Microsoft understand that.
As many have already said, this wasn't a "C# memory leak", but an app bug, and solutions have already been offered (use weak references, or just remember to deregister event listener at the same time as the app deletes the event listener object from the collection).
But I think people have been missing what the real problem was.
From what I'm reading in TFA, the problem wasn't really a "running out of memory" issue, it was that more and more event listeners were being registered, so every time an event occurred it took more and more time for the event to fire. They say that after 40 minutes or so, the system began to get slower and slower and slower, and would eventually grind to a halt. I think the problem wasn't lack of memory, but that eventually gazillions of event listeners were registered so it took forever to call them all.
"As much as I wanted it to be a bug in the C# runtime, ..."
Um, why would you *want* the bug to be in the runtime such that it would be a widespread issue?
This is what I don't understand about slashdotters. True tech geeks would want *all* technologies to work and succeed. Rooting for technologies to be bad or to fail seems backward. Yet I see it all the time here: people rooting for certain video games to be bad/fail, certain mp3 players to be bad/fail, rooting for certain OSes, apps, programming languages, programming frameworks, web services, phones, robots, optical disc formats, etc to be bad/fail.
A concrete example is that many iPod fanboys root for all other mp3 players to fail in the marketplace, and I have to scratch my head and wonder why?
Why not instead root for everything to be good? It gives you more options. For example, if all games are good, that's more games one can enjoy. But many root for certain games to be bad instead. I guess it's a geek thing.
Yeah, according to TFA, that was the entire problem. .NET 3.5 addresses that problem with "weak references", and more specifically, the WeakEvent/WeakEventManager.
.NET 3.5 you can use WeakEvent and the WeakEventManager to avoid this problem. "
A couple of the comments to TFA say that
"In
Since you asked, I assume you want both sides of the issue, so I'm going to offer a view that's outside of the slashdot doctrine. Meaning, I'm going to present a more neutral stance, but somewhat from MS's perspective, since you'll get the "MS is evil" perspective from the other posts.
Many OSS devs put the burden of paying patent license fees on their users.
For example, this is what VideoLAN has to say about their use of pattented MPEG2-LA technology in their VLC Media Plater:
http://wiki.videolan.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#What_about_personal.2Fcommercial_usage.3F Some of the codecs distributed with VLC are patented and require you to pay royalties to their licensors. These are mostly the MPEG style codecs.
With many products the producer pays the license body (in this case MPEG LA) so the user (commercial or personal) does not have to take care of this. VLC (and ffmpeg and libmpeg2 which it uses in most of these cases) cannot do this because they are Free and Open Source implementations of these codecs. The software is not sold and therefore the end-user becomes responsible for complying to the licensing and royalty requirements. You will need to contact the licensor on how to comply to these licenses.
This goes for playing a DVD with VLC for your personal joy ($2.50 one time payment to MPEG LA) as well as for using VLC for streaming a live event in MPEG-4 over the Internet. In essence, VideoLAN is saying, "Because we are free and open source, we can't and/or don't pay MPEG LA the license fees, so it's up to our users to do so; so MPEG LA, if you want license fees, then sue our users, not us." Now, VideoLAN can take that stance since their software is free as in beer, and MPEG LA won't sue their users. And many OSS devs take that stance. But Red Hat, unlike VideoLAN, makes big bucks on support contracts for its distros. A patent holder that suspects that Red Hat is shipping software that violates its patents would be less forgiving of Red Hat than of VideoLAN because Red Hat is making huge bucks while VideoLAN is not.
Now, Microsoft claims that Linux itself or software shipped by Linux distros (particularly Red Hat) violates some 235 Microsoft patents. Red Hat, in particular, refuses to make a patent licensing deal, which theoretically puts their users at risk of being sued, like VideoLAN puts its own users at risk for being sued by MPEG LA. But that's only in theory, as Microsoft hasn't disclosed (publicly at least) the patents in question. Microsoft is being underhanded by not being upfront about the patents in question, at least not publicly, and many say that the patents are bullshit. Red Hat, on the other hand, as a member of OIN is using its own threats that they'd sue Microsoft (and presumably any one else that comes after them for patent infringement) using OIN's gargantuous patent portfolio. Of course, OIN hasn't publicly disclosed which of their patents Microsoft or anyone else is infringing. (Taking the OIN threats to their logical conclusion, OIN members could very well use their portfolio to violate others' patents at will, even if the patents are legit, daring the patent holders to come after them on risk of being sued into oblivion; but for now OIN uses it's patents defensively (as does Microsoft, for that matter).)
So there's a patent cold war between Microsoft and RedHat/OIN.
Microsoft has made patent deals with Novell regarding SuSE and a few small-time distros, all of which have been ostracised by the FLOSS community as traitors and sellouts.
To be fair, I think the reason so many slashdotters are of the "information wants to be free", "copyrights suck" mindset is not necessarily that they've never created anything of worth themselves but that RMS has convinced them that all software should be "free" and slashdotters go on to extend that to anything that can be stores as bytes.
Many slashdotters seem to not understand that just because they write programs and give them away for free, that authors, music makers, movie makers, etc don't feel the same way (and are not wrong or evil or greedy for that).
"There's something very basic in humans that less us understand the concept of "mine" and "yours", and apply it to physical objects. But what about ideas? Intellectual property is much more difficult for most people to wrap their minds around."
:p)). There's a huge differnce between ideas and implementations of those ideas, even if those implementations can be stored as bytes. And it's not difficult to wrap one's head around, most people understand the difference, otherwise they wouldn't download the stuff in the first place, they'd just be satisfied with the "idea" for a particular song, movie, game, etc. (I doubt most people downloading songs would be satisfied with merely downloading the sheet music (though even that is beyond the "idea" stage for a song, but you get the point).)
You label intellectual property as "ideas". Patents may be "ideas", but music, movies, video games, software, books, are concrete implementations of ideas, that took time, money, resources to create. The idea of a spreadsheet isn't the same as Excel. The idea for a video game taking place on a ring-world fighting alien religious zealots and parasites is not the same as Halo. The idea for a song about a man telling his lady that he'll be home late because he's busy rehearsing with his band is not the same as "Beth" (I used that example, since we're talking about Gene Simmons
""Downloading stuff that you didn't pay for" is not stealing. Stealing is a criminal act where you deprive someone of the use or enjoyment of property. Making a copy of a work is not criminal, nor does it deprive the copyright owner of anything. It can be against the wishes of the copyright owner, and the copyright owner can assert that you inflicted damages, but it is not stealing, just as hijacking an aircraft is not committing insurance fraud."
So, if I hack into my business competitor's computer system and copy trade secrets, but leave them intact on his computer system, I've not "stolen trade secrets"? Sorry, but colloquially speaking, it is "stealing", and it's called that. Maybe in court it'd be called something else, but let's get real here. Colloqually, "stealing" is obtaining something without proper authorization. Downloading a copy of music outside of the terms of the "creator" is obtaining a copy of music without proper authorization. (One of the example sentences for "steal" at dictionary.com is "This author stole entire paragraphs from my dissertation".)
Even if you don't consider it "stealing", it's certainly "cheating" (you're cheating the "creator" by making use of his work outside the terms he provided for its use), so it's still one of the classic wrongs (lie, cheat, steal, kill).
I think those that celebrate the demise of the "Album" are short-sighted nincumpoops. :)
:)
A-la-carte means that every song must have the characterstics of a hit single: catchy, short, etc. Albums have those songs, but have other songs that don't have those charateristics, but are as good or better. Hell, the Beatles' Abbey Road is one of the best albums ever made, and while it does have three great singles, the best part of the album is the second half which is entirely made up songs that would never be released as singles, and indeed, don't even work as singles, as they flow together as one complete piece. I'd hate for stuff like that to go away for good. And the White Album has plenty of great songs, almost none of which would work as singles. None of those songs would have been released under an al-a-carte model, as nobody would have bought them as singles. But taken as a whole work, they're better than almost any "Greatest Hits" album, which is the only kind of "album" we'd be left with under your model, as all songs would have to be "hit"-like songs.
And I keep seeing people talk about buying a CD filled with crap to get one song. That's almost NEVER happened to me. I generally like nearly every song on albums, even if I don't like them at first, they grow on me and I end up liking them more than the "hit" single. But that's just me, I guess.
Speaking as an owner of an iPod, a Rios, and a Sandisk (I bought them over the years), but no Zune (yet), one reason that I'd prefer a Zune over an iPod is that I prefer the music-subscription model over the purchase model. Zune offers both models, while iPod only offers one. That's at least one advantage. It doesn't necessarily apply to me since I can use subscription models with my Rios and Sandisk (but Zune does have other advantages over those devices).
" to promote choice and innovation and be an advocate for the non-commercial aspects of the Web and the people using the Web, is just stupid."
An advocate for the "non-commercial aspects of the Web"? Are you for real? I think you've drank too much of your own Kool-Aid. Hello! Google epitomizes the very commercial aspects of the Web! And you're in bed with them. Are you blind to your own business?
"I'm sure they have a hand in, but let me know when then donate $50M."
"Donate" suggests giving money with no strings attached. This money isn't donated, it's *payment* to lock in Google's services. Just like Google pays dozens of software companies to include Google Desktop and Toolbar in the various installation procedures of software. Even Sun's JVM security updates try to foist Google Toolbar and Desktop onto the user. Disgusting, but Google paid for that. You're VERY naive if you think Google expects nothing back from its 56 million dollar per year bankrolling of Firefox.
Google casts a shadow as Firefox plans for the future "According to Mozilla's 2006 financial records, which were recently released, the foundation had $70 million in assets, largely invested in mutual funds, and last year collected $66 million in revenue. Eighty-five percent came from a single source - Google. But, despite a pledge to use Firefox revenue to support new open-source projects, the foundation gave away less than $100,000 in grants, according to the audited statement, or $287,000, according to Mozilla, in 2006. In the same year, it paid its chief executive, Mitchell Baker, more than $500,000 in salary and benefits."
It's clear that Google pays Firefox's bills and Firefox is indeed Google's lapdog. But at least in Firefox you can change the default search engine and also add secondary engines.
That's a lot better than Apple's Safari. Safari search engine is Google, lock, stock, and barrel so you can't even change the default or add secondary search engines. And since Safari is the default browser on OSX, Google is *locked* in as the default engine for OSX itself (and no, you can't say the same for Windows, since its default browser (IE) allows the user to change the default and add secondary engines).
So I'd say that Firefox has more integrity on this matter than Apple. (But not much. Safari at least has its own Apple home page, phishing page, etc, while Firefox uses Google for all of that.)
I've noticed that every time a new product/service is announced, the media's prime focus is that it's a "competitor" of some earlier product? It's like, who cares about what it actually does, let's just talk about the "competition', "horse race", etc.
Maybe a company releases a product/service just to make money, not to compete or kill something else. Hell, I have multilple gmail, yahoo, and hotmail email accounts; I don't think of them as competitors (even though they are), they are just services to me. Sometime I buy Coke, sometimes Pepsi. I don't give a damn about the competition between the two.
So here we have the story, "Microsoft Plans Flickr Competitor (or 'Clone' as TFA says)" rather than "Microsoft Plans Online Photo Service" as the headline. Because all we care about is the competition aspect. *yawn*
Apple/Jobs has been doing this for years and years. It's called "style over substance". It's just fine and dandy to have products with less and/or worse functionality than competing products, as long as it "looks good". Brings to mind Billy Crystal's Saturday Night Live "Fernando" character, whose trademark phrase was, "It is better to look good than to feel good." iPhone is most respects is less featurful and in some ways less usable than other phones, but it looks good. (Same goes for the iPod, TimeMachine, etc.)
But Jobs' style over substance strategy works. People flock to the dazzle/flash like flies to feces.
Regarding the malware/spyware-style installation process of Google Toolbar and Desktop, I've seen both Google Toolbar and Desktop riding the installation procedures of Roxio's video editing software, Sun's JVM security updates (a security update has NO business installing unrelated software), Maxtor's and Western Digital's harddrives, and on and on.
And it's gotten much worse, not just how pervasive this is, but because in the past I would only see Google Toolbar pre-checked, while Google Desktop would be unchecked by default. But in the past year, I've noticed that both Google Toolbar and Desktop are pre-checked. My mom keeps asking me why Google's crapware keeps getting installed on her computer and asking me to remove it over and over.
Safari? The browser whose web-search box is the most limited of any modern browser because it's locked into Google? (Safari not only locks in Google as the default/primary search provider, but Safari's search box doesn't allow for secondary search providers at all either.)
If the OSS community had come up with the Office 2k7 UI, you guys would be hailing it as a triumph of OSS, and you know it.
To extend my previous remarks, go watch some videos at http://channel9.msdn.com./ You'll see many people very happy with their jobs working on very interesting things (much more interesting than ad/search stuff that Google wastes PhDs on, IMO), and no hint of any of them lacking ethics and morality.
" I don't have to sacrifice my sense of ethics and morality at my job."
Wow, talk about arrogance and self-righteousness.
You are calling every one of Microsoft's 80 thousand employees unethical and immoral? Microsoft employees give more to charity per employee than any other company (I'm not including Gates in that figure either). Just what evidence do you have that every one of Microsoft's employees is unethical and immoral? Oh, because someone decided to bundle a browser in an OS? Are you for real? Grow up.
This must *really* piss you guys off:
Microsoft and Novell extend alliance
I know that 99% of slashdotters desperately want the MS/Novell deal to flop, but you're going to have to accept the fact that it's here to stay. And it's causing companies to switch to Novell at Red Hat's expense. Know that.