Anything can be done, but only given infinite resources. All you have to do is put it in terms of cost.
"I can do X, but if I do X, I won't be able to do Y or Z and these things are more important."
Usually, as long as you are compentent, being overworked is not a crime. I got fired once from a place where they believed I wasn't competent because I didn't spend all my time pointing out all the things I did. They found out afterward that it was impossible to hire a replacement (because no one else in town had the combination of my skill set and my willingness to work for practically nothing), and that, without someone doing my job, they couldn't support 3 of their largest clients, who accounted for the vast majority of their revinue. A little instant karma for them, bastards.
I think the RIAA believes that you're buying a piece of plastic, which happens to have content on it, and that all your rights to the content hinge on the plastic.
I personally think that you're buying rights to the content, which makes the CD itself immaterial as it is simply a medium, with no inherent value.
Regardless of who's doing it, and their chances/likelihood of needing an orbital reboot, I'm glad to see someone not stuck on 40 year old technology trying something new. Christ I remember watching the first space shuttle landing when I was like 4. They treat it like it's great and proven tech, but its performance/cost ratio is awful.
Anything to get some new ideas floating around nasa.
I can't see switching to UDP as adding a lot of efficiency. Most applications that use udp are really fault tolerant (streaming video, games, etc), whereas most internet traffic gets screwy if packets are vanishing all over the place.
It's an interesting problem though. Decreasing the time before time out should help, or maybe some randomness in the time it takes to drop someone. It would be hard to build up a pattern that way.
I share files. I share a lot of files. Video and audio; no porn or anything gross, but if you want an episode of the simpsons or south park, I'm yer guy. I share music too, and a good bit of it I own on CD.
Here's the thing. I never rip anything. I've got a nice fast cable connection, and it's not worth it to me to go dig through my car looking for something when I can just grab it online. So everything that I share is content provided by some hypothetical individual way up the chain.
So who is to blame for this? Say I grab a file from some guy running on 56k, then I distribute that to 3 million people. According to the RIAA I would be liable for 3 million downloads, which is fair, but so would the orginal guy, which is clearly not, even though he was the original violator, and the only person in the situation who definitely owned the media. The reality of the situation would be different still; I'd probably upload it to a couple dozen people (my upload pipe is pretty skinny), and they'd all upload it to 12 people, etc. And ALL of us would be liable for the 3 million downloads, which is completely absurd.
Part of the problem is, there isn't any real way to tell, aside from having my ISP provide an exact record of the stuff that came and went from my computer, which I know for a FACT they're not doing (since I work for them). So there is no way to know how many times the file has been shared. I sure as hell don't know.
Since it is impossible to determine how many times the file was shared, it is impossible to know what the damages ought to be. The RIAA is going off on this hypothetical crap, "Millions of times! Billions of dollars!" but there is no way they're going to be able to hold that up in court, especially not with so many defendants. If nothing else, their inability to prove damages is going to hurt their case. I can see a jury levying a multi-million dollar judgement on a huge corporation for the benefit of some everyday joe, but I really can't see them doing the reverse.
The RIAA is trying to confuse the issue in many ways. Part of it is that they're treating CD's and music as 2 different things.
When you buy the CD you're not buying rights to the music at all. Fair use for them covers little more than the right to play your own CD, just not in a really big crowd. If the media is destroyed, you no longer have any rights to the content, because the content isn't what you paid for.
In this sense, whatever happens to your CD's your rights are gone. If you can't play them for any reason, that's your tough luck.
The thing is, you're not really buying a physical thing. What you're buying is content. Not to say that you have unlimited rights to it, but it is clear that you DO have rights to the content, otherwise there would be no possible justification for charging 18.00 for a.25 cent piece of plastic.
That being the case, it is crystal clear that you have a right to backups, seeing as you paid for the content. But what is unique about your CD? Nothing. Someday they may try and watermark every single CD, but not today. So what distinguishes your backup from someone elses? A few random numbers of a hash algorythim? Doesn't seem like enough to deny you your right to the content that you've paid for.
One of the arguments I hear most from the linux community is that the windows "Software monoculture" is bad for security, bad for innovation, and bad for the user. Competition is healthy, competition makes you strong.
Sure Gnome beats the snot out of KDE, but does that mean KDE is serving no useful purpose? I frankly am completely unimpressed by an argument setting windows up as the standard to be emulated. What can really be learned from windows explorer? How to make your GUI more important than the underlying code? How to make sure you can't do any of that awful "customization" thing?
Adoption of the linux desktop relies on the same thing that the adoption of every other desktop depends on: familiarity, or the willingness to learn. Is there somethign about Gnome or KDE that would be hard for the average computer user to pick up?
The factors slowing linux's adoption on the average desktop really have very little to do with the fact that there are multiple desktop environments.
First of all, NO, TRUST ME, you do not have to initiate the conversation. AT ALL. I used these damn things for more than a year, it's burned into my head. You push the button, and then you start talking.
Handy fact, in case you have an annoying boss who jabbers on and on about nothing: If you push the talk button on your side, all you get is an annoying beep, but if you push the "cancel" button, THEY get the annoying beep, and it may startle them enough that you can mash down your own talk button and get a word in...Or you can HOLD DOWN THE BUTTON FOREVER! Let them hear nothing but your maniacal laughter! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!
This isn't just nothing new, it's old news. Wasn't this how they caught the guy who wrote the melissa virus? When that little popup window from MS Office came up asking for their personal info, did they just think Office was trying to get to know them better, in order to be their friend?
It's just silly pressmongering. Those dumbasses have to come up with a terrifying computer factoid every day, or the ignorant compu-phobes they prey on might come to their senses.
The reason is, "If a virus is 20megs in size, only an idiot would download it."
Seriously. I guess you could make it to add a little random garbage at the end of every file to change the size, but that wouldn't fool a heuristics scanner, much less something that's actually got a piece of the code to compare.
The best you can get at this point is something that crawls network shares, or scans multiple ports, and that's not thinking, that's just idiot savant mode, which is about as good as it gets for a small piece of software.
It's not like they can say, "We don't have a counter for this yet, so lets not develop it or think about it, and hope the rest of the world is too dumb to figure out how to jam cell phones, or triangulate our position from out radio broadcasts."
Anyway, this stuff is nothign new, it's just a new way to deploy things we could already do. Jam cell phones? Easy. Mine gets jammed 1000000 times a day (SouthernLink==SuckyLink). And triangulation is easy enough as well.
Think if I get some good friends over at the Pentagon, and a GPS handheld, that they'd let me call in tactical strikes on annoying cellphone users? Talk about a peace dividend!
Imagine, if you will, sitting in a car with a hot member of the opposite sex...Okay, make that just a member of the opposite sex, since this is/.
Things are going well...VERY well. And then, with no warning, your phone makes a little BRRREEP noise, and a voice says LOUDLY, "Hey man, you get any on that date tonight?"
This is a technology that has few practical applications, and offers a whole WORLD of annoying possibilities.
Ooooo, it checks FILE NAMES. And poorly too. That's a very simple text search if all it does is pattern match on that level...Like the profanity filters that will catch "Wish it" or "Cockpit". There is no WAY they are getting anything that even resembles useful information. If PAC and MAN are in the search criteria, I'm surprised they bothered to send out any letters at all.
First of all, that fricking PAC MAN is worthy of that kind of vigilant enforcement is mind boggling. And second that they're willing to poin the finger on so little evidence... I've played that infiltration mod for unreal. Even the most cursory check would show that it violated no copyrights and no IP laws, and, especially that it wasn't fricking PACMAN!
This kind of thing is good, because it shows very clearly the flaws and the flawed minds behind the DMCA.
Now, I'm off to put a bunch of files with misleading filenames up on my site.
The whole thing is stupid, because it should never ahve gone to the supreme court.
If an election is "too close to call" which means, "within the statistical margin of error" which certainly applied, the issue is supposed to go to the damn legislature, not the supreme court. The executive and legislative branches elect supreme court justices, not the other way around.
I do a lot of database work. I guarantee I'd trip some of these record-bombs just doing my job.
I mean, most times I'm supposed to be looking for weird stuff. I mean, right now I have access to info on people that I KNOW would be appalled to find out someone is privy to everything about some private part of their life. I don't get my jollies off it or anything, but there is no way I can fix some of these problems without ever taking a look at the actual data.
Now, I could hack together some access controls, or just a little snoop program that tells some administrator who's been browsing his files without having to hide a bunch of stupid fake entries. Seems like that would be a better solution, and that's old, proven tech.
Whatever. 10 years ago, if I copied a bunch of songs onto a tape and gave it to someone else, the RIAA would have given me a fricking medal. It's free advertising on non-durable media. They LOVE their shoddy ass media.
I've got 2 milk crates of tapes that I bought for around 10 dollars a piece, and only about 1 in 10 still plays worth a damn. I've got around 500 cd's that I've bought for between 12 and 18 dollars a piece. Couple of years ago I had almost 900, but some crackhead busted a window out of my car and swiped 2 cases from my backseat.
I don't see them falling over themselves to defend my property rights. As far as they're concerned, that money I spent got me nothing but a cheap piece of plastic, and when that's broken or gone, that's my problem. Well, I disagee.
Far as I'm concerned, I can fileshare for 10 more years at the rate I'm going and the RIAA is STILL going to owe me money. They want to kick down my door, charge me 150000 a song and slap a felony on my ass so I can't vote against their little butt boys, they can give it their best shot.
To the best of my understanding, there is no law against quoting from a book, for any reason, as long as your attribution is correct. This has been the case forever, and is well understood.
The thing is, a sampled piece of music is governed my completely different laws. There was a band called "The Verve" who put together a song which sampled a symphonic recording of an old Stones tune. They lost 100% of the song's profits in the ensuing lawsuit. Nothing to do with attribution.
The music business has been about trying to own everything about the music for a long time. This whole mess is to nail down whether or not they will succeed.
In some ways, it's worse than that. A good recent example from the world of gaming: Master of Orion III. Went gold before it ever got released. Huge dissapointment to a lot of people. Made a LOT of money. Sold because everyone who loved Moo II was willing to gamble on the sequel. The stores bought it because Moo II sold a lot of copies.
Just because you are discerning, doesn't mean you can't pick up some crappy software, especially crappy games. You see good screenshots, you hear good sound clips, nice cinematics, good storyline, so you buy it and poof, the interface sucks, the whole thing is a complete waste. I've got a whole box of crap like that sitting by my desk.
Microsoft is the best in the world at one thing: making you buy their damn products. Savvy people can not buy their stuff, and it will put a dent in their profits. However, there are plenty of suckers out there who will buy the stuff.
Ever notice how books top the bestseller list before they can be bought by the public? You know why? Because the people who BUY books are not consumers: They are bookstores.
Same goes with the Xbox. Microsoft sells to electronics stores. If an Xbox is in the store, they've sold it already. If an Xbox game is in the store, it's already been sold.
Microsoft doesn't care if the consumer buys more games, they just care if the retail store buys more games. Admittedly they are connected, but you have to remember that it is possible for MS to break even on a product that is ONLY bought by the retail chains, and never sold to a single person. Indeed, they can make a very nice profit if the hype is effective.
Put two people in a room and they won't agree about everything to do with ethics. Put 10 people in a room, they may agree about something ethical.
Take a million people. They will only agree that murder is bad, and even that won't be unanimous.
Whenever someone tries to nail down a few rules of human behavior and then tries to call it "ethics" I always want to go beat the hell out of them. In this case, the guy seems to be trying to isolate 2 things: Empathy and Politeness. Considering that 90% of the human race is massively deficient in these qualities, pardon me if I don't hold faith. And the fact that he PATENTS it is infuriating! Don't those bastards at the patent office turn down ANYTHING?
He might be dangerous if he knew what the word "ethics" means.
Just because the printer market is not monopolized does not mean that this is not unfair competition. Think about it.
The PRINTER market is not monopolized. However printers and printer INK are two different things. By denying other ink makers the right to compete at all, Lexmark is creating a situation in which only they can sell a product. They are creating a little ink monopoly. This is illegal.
Now, whether or not the courts will see it that way or not, who the hell knows?
That's easy to say, but all of us here tend to be on the end that knows something about this stuff, which puts us on the opposite end from the people who make the purchasing descisions. My boss buys stuff from whichever vendor gives him the best toys.
Oh yea, the convenience of a wave of the hand. You itch your nose, you hang up on someone. You swat a bug, you auto-dial your mother in law. You start making out with your significant other, and your OTHER significant other plays you a tape of it off their answering machine. Oh yea, can't WAIT for this one to come out!
Slashdot Mirror
If computer gaming does nothing but make you better then why can't I get laid? I'm getting gypped here!
Anything can be done, but only given infinite resources. All you have to do is put it in terms of cost.
"I can do X, but if I do X, I won't be able to do Y or Z and these things are more important."
Usually, as long as you are compentent, being overworked is not a crime. I got fired once from a place where they believed I wasn't competent because I didn't spend all my time pointing out all the things I did. They found out afterward that it was impossible to hire a replacement (because no one else in town had the combination of my skill set and my willingness to work for practically nothing), and that, without someone doing my job, they couldn't support 3 of their largest clients, who accounted for the vast majority of their revinue. A little instant karma for them, bastards.
I should have been clearer.
I think the RIAA believes that you're buying a piece of plastic, which happens to have content on it, and that all your rights to the content hinge on the plastic.
I personally think that you're buying rights to the content, which makes the CD itself immaterial as it is simply a medium, with no inherent value.
Regardless of who's doing it, and their chances/likelihood of needing an orbital reboot, I'm glad to see someone not stuck on 40 year old technology trying something new. Christ I remember watching the first space shuttle landing when I was like 4. They treat it like it's great and proven tech, but its performance/cost ratio is awful.
Anything to get some new ideas floating around nasa.
Just my opinion.
I can't see switching to UDP as adding a lot of efficiency. Most applications that use udp are really fault tolerant (streaming video, games, etc), whereas most internet traffic gets screwy if packets are vanishing all over the place.
It's an interesting problem though. Decreasing the time before time out should help, or maybe some randomness in the time it takes to drop someone. It would be hard to build up a pattern that way.
Just a thought.
I share files. I share a lot of files. Video and audio; no porn or anything gross, but if you want an episode of the simpsons or south park, I'm yer guy. I share music too, and a good bit of it I own on CD.
Here's the thing. I never rip anything. I've got a nice fast cable connection, and it's not worth it to me to go dig through my car looking for something when I can just grab it online. So everything that I share is content provided by some hypothetical individual way up the chain.
So who is to blame for this? Say I grab a file from some guy running on 56k, then I distribute that to 3 million people. According to the RIAA I would be liable for 3 million downloads, which is fair, but so would the orginal guy, which is clearly not, even though he was the original violator, and the only person in the situation who definitely owned the media. The reality of the situation would be different still; I'd probably upload it to a couple dozen people (my upload pipe is pretty skinny), and they'd all upload it to 12 people, etc. And ALL of us would be liable for the 3 million downloads, which is completely absurd.
Part of the problem is, there isn't any real way to tell, aside from having my ISP provide an exact record of the stuff that came and went from my computer, which I know for a FACT they're not doing (since I work for them). So there is no way to know how many times the file has been shared. I sure as hell don't know.
Since it is impossible to determine how many times the file was shared, it is impossible to know what the damages ought to be. The RIAA is going off on this hypothetical crap, "Millions of times! Billions of dollars!" but there is no way they're going to be able to hold that up in court, especially not with so many defendants. If nothing else, their inability to prove damages is going to hurt their case. I can see a jury levying a multi-million dollar judgement on a huge corporation for the benefit of some everyday joe, but I really can't see them doing the reverse.
Just my opinion.
The RIAA is trying to confuse the issue in many ways. Part of it is that they're treating CD's and music as 2 different things.
.25 cent piece of plastic.
When you buy the CD you're not buying rights to the music at all. Fair use for them covers little more than the right to play your own CD, just not in a really big crowd. If the media is destroyed, you no longer have any rights to the content, because the content isn't what you paid for.
In this sense, whatever happens to your CD's your rights are gone. If you can't play them for any reason, that's your tough luck.
The thing is, you're not really buying a physical thing. What you're buying is content. Not to say that you have unlimited rights to it, but it is clear that you DO have rights to the content, otherwise there would be no possible justification for charging 18.00 for a
That being the case, it is crystal clear that you have a right to backups, seeing as you paid for the content. But what is unique about your CD? Nothing. Someday they may try and watermark every single CD, but not today. So what distinguishes your backup from someone elses? A few random numbers of a hash algorythim? Doesn't seem like enough to deny you your right to the content that you've paid for.
Just my opinion.
One of the arguments I hear most from the linux community is that the windows "Software monoculture" is bad for security, bad for innovation, and bad for the user. Competition is healthy, competition makes you strong.
Sure Gnome beats the snot out of KDE, but does that mean KDE is serving no useful purpose? I frankly am completely unimpressed by an argument setting windows up as the standard to be emulated. What can really be learned from windows explorer? How to make your GUI more important than the underlying code? How to make sure you can't do any of that awful "customization" thing?
Adoption of the linux desktop relies on the same thing that the adoption of every other desktop depends on: familiarity, or the willingness to learn. Is there somethign about Gnome or KDE that would be hard for the average computer user to pick up?
The factors slowing linux's adoption on the average desktop really have very little to do with the fact that there are multiple desktop environments.
Just my opinion.
First of all, NO, TRUST ME, you do not have to initiate the conversation. AT ALL. I used these damn things for more than a year, it's burned into my head. You push the button, and then you start talking.
Handy fact, in case you have an annoying boss who jabbers on and on about nothing: If you push the talk button on your side, all you get is an annoying beep, but if you push the "cancel" button, THEY get the annoying beep, and it may startle them enough that you can mash down your own talk button and get a word in...Or you can HOLD DOWN THE BUTTON FOREVER! Let them hear nothing but your maniacal laughter! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!
Just my opinion.
NOT MY PERSONAL INFO! NOOOOOOOOO!
This isn't just nothing new, it's old news. Wasn't this how they caught the guy who wrote the melissa virus? When that little popup window from MS Office came up asking for their personal info, did they just think Office was trying to get to know them better, in order to be their friend?
It's just silly pressmongering. Those dumbasses have to come up with a terrifying computer factoid every day, or the ignorant compu-phobes they prey on might come to their senses.
Just my opinion.
The reason is, "If a virus is 20megs in size, only an idiot would download it."
Seriously. I guess you could make it to add a little random garbage at the end of every file to change the size, but that wouldn't fool a heuristics scanner, much less something that's actually got a piece of the code to compare.
The best you can get at this point is something that crawls network shares, or scans multiple ports, and that's not thinking, that's just idiot savant mode, which is about as good as it gets for a small piece of software.
Just my opinion.
It's not like they can say, "We don't have a counter for this yet, so lets not develop it or think about it, and hope the rest of the world is too dumb to figure out how to jam cell phones, or triangulate our position from out radio broadcasts."
Anyway, this stuff is nothign new, it's just a new way to deploy things we could already do. Jam cell phones? Easy. Mine gets jammed 1000000 times a day (SouthernLink==SuckyLink). And triangulation is easy enough as well.
Think if I get some good friends over at the Pentagon, and a GPS handheld, that they'd let me call in tactical strikes on annoying cellphone users? Talk about a peace dividend!
Just My Opinion
Imagine, if you will, sitting in a car with a hot member of the opposite sex...Okay, make that just a member of the opposite sex, since this is /.
Things are going well...VERY well. And then, with no warning, your phone makes a little BRRREEP noise, and a voice says LOUDLY, "Hey man, you get any on that date tonight?"
This is a technology that has few practical applications, and offers a whole WORLD of annoying possibilities.
Just my opinion.
Ooooo, it checks FILE NAMES. And poorly too. That's a very simple text search if all it does is pattern match on that level...Like the profanity filters that will catch "Wish it" or "Cockpit". There is no WAY they are getting anything that even resembles useful information. If PAC and MAN are in the search criteria, I'm surprised they bothered to send out any letters at all.
First of all, that fricking PAC MAN is worthy of that kind of vigilant enforcement is mind boggling. And second that they're willing to poin the finger on so little evidence... I've played that infiltration mod for unreal. Even the most cursory check would show that it violated no copyrights and no IP laws, and, especially that it wasn't fricking PACMAN!
This kind of thing is good, because it shows very clearly the flaws and the flawed minds behind the DMCA.
Now, I'm off to put a bunch of files with misleading filenames up on my site.
The whole thing is stupid, because it should never ahve gone to the supreme court.
If an election is "too close to call" which means, "within the statistical margin of error" which certainly applied, the issue is supposed to go to the damn legislature, not the supreme court. The executive and legislative branches elect supreme court justices, not the other way around.
Fritz is only leaving office the same way Strom went...Feet first.
Don't let the D fool you, he's about as conservative as they come.
And for the record, I think there are too many puppies in this thread. =P
I do a lot of database work. I guarantee I'd trip some of these record-bombs just doing my job.
I mean, most times I'm supposed to be looking for weird stuff. I mean, right now I have access to info on people that I KNOW would be appalled to find out someone is privy to everything about some private part of their life. I don't get my jollies off it or anything, but there is no way I can fix some of these problems without ever taking a look at the actual data.
Now, I could hack together some access controls, or just a little snoop program that tells some administrator who's been browsing his files without having to hide a bunch of stupid fake entries. Seems like that would be a better solution, and that's old, proven tech.
Just my opinion.
Whatever. 10 years ago, if I copied a bunch of songs onto a tape and gave it to someone else, the RIAA would have given me a fricking medal. It's free advertising on non-durable media. They LOVE their shoddy ass media.
I've got 2 milk crates of tapes that I bought for around 10 dollars a piece, and only about 1 in 10 still plays worth a damn. I've got around 500 cd's that I've bought for between 12 and 18 dollars a piece. Couple of years ago I had almost 900, but some crackhead busted a window out of my car and swiped 2 cases from my backseat.
I don't see them falling over themselves to defend my property rights. As far as they're concerned, that money I spent got me nothing but a cheap piece of plastic, and when that's broken or gone, that's my problem. Well, I disagee.
Far as I'm concerned, I can fileshare for 10 more years at the rate I'm going and the RIAA is STILL going to owe me money. They want to kick down my door, charge me 150000 a song and slap a felony on my ass so I can't vote against their little butt boys, they can give it their best shot.
To the best of my understanding, there is no law against quoting from a book, for any reason, as long as your attribution is correct. This has been the case forever, and is well understood.
The thing is, a sampled piece of music is governed my completely different laws. There was a band called "The Verve" who put together a song which sampled a symphonic recording of an old Stones tune. They lost 100% of the song's profits in the ensuing lawsuit. Nothing to do with attribution.
The music business has been about trying to own everything about the music for a long time. This whole mess is to nail down whether or not they will succeed.
In some ways, it's worse than that. A good recent example from the world of gaming: Master of Orion III. Went gold before it ever got released. Huge dissapointment to a lot of people. Made a LOT of money. Sold because everyone who loved Moo II was willing to gamble on the sequel. The stores bought it because Moo II sold a lot of copies.
Just because you are discerning, doesn't mean you can't pick up some crappy software, especially crappy games. You see good screenshots, you hear good sound clips, nice cinematics, good storyline, so you buy it and poof, the interface sucks, the whole thing is a complete waste. I've got a whole box of crap like that sitting by my desk.
Microsoft is the best in the world at one thing: making you buy their damn products. Savvy people can not buy their stuff, and it will put a dent in their profits. However, there are plenty of suckers out there who will buy the stuff.
People always miss the point on retail sales.
Ever notice how books top the bestseller list before they can be bought by the public? You know why? Because the people who BUY books are not consumers: They are bookstores.
Same goes with the Xbox. Microsoft sells to electronics stores. If an Xbox is in the store, they've sold it already. If an Xbox game is in the store, it's already been sold.
Microsoft doesn't care if the consumer buys more games, they just care if the retail store buys more games. Admittedly they are connected, but you have to remember that it is possible for MS to break even on a product that is ONLY bought by the retail chains, and never sold to a single person. Indeed, they can make a very nice profit if the hype is effective.
Put two people in a room and they won't agree about everything to do with ethics. Put 10 people in a room, they may agree about something ethical.
Take a million people. They will only agree that murder is bad, and even that won't be unanimous.
Whenever someone tries to nail down a few rules of human behavior and then tries to call it "ethics" I always want to go beat the hell out of them. In this case, the guy seems to be trying to isolate 2 things: Empathy and Politeness. Considering that 90% of the human race is massively deficient in these qualities, pardon me if I don't hold faith. And the fact that he PATENTS it is infuriating! Don't those bastards at the patent office turn down ANYTHING?
He might be dangerous if he knew what the word "ethics" means.
Just my opinion.
Just because the printer market is not monopolized does not mean that this is not unfair competition. Think about it.
The PRINTER market is not monopolized. However printers and printer INK are two different things. By denying other ink makers the right to compete at all, Lexmark is creating a situation in which only they can sell a product. They are creating a little ink monopoly. This is illegal.
Now, whether or not the courts will see it that way or not, who the hell knows?
That's easy to say, but all of us here tend to be on the end that knows something about this stuff, which puts us on the opposite end from the people who make the purchasing descisions. My boss buys stuff from whichever vendor gives him the best toys.
Oh yea, the convenience of a wave of the hand. You itch your nose, you hang up on someone. You swat a bug, you auto-dial your mother in law. You start making out with your significant other, and your OTHER significant other plays you a tape of it off their answering machine. Oh yea, can't WAIT for this one to come out!