That's assuming a nice empty road on which to slide...
Although, I have to admit that's the scenario that did not cross my mind. When I thought about it: I pictured a biker flying into traffic (since it was an accident) or a divider or something.
I'm not sure how these things usually end up, but if you don't have the room to slide (and *not* tumble btw), then the speed of the collision definitely matters.
Maybe we're picturing something radically different here. I see a bike and rider going at the same speed. 1 accident later, the bike is stopped and the biker is continuing to fly past at the same original speed he was riding at (actually, probably less if he hit his legs on the handlebars on the way forward).
The only law that applies is that bodies in motion tend to stay in motion (biker and bike) unless acted on by another force (car stops bike, and later, wall/pavement stops biker).
The biker surely doesn't "accelerate" as result of the collision...
BTW: *momentum* is conserved in inelastic collisions, *energy* is not (though I don't think either apply to the "post-crash, biker-speed-in-the-air physics problem " -- it's simply the speed at which the accident happened).
As far as I know, this argument has been going on for ever, at least as far as the US is concerned.
Several of the founding fathers were suspicious of patents, and one actually wrote (I don't remember if it was Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson) that he felt that a patent system wasn't likely to actually *do* anything towards encouraging progress (controversial satetments this day and age in the US!).
History, in fact, seemed to suggest that issuing patents didn't actually have much of an effect on the rate of progress *at all* (comparing European countries with and without patent systems. Wish I remembered details, I think England had them, Germany didn't).
My understanding that the "compromise" was to make sure that the rights to an invention would be "temporary" -- and this clearly has always been a goal. The only reason patents are tolerated (and yes, Thomas Jefferson writes to that effect) is because of the supposed improvements they bring about to society. If the patents lasted too long, we'd lose the only reason patents exist in the first place: to serve society at large.
Since 20 years is enough for just about all software we use to become obsolete, I do think how software is handled is especially broken.
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me... Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously"
-- Benjamin Franklin
That's two.
I'm amazed that it seems incomprehensible to some people that not everybody's sole motivation in life is money.
There's definitely something wrong with his setup, I've had nothing but excellent experiences since Firebird 0.3 and pre 1.0 Mozilla (I've personally been wondering if there *are* any sites that don't work with Mozilla for well over a year. I know that they exist, but I've personally been doing my banking, work-related secure "IE only" PO sites, anything web related, essentially.)
But Slashdot? Come on man, this is one site that has always worked, whether on Linux or Windows (and I'm typing this right now from work using Linux) for me personally since before Firebird 0.3 (and I was using whatever version of Mozilla for a while before that).
Anyways, people have posted before stats on Slashdot surfers, and the sad truth was that the majority viewed on IE on Windows. This was a while back, and I couldn't find a link -- quite honestly I don't remember if they were official stats from the Taco Commander himself or another/. person speculating...
I remember that the most popular theory was that we're all at work, and most of us can't get to use the software we'd prefer...
Either that, or/. really has become totally overrun with MS paid astro-turfers (sometimes, that's my nagging suspicion!), which is skewing the stats!:P
Winamp 2 is pretty sweet as is, can play ogg files (the legal status of the MP3 format itself worries me more, honestly. What if they went "FAT" on us?), and has a functional if somewhat bare music library feature.
Just recently realized too (I'm not sure I was supposed to be surprised by this) that Winamp can use XMMS skins...
What I'm personally waiting for is a port of Mplayer or Xine to Windows -- finally, one player for Windows to handle all the formats!
Wow, the argument as I understand it is that MS allowed for continued improvements in older product, like it does occur in Linux (stability, security patches if not new features).
That's the part I don't understand. There is no *forced* upgrade when the security/stability updates are still being backported (from what I've been reading here, there's people still using 2.2!).
It's actually an honest trade (which is what doesn't always happen with closed software); you want the shiny new features? Well, you'll have to put up with not-yet-throughly tested software. There's a trade off.
If security matters to you, for example, and security patches aren't backported, *then* you're forced to upgrade, deal with new software but this time you're doing it for the sake of the same functionality. There is no trade off, you just lose (time and money).
She said that when Archipelago allowed trading to resume, it did not know that trades might be canceled.
and
Nasdaq had resumed its own trading before announcing the cancellations.
It seems that it was a system fault, in the sense that two companies in charge *screwed up* -- it wasn't a cosmic ray flipping a random bit in a computer (and what the heck can you do about that?) -- but two companies not following procedure.
So I still don't understand why not one or the other or both aren't liable for refunding the people who lost money...
My Dad used to teach philosophy classes at a university.
It blew me away when, in one of his books of philosphy (on the philosophy of logic, by some dude well over a hundred years ago -- sorry, don't remember specifics) laying on the table were several pages verbatim from an AI class I was taking at school.
I knew that philosophy was the mother of all sciences, but it struck me then how literally true that was, at least in this case.
At lot of sections that were "just" taught as CS principles actually turned out to hail from work on the philosophy of logic from way before anyone had dreamt up a computer.
Amazing.
I would argue, for instance, that The Scientific Method is grounded on philosophy and nothing else. Everything we call science stems from this.
It's all of us, deciding on "how to think". (Which, btw, is what my Dad to this day proclaims is his goal in studying philosophy, "learning to think".)
Finally, I'd imagine that studying certain sciences, like pure math, is nothing but philosphy with non-Latin characters.
I don't know details myself, but IBM is an entirely different beast than Walmart when it comes to IP anyways.
I would be surprised if IBM didn't have tons of lawyers on hand. With its IP portofolio (largest number of pantents per year of any company in any industry anywhere in the world, for over a decade running), I'd imagine IP battles are a daily, on-going thing at IBM.
Actually, I wonder how this fits into SCO's version of the story: the busiest and most prodigious owner of "IP" in the world has also been the first mega-corp to embrace Linux (and, again, by a wide margin). You'd think it'd be IBM and not SCO that would stand to lose the most from Linux (if Darl's bizarro logic actually applied to this dimension).
I didn't think my first "old coot" post would come so soon....
Geez, I'm happily running with a 533 Celeron -- and until this article I would not have said that I was running an ancient machine.
At any rate, I watch videos, DVDs, surf, play games (GAT3 only at lowest resolution -- still better than what it looks like on the TV though!, Diablo, Counter Strike, Age of Mythology, etc.), rip, burn etc. etc.
It's just funny to read that people are "making do" with only 2.6 GHz processors...
I guess my next computer certainly won't cost me a thousand dollars (like the one I'm still using), since a bottom of the barrell, technology from two years ago will still be overkill for whatever I might want to do!
I thought they were innovators, making their living from "inventing" and "creating" useful things.
If that's where their money came from, I'd be jealous but happy for them.
This is *not* doing what they should be doing.
Look, FAT has value only because it was freely and widely used. It's not a magical filesystem that no one else could have created. If these restrictions had been there from the beginning, then I would also say things were "fair". But, to give it away so that peope can come to depend on it and then all of a sudden claim that it's "technology" that you have monetary rights for is indeen underhanded.
It may well be all fine and dandy within the scope of the law (maybe that's the only thing you're arguing), but that doesn't make it ethical, nor what a supposed "technology" company that "invents" and "innovates" does for a living. It might be what MS does, but it's nothing more than legislating for dollars.
If anything, Stallman's probably right: we should avoid all propietary software for exactly these underhanded reasons. And maybe people won't be so quick to poo-poo the efforts to create patent-free standards and formats (like ogg, etc.).
My problem is that companies, supposedly, gain revenue from some sort of service or innovation. This doesn't fit either, it's really not much better than extortion (the value of FAT is artificial, and only valuable now *because* all were once free to use it).
Most clueless computer users can't and never have installed Windows themselves, either.
Besides, the Red Hat installer (I can't speak personally to any other) already surpases windows installs in many cases -- and if the hardware were guaranteed to work (non-insignificant home Linux user base, with hardware makers providing drivers as they do with windows) -- the Linux installation experience is already vastly superior to installing windows. Easier, faster less hassle.
I really don't think it's that critical -- but what happens after you turn on the computer is (will it do everything grandma needs it to? Play MP3s out of the box? At least let you blindingly easily install what you need to play MP3s from the net?). That's the part that needs work, IMHO.
I think it's hard to imagine, because I know for me it's trivial (I have bookmarks, I understand I need xmms/mplayer/xine, I know I want an RPM and it needs to be the correct RPM for my particular case), so going from a fresh install of Red Hat 9 to adding the bits I need to rip/re encode/watch/listen to DVD's MP3s, CDs, all video formats, etc. is trivial for me.
That's exactly where grandma would get stuck, IMHO (won't play my MP3s, what the hell do they do? They're not even going to know to "google" for "xmms" -- how would they?)
I don't know, maybe I'm too cynical, but the day that gradma can buy an electronic gadget at Walgreen's and make it work with her Linux box won't come until there is significant market share, and the peripheral makers have Linux in mind (as they do with windows -- that's where window's "ease of use" really come from anyways -- I personally think it has next to nothing to with anything Microsoft might have done, and it has everything to do with the fact that hardware, software makers can safely assume you'll be running one of a few flavors of Windows, and they try to make sure you have everything you need in the box to get going).
You are correct in that, until we make first contact, this will all be speculation.
The fact is, though, the universe could be teeming with life (intelligent, space-faring aliens) and we'd still likely not know it -- it's a damn big place.
However, it's just as innacurate, and speculative, to state that we are *it*, because we also definitely do *not* know that either -- and if we're taking about speculation, I actually think it's safer to bet on life already existing in some form elsewhere (again, just based on the sheer size of what we're talking about here).
Put it another way, the fact that we haven't yet met little green guys in no way proves that they aren't there. But, assuming that we have to be the best thing this universe has yet created (all based on "hey, the Martians haven't yet come to my house") is assuming a lot, and can be viewed as simple arrogance (since you have no other reason to think so -- certainly there's no proof for that claim either).
I don't think it's that simple. It's not as if "3rd world countries" have a different set of values or something. Mostly, I think, it's that for people of these countries, paying for the software just isn't within the realm of possibilities.
It would probably make more sense to catalogue everything that should be in your body, and destroy everything that fails to identity itself
I think that's exactly how white blood cells work (my bio class was a while ago, maybe the details are all off), they recognize all the proteins that all your cells make, and destroy any cells that they encounter that are making stuff that's not recognized. I seem to remember that they are "trained" in the bone marrow, before they are let loose in your body to make sure they have a complete "catalog" of your bodily chemicals (proteins?) and don't go out and attack normal cells.
I'm not sure why this isn't effective with cancer cells (hmmm... are cancer cells completely normal cells, and thus not attacked as foreign, except that they are reproducing uncontrollably fast?).
As to your question, hmmm..., I'm not sure that I'd trust MS with my immune system -- can you imagine? We would end up literally absorbed by the Collective then, looking like the Bill Gates icon on slashdot.
It's not that the WTO is threatening military action agains the US. But what it is doing, is that Asia/Europe (since they do seem to respect international law) are now justified in putting in place their own tariffs.
Someone above posted saying that exports don't matter to the US economy, but I do find that hard to believe.
At any rate, it's not the WTO organization itself, it's the rest of the world that, using the WTO ruling, can now justifiably retaliate (and it seems like Asia and Europe are licking their chops over this).
RMS told us, the OS includes compilers, editors, sorting and searching utilities, and of course, a chess program.
Ok, I'm guessing that you're kidding, but I have a hard time believing that RMS ever said that. In fact, he seems to be criticized for being exact in his descriptions. So, he's likely to say stuff like kernel != OS, but that's not what you're claiming.
I assume the problem is not the players itself, but to dominate the formats of the videos that we watch (and that way control the software we have to use).
Granted, I haven't played videos using Windows in quite a while, so I'm not sure at this point if Windows Media Player will let you, for instance, view a Quicktime video and vice-versa.
If 99% percent of the "ignorant masses" use a particular format, what choices will anyone else be left with? Sure, you'll be able to view the videos you recorded yourself, but that's not much use when you want to view video content on the BBC (for instance, I know the BBC actually uses RealPlayer). And what choices will the BBC be left with in order to serve its video?
I think that's the lock-in (enabled by the MS monopoly of the desktop).
Slashdot Mirror
That's assuming a nice empty road on which to slide...
Although, I have to admit that's the scenario that did not cross my mind. When I thought about it: I pictured a biker flying into traffic (since it was an accident) or a divider or something.
I'm not sure how these things usually end up, but if you don't have the room to slide (and *not* tumble btw), then the speed of the collision definitely matters.
Collisions?
...
Maybe we're picturing something radically different here. I see a bike and rider going at the same speed. 1 accident later, the bike is stopped and the biker is continuing to fly past at the same original speed he was riding at (actually, probably less if he hit his legs on the handlebars on the way forward).
The only law that applies is that bodies in motion tend to stay in motion (biker and bike) unless acted on by another force (car stops bike, and later, wall/pavement stops biker).
The biker surely doesn't "accelerate" as result of the collision
BTW: *momentum* is conserved in inelastic collisions, *energy* is not (though I don't think either apply to the "post-crash, biker-speed-in-the-air physics problem " -- it's simply the speed at which the accident happened).
As far as I know, this argument has been going on for ever, at least as far as the US is concerned.
Several of the founding fathers were suspicious of patents, and one actually wrote (I don't remember if it was Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson) that he felt that a patent system wasn't likely to actually *do* anything towards encouraging progress (controversial satetments this day and age in the US!).
History, in fact, seemed to suggest that issuing patents didn't actually have much of an effect on the rate of progress *at all* (comparing European countries with and without patent systems. Wish I remembered details, I think England had them, Germany didn't).
My understanding that the "compromise" was to make sure that the rights to an invention would be "temporary" -- and this clearly has always been a goal. The only reason patents are tolerated (and yes, Thomas Jefferson writes to that effect) is because of the supposed improvements they bring about to society. If the patents lasted too long, we'd lose the only reason patents exist in the first place: to serve society at large.
Since 20 years is enough for just about all software we use to become obsolete, I do think how software is handled is especially broken.
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me... Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously"
-- Benjamin Franklin
That's two.
I'm amazed that it seems incomprehensible to some people that not everybody's sole motivation in life is money.
There's definitely something wrong with his setup, I've had nothing but excellent experiences since Firebird 0.3 and pre 1.0 Mozilla (I've personally been wondering if there *are* any sites that don't work with Mozilla for well over a year. I know that they exist, but I've personally been doing my banking, work-related secure "IE only" PO sites, anything web related, essentially.)
/. person speculating ...
/. really has become totally overrun with MS paid astro-turfers (sometimes, that's my nagging suspicion!), which is skewing the stats! :P
But Slashdot? Come on man, this is one site that has always worked, whether on Linux or Windows (and I'm typing this right now from work using Linux) for me personally since before Firebird 0.3 (and I was using whatever version of Mozilla for a while before that).
Anyways, people have posted before stats on Slashdot surfers, and the sad truth was that the majority viewed on IE on Windows. This was a while back, and I couldn't find a link -- quite honestly I don't remember if they were official stats from the Taco Commander himself or another
I remember that the most popular theory was that we're all at work, and most of us can't get to use the software we'd prefer...
Either that, or
Winamp 2 is pretty sweet as is, can play ogg files (the legal status of the MP3 format itself worries me more, honestly. What if they went "FAT" on us?), and has a functional if somewhat bare music library feature.
...
Just recently realized too (I'm not sure I was supposed to be surprised by this) that Winamp can use XMMS skins
What I'm personally waiting for is a port of Mplayer or Xine to Windows -- finally, one player for Windows to handle all the formats!
Wow, it seems you're right.
Kinda telling, isn't it?
Wow, the argument as I understand it is that MS allowed for continued improvements in older product, like it does occur in Linux (stability, security patches if not new features).
That's the part I don't understand. There is no *forced* upgrade when the security/stability updates are still being backported (from what I've been reading here, there's people still using 2.2!).
It's actually an honest trade (which is what doesn't always happen with closed software); you want the shiny new features? Well, you'll have to put up with not-yet-throughly tested software. There's a trade off.
If security matters to you, for example, and security patches aren't backported, *then* you're forced to upgrade, deal with new software but this time you're doing it for the sake of the same functionality. There is no trade off, you just lose (time and money).
She said that when Archipelago allowed trading to resume, it did not know that trades might be canceled.
...
and
Nasdaq had resumed its own trading before announcing the cancellations.
It seems that it was a system fault, in the sense that two companies in charge *screwed up* -- it wasn't a cosmic ray flipping a random bit in a computer (and what the heck can you do about that?) -- but two companies not following procedure.
So I still don't understand why not one or the other or both aren't liable for refunding the people who lost money
My Dad used to teach philosophy classes at a university.
It blew me away when, in one of his books of philosphy (on the philosophy of logic, by some dude well over a hundred years ago -- sorry, don't remember specifics) laying on the table were several pages verbatim from an AI class I was taking at school.
I knew that philosophy was the mother of all sciences, but it struck me then how literally true that was, at least in this case.
At lot of sections that were "just" taught as CS principles actually turned out to hail from work on the philosophy of logic from way before anyone had dreamt up a computer.
Amazing.
I would argue, for instance, that The Scientific Method is grounded on philosophy and nothing else. Everything we call science stems from this.
It's all of us, deciding on "how to think". (Which, btw, is what my Dad to this day proclaims is his goal in studying philosophy, "learning to think".)
Finally, I'd imagine that studying certain sciences, like pure math, is nothing but philosphy with non-Latin characters.
I don't know details myself, but IBM is an entirely different beast than Walmart when it comes to IP anyways.
I would be surprised if IBM didn't have tons of lawyers on hand. With its IP portofolio (largest number of pantents per year of any company in any industry anywhere in the world, for over a decade running), I'd imagine IP battles are a daily, on-going thing at IBM.
Actually, I wonder how this fits into SCO's version of the story: the busiest and most prodigious owner of "IP" in the world has also been the first mega-corp to embrace Linux (and, again, by a wide margin). You'd think it'd be IBM and not SCO that would stand to lose the most from Linux (if Darl's bizarro logic actually applied to this dimension).
Exactly, especially with Darl's letter claiming that they're eager to get to court and prove their case.
... I'm getting jaded here!
...
I was hoping that the axe would fall today (since there was going to be some court action), so maybe it'll fall in 30 days.
Honestly, I've personally been under the impression that the axe was just about to fall for a while now
Off with their heads already! My popcorn's gotten cold
I didn't think my first "old coot" post would come so soon ....
...
Geez, I'm happily running with a 533 Celeron -- and until this article I would not have said that I was running an ancient machine.
At any rate, I watch videos, DVDs, surf, play games (GAT3 only at lowest resolution -- still better than what it looks like on the TV though!, Diablo, Counter Strike, Age of Mythology, etc.), rip, burn etc. etc.
It's just funny to read that people are "making do" with only 2.6 GHz processors
I guess my next computer certainly won't cost me a thousand dollars (like the one I'm still using), since a bottom of the barrell, technology from two years ago will still be overkill for whatever I might want to do!
For once, Microsoft is doing what they should do
I thought they were innovators, making their living from "inventing" and "creating" useful things.
If that's where their money came from, I'd be jealous but happy for them.
This is *not* doing what they should be doing.
Look, FAT has value only because it was freely and widely used. It's not a magical filesystem that no one else could have created. If these restrictions had been there from the beginning, then I would also say things were "fair". But, to give it away so that peope can come to depend on it and then all of a sudden claim that it's "technology" that you have monetary rights for is indeen underhanded.
It may well be all fine and dandy within the scope of the law (maybe that's the only thing you're arguing), but that doesn't make it ethical, nor what a supposed "technology" company that "invents" and "innovates" does for a living. It might be what MS does, but it's nothing more than legislating for dollars.
If anything, Stallman's probably right: we should avoid all propietary software for exactly these underhanded reasons. And maybe people won't be so quick to poo-poo the efforts to create patent-free standards and formats (like ogg, etc.).
My problem is that companies, supposedly, gain revenue from some sort of service or innovation. This doesn't fit either, it's really not much better than extortion (the value of FAT is artificial, and only valuable now *because* all were once free to use it).
If we had trusted computing, we never might have seen the message.
No, I think it is silly.
Most clueless computer users can't and never have installed Windows themselves, either.
Besides, the Red Hat installer (I can't speak personally to any other) already surpases windows installs in many cases -- and if the hardware were guaranteed to work (non-insignificant home Linux user base, with hardware makers providing drivers as they do with windows) -- the Linux installation experience is already vastly superior to installing windows. Easier, faster less hassle.
I really don't think it's that critical -- but what happens after you turn on the computer is (will it do everything grandma needs it to? Play MP3s out of the box? At least let you blindingly easily install what you need to play MP3s from the net?). That's the part that needs work, IMHO.
I think it's hard to imagine, because I know for me it's trivial (I have bookmarks, I understand I need xmms/mplayer/xine, I know I want an RPM and it needs to be the correct RPM for my particular case), so going from a fresh install of Red Hat 9 to adding the bits I need to rip/re encode/watch/listen to DVD's MP3s, CDs, all video formats, etc. is trivial for me.
That's exactly where grandma would get stuck, IMHO (won't play my MP3s, what the hell do they do? They're not even going to know to "google" for "xmms" -- how would they?)
I don't know, maybe I'm too cynical, but the day that gradma can buy an electronic gadget at Walgreen's and make it work with her Linux box won't come until there is significant market share, and the peripheral makers have Linux in mind (as they do with windows -- that's where window's "ease of use" really come from anyways -- I personally think it has next to nothing to with anything Microsoft might have done, and it has everything to do with the fact that hardware, software makers can safely assume you'll be running one of a few flavors of Windows, and they try to make sure you have everything you need in the box to get going).
You are correct in that, until we make first contact, this will all be speculation.
The fact is, though, the universe could be teeming with life (intelligent, space-faring aliens) and we'd still likely not know it -- it's a damn big place.
However, it's just as innacurate, and speculative, to state that we are *it*, because we also definitely do *not* know that either -- and if we're taking about speculation, I actually think it's safer to bet on life already existing in some form elsewhere (again, just based on the sheer size of what we're talking about here).
Put it another way, the fact that we haven't yet met little green guys in no way proves that they aren't there. But, assuming that we have to be the best thing this universe has yet created (all based on "hey, the Martians haven't yet come to my house") is assuming a lot, and can be viewed as simple arrogance (since you have no other reason to think so -- certainly there's no proof for that claim either).
I don't think it's that simple. It's not as if "3rd world countries" have a different set of values or something. Mostly, I think, it's that for people of these countries, paying for the software just isn't within the realm of possibilities.
It would probably make more sense to catalogue everything that should be in your body, and destroy everything that fails to identity itself
..., I'm not sure that I'd trust MS with my immune system -- can you imagine? We would end up literally absorbed by the Collective then, looking like the Bill Gates icon on slashdot.
I think that's exactly how white blood cells work (my bio class was a while ago, maybe the details are all off), they recognize all the proteins that all your cells make, and destroy any cells that they encounter that are making stuff that's not recognized. I seem to remember that they are "trained" in the bone marrow, before they are let loose in your body to make sure they have a complete "catalog" of your bodily chemicals (proteins?) and don't go out and attack normal cells.
I'm not sure why this isn't effective with cancer cells (hmmm... are cancer cells completely normal cells, and thus not attacked as foreign, except that they are reproducing uncontrollably fast?).
As to your question, hmmm
It's not that the WTO is threatening military action agains the US. But what it is doing, is that Asia/Europe (since they do seem to respect international law) are now justified in putting in place their own tariffs.
Someone above posted saying that exports don't matter to the US economy, but I do find that hard to believe.
At any rate, it's not the WTO organization itself, it's the rest of the world that, using the WTO ruling, can now justifiably retaliate (and it seems like Asia and Europe are licking their chops over this).
"Threaten" to walk away?
I don't think MS has this sort of leverage. I think Europe could ban MS -- this doesn't mean formatting every European's hardrive.
All it would mean is that the next upgrade cycle would necessarily be something else, that's all.
I can see how Microsoft loses, I don't see how Europe would lose.
RMS told us, the OS includes compilers, editors, sorting and searching utilities, and of course, a chess program.
Ok, I'm guessing that you're kidding, but I have a hard time believing that RMS ever said that. In fact, he seems to be criticized for being exact in his descriptions. So, he's likely to say stuff like kernel != OS, but that's not what you're claiming.
I assume the problem is not the players itself, but to dominate the formats of the videos that we watch (and that way control the software we have to use).
Granted, I haven't played videos using Windows in quite a while, so I'm not sure at this point if Windows Media Player will let you, for instance, view a Quicktime video and vice-versa.
If 99% percent of the "ignorant masses" use a particular format, what choices will anyone else be left with? Sure, you'll be able to view the videos you recorded yourself, but that's not much use when you want to view video content on the BBC (for instance, I know the BBC actually uses RealPlayer). And what choices will the BBC be left with in order to serve its video?
I think that's the lock-in (enabled by the MS monopoly of the desktop).
Why, in a world without IP protection, would anyone give away their source code? That part is poorly explained in FSF philosophy
In a world without IP protection, we wouldn't have to protect all the GPL software since it would no longer be possible to "hijack it".
I think it's not explained because it's obvious.
Why copy MS, who's usually late, with the crappiest first-time implementation? (as they copy technoloy, not invent it).
Apple, I thought, had already done this. So why refer to what is most likely an inferior implementation by MS?