It protects your IP (assuming you have any) from predatory behavior from mega-corporations.
What IP? Are you talking about patents? Copyright? Trade Secrets? IP covers a number of unrelated legal mechanisms.
The only part of "IP" patents protect are patents themselves. Obvious, really. It does nothing to protect existing copyrights, which is the sort of "intellectual property" that the majority of IT people are likely to hold. Quite the reverse.
Suppose you are an IT startup. You have a good idea, and you work hard to implement that idea using ideas that have impeccabile prior art. Then a patent gets granted to ScumBagSoft that covers part of your poduct. All of a sudden your hard work can be released or surpressed at the pleasure of ScumbagSoft. They may licence your idea back to you, but the fact remains that your product cannot be marketed except with ScumBagSoft's permission.
How has that protected your IP? The IP in this case is copyright, and patents rendered it worthless.
It wouldn't even matter if you had the patent on your idea. As Stallman pointed out, patents are granted on overlapping areas in software. The chances are your idea will infringe many other patents. Any one of the patent holders can prevent you from profiting from your "IP" simply by refusing to licence their patnet. That remains true even if you the patent on your own idea because of the way patents are granted.
You can cross licence, but that depends on the willingness of the other parties involved. As a startup, you won't be able to trade one for one with the likes of Microsoft, which means the big players can wait for your company to go bust, and then pick up rights to your patent for peanuts.
And even if licencing is an option, you could easily end up in a stiaution where you have eleven patent holders all demanding 10% of your gross.
Where's the protection in that?
You can't even afford to fight the case in court. One maybe, but not several. The threat of legislation will scare investors away, and if you can't fight the case, you can't distribute your product, and so can't recoup your expenses, let alone profit from your innovation and hard work
software patents are a GOOD thing. It protects your IP (assuming you have any) from predatory behavior from mega-corporations
Perhaps you'd like to explain how that works?
It seems to me that patents make our "IP" worthless and provide predatory mega corporations with the means to steal what is rightfully ours.
If you still disagree, feel free to explain where you feel I may be in error.
And is there some reason why you feel that copyright is insufficient to this end? It seems to have worked for Microsoft.
Perhaps you might define for us what you consider to be "real discoveries and innovations". Remember, the topic here is software patents.
And if you do feel shoftware should be patented, please explain why it deserves this double protection, apart from the ability it grants multinational software concerns to prevent free software authors from distribnuting the the software they own.
Comparing the two is a time honored tradition among the Slashdot crowd, and also an arguement that cannot be won by either side.
But the basis of comparison does exist. You may be right about the futility of the debate - it's not an aspect in which I'm interested - but to say that there are no similarities at all is unsupportable.
but the fact remains that to publically advertise an illegal use of a piece of software is something that the software manufacturers can now be held liable for.
The two are completely unrelated. Nobody dies from copyright infringement, for one thing.
That'd be the obvious difference. What are the others?
The fact that you can identify one obvious difference doesn't mean that there are no similarities.
Gun manufacturers aren't granted a safe harbour at all.
That's just plain wrong. The safe harbour term comes from the Sony Betamax case where it was ruled that Sony could not be held liable for copyright infringement resulting from use of Sony's VCRs because there were substantial non-infringin uses for the device.
In other words, because there were legit uses for the product, sony wasn't considered culpable when someone taped a TV show.
Now if the firearm manufacturers did not enjoy a similar immunity, then ever time someone was murdered using a handgun, the manufacturers would find themselves in the dock alongside the murderer.
Since this does not happen, we can conclude that firearms manufactures do indeed enjoy safe harbour provisions under law, QED.
And from that we conclude that there is at least one similarity under law between firearms and p2p software.
I get really sick of the stupid Slashdot anti-gun attitude.
You don't think you might be projecting slightly?
I have no axe to grind pro or anti gun control. And while I wonder if you could make the same statement regarding P2P technology, my only argument with you is that your reasoning is faulty.
We are entitled expect ethical behaviour from corporate leaders. Thise expectations may be increasingly unrealistic in certain cases, but we are entitled to expect and require ethical conduct.
And we are entitled to disaprove when someone like Schwartz repeatedly disappoints those expectations.
There's a presistent meme lately that it's acceptable for corporate execs to behave like scumbags because we can't expect any better. A bit like the way we tolerate misbehaviour from small children who are too young to know any better.
But Schwartz is old enough to know better. And even small children get chastised for their misdemeanors.
Gun manufacturers aren't saying "Buy a Ruger.22 so you can kill your neighbors" in any way, shape, or form. To compare the two like that is just inflammatory and stupid.
So you're not suggesting then that firearms have a substantial non-infringing use, and that the gun manufacturers should be granted some sort of safe harbour?
It certainly sounds like there might be some basis for comparison there.
I remember readiing somewhere that the police maintain that the thing that deters would be lawbreakers is not the severity of the punishment, but the likelihood of being caught.
If that's correct, and I can't provide a reference I'm afraid, then raming up fines will do nothing to slow unauthorised distribution of copyrighted materials.
And it seems unlikely that the penalty will be widely applied. There will be too many people who can't pay for a start. If the person being fined is going to have to pay it in pennies a week, it won't matter wether the fine is $100 or $1,000,000. Then there are the six year old girls and the grannies who don't understand tech and any nomber of other PR nightmares...
But what it will provide is a law that can be selectively enforced. There have been cases where unscrupulous types have planted child pronography on a rivals computer as a means to discredit them. We can imagine MP3s and DVD images being used to the same purpose.
Same holds true for Piracy... make the penalties so severe that nobody in their right mind will want to partake.
There's a historical parallel. The Agricultural Revolution in England led to a large number of displaced smallholders migrating to the cities to lead to work. Unemployment was high and crime soared. Ever harsher penalties for crimes were passed until almost every crime bore the death penalty.
It didn't work.
For one thing, juries were loathe to convict when the sentence was unjustly harsh. It also meant that otherwise petty criminals came to regard all laws with the same contempt. This is the origin of the phrase "might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb".
The penalty as deterrent idea didn't work in the 1800s and had unwanted, unforseen and undesirable repercussions. Modern law enforcement thinking, as I understand it, is likewise sceptical about deterrence-by-severity. And you know what they say about those who cannot learn from history...
It's no help researchwise, but I can say that I've found online advertsing useful precisely twice.
Once was for a corsair memory upgrade, the other was a megatokyo banner on slashdot.
Neither was a popup. The effect popup ads have on me is to get me to bar the agency responsible from my computer. Not only do they fail to sell the popup advertised product, they fail to sell me anything else, at least until my next review of my adblocking measures, possibly indefinitely.
I suppose the interesting thing about popups is that they only report successes. Those who deploy the ads have no way to evaluate the failure rate, and no way to evaluate secondary costs in missed advertising oportunities as a result of retaliatory ad blocking.
There's got to be a research proposal in there somewhere:)
Good. HSM seem to have misrepresented log data to the police in order to get Chip's home raided and his property confiscated. I would have said that was illegal. Do you concur?
If you don't like something your company is doing, let them know you don't like it. If they say, "Tough sh*t," then you have two choices -- leave on your own, or stay and suck it up. Staying and making threats against your employer isn't likely to be tolerated by anyone, anywhere.
And the next question is what constitutes an acceptable level of intolerance.
Getting shouted at by the boss - fair enough.
Instant dismissal and being escorted off the premises - a bit harsh, but I could see where the employer was coming from
Having the employee's personal possesions siezed on trumped up charges... that seems somewhat excessive.
You sympathise with Chip's predicament, but the subtext I get is that Mr. Salzenberg's naivety somehow justifies the illegal behaviour of his employers. I think there must be a limit to the sort of unpleasantness we are willing to countenance, simply because it's "just business".
That didn't work for Al Capone
and it shouldn't work
for the likes of HMS either.
HMS are deeply, massively and incredibly in the wrong over this. Let's just keep that in mind.
Up to a point. A lot of those criminals and reprobates would seem to have spent some time trying to make whistleblowing seem like a bad thing. I think there are a lot of basically good people who think whistleblowing is somehow wrong, just because of the spin its been given in them media.
So without disagreeing with you, I thought it was worth stressing that Chip wasn't blowing any whistles.
HMS fabricated evidence in order to have the police raid Chip's house and sieze his computer equipment.
Chip threatened his own employers with legal action. What do you expect them to do?
Have your expectations regading business ethics fallen so low that you expect all companies to break the law as a matter of routine? Or are you suggesting that this is acceptable behaviour for an employer? Your message reads as though you approve, which may not be what you intended to convey.
HMS was already knowingly engaged in illegal activities. So probably Chip should have expected their response to be similarly illegal. With hindsight, that seems glaringly obvious.
But to simply dismiss that the company's actions with "what do you expect?" is foolish and dangerous. If we grant acceptance to such activities what can we expect the next time some CEO decides to push the envelope?
I mean yeah, ok, ScumBagSoft sent some goons around to beat the guy senseless, rape his wife and kidnap his kids. But, you know, he was like rude to his CEO in public. What'd the guy
expect?
Chip isn't a whistleblower. Whistleblowing involves running to external authorities with a story.
Chip complained internally. That's allowed. That's ethical. He was giving his employers a chance to sort out a problem. The open proxy scam might have been in contravention of company policy.
Unlikely with hindsight, I'll grant.
OK, I'm missing your point, I know. I don't even disagree with your advice. All I'm saying is let's watch the terminology. A lot of people will thing "Whistleblower, pah! He had it coming!" when nothing is further from the truth. He got into this mess because he gave his employers the benefit of the doubt.
And if they do decide to do something as tasteless as run side-bar ads to pay for what everyone uses millions of times a day, they certainly shouldn't use any sort of technology to make those ads actually relevent or attractive to the people that the paying advertisers want to reach.
Oh look, it's a straw man. Off to see the wizard, are we?
Look, I get the idea that you think this is all about search engines, and that MS engine is (presumably) losing so much money that they need to Claria's unique expertese to make the thing profitable.
However, you're going to have to accept the fact that a lot of people will be more interested in the fact that MS are trying buy a company that earned the dubious distinction of having to change its name to stay in business. Some people are going to wonder what MS, whose reputation is hardly spotless are regards spyware, are goign to do with all that Gator expertese.
I mean its not like the desciscion is popular at MS; even you, whom I presume to be a fan of Microsoft reckon the Gator guys could use a kicking. Look at it that way and you have to wonder what planet Ballmer's on this week.
Or maybe you don't. Spin it however you like, it's all the same to me.
Wait... I've got an idea.
And don't think we're not proud of you.
If you don't like MS, don't use their free search engine, and don't patronize the thousands of merchants and other entities that choose to advertise there.
heh... I won't have to change my behaviour to implement that suggestion!
Gosh, that was complicated.
It'll get easier with practice. Thanks for sharing, now.
Think about it: ever since SCO started playing silly bugger's a couple of years back, Microsoft's position as Slimeball #1 has been under seige. Combined with increasing pressure from other sectors of industry, Microsoft were facing serious problems of the lack of ethics front.
In that light, this is clearly a strategic move aimed at firmly re-establishing MS' position as the world leaders in sleazoid corporate tricks.
Of course, if they hadn't been blocked from merging with the RIAA by those ridiculous anti-monopoly laws, they'd never have been in this postion in the first place, but that's another discussion entirely.
Once you commit a sex crime (or are convicted of ANY felony) you lose the majority of your rights.
Aye, and there's the rub.
For once the principle has been established that you hold your rights only at the indulgence of the government, then all that is required to strip you of your rights is a change in the law.
I don't have any great sympathy for sex offenders. No one does really. But if these inalienable human rights we her so much about are truly to be "inalienable" then they apply to sex offenders too.
That's the thing about rights - if they can be stripped from you at any time, then you never had them in the first place. And all they need do to remove your rights is change the law such that you are in contravention of it.
How about a bill against reading that hive of communists, jackers, pirates and other terrorists, Slashdot? I bet there are already anti-terror laws that could be bent to fit.
The RSS standard itself allows for extensions.
The extensions themselves can be standardized.
Yeah! Like XML! Of course RSS is based on XML so that makes sense.
Of course, usually when you create an extension to something, you call it something else, so as not to confuse people, or break existing apps.
That doesn't sound much like Microsoft's usual Modus Operandi though. In fact I don't think Microsoft use mean the same thing by "extend" as the RSS people mean. The RSS guys probably meant "create a standard based upon RSS but distinct from it".
When Microsoft say "extend" they generally seem to mean "Exterminate! Exterminate!"
A patent free world is an interesting idea. I suppose that your archetypal lone inventor would carry on inventing stuff, much the same way open source coders write software without expecting recompense. I expect we'd even see large scale projects co-ordinated over the internet.
The place where the comparison with FLOSS breaks down is manufacture and distribution. With software your manufacture phase involves compiling the source and distribution involves finding a friendly ftp server. Setting up a production line, raw materials, warehousing... they all involve expenditure that's absent in the software world.
Why is that important? Well, development without hope of recompense only works in the software world because production costs are negligible. This means the product can be made available for zero cost, which makes it hard for competitors to take your product and undercut your price.
On the other hand, if we're marketing, say, one-shot disposable MP3 players, then we need to charge enough to recover the costs of setting up and maintaining a production line. But once we invest that capital, we're vulnerable.
A big manufacturing concern can set up a much larger plant, or retool an existing production line, and undercut you through economies of scale. Established players can probably afford to out advertise you as well. If that happens, you may never recoup your expenditure, which would certainly discourage further projects. It's bad enough that so many new products fail, but to have one succeed only to have a competitor take it away from you...
So as far as I can see, that's the main objection you'll need to overcome before you get any sort of widespread acceptance for the idea - the problem that scrapping patents would let the big manufacturing and marketing concens dominate just about everything. Until you can explain what mechanism will stop that from happening, people are going be sceptical
Of course, if 3D printers ever live up to their promise, that'd change things considerably.
If you want digital, get Sky digital, it's like terrestrial digital, but done right. By people who actually know what they're doing. The interface done is properly, and you get all the proper channels, like Sky 1, the Sports and the film channels.
Yep, and then you can watch all the Simpsons repeats you like. And, umm.... well, it's got Simpsons repeats as well! And don't forget the Simposns repeats! Or you can pay extra for Sky Movies N where N is a large integer. Everytime N gets a subscriber, they create Sky Movies N+1 and migrate all the good stuff to that. Same for the sports so far as I can tell.
It doesn't really matter, since anything good is going to be pay-per-view regardless.
I've never seen a slashdot post in Private Eye's Eye Sky spot, but I'm strongly tempted to submit this one. Bloody astroturfers...
I'm no microsoft fan, and for Ballmer to be pushed into even these admissions suggests considerable rot below the surface.
But irrelevant? Even if MS are completely up the creek san paddle, they're still going to be very relevant to anyone with a significant investment in MS software.
At least for as long as it takes them to migrate to linux, anyway.
Re:I suggested a similar scenario to TiVo
on
P2P and TV
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· Score: 1
That's gray market... Buying the British DVD release not only distorts the British selling demographics, but it also reduces the future American sales figures
Explain to me who is hurt by this, please.
As far as I can see, this grey nonsense claptrap is just price fixing on a global scale. To cite it as an illegal activity will bring the law into disrepute sooner than it discourages anyone from buying a DVD from overseas.
But I might change my opinion if I could see the harm done. So please: who suffers from the "grey market?"
Re:Not yet ready for Prime Time
on
P2P and TV
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· Score: 1
Frankly, Roger, I think you'd be shooting yourself in the foot with that mentality.
I bet he's glad that there are all these public spirited slashdotters being so vigilant on his behalf.
I mean if it wasn't for all this very strident advice, he might go and make it work^H^H^H^H^H^H^Ha fool of himself.
And I bet no one wants that to happen.
Re:Then how is the production funded?
on
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· Score: 1
And no one's going to finance a project like this, since you've got no proven paying viewership.
That would seem to be a matter of debate. I belive John Rogers was volunteering to test the theory. If he does, we'd have facts to discuss instead of just bluster.
Look, guys: we all realize that P2P has legitimate applications. But these desperate attempts to somehow "prove" that P2P is somehow the most desirable distribution mechanism are getting tiresome.
Slashdot is a very active board, fella; there must be something around here that you can read that won't try your patience.
Really, I can't see where you're coming from here.
It's not like anyone's putting a gun to your head and forcing you to take part. Do you have some stake in this?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, really?
It protects your IP (assuming you have any) from predatory behavior from mega-corporations.
What IP? Are you talking about patents? Copyright? Trade Secrets? IP covers a number of unrelated legal mechanisms.
The only part of "IP" patents protect are patents themselves. Obvious, really. It does nothing to protect existing copyrights, which is the sort of "intellectual property" that the majority of IT people are likely to hold. Quite the reverse.
Suppose you are an IT startup. You have a good idea, and you work hard to implement that idea using ideas that have impeccabile prior art. Then a patent gets granted to ScumBagSoft that covers part of your poduct. All of a sudden your hard work can be released or surpressed at the pleasure of ScumbagSoft. They may licence your idea back to you, but the fact remains that your product cannot be marketed except with ScumBagSoft's permission.
How has that protected your IP? The IP in this case is copyright, and patents rendered it worthless.
It wouldn't even matter if you had the patent on your idea. As Stallman pointed out, patents are granted on overlapping areas in software. The chances are your idea will infringe many other patents. Any one of the patent holders can prevent you from profiting from your "IP" simply by refusing to licence their patnet. That remains true even if you the patent on your own idea because of the way patents are granted.
You can cross licence, but that depends on the willingness of the other parties involved. As a startup, you won't be able to trade one for one with the likes of Microsoft, which means the big players can wait for your company to go bust, and then pick up rights to your patent for peanuts. And even if licencing is an option, you could easily end up in a stiaution where you have eleven patent holders all demanding 10% of your gross.
Where's the protection in that?
You can't even afford to fight the case in court. One maybe, but not several. The threat of legislation will scare investors away, and if you can't fight the case, you can't distribute your product, and so can't recoup your expenses, let alone profit from your innovation and hard work
software patents are a GOOD thing. It protects your IP (assuming you have any) from predatory behavior from mega-corporations
Perhaps you'd like to explain how that works? It seems to me that patents make our "IP" worthless and provide predatory mega corporations with the means to steal what is rightfully ours.
If you still disagree, feel free to explain where you feel I may be in error.
Perhaps you might define for us what you consider to be "real discoveries and innovations". Remember, the topic here is software patents.
And if you do feel shoftware should be patented, please explain why it deserves this double protection, apart from the ability it grants multinational software concerns to prevent free software authors from distribnuting the the software they own.
But the basis of comparison does exist. You may be right about the futility of the debate - it's not an aspect in which I'm interested - but to say that there are no similarities at all is unsupportable.
but the fact remains that to publically advertise an illegal use of a piece of software is something that the software manufacturers can now be held liable for.
Not under dispute, at least not by me.
Before any further postings on whose part?
My main point was that safe harbour did apply to gun makers, and nowhere did I suggest that Betamax had been overturned.
Did you perhaps reply to the wrong message?
That'd be the obvious difference. What are the others?
The fact that you can identify one obvious difference doesn't mean that there are no similarities.
Gun manufacturers aren't granted a safe harbour at all.
That's just plain wrong. The safe harbour term comes from the Sony Betamax case where it was ruled that Sony could not be held liable for copyright infringement resulting from use of Sony's VCRs because there were substantial non-infringin uses for the device.
In other words, because there were legit uses for the product, sony wasn't considered culpable when someone taped a TV show.
Now if the firearm manufacturers did not enjoy a similar immunity, then ever time someone was murdered using a handgun, the manufacturers would find themselves in the dock alongside the murderer.
Since this does not happen, we can conclude that firearms manufactures do indeed enjoy safe harbour provisions under law, QED.
And from that we conclude that there is at least one similarity under law between firearms and p2p software.
I get really sick of the stupid Slashdot anti-gun attitude.
You don't think you might be projecting slightly?
I have no axe to grind pro or anti gun control. And while I wonder if you could make the same statement regarding P2P technology, my only argument with you is that your reasoning is faulty.
And we are entitled to disaprove when someone like Schwartz repeatedly disappoints those expectations.
There's a presistent meme lately that it's acceptable for corporate execs to behave like scumbags because we can't expect any better. A bit like the way we tolerate misbehaviour from small children who are too young to know any better.
But Schwartz is old enough to know better. And even small children get chastised for their misdemeanors.
So you're not suggesting then that firearms have a substantial non-infringing use, and that the gun manufacturers should be granted some sort of safe harbour?
It certainly sounds like there might be some basis for comparison there.
If that's correct, and I can't provide a reference I'm afraid, then raming up fines will do nothing to slow unauthorised distribution of copyrighted materials.
And it seems unlikely that the penalty will be widely applied. There will be too many people who can't pay for a start. If the person being fined is going to have to pay it in pennies a week, it won't matter wether the fine is $100 or $1,000,000. Then there are the six year old girls and the grannies who don't understand tech and any nomber of other PR nightmares...
But what it will provide is a law that can be selectively enforced. There have been cases where unscrupulous types have planted child pronography on a rivals computer as a means to discredit them. We can imagine MP3s and DVD images being used to the same purpose.
Same holds true for Piracy... make the penalties so severe that nobody in their right mind will want to partake.
There's a historical parallel. The Agricultural Revolution in England led to a large number of displaced smallholders migrating to the cities to lead to work. Unemployment was high and crime soared. Ever harsher penalties for crimes were passed until almost every crime bore the death penalty.
It didn't work.
For one thing, juries were loathe to convict when the sentence was unjustly harsh. It also meant that otherwise petty criminals came to regard all laws with the same contempt. This is the origin of the phrase "might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb".
The penalty as deterrent idea didn't work in the 1800s and had unwanted, unforseen and undesirable repercussions. Modern law enforcement thinking, as I understand it, is likewise sceptical about deterrence-by-severity. And you know what they say about those who cannot learn from history...
Once was for a corsair memory upgrade, the other was a megatokyo banner on slashdot.
Neither was a popup. The effect popup ads have on me is to get me to bar the agency responsible from my computer. Not only do they fail to sell the popup advertised product, they fail to sell me anything else, at least until my next review of my adblocking measures, possibly indefinitely.
I suppose the interesting thing about popups is that they only report successes. Those who deploy the ads have no way to evaluate the failure rate, and no way to evaluate secondary costs in missed advertising oportunities as a result of retaliatory ad blocking.
There's got to be a research proposal in there somewhere :)
I don't suppose we could feed it Darl McBride?
Good. HSM seem to have misrepresented log data to the police in order to get Chip's home raided and his property confiscated. I would have said that was illegal. Do you concur?
If you don't like something your company is doing, let them know you don't like it. If they say, "Tough sh*t," then you have two choices -- leave on your own, or stay and suck it up. Staying and making threats against your employer isn't likely to be tolerated by anyone, anywhere.
And the next question is what constitutes an acceptable level of intolerance.
-
Getting shouted at by the boss - fair enough.
- Instant dismissal and being escorted off the premises - a bit harsh, but I could see where the employer was coming from
-
Having the employee's personal possesions siezed on trumped up charges... that seems somewhat excessive.
You sympathise with Chip's predicament, but the subtext I get is that Mr. Salzenberg's naivety somehow justifies the illegal behaviour of his employers. I think there must be a limit to the sort of unpleasantness we are willing to countenance, simply because it's "just business". That didn't work for Al Capone and it shouldn't work for the likes of HMS either.HMS are deeply, massively and incredibly in the wrong over this. Let's just keep that in mind.
So without disagreeing with you, I thought it was worth stressing that Chip wasn't blowing any whistles.
HMS fabricated evidence in order to have the police raid Chip's house and sieze his computer equipment.
Chip threatened his own employers with legal action. What do you expect them to do?
Have your expectations regading business ethics fallen so low that you expect all companies to break the law as a matter of routine? Or are you suggesting that this is acceptable behaviour for an employer? Your message reads as though you approve, which may not be what you intended to convey.
HMS was already knowingly engaged in illegal activities. So probably Chip should have expected their response to be similarly illegal. With hindsight, that seems glaringly obvious.
But to simply dismiss that the company's actions with "what do you expect?" is foolish and dangerous. If we grant acceptance to such activities what can we expect the next time some CEO decides to push the envelope?
Chip complained internally. That's allowed. That's ethical. He was giving his employers a chance to sort out a problem. The open proxy scam might have been in contravention of company policy.
Unlikely with hindsight, I'll grant.
OK, I'm missing your point, I know. I don't even disagree with your advice. All I'm saying is let's watch the terminology. A lot of people will thing "Whistleblower, pah! He had it coming!" when nothing is further from the truth. He got into this mess because he gave his employers the benefit of the doubt.
Oh look, it's a straw man. Off to see the wizard, are we?
Look, I get the idea that you think this is all about search engines, and that MS engine is (presumably) losing so much money that they need to Claria's unique expertese to make the thing profitable.
However, you're going to have to accept the fact that a lot of people will be more interested in the fact that MS are trying buy a company that earned the dubious distinction of having to change its name to stay in business. Some people are going to wonder what MS, whose reputation is hardly spotless are regards spyware, are goign to do with all that Gator expertese.
I mean its not like the desciscion is popular at MS; even you, whom I presume to be a fan of Microsoft reckon the Gator guys could use a kicking. Look at it that way and you have to wonder what planet Ballmer's on this week.
Or maybe you don't. Spin it however you like, it's all the same to me.
Wait... I've got an idea.
And don't think we're not proud of you.
If you don't like MS, don't use their free search engine, and don't patronize the thousands of merchants and other entities that choose to advertise there.
heh... I won't have to change my behaviour to implement that suggestion!
Gosh, that was complicated.
It'll get easier with practice. Thanks for sharing, now.
Think about it: ever since SCO started playing silly bugger's a couple of years back, Microsoft's position as Slimeball #1 has been under seige. Combined with increasing pressure from other sectors of industry, Microsoft were facing serious problems of the lack of ethics front.
In that light, this is clearly a strategic move aimed at firmly re-establishing MS' position as the world leaders in sleazoid corporate tricks.
Of course, if they hadn't been blocked from merging with the RIAA by those ridiculous anti-monopoly laws, they'd never have been in this postion in the first place, but that's another discussion entirely.
Aye, and there's the rub.
For once the principle has been established that you hold your rights only at the indulgence of the government, then all that is required to strip you of your rights is a change in the law.
I don't have any great sympathy for sex offenders. No one does really. But if these inalienable human rights we her so much about are truly to be "inalienable" then they apply to sex offenders too.
That's the thing about rights - if they can be stripped from you at any time, then you never had them in the first place. And all they need do to remove your rights is change the law such that you are in contravention of it.
How about a bill against reading that hive of communists, jackers, pirates and other terrorists, Slashdot? I bet there are already anti-terror laws that could be bent to fit.
Of course, usually when you create an extension to something, you call it something else, so as not to confuse people, or break existing apps.
That doesn't sound much like Microsoft's usual Modus Operandi though. In fact I don't think Microsoft use mean the same thing by "extend" as the RSS people mean. The RSS guys probably meant "create a standard based upon RSS but distinct from it".
When Microsoft say "extend" they generally seem to mean "Exterminate! Exterminate!"
Gosh, with silver tounged ambassadors like yourself ready to launch a charm offensive on their behalf, how can they possibly lose?
A patent free world is an interesting idea. I suppose that your archetypal lone inventor would carry on inventing stuff, much the same way open source coders write software without expecting recompense. I expect we'd even see large scale projects co-ordinated over the internet.
The place where the comparison with FLOSS breaks down is manufacture and distribution. With software your manufacture phase involves compiling the source and distribution involves finding a friendly ftp server. Setting up a production line, raw materials, warehousing... they all involve expenditure that's absent in the software world.
Why is that important? Well, development without hope of recompense only works in the software world because production costs are negligible. This means the product can be made available for zero cost, which makes it hard for competitors to take your product and undercut your price.
On the other hand, if we're marketing, say, one-shot disposable MP3 players, then we need to charge enough to recover the costs of setting up and maintaining a production line. But once we invest that capital, we're vulnerable.
A big manufacturing concern can set up a much larger plant, or retool an existing production line, and undercut you through economies of scale. Established players can probably afford to out advertise you as well. If that happens, you may never recoup your expenditure, which would certainly discourage further projects. It's bad enough that so many new products fail, but to have one succeed only to have a competitor take it away from you...
So as far as I can see, that's the main objection you'll need to overcome before you get any sort of widespread acceptance for the idea - the problem that scrapping patents would let the big manufacturing and marketing concens dominate just about everything. Until you can explain what mechanism will stop that from happening, people are going be sceptical
Of course, if 3D printers ever live up to their promise, that'd change things considerably.
Yep, and then you can watch all the Simpsons repeats you like. And, umm.... well, it's got Simpsons repeats as well! And don't forget the Simposns repeats! Or you can pay extra for Sky Movies N where N is a large integer. Everytime N gets a subscriber, they create Sky Movies N+1 and migrate all the good stuff to that. Same for the sports so far as I can tell.
It doesn't really matter, since anything good is going to be pay-per-view regardless.
I've never seen a slashdot post in Private Eye's Eye Sky spot, but I'm strongly tempted to submit this one. Bloody astroturfers...
I'm no microsoft fan, and for Ballmer to be pushed into even these admissions suggests considerable rot below the surface.
But irrelevant? Even if MS are completely up the creek san paddle, they're still going to be very relevant to anyone with a significant investment in MS software.
At least for as long as it takes them to migrate to linux, anyway.
Explain to me who is hurt by this, please.
As far as I can see, this grey nonsense claptrap is just price fixing on a global scale. To cite it as an illegal activity will bring the law into disrepute sooner than it discourages anyone from buying a DVD from overseas.
But I might change my opinion if I could see the harm done. So please: who suffers from the "grey market?"
I bet he's glad that there are all these public spirited slashdotters being so vigilant on his behalf.
I mean if it wasn't for all this very strident advice, he might go and make it work^H^H^H^H^H^H^Ha fool of himself.
And I bet no one wants that to happen.
That would seem to be a matter of debate. I belive John Rogers was volunteering to test the theory. If he does, we'd have facts to discuss instead of just bluster.
Look, guys: we all realize that P2P has legitimate applications. But these desperate attempts to somehow "prove" that P2P is somehow the most desirable distribution mechanism are getting tiresome.
Slashdot is a very active board, fella; there must be something around here that you can read that won't try your patience.
Really, I can't see where you're coming from here. It's not like anyone's putting a gun to your head and forcing you to take part. Do you have some stake in this?