But publishers who were "pirating" [Dickens'] books in the US made enough money to kickstart the publishing industry in the US. Then a time came when there were enough US authors whose rights had to be protected & that's when the relevant laws were passed & enforced in the US.
Take off the rose colored glasses and see how the world really works:
In 1842 there was still no international copyright law, a condition that was stunting American letters and depriving authors on both sides of the Atlantic of a living. Britain was willing to recognize the copyright of foreign writers--but only if their countries reciprocated.
This American publishers adamantly refused to do. Instead, they competed in bribing English pressmen to get early sheets of British books. The sheets were rushed by boat over to the United States, where the jolly pirates churned out cheap editions in a matter of hours.
But it was not only British authors they were robbing. Few publishers were willing to pay American authors for books when they could purloin better-known British ones for free. Herman Melville was hurt by the lack of an international copyright, and such eminent American authors as Emerson, Longfellow, and Hawthorne had to pay publishers an advance, rather than vice versa, in order to have their books produced. The early giants of American literature had to scramble for work at customhouses and in other government jobs, and Edgar Allan Poe, according to his biographer Sidney P. Moss, had to raise advance money for one collection of poems by soliciting 75 cents a head from his fellow West Point classmates, to whom he then dedicated the book.
"The Americans read [Dickens}; the free, enlightened, independent Americans; and what more would he have?... As to telling them they will have no literature of their own, the universal answer (out of Boston) is, 'We don't want one. Why should we pay for one when we can get it for nothing.'"
Yes, the kernel devs could go out of their way to support binary kernel modules. But why should they? If you're using an open-source kernel, it's because you think there is some tangible benefit versus a proprietary one.
The problem here is that this tends to limit the Linux user base to those who know what a kernel is and give a damn about open source. Most users don't and never will.
Perhaps one of the last compelling reasons to use Windows is hardware support. Every PC device made today comes with Windows drivers, and most can be installed by even non-technical people. Take that away, and there's not much reason for the average user to run Windows - Linux is more stable, and does things like email, websurfing, and document editing just as well, or better than Windows, and at a fraction of the price.
OEM Linux disappeared from Walmart.com because a) sales were poor b) and the price uncompetitive.
There are enormous economies of scale when you build and market for the OS with 95-98% market share and whose only real competitor in the domestic market is the closed hardware and software platform of the Mac.
There is no mass migration to Linux. The PC in the home has become more than e-mail and the web. TouchSmart The lessons the Geek never learns.
The Windows advantage in drivers is not going away.
If there's anything consumer products manufacturers should have learnt by now, it's that they have no idea wtf people want.
I am more inclined to think that it is the Geek who doesn't have a clue as to what sells in the consumer market. Would you care to invest in my new Network Appliance for the Home? It runs on Linux. Really and for true. A can't-miss proposition.
the studios have prioritized copy protection and anti-piracy above user experience.
User experience. OK. How about the user experience of P2P:
Bogus titles. Bonus points if "Corpse Bride" or "Over The Hedge" downloads as triple-X porno.
The camcorder video that looks like a shot of a 16mm print projected on the walls of Mammouth Cave during a blackout.
The amatuer's artifact-ridden DiVx rip. "Back to the Future" Drive-In sound.
I've played this game and I've gone back to Netflix, Movies Unlimited, The Serial Squadron.
They got called "auteurs" because it is believed that their directorial vision colored their work enough that they effectively authored it--regardless of who wrote the screenplay.
I know the theory.
But I can't think of anything more likely to be the ruin of an American original like Orson Welles.
These things are clearly not expensive, where are they?
Unwanted, mostly. Audiobooks have had remarkable success. Hands free, perfect for the road. The hardcover or the paperback is for the bed, the bath or the recliner. No batteries to replace. No dynamos to crank. There is a market still for the book as art or craft. People for whom names like Bruce Rogers and N.C. Wyeth still have resonance.
In the 1960s, auteurs like Bergman and Antonioni created films with a highly personal stamp
Foreign films have always struggled to reach an American audience, and a director so precious and conceited as to call himself an "auteur" has a particularly hard row to hoe.
I think we had a populist president in the 1910-1920's in the US.
The Presidents in this era:
Willliam Howard Taft, later Chief Justice, Republican.
Woodrow Wilson, Democrat.
Warren G. Harding, Republican.
The Populists can be seen at work in the important reforms of this era, the vote for women, the direct election of senators, and so on, but also in Reaction:
Prohibition. Restricted immigration, with rigid racial and ethnic quotas, the revival of the Klu Klux Klan.
Yes, because when I want to blow something up, I ALWAYS make sure that the bomb displays flashing lights clearly visible to everyone around.
and when you want the Geek out of the picture, you show him something shiney...that ticks.
all that the driver sees on the road or under the bridge is something that is almost but not quite right: movement, a flashing light, that has no good reason for being there.
Here is his mother's site ( or so I believe - I can't guarantee you that it is not a scam )
Red-flagged by SiteAdvisor. Here is the report from McAfee for p2pnet.net:
When we tested this site we found links to warezclient.com, which we found to be a distributor of downloads some people consider adware, spyware or other unwanted programs
After entering our e-mail address on this site, we received 3.7 e-mails per week.
I offer this purely as a suggestion, mind you, not legal advice:
But if the heart of your defense is that know you "nothing, nothing!" about the darker side of the P2P nets, a jury might think that this is a mighty strange place to find you.
I think Windows 2000 was better than XP in terms of stability. Is XP really that much better?
W2K was never significant in the consumer market. The distinctions inevitably become blurred, particularly when you look at the SOHO and laptop markets, which is why you get products like XP Pro and Vista Ultimate.
Q: I feel the product I purchased is wearing out prematurely. Isn't this covered under my warranty?
A: Implied warranties are promises about the condition of products at the time they're sold, but they don't assure that a product will last for any specific length of time. (The normal durability of a product is, of course, one aspect of a product's merchantability or its fitness for a particular purpose.)
Nor does the law say that everything that can possibly go wrong with a product falls within the scope of implied warranties. For example, implied warranties don't cover problems such as those caused by:
The people who buy Vista are paying for it-- through the additional monetary costs of the hardware needed solely for the Premium Content pipes
all of which will be priced for OEM sale or big box retail within a year or two.
the geek will despise himself for it, but the next monitor he buys will be the widescreen panel with HDCP.
and through the obligatory CPU overhead of running the processes that assure the OS that you haven't sneaked any non-DRM hardware onto the machine in the last few milliseconds.
assuming vista does check the protected path when unprotected content is playing and assuming your employer has no interest in protecting in-house content--
who the hell will give a damn if their quad core 3 GHz CPU wastes a cycle every now and then?
If you're running Vista, however, your older monitor that is missing the HDCP (that has absolutely NOTHING to do with quality) will have to be replaced despite it's full ability to display HD content. THAT is the concern.
Your monitor is an aging 17 to 19 inch 4:3 display. Your monitor is a power hungry fifty pound glass bottle. Which will in not so very distant future be making the trip to the dumpster anyway.
Tell me that there is anything which will hold you back when the big screen HDCP monitor become mass market.
As the price of computers continues to decline, M$ is going to have trouble gettin money out of OEMs. The margins don't allow it. The end of the M$ monopoly is here
Walmart.com has thirty OEM Vista systems on sale beginning at $498 for a Vista Basic laptop. Vista-Preloaded Computers Thirty times it's OEM Linux selection.
When I look at a microphotgraph of a chip what I see is an urban landscape viewed from above, patterns as elegant and satisfying in their own internal logic.
Write to your local elected representative...and demand that PC manufacturers be forced to sell their computers without Windows installed. We are currently paying ~$80USD for every computer we buy
---and getting the hardware at mass market prices.
The Vista Basic laptop from Walmart.com is $500, the Toshiba Vista Premium, $850. The OEM system install has been the gold standard in the consumer market for over twenty-five years.
Slashdot Mirror
Take off the rose colored glasses and see how the world really works:
In 1842 there was still no international copyright law, a condition that was stunting American letters and depriving authors on both sides of the Atlantic of a living. Britain was willing to recognize the copyright of foreign writers--but only if their countries reciprocated.
This American publishers adamantly refused to do. Instead, they competed in bribing English pressmen to get early sheets of British books. The sheets were rushed by boat over to the United States, where the jolly pirates churned out cheap editions in a matter of hours.
But it was not only British authors they were robbing. Few publishers were willing to pay American authors for books when they could purloin better-known British ones for free. Herman Melville was hurt by the lack of an international copyright, and such eminent American authors as Emerson, Longfellow, and Hawthorne had to pay publishers an advance, rather than vice versa, in order to have their books produced. The early giants of American literature had to scramble for work at customhouses and in other government jobs, and Edgar Allan Poe, according to his biographer Sidney P. Moss, had to raise advance money for one collection of poems by soliciting 75 cents a head from his fellow West Point classmates, to whom he then dedicated the book.
"The Americans read [Dickens}; the free, enlightened, independent Americans; and what more would he have?... As to telling them they will have no literature of their own, the universal answer (out of Boston) is, 'We don't want one. Why should we pay for one when we can get it for nothing.'"
Copy Wrong
The problem here is that this tends to limit the Linux user base to those who know what a kernel is and give a damn about open source. Most users don't and never will.
OEM Linux disappeared from Walmart.com because a) sales were poor b) and the price uncompetitive.
There are enormous economies of scale when you build and market for the OS with 95-98% market share and whose only real competitor in the domestic market is the closed hardware and software platform of the Mac.
There is no mass migration to Linux. The PC in the home has become more than e-mail and the web. TouchSmart The lessons the Geek never learns.
The Windows advantage in drivers is not going away.
After all, not everyone has the hawk-like eyes of a twenty-year old.
I am more inclined to think that it is the Geek who doesn't have a clue as to what sells in the consumer market. Would you care to invest in my new Network Appliance for the Home? It runs on Linux. Really and for true. A can't-miss proposition.
User experience. OK. How about the user experience of P2P:
Bogus titles. Bonus points if "Corpse Bride" or "Over The Hedge" downloads as triple-X porno.
The camcorder video that looks like a shot of a 16mm print projected on the walls of Mammouth Cave during a blackout.
The amatuer's artifact-ridden DiVx rip. "Back to the Future" Drive-In sound.
I've played this game and I've gone back to Netflix, Movies Unlimited, The Serial Squadron.
I know the theory.
But I can't think of anything more likely to be the ruin of an American original like Orson Welles.
Unwanted, mostly. Audiobooks have had remarkable success. Hands free, perfect for the road. The hardcover or the paperback is for the bed, the bath or the recliner. No batteries to replace. No dynamos to crank. There is a market still for the book as art or craft. People for whom names like Bruce Rogers and N.C. Wyeth still have resonance.
Foreign films have always struggled to reach an American audience, and a director so precious and conceited as to call himself an "auteur" has a particularly hard row to hoe.
The Presidents in this era:
Willliam Howard Taft, later Chief Justice, Republican.
Woodrow Wilson, Democrat.
Warren G. Harding, Republican.
The Populists can be seen at work in the important reforms of this era, the vote for women, the direct election of senators, and so on, but also in Reaction:
Prohibition. Restricted immigration, with rigid racial and ethnic quotas, the revival of the Klu Klux Klan.
It might, however, save you an over-nighter at the holding center downtown.
and when you want the Geek out of the picture, you show him something shiney...that ticks.
all that the driver sees on the road or under the bridge is something that is almost but not quite right: movement, a flashing light, that has no good reason for being there.
do I see you volumteering to open the brown bag someome left behind on the bus? in the states, maybe. in Israel, probably not.
and Big Tobacco is still Big Tobacco. What, precisely, has changed?
Red-flagged by SiteAdvisor. Here is the report from McAfee for p2pnet.net:
When we tested this site we found links to warezclient.com, which we found to be a distributor of downloads some people consider adware, spyware or other unwanted programs
After entering our e-mail address on this site, we received 3.7 e-mails per week.
I offer this purely as a suggestion, mind you, not legal advice:
But if the heart of your defense is that know you "nothing, nothing!" about the darker side of the P2P nets, a jury might think that this is a mighty strange place to find you.
W2K was never significant in the consumer market. The distinctions inevitably become blurred, particularly when you look at the SOHO and laptop markets, which is why you get products like XP Pro and Vista Ultimate.
____
Consumer Law: Warranty FAQ
Q: I feel the product I purchased is wearing out prematurely. Isn't this covered under my warranty?
A: Implied warranties are promises about the condition of products at the time they're sold, but they don't assure that a product will last for any specific length of time. (The normal durability of a product is, of course, one aspect of a product's merchantability or its fitness for a particular purpose.)
Nor does the law say that everything that can possibly go wrong with a product falls within the scope of implied warranties. For example, implied warranties don't cover problems such as those caused by:
* Abuse
* Misuse
* Ordinary wear
* Failure to follow directions
* Improper maintenance
___
I'd say a judge would tell you Microsoft isn't obliged to extend or replace an OEM license when the hardware it was bound to dies of natural causes.
all of which will be priced for OEM sale or big box retail within a year or two.
the geek will despise himself for it, but the next monitor he buys will be the widescreen panel with HDCP.
and through the obligatory CPU overhead of running the processes that assure the OS that you haven't sneaked any non-DRM hardware onto the machine in the last few milliseconds.
assuming vista does check the protected path when unprotected content is playing and assuming your employer has no interest in protecting in-house content--
who the hell will give a damn if their quad core 3 GHz CPU wastes a cycle every now and then?
Your monitor is an aging 17 to 19 inch 4:3 display. Your monitor is a power hungry fifty pound glass bottle. Which will in not so very distant future be making the trip to the dumpster anyway.
Tell me that there is anything which will hold you back when the big screen HDCP monitor become mass market.
Walmart.com has thirty OEM Vista systems on sale beginning at $498 for a Vista Basic laptop. Vista-Preloaded Computers Thirty times it's OEM Linux selection.
drive by Amazon.com and the picture changes, with Vista Ultimate Upgrade at #3 and Vista Ultimate full version at #8 in sales (1:30 PM ET January 30).
sales are even stronger in Canada and the UK, with Vista Ultimate Upgrade #1 at Amazon.ca.
When I look at a microphotgraph of a chip what I see is an urban landscape viewed from above, patterns as elegant and satisfying in their own internal logic.
If this is not architecture, I don't what is.
The geek is kidding himself if he thinks it is still 1998 and Windows BSODs three times a week and twice on Sundays.
Learning how to maintain Linux would be mean a lot of extra work.
Because I have the same purchasing power as Time-Warner? Because I don't see any benefit in having these services running on every Windows client?
And those people running linux and using the same cable service are paying more for nothing
Your benefit is a market big enough to make the service economically viable. Ask your cable guy how often he sees Linspire.
---and getting the hardware at mass market prices.
The Vista Basic laptop from Walmart.com is $500, the Toshiba Vista Premium, $850. The OEM system install has been the gold standard in the consumer market for over twenty-five years.