One potentially useful application for print-on-demand is the publishing and distribution of textbooks. The costs of dealing with extra unused books are eliminated, and customers no longer have to wait two weeks at the beginning of the semester for their semi-out-of-print book to arrive at the bookstore.
But will this mean a significant decrease in already overpriced college textbooks? Not a chance.
Guess it remains to be seen, but until people actually have real issues with WGA, I think it's just the "bitching of the moment" and is not warranted.
Except you can't uninstall WGA without reinstalling Windows (and, in the process, undoing all of the security updates that are necessary to use Windows safely on today's Intarweb). If I let MS put WGA on my machine today, and tomorrow they turn on the kill switch and my machine stops working, I'm just as screwed as I would be if there were already problems occurring now.
Many corporations and government agencies are reluctant to update software unless necessary because of fears that doing so might introduce new problems.
For that matter, many home users are starting to feel the same way.
(This paranoia has been brought to you by the letters W, G, and A.)
Not only do I not know why Vista would be such a tremendous improvement over 2k/XP (fine, fine, they changed a bunch of stuff, does that really make it worth the lateral upgrade?), but the issues with DRM and the Mac OS X-induced feature creep have made me decide to replace my old laptop before Vista is released, to guarantee that I don't get stuck with it.
This isn't just a MS-hatred-induced unwillingness to upgrade. 2k/XP are orders of magnitude more stable than 9X was - so stable that I don't feel like going to Vista would get me anything that I need but don't already have.
Copyright's sole purpose is to "promote science and the useful arts", as defined by the US Constitution. If music, movies, and other art become lost in the abandonment void between public domain and copyrighted works, due to poor record-keeping or estate heirs unwilling to re-release particular works in a format playable on currently available devices, that has the opposite effect from what the Constitution demands.
If you don't wear your safety belt when you're traveling in a car or your brain bucket when you're on a motorcycle, you are too stupid and irresponsible to make your own decisions about safety.
US Magistrate Ted Bandstra said there was "strong and sufficient" evidence to indicate the suspects had conspired to commit illegal acts on their own, without inducement from government informants.
In the United States federal court system, "magistrate judges" are appointed by the life-term federal district judges of a particular court, serving terms of eight years if full-time, or four years if part-time, and may be reappointed.
Yes, and if by some miracle they win a boat race against Sun and Novell, not only will any multiple secret probation be rescinded, but José Barroso will be forced to grandmaster a parade in Microsoft's honor.
In addition to the mines communicating with each other, the field commanders can communicate with the landmines to detonate them remotely once they are no longer needed.
Quite true, but I doubt you can lay all of the blame at Microsoft's feet. This is the way the entire retail world works.
For most goods, bulk discounts are offered to encourage the biggest buyers to go with the company offering the discount rather than some other vendor, while the higher per-unit price for small quantities are meant to cover the higher cost that occurs since economies of scale are not being taken advantage of.
But with software - especially Microsoft software - there aren't really any competitors at all. Most people who want a Mac or Linux box already know that going into their purchase, so offering a bulk discount to the biggest vendors doesn't really offer any incentive at all, especially since those companies won't pirate Windows in the first place. The large OEMs are still going to buy Windows hand over fist. But the small vendor - or the individual home user - faces a big decision between pirating Windows and buying it. There is little difference in economies of scale, since the retail price is so much more than the per-unit manufacturing costs (i.e., the box, manual, and CD). Thus, the people who should be incentivized are the small buyers.
No, it's not an excuse to pirate Windows, but MS should know by now that since lots of people do it, changing their pricing structure would solve a lot of problems.
If MS would offer whitebox builders the same price that they offer to the big OEMs like Dell and Gateway, they'd probably see a lot less for-profit piracy. As it stands, the small shops can put together good quality hardware and come out slightly ahead of the big companies, but the moment they add in software (including Windows and Office), they end up being forced to offer the complete system at a very uncompetitive price.
While the Court rejected that argument out-of-hand, it appeared more amenable to KinderStart's argument that since it was a search page, Google's suppression of a rival search engine is prohibited by antitrust laws.
What's next, forcing Wendy's and Burger King to put McDonald's advertising placards in their restaurants?
He's said on the DVD commmentaries (in his normal voice, of course) that Fry's voice is just his own voice, but a bit higher to make it sound thirty years younger.
The Executive Branch is unilaterally responsible for engaging in executive functions (including those which invoke the Eminent Domain clause of the Constitution), pursuant to the powers granted to it by the Constitution and those granted in statute by the Legislature. Therefore, if the head of the Executive Branch says in an executive order that his government shall not do X, and X is not otherwise required by legislation, then X will not happen (under penalty of being fired - and possibly civil or criminal penalty if an agent of the government does not comply with the executive order, depending on the circumstances). (Obviously, this ignores cases where the executive branch doesn't follow up on violations of the order, in particular when X might be something done in secret.)
In this case, since the federal government, per executive order, is not to take property via eminent domain when the property won't be used specifically for the public good, the federal government simply won't do it. No other part of the federal government has the capability to exercise such power, so the order is as good as law until a subsequent president revokes the policy, even though it's not statute.
It's essentially the same thing as a federal regulation - these are things defined not in statute, but rather by the Executive Branch of the government. Some things in the CFR are there because the legislature specifically requires them, while others are regulations crafted under the broad discretion that Congress sometimes gives. In the case of the anti-Kelo executive order, (fairly) broad discretion is granted by the Constitution, and the executive order sets a specific procedure under which that power is exercised. The entirety of the federal Executive Branch must abide by that order (under penalty of at least getting fired, and possibly incurring substantial civil damages against oneself if one attempts to bypass the order), and so it's as good as law as long as it's not revoked.
The driving force behind adoption of DirectX 10 (or is that DirectX X) isn't Microsoft or the release of Vista. It's game developers, and more importantly, game publishers. If a game publisher sees that 10% of the home user Windows install base is Vista, 80% is 2000/XP, and 10% is earlier versions of Windows, the publisher is going to come to the conclusion that developing for DirectX 10 - and limiting themselves to the meager Vista install base - just isn't worth their time and money.
Game aficionados may pay $60 for a game, but they're not going to pay an extra $100+ for the operating system just to play that game until there's a substantial base of games only available under the new OS (much like consoles sell better when there are a lot of games out for it). So, if Microsoft is really doing this to get people to laterally upgrade to Vista, that's not a winning strategy. The better strategy, if they're trying to achieve forced upgrades, would be for each subsequent version of DirectX to exclude the third-newest OS (in this case, Windows 2000) so that those users will upgrade, while the game publishers see the XP install base and opt to develop for the newest DirectX version.
I say this ruefully, though, because I'm still using Win2k and have no desire to upgrade, because it works just fine for home use, without all the feature bloat that XP and especially Vista provide.
Obviously, denouncing DRM and the products and companies that sustain it is what any fair use advocate should do. But such a strategy will never work unless the unwashed masses are also made aware of how DRM negatively impacts their lives. The anti-DRM slashdot type accounts for such a small piece of the pie compared to the workaday single mom who wants to record her soaps in HD, or the 13-year-old girl who wants to record Britney's new trailer trash offering off of the radio, or the recent business school graduate who wants to save what he hears on his new XM or Sirius radio for later. All those folks will be seriously impacted by the encroachment of DRM as the digital entertainment age emerges, but none of them are aware that their fair use liberties are in danger.
Now, if each of us told our parents and siblings about the imminent mainstream DRM fiasco, and all of them told their coworkers and fellow students, and so on, then maybe - just maybe - the public outrage would reach the critical point where Congress and the electronics companies would finally see the light and tell the copyright cartels where to cram it. Until then, the nerdiest of us will just have to sit and watch as our fair use rights are taken away one by one.
If he really protected consumers, he'd replace the broadcast flag legislation with other legislation that blocks it, rather than leave the vacuum.
What good would that do? Congress could just turn around next year and pass a law making it mandatory, regardless of what gets blocked this year.
Also, you talk about the Republicans as if they all have hearts as black as coal while Democrats are pure as the driven snow. It's not like that at all. On both sides of the aisle, they're all self-serving money-grubbing politicians, and it's silly to tear down only the one side when there's plenty of blame and criticism to go around, especially when the issue at hand doesn't follow party lines at all (note that the only person to sing high praises of the Broadcast Flag during Thursday's markup was Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California).
Bickering over partisan maneuverings is pointless, because once the Democrats end up in power (and eventually they will), they'll pull all the same stunts the Republicans are doing now.
Slashdot Mirror
I did not own any transformers. They were too expensive for my parents. I just got the stupid knock-off Go-bots.
Perhaps you'd be interested in some of these then.
One potentially useful application for print-on-demand is the publishing and distribution of textbooks. The costs of dealing with extra unused books are eliminated, and customers no longer have to wait two weeks at the beginning of the semester for their semi-out-of-print book to arrive at the bookstore.
But will this mean a significant decrease in already overpriced college textbooks? Not a chance.
Guess it remains to be seen, but until people actually have real issues with WGA, I think it's just the "bitching of the moment" and is not warranted.
Except you can't uninstall WGA without reinstalling Windows (and, in the process, undoing all of the security updates that are necessary to use Windows safely on today's Intarweb). If I let MS put WGA on my machine today, and tomorrow they turn on the kill switch and my machine stops working, I'm just as screwed as I would be if there were already problems occurring now.
Many corporations and government agencies are reluctant to update software unless necessary because of fears that doing so might introduce new problems.
For that matter, many home users are starting to feel the same way.
(This paranoia has been brought to you by the letters W, G, and A.)
Not only do I not know why Vista would be such a tremendous improvement over 2k/XP (fine, fine, they changed a bunch of stuff, does that really make it worth the lateral upgrade?), but the issues with DRM and the Mac OS X-induced feature creep have made me decide to replace my old laptop before Vista is released, to guarantee that I don't get stuck with it.
This isn't just a MS-hatred-induced unwillingness to upgrade. 2k/XP are orders of magnitude more stable than 9X was - so stable that I don't feel like going to Vista would get me anything that I need but don't already have.
Copyright's sole purpose is to "promote science and the useful arts", as defined by the US Constitution. If music, movies, and other art become lost in the abandonment void between public domain and copyrighted works, due to poor record-keeping or estate heirs unwilling to re-release particular works in a format playable on currently available devices, that has the opposite effect from what the Constitution demands.
If you don't wear your safety belt when you're traveling in a car or your brain bucket when you're on a motorcycle, you are too stupid and irresponsible to make your own decisions about safety.
From Wikipedia:
a bunch of crazy homeless people
A bunch of crazy homeless people who were denied bail. There was apparently something going on here, Daily Show accusations to the contrary aside.
immediately after the bill became law in the senate.
Methinks you need a refresher course in How Our Legislature Works.
Yes, and if by some miracle they win a boat race against Sun and Novell, not only will any multiple secret probation be rescinded, but José Barroso will be forced to grandmaster a parade in Microsoft's honor.
In addition to the mines communicating with each other, the field commanders can communicate with the landmines to detonate them remotely once they are no longer needed.
Quite true, but I doubt you can lay all of the blame at Microsoft's feet. This is the way the entire retail world works.
For most goods, bulk discounts are offered to encourage the biggest buyers to go with the company offering the discount rather than some other vendor, while the higher per-unit price for small quantities are meant to cover the higher cost that occurs since economies of scale are not being taken advantage of.
But with software - especially Microsoft software - there aren't really any competitors at all. Most people who want a Mac or Linux box already know that going into their purchase, so offering a bulk discount to the biggest vendors doesn't really offer any incentive at all, especially since those companies won't pirate Windows in the first place. The large OEMs are still going to buy Windows hand over fist. But the small vendor - or the individual home user - faces a big decision between pirating Windows and buying it. There is little difference in economies of scale, since the retail price is so much more than the per-unit manufacturing costs (i.e., the box, manual, and CD). Thus, the people who should be incentivized are the small buyers.
No, it's not an excuse to pirate Windows, but MS should know by now that since lots of people do it, changing their pricing structure would solve a lot of problems.
Carl Stalling sez, "It will never work!"
If MS would offer whitebox builders the same price that they offer to the big OEMs like Dell and Gateway, they'd probably see a lot less for-profit piracy. As it stands, the small shops can put together good quality hardware and come out slightly ahead of the big companies, but the moment they add in software (including Windows and Office), they end up being forced to offer the complete system at a very uncompetitive price.
While the Court rejected that argument out-of-hand, it appeared more amenable to KinderStart's argument that since it was a search page, Google's suppression of a rival search engine is prohibited by antitrust laws.
What's next, forcing Wendy's and Burger King to put McDonald's advertising placards in their restaurants?
It's like a conflation of Sally Struthers commercials:
"Do you want to make more money? Sure, we all do!" "For the price of a cup of coffee a day...."
He's said on the DVD commmentaries (in his normal voice, of course) that Fry's voice is just his own voice, but a bit higher to make it sound thirty years younger.
The Executive Branch is unilaterally responsible for engaging in executive functions (including those which invoke the Eminent Domain clause of the Constitution), pursuant to the powers granted to it by the Constitution and those granted in statute by the Legislature. Therefore, if the head of the Executive Branch says in an executive order that his government shall not do X, and X is not otherwise required by legislation, then X will not happen (under penalty of being fired - and possibly civil or criminal penalty if an agent of the government does not comply with the executive order, depending on the circumstances). (Obviously, this ignores cases where the executive branch doesn't follow up on violations of the order, in particular when X might be something done in secret.)
In this case, since the federal government, per executive order, is not to take property via eminent domain when the property won't be used specifically for the public good, the federal government simply won't do it. No other part of the federal government has the capability to exercise such power, so the order is as good as law until a subsequent president revokes the policy, even though it's not statute.
It's essentially the same thing as a federal regulation - these are things defined not in statute, but rather by the Executive Branch of the government. Some things in the CFR are there because the legislature specifically requires them, while others are regulations crafted under the broad discretion that Congress sometimes gives. In the case of the anti-Kelo executive order, (fairly) broad discretion is granted by the Constitution, and the executive order sets a specific procedure under which that power is exercised. The entirety of the federal Executive Branch must abide by that order (under penalty of at least getting fired, and possibly incurring substantial civil damages against oneself if one attempts to bypass the order), and so it's as good as law as long as it's not revoked.
The driving force behind adoption of DirectX 10 (or is that DirectX X) isn't Microsoft or the release of Vista. It's game developers, and more importantly, game publishers. If a game publisher sees that 10% of the home user Windows install base is Vista, 80% is 2000/XP, and 10% is earlier versions of Windows, the publisher is going to come to the conclusion that developing for DirectX 10 - and limiting themselves to the meager Vista install base - just isn't worth their time and money.
Game aficionados may pay $60 for a game, but they're not going to pay an extra $100+ for the operating system just to play that game until there's a substantial base of games only available under the new OS (much like consoles sell better when there are a lot of games out for it). So, if Microsoft is really doing this to get people to laterally upgrade to Vista, that's not a winning strategy. The better strategy, if they're trying to achieve forced upgrades, would be for each subsequent version of DirectX to exclude the third-newest OS (in this case, Windows 2000) so that those users will upgrade, while the game publishers see the XP install base and opt to develop for the newest DirectX version.
I say this ruefully, though, because I'm still using Win2k and have no desire to upgrade, because it works just fine for home use, without all the feature bloat that XP and especially Vista provide.
Sure, but my terminal only does fixed-width characters.
TOS or no TOS, they don't have the right to say what you can or can't do with your own network and equipment.
Perhaps true, but that won't matter much when you discover that your network and equipment no longer have Internet access.
Obviously, denouncing DRM and the products and companies that sustain it is what any fair use advocate should do. But such a strategy will never work unless the unwashed masses are also made aware of how DRM negatively impacts their lives. The anti-DRM slashdot type accounts for such a small piece of the pie compared to the workaday single mom who wants to record her soaps in HD, or the 13-year-old girl who wants to record Britney's new trailer trash offering off of the radio, or the recent business school graduate who wants to save what he hears on his new XM or Sirius radio for later. All those folks will be seriously impacted by the encroachment of DRM as the digital entertainment age emerges, but none of them are aware that their fair use liberties are in danger.
Now, if each of us told our parents and siblings about the imminent mainstream DRM fiasco, and all of them told their coworkers and fellow students, and so on, then maybe - just maybe - the public outrage would reach the critical point where Congress and the electronics companies would finally see the light and tell the copyright cartels where to cram it. Until then, the nerdiest of us will just have to sit and watch as our fair use rights are taken away one by one.
If you don't like their policies, DON'T BUY THEIR MUSIC! It's that simple.
But if you don't buy their music, that doesn't mean the record companies are doing anything wrong - it just means the pirates are winning. Yarrr!
If he really protected consumers, he'd replace the broadcast flag legislation with other legislation that blocks it, rather than leave the vacuum.
What good would that do? Congress could just turn around next year and pass a law making it mandatory, regardless of what gets blocked this year.
Also, you talk about the Republicans as if they all have hearts as black as coal while Democrats are pure as the driven snow. It's not like that at all. On both sides of the aisle, they're all self-serving money-grubbing politicians, and it's silly to tear down only the one side when there's plenty of blame and criticism to go around, especially when the issue at hand doesn't follow party lines at all (note that the only person to sing high praises of the Broadcast Flag during Thursday's markup was Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California).
Bickering over partisan maneuverings is pointless, because once the Democrats end up in power (and eventually they will), they'll pull all the same stunts the Republicans are doing now.