My whole problem is that it DOESN'T protect Samba. They want to force MS to license tech. In other words, people who want to use it will have to pay for it. That kinda screws the OSS world. If it was up to me, I'd have the Antitrust people go farther, and require them to open up the interoperability info completely, so people like Samba wouldn't have to reverse engineer and wouldn't have to pay.
I've been using Windows for some 10 years or so, and various Linux distros for about 3.
While I mildly prefer Windows Media Player to Quicktime and RealOne, this is beside the point. They all suck. Badly. The main reasons are that they're generally slower, less responsive, more bloated, and sometimes harder to set up with the required codecs than the players I recommend below. I'm thinking you must be new to the digital video world if you haven't experimented with players like Media Player Classic, Zoomplayer, and maybe some other ones for Windows, or Mplayer and VLC for ANY OS. Either that or you have really low standards in a player.
I'm not asking for promotion of open source. I'm asking for Antitrust laws to make the market fair to open source as well as to companies. And licensing doesn't accomplish this, since it requires payment that open source developers cannot make. This leaves the OSS world stuck between ignoring the closed standards or hacking them, neither of which is remotely fair competition compared to the companies that can easily afford to license it.
No offense, but you didn't get the point of my post at all.
Antitrust law is SUPPOSED to defend consumers. And the software that has the best shot at being best for consumers and promoting interoperability is open source software, which gets shafted by this action.
In other words, they're for competition provided that the competition is still soaking money from the public. Fuck that.
On the off chance that you want to watch movie trailers while avoiding the train wreck that is Quicktime, I recommend Quicktime Alternative, Real Alternative, and Media Player Classic (which comes with both of the aforementioned).
As for Windows Media Player... Well, it's passable. I used it for a while. But it uses too many resources for my liking. In any case, should you prefer it, the Alternatives I mentioned are codecs, so you should be able to watch.mov files in it, in theory.
The article says that the major reason for the fines is Microsoft's refusal to license information to competitors to ensure compatibility.
In other words, the actual software that these laws protects is horrible stuff like RealOne and Quicktime. Open source projects can't afford to license things. I'll be even more impressed than I already am if Mplayer and the like can continue their higher quality in the face of such crappy capitalistic laws.
That's ironic, I find that Multimedia is the one area Linux has been kicking ass on.
Using Arch Linux (although it's a bitch to install in the first place), it took "pacman -Sy mplayer" to set up mplayer with all codecs. Simply beautiful, and it's played everything I've thrown at it, from.rmvb to.mov to.ogm.
More than for any other reason, I find myself booting Linux to watch a movie.
While it's true that MSN is the default home page, and that there are certain levels of integration, there isn't anything overly blatant like a google bar for MSN. Also, the fact that they have used some integration doesn't mean they have the right to do so. Europe seems to be of the opinion that MS doesn't have the right to include a media player at all, why would search engine integration be different?
Well, it COULD... It doesn't seem likely to me, though. As far as I can tell, the people who grant patents tend to be missing the point entirely. How is one-click shopping really an innovation that should be protected???
No, if you ask me, it needs a complete overhaul, not just more money. And disregarding the practical considerations, I still think it's ethically ridiculous to lay claim to an idea.
I think if it's really an even remotely accurate implementation of what I was talking about, then I guess democracy doesn't work for companies either.:)
Power is transferring from the state (the general state, not just California) to corporations. If this continues, companies will rule. This is perhaps the ultimate downfall of democracy, and the end point of capitalism.
It gave me an interesting idea, though. If this situation actually happens, or even if it doesn't, imagine a company run as a democracy. Regular elections for CEO (of course there would have to be some accountability rules so they don't milk it for personal gain before stepping down, but that'a already a problem anyway). I can imagine workers for such a company being more motivated, and certainly more financially healthy since the massive salaries at the top would essentially be spread around.
One major reason to want free software to be adopted by the rest of the market is so that open standards dominate, and I don't have to choose between MSN and not talking to all my friends. So I don't have to pay for software to read office documents that are sent to me.
Re: viruses, your worst case sounds no worse than the current state. The favourite apps will not become ad-filled because the base is open. Someone puts an ad in, fork the last one.
True. However, when it comes to past new forms of media (VCRs, photocopiers, etc), there's always been the advantage to the copyright owner that the copies degrade the quality. I think it could be a potentially critical difference with digital copying that it doesn't degrade, especially when more of the population gets broadband net access.
In the interests of full disclosure, however, I am still rabidly anti-IP law, pro p2p, and generally believe that owning an idea is a bad concept.
From the paper: "The idea was to learn about the disruptive and also annoying phenomena that have become very commonplace over the past couple of years in the internet: namely, the Peer-to-Peer traffic and applications and the unsolicited and unwanted e-mail or Spam."
I think bundling p2p and spam is either totally missing the point, or attempting to influence the opinions of people who don't know better. The users of p2p want what they get for the most part (maybe not viruses and fakes, but the author seems to be targeting p2p due to the copyrighted content).
It's a really cool class, although it is of course insane on the workload, and it sometimes doesn't help that the prof is really good and helpful in this class, but terrible and condescending in the class he teaches prior to everyone taking this one. Still, all in all a good experience.
In vaguely related news, this Friday, my Eng Phys class (okay, not mine, I did it last year) is requiring the students to slalom autonomous vehicles around pylons of arbitrary position (though powered devices are allowed on top).
As I said, I did the course last year (it was easier at the time), and let me tell you, it's harder than it looks. Hats off to anyone who even comes close to finishing this.
Slashdot Mirror
My whole problem is that it DOESN'T protect Samba. They want to force MS to license tech. In other words, people who want to use it will have to pay for it. That kinda screws the OSS world. If it was up to me, I'd have the Antitrust people go farther, and require them to open up the interoperability info completely, so people like Samba wouldn't have to reverse engineer and wouldn't have to pay.
I've been using Windows for some 10 years or so, and various Linux distros for about 3.
While I mildly prefer Windows Media Player to Quicktime and RealOne, this is beside the point. They all suck. Badly. The main reasons are that they're generally slower, less responsive, more bloated, and sometimes harder to set up with the required codecs than the players I recommend below. I'm thinking you must be new to the digital video world if you haven't experimented with players like Media Player Classic, Zoomplayer, and maybe some other ones for Windows, or Mplayer and VLC for ANY OS. Either that or you have really low standards in a player.
Look, it's quite simple.
I'm not asking for promotion of open source. I'm asking for Antitrust laws to make the market fair to open source as well as to companies. And licensing doesn't accomplish this, since it requires payment that open source developers cannot make. This leaves the OSS world stuck between ignoring the closed standards or hacking them, neither of which is remotely fair competition compared to the companies that can easily afford to license it.
No offense, but you didn't get the point of my post at all.
Antitrust law is SUPPOSED to defend consumers. And the software that has the best shot at being best for consumers and promoting interoperability is open source software, which gets shafted by this action.
In other words, they're for competition provided that the competition is still soaking money from the public. Fuck that.
On the off chance that you want to watch movie trailers while avoiding the train wreck that is Quicktime, I recommend Quicktime Alternative, Real Alternative, and Media Player Classic (which comes with both of the aforementioned).
.mov files in it, in theory.
As for Windows Media Player... Well, it's passable. I used it for a while. But it uses too many resources for my liking. In any case, should you prefer it, the Alternatives I mentioned are codecs, so you should be able to watch
The article says that the major reason for the fines is Microsoft's refusal to license information to competitors to ensure compatibility.
In other words, the actual software that these laws protects is horrible stuff like RealOne and Quicktime. Open source projects can't afford to license things. I'll be even more impressed than I already am if Mplayer and the like can continue their higher quality in the face of such crappy capitalistic laws.
Nothing strikes fear into the hearts of your enemies like being "the ringleader of a vitamin cartel." :)
That's ironic, I find that Multimedia is the one area Linux has been kicking ass on.
.rmvb to .mov to .ogm.
Using Arch Linux (although it's a bitch to install in the first place), it took "pacman -Sy mplayer" to set up mplayer with all codecs. Simply beautiful, and it's played everything I've thrown at it, from
More than for any other reason, I find myself booting Linux to watch a movie.
While it's true that MSN is the default home page, and that there are certain levels of integration, there isn't anything overly blatant like a google bar for MSN. Also, the fact that they have used some integration doesn't mean they have the right to do so. Europe seems to be of the opinion that MS doesn't have the right to include a media player at all, why would search engine integration be different?
Depends on how they implement it. If they integrate it into IE, which is of course "inseparable from Windows", then yes.
If they make it the default home page, maybe, but that's a little grey.
If they make it a web-based search engine similar to google, and have no special references to it in Windows, no.
"It's easy to make a nuclear weapons program work now, provided you're willing to throw a lot of money at it"
-my nuclear prof
"Passengers who raise questions would be classified as yellow and would receive extra security screening."
:)
It just goes to show you should never rock the boat at an airport (or border crossing).
What do they do if there are two people with the same name?
...are we going to get the MAN'S printer??? Sexist bastards!
You still have to have Windows to use that, so you still have to pay.
"Could this be a good thing?"
Well, it COULD... It doesn't seem likely to me, though. As far as I can tell, the people who grant patents tend to be missing the point entirely. How is one-click shopping really an innovation that should be protected???
No, if you ask me, it needs a complete overhaul, not just more money. And disregarding the practical considerations, I still think it's ethically ridiculous to lay claim to an idea.
I think if it's really an even remotely accurate implementation of what I was talking about, then I guess democracy doesn't work for companies either. :)
Power is transferring from the state (the general state, not just California) to corporations. If this continues, companies will rule. This is perhaps the ultimate downfall of democracy, and the end point of capitalism.
It gave me an interesting idea, though. If this situation actually happens, or even if it doesn't, imagine a company run as a democracy. Regular elections for CEO (of course there would have to be some accountability rules so they don't milk it for personal gain before stepping down, but that'a already a problem anyway). I can imagine workers for such a company being more motivated, and certainly more financially healthy since the massive salaries at the top would essentially be spread around.
...stop telling me things are DYING, maybe let me know when they're DEAD.
One major reason to want free software to be adopted by the rest of the market is so that open standards dominate, and I don't have to choose between MSN and not talking to all my friends. So I don't have to pay for software to read office documents that are sent to me.
Re: viruses, your worst case sounds no worse than the current state. The favourite apps will not become ad-filled because the base is open. Someone puts an ad in, fork the last one.
Is there anything that ISN'T dying these days???
Seriously, the media exaggerates EVERYthing because it makes for more entertaining reading.
True. However, when it comes to past new forms of media (VCRs, photocopiers, etc), there's always been the advantage to the copyright owner that the copies degrade the quality. I think it could be a potentially critical difference with digital copying that it doesn't degrade, especially when more of the population gets broadband net access.
In the interests of full disclosure, however, I am still rabidly anti-IP law, pro p2p, and generally believe that owning an idea is a bad concept.
From the paper: "The idea was to learn about the disruptive and also annoying phenomena that have become very commonplace over the past couple of years in the internet: namely, the Peer-to-Peer traffic and applications and the unsolicited and unwanted e-mail or Spam."
I think bundling p2p and spam is either totally missing the point, or attempting to influence the opinions of people who don't know better. The users of p2p want what they get for the most part (maybe not viruses and fakes, but the author seems to be targeting p2p due to the copyrighted content).
McMaster, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
It's a really cool class, although it is of course insane on the workload, and it sometimes doesn't help that the prof is really good and helpful in this class, but terrible and condescending in the class he teaches prior to everyone taking this one. Still, all in all a good experience.
In vaguely related news, this Friday, my Eng Phys class (okay, not mine, I did it last year) is requiring the students to slalom autonomous vehicles around pylons of arbitrary position (though powered devices are allowed on top).
As I said, I did the course last year (it was easier at the time), and let me tell you, it's harder than it looks. Hats off to anyone who even comes close to finishing this.