GPL triger on the moment that you pass some GPLed software to another person. That means that if WebStore sells the program, it must agree to the GPL, so it can't sell the piece of hardware.
The only way to put the two (hardware and software) toghether without violating the GPL is by the end user doing so.
You know, consumer electronics didn't have to be commodities. There could be enough differentiation between brands to let the consumers chose one of them, instead of chosing prices.
But the greed eats everything. I'd be happy to spend another $0.5 to have a motherboard with good capacitors, or another $5 to get a power supply that really resists an electric transient. But the manufactors needed get those $5.5 to themselves, using the hight prices to get highter returns. Well, if they can't sell me some quality products, I'll chose based on price, and won't trust their PR.
"It doesn't matter which version of Windows you run (okay, not necessarily with '95, '98 or something even more ancient) you can install the same.exe file and run it. On the other hand, with Linux, you usually have to get the executeable for your specific CPU if not your CPU and flavor of Linux."
You mean... You can't run Alpha or MIPS binaries on your x86 machine! Well, Windows surely doesn't have this kind of problems.
You got almost all right. But the WebShop can't sell both the hardware and software, because it must distribute the SoftCorp's keys.
That means that it is hard to get a sucessfull lock-in this way. Lots of companies won't be able to do so. But this protection against DRM isn't absolute, the same way that DRM isn't also absolute (even in hardware).
Well, 1995 is over. Most people can't distribute stuff from their computers nowadays (think about NAT and DHCP) and if they could, they wouldn't know how to do that (they use Windows afterall, it doesn't support that out of the box). So, people spent a lot of time just consuming stuf from the net, not producing.
The blogs are just 1995 all over again, but easier, so people with any set of knowledge can post. It is a huge step ahead from 2000.
Well, no content protection is bullet proof, and information really wants to be free. That is why you can always go to the nearest corner and buy some pirate content that will play on your Linux machine.
Now, if the content makers refuse to let you buy their stuff, too bad for them.
If I understand it well, the killer feature of the iTunes is that it manages the musics that will go into the iPod. So, the users don't have to think about what musics they'll carry.
That means that the iPod is better because of the iTunes, not that the iTunes excels in any way. So, for the people that doesn't have an iPod, it doesn't make any difference.
Well, that is my case, and I'll surely try amaroK if I can find it at Debian.
Division of labor was a cause. But not stem machines. The industrialization was aready happening when they become usefull, they simply changed the small factories, powered by water or animals into big ones, powered by fire.
But what really started the revolution was the ability to design complex machines, that was only possible because of Newton's work.
Well, contrary to what you say, it seems that governments are getting tired of MS seeing their citzens as cash cows. And if they need to destroy MS to guarantee the right of people to not be stolen, then, will make it so.
There are still some governemnts out there that work for the people. Well, probably not all the time, but at least for a few moments.
Prices have a lot of problems, as some previous posters have already said. But it is not all that is wrong with your argument. Thei point with science is that you don't know upfront what research will ultimately change the way people live, and what will go nowhere.
When Newton started working on the planets orbit, nobody could even imagine that it would lead to the industrial revolution. Or, to put it on more recent facts, who could tell that creating a protocol to interconnect a few computers on some universities at the 60s would affect all the way that our society is organized? On the other side, most of the money spent on what people knew that was important (oil discoveries, space flight, etc) generated only ordinary benefits.
"Sure, that's something that mostly only geeks do - normal people either let itunes rip a cd when they buy it, or don't rip cds at all."
Well, if you're right, then there is something very wrong here. I can't tell you what normal people do, but ripping a CD is just putting a CD on the driver and oppening the right program. Maybe they don't do that because they didn't have enought time to learn yet. But more probably, they do that.
Anyway, the GP doesn't have a point here, because you almost never need to rip 20 CDs. Once you rip your collection, you just need some incremental steps.
"Oh, and Lincoln, NE's power company, right in the middle of the Midwest, decided to stop expanding wind power, because their mills were only producing usable electricity about 25% of the time. So it's not like it was saving them generation capacity."
What is it that the United States have that no alternative energy prject goes well? I am serious here. I've listened to the failed tries of using biomass for a long time, every time I heard about an hydro plant it was a complete failure, every solar cells initiative seem to go the way of the dodo. And now that, wind porwer also fails.
This stuff generaly work for the rest of the world. Not all of them every time, but there is always some alternatives that work.
Where did you got that affirmation that wind power doesn't scale from? I'd love to hear some real facts about it. Also, what are those problems that you say hydro power has? I happen to know a bit about hydro power, and can't see an enviromental disaster at the well done dams. They change the environment a bit, that is true, but that is not an evironmental disaster. Life goes well on a reservoir and it has even a lot of economical uses.
And, about solar, I think that the best place to put solar cells is on buildings. No space spent, no transmission costs, and no thermal zone problems. Also, bio-energy (a kind of solar) is already suscessfully used on several places around the world.
At least the tropics don't need nuclear power for now.
1: Yes, by eyeballing. It is not enought prove that the data fit the model. But it can be enoght to perceive that it doesn't fit. He arguees that there is a line there, but everything I can see is some kind of curve. I'd like to see the correlation of the fit, so I could numericaly prove my point, but it is really not needed.
3: That came from item 1. I'm saying that it is not an exponential law, because the graph is not an straight line.
Of course the line may be calculated by a best fit algorithm. I never questioned that. The problem is that the points dont fit well above a straight line. So they should be described by something else.
My other point is that when you lack the middle points (there is a gap there), you can't reliably model it. It will probably look like anything that you want*. And even so, the author had the bad luck of getting points that don't look like a straight line.
* That is not true if you have precise measurements, but it is not the case.
"Also important is Kryder's Law for HD storage capacity."
I followed your link. Now I understand why I never heard about this law... That graph is anything but a straight line. When you have a cluster of points, a gap, and another cluster of points, the easiest thing to come out with is a straight line. On this case, you have the two culsters seppareted by a gap, and not even this way it look straight.
But thanks. Now I know that HD sizes don't folow an exponential law.
Worse yet. It won't display (and print) the same on different computers. That kills the reimaning PDF usefullnes.
I am with the author when he thinks that it would be great it people standirdize on some one-file page formats. But I can't see that happening on his format. It would be much better to just tar and gzip everything. In fact, I can't see that happening at all while MS has the bigest share of browsers out there.
You mean that we can create more artificail scarcity, that will create more artificial markets where people trade more virtual goods. All that while adding near to zero worth on the real markets out there.
We really need to get out of those pyramids. Not create more.
"We decripted it" can be easily negated by any expert that the courts chose to listen. You just need to tell what algorithm you used to prove that it is a lie.
"If instead the only way to detect a watermark is to put it in a carefully protected machine in the RIAA's basement with a secret program on it, then there is no way any pirate will remove it successfully."
Ahmen to RIAA and its holy secret computer that can create evidence against anyone. It makes me wondering... Since when did the RIAA words value more than our (mere mortals) ones?
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GPL triger on the moment that you pass some GPLed software to another person. That means that if WebStore sells the program, it must agree to the GPL, so it can't sell the piece of hardware.
The only way to put the two (hardware and software) toghether without violating the GPL is by the end user doing so.
You know, consumer electronics didn't have to be commodities. There could be enough differentiation between brands to let the consumers chose one of them, instead of chosing prices.
But the greed eats everything. I'd be happy to spend another $0.5 to have a motherboard with good capacitors, or another $5 to get a power supply that really resists an electric transient. But the manufactors needed get those $5.5 to themselves, using the hight prices to get highter returns. Well, if they can't sell me some quality products, I'll chose based on price, and won't trust their PR.
I guess most people think the same way as I do.
You mean... You can't run Alpha or MIPS binaries on your x86 machine! Well, Windows surely doesn't have this kind of problems.
That may be the most insightfull poster on the thread. You should post your solution to FSF.
You got almost all right. But the WebShop can't sell both the hardware and software, because it must distribute the SoftCorp's keys.
That means that it is hard to get a sucessfull lock-in this way. Lots of companies won't be able to do so. But this protection against DRM isn't absolute, the same way that DRM isn't also absolute (even in hardware).
Well, 1995 is over. Most people can't distribute stuff from their computers nowadays (think about NAT and DHCP) and if they could, they wouldn't know how to do that (they use Windows afterall, it doesn't support that out of the box). So, people spent a lot of time just consuming stuf from the net, not producing.
The blogs are just 1995 all over again, but easier, so people with any set of knowledge can post. It is a huge step ahead from 2000.
Well, no content protection is bullet proof, and information really wants to be free. That is why you can always go to the nearest corner and buy some pirate content that will play on your Linux machine.
Now, if the content makers refuse to let you buy their stuff, too bad for them.
If I understand it well, the killer feature of the iTunes is that it manages the musics that will go into the iPod. So, the users don't have to think about what musics they'll carry.
That means that the iPod is better because of the iTunes, not that the iTunes excels in any way. So, for the people that doesn't have an iPod, it doesn't make any difference.
Well, that is my case, and I'll surely try amaroK if I can find it at Debian.
Division of labor was a cause. But not stem machines. The industrialization was aready happening when they become usefull, they simply changed the small factories, powered by water or animals into big ones, powered by fire.
But what really started the revolution was the ability to design complex machines, that was only possible because of Newton's work.
Well, contrary to what you say, it seems that governments are getting tired of MS seeing their citzens as cash cows. And if they need to destroy MS to guarantee the right of people to not be stolen, then, will make it so.
There are still some governemnts out there that work for the people. Well, probably not all the time, but at least for a few moments.
Prices have a lot of problems, as some previous posters have already said. But it is not all that is wrong with your argument. Thei point with science is that you don't know upfront what research will ultimately change the way people live, and what will go nowhere.
When Newton started working on the planets orbit, nobody could even imagine that it would lead to the industrial revolution. Or, to put it on more recent facts, who could tell that creating a protocol to interconnect a few computers on some universities at the 60s would affect all the way that our society is organized? On the other side, most of the money spent on what people knew that was important (oil discoveries, space flight, etc) generated only ordinary benefits.
"Sure, that's something that mostly only geeks do - normal people either let itunes rip a cd when they buy it, or don't rip cds at all."
Well, if you're right, then there is something very wrong here. I can't tell you what normal people do, but ripping a CD is just putting a CD on the driver and oppening the right program. Maybe they don't do that because they didn't have enought time to learn yet. But more probably, they do that.
Anyway, the GP doesn't have a point here, because you almost never need to rip 20 CDs. Once you rip your collection, you just need some incremental steps.
What is it that the United States have that no alternative energy prject goes well? I am serious here. I've listened to the failed tries of using biomass for a long time, every time I heard about an hydro plant it was a complete failure, every solar cells initiative seem to go the way of the dodo. And now that, wind porwer also fails.
This stuff generaly work for the rest of the world. Not all of them every time, but there is always some alternatives that work.
Where did you got that affirmation that wind power doesn't scale from? I'd love to hear some real facts about it. Also, what are those problems that you say hydro power has? I happen to know a bit about hydro power, and can't see an enviromental disaster at the well done dams. They change the environment a bit, that is true, but that is not an evironmental disaster. Life goes well on a reservoir and it has even a lot of economical uses.
And, about solar, I think that the best place to put solar cells is on buildings. No space spent, no transmission costs, and no thermal zone problems. Also, bio-energy (a kind of solar) is already suscessfully used on several places around the world.
At least the tropics don't need nuclear power for now.
But is the light on or off whe the dor is closed?
1: Yes, by eyeballing. It is not enought prove that the data fit the model. But it can be enoght to perceive that it doesn't fit. He arguees that there is a line there, but everything I can see is some kind of curve. I'd like to see the correlation of the fit, so I could numericaly prove my point, but it is really not needed.
3: That came from item 1. I'm saying that it is not an exponential law, because the graph is not an straight line.
Of course the line may be calculated by a best fit algorithm. I never questioned that. The problem is that the points dont fit well above a straight line. So they should be described by something else.
My other point is that when you lack the middle points (there is a gap there), you can't reliably model it. It will probably look like anything that you want*. And even so, the author had the bad luck of getting points that don't look like a straight line.
* That is not true if you have precise measurements, but it is not the case.
I followed your link. Now I understand why I never heard about this law... That graph is anything but a straight line. When you have a cluster of points, a gap, and another cluster of points, the easiest thing to come out with is a straight line. On this case, you have the two culsters seppareted by a gap, and not even this way it look straight.
But thanks. Now I know that HD sizes don't folow an exponential law.
Worse yet. It won't display (and print) the same on different computers. That kills the reimaning PDF usefullnes.
I am with the author when he thinks that it would be great it people standirdize on some one-file page formats. But I can't see that happening on his format. It would be much better to just tar and gzip everything. In fact, I can't see that happening at all while MS has the bigest share of browsers out there.
You noticed that humans are composed of dark matter, didn't you. I mean, we aren't so bright...
You mean that we can create more artificail scarcity, that will create more artificial markets where people trade more virtual goods. All that while adding near to zero worth on the real markets out there.
We really need to get out of those pyramids. Not create more.
"We decripted it" can be easily negated by any expert that the courts chose to listen. You just need to tell what algorithm you used to prove that it is a lie.
Now you got me. How usefull is a key that nobody knows? I can't think on what RIAA would do with it.
Ahmen to RIAA and its holy secret computer that can create evidence against anyone. It makes me wondering... Since when did the RIAA words value more than our (mere mortals) ones?
Guess what. Now they can even start working on a voice protocol.