There's also the fact that data isn't copyrightable. It's just facts.
While data isn't copyrightable, the published article is. Scientific journals are not just collections of spreadsheets and data files, they are a curated, peer-reviewed, filtered, and edited product intended to deliver a cohesive set of information to specific audiences. That takes effort and resources, which means that resulting product is a copyrightable work of art.
If you stumble across a data file hosted on Joe Smith's faculty website while searching for info on your topic, how do you know if it's any good? If that same information appears as a peer-reviewed article in a prestigious journal, it could have a different value for you -- it's been vetted. That process doesn't happen magically without resources. If the resulting product is made freely available, the resources come from elsewhere (eg, submission fees), but it's still copyrightable.
You're assuming that all "companies" are for-profit and are making money. What about non-profit organizations or those companies that are underwater financially?
2) Microsoft quit attempting to make all of their file formats dependent upon the OS/software that they write. The data is MINE, and I should be able to use other software to read the data. Commit to open file formats and I'd look a lot more favorably on MS.
That's the real trick, isn't it? To devise a file format that is completely independent of any editing applications and whatever features/limitations they happen to have?
Folks have been trying to do essentially that on the web for a decade, and there still isn't a uniform, file-renders-exactly-the-same-on-all-platforms format.
It isn't a Microsoft issue, it's an industry-wide issue.
"Billions of dollars can't save him from still being an idiot..".
How many of us have used our creative talents to amass a huge personal
fortune from next to nothing?
I submit that it's unlikely that an idiot could pull off such a feat.
There is no need to insult George's mental or artistic abilities simply because
we disagree with his vision. It's not as if he is leading our country further into
geo-political chaos.... <g>
"Y haven't a Black or any Woman hasn't been prez. since last few 100 yrs?"
Because they are were elected by the people.
Not trying to get modded as flamebait here; seriously: with whom would you file a complaint regarding the lack of diversity in the White House? There is no one because it's up to everyone.
Personally, I look forward to the day when the White House receives a qualified, effective leader that breaks the U.S. presidential stereotype.
There are some good reasons that the "base model" now include many of the tasty trimmings.
While many of these features used to be premium add-ons, now the cost of engineering multiple configurations (one with power doors, one without), combined with Americans' ever-present desire for the luxurious, outweighs the potential cost savings and lost sales incurred by simply not including these features as part of the base product.
Also, transmission/transaxle technology has come quite a long way from when you and I first learned to drive. While it used to be true that manual transmissions had advantages with lower price, lower repairs, and better gas mileage, engineering has now reduced the choice to simply that of personal preference. You'd be hard-pressed to find an automatic transmission that has fewer than four gears (many have 5 or even 6) which does not last the life of the car.
Lastly, I too looked at Subaru Foresters about five years ago, and was dismayed that this company in particular listed many of their amenities as cost-extra options, but failed to actually deliver vehicles to dealerships that didn't have these amenities pre-installed. When I questioned the dealer about getting a base car without the extras, he indicated he'd have to charge me labor costs to remove them.
I ended up with a Honda CR-V. One with a manual transmission at that! <g>
A few of the "facts" are open to debate when you consider things from a business person's point of view:
ARGUMENT: License cost is only a small part of the total cost of ownership.
FACT: License cost is a significant part of the cost at $369-479 per PC (per CDW.com) for MS-Office 2003 Standard/Professional.
TCAF: The license cost includes phone support from Microsoft; while you may not use it, there are many who do.
ARGUMENT: Installation and deployment costs
FACT: Many of the same methods used to deploy MS-Office work equally well, or better with Open Office. There are no software keys or other serial numbers to deal with in Open Office. You do not need to invest time and money into administering software licenses, audit trails and license compliance reports with Open Office. You do not need to worry about entering 25-digit CDKey codes on each PC or performing Microsoft Product Activation. You do not need a Microsoft Passport or the risk of associated unintentional information disclosure to use Open Office.
TCAF: Passport is unrelated to Office, and how well does OO support network/remote administration?.
ARGUMENT: Existing MS-Office users will need retraining to use Open Office.
FACT: Like the retraining necessary when MS-Office 95 users were forced to move to MS-Office 97? And again to MS-Office 2000? And again to XP/2002? And, though to a lesser extent, again to 2003?
What happens when students, either due to school policy or an individual effort to save money, grow up using Open Office instead of Microsoft office? Won't this argument then get turned on its head?
TCAF: Version upgrades tend to (for better or worse) heap on new features and refine existing features, while other software packages simply work *differently*. It may not be a big deal to one who simply needs to type a term paper, but to those thousands of office drones who work up to their armpits in documents and spreadsheets every day, it does represent a huge productivity impact.
ARGUMENT: Open Office does not have an email client, so customers may incur cost to get one.
FACT: Netscape? Mozilla? Pheonix? Eudora? Pegasus Mail? Outlook Express? Need I go on?
TCAF: Which of those support Microsoft Exchange Server? Businesses usually need an "email client" that is more than that: they need collaboration. (Is Jane available for a meeting next Tuesday? Let me attach this agenda to the calendar appointment.) Notes supported this, but rather clumsily.
ARGUMENT: Businesses need to exchange documents with other businesses.
FACT: HTML and PDF are the two most widely used formats for sharing documents with other businesses, and both are natively written and read in Open Office, without the need to spend $200 more on Acrobat Writer. Microsoft's argument exposes their belief that they should and do monopolize the office productivity marketplace, or else how could they argue that MS-Office format files are more portable than PDF or HTML?
TCAF: No strong argument here except that PDF and HTML themselves are not true standards. Everyone's familiar with HTML pages that render 101 different ways given 80 different programs, but the same often happens with PDF. (I work in the publications industry, and the PDF sent in by authors, rendered by all kinds of PDF-generating software, is all over the map; many times only the same program that wrote it can read it.)
ARGUMENT: Ensure their mission-critical data is protected from virus attack.
FACT: Like those pesky office macro viruses? Or the dozens of exploits for Outlook? Or the fact that VBScript does not properly implement sandbox security? And since when is Microsoft so concerned about viruses? Hell, they used to include antivirus software at no additional charge with Windows 3.x. We now pay 4x more for Win
But, it is *their* site to do with as they please, regardless whether it is from explicit intention or stupidity. The company owning the site does not "owe it" to you or anyone else to ensure compatibility with BubbasSchoolProjectWebBrowser or whatever else you prefer to use.
If *your* browser doesn't work on *their* site, then you can either choose another browser, or choose another site.
Maybe once you have a real job, repsonsible for ensuring near-flawless operation of a banking website with millions of users, you'll appreciate the need to limit compatitibilty support and testing to the top 98% platforms....
Two reasons: 1) You don't actually OWN the software: if you read the ageement, you are LEASING the software from the company. So, it'd be like tinkering with a leased car.
2) After you and your buddy finished making your mods to your car, you can't press a button and create thousands of identical copies for each of your friends and their friends, thereby bypassing the auto manufacturer's intended design, let alone the lost sales.
Slashdot Mirror
There's also the fact that data isn't copyrightable. It's just facts.
While data isn't copyrightable, the published article is. Scientific journals are not just collections of spreadsheets and data files, they are a curated, peer-reviewed, filtered, and edited product intended to deliver a cohesive set of information to specific audiences. That takes effort and resources, which means that resulting product is a copyrightable work of art. If you stumble across a data file hosted on Joe Smith's faculty website while searching for info on your topic, how do you know if it's any good? If that same information appears as a peer-reviewed article in a prestigious journal, it could have a different value for you -- it's been vetted. That process doesn't happen magically without resources. If the resulting product is made freely available, the resources come from elsewhere (eg, submission fees), but it's still copyrightable.
You're assuming that all "companies" are for-profit and are making money. What about non-profit organizations or those companies that are underwater financially?
That's the real trick, isn't it? To devise a file format that is completely independent of any editing applications and whatever features/limitations they happen to have?
Folks have been trying to do essentially that on the web for a decade, and there still isn't a uniform, file-renders-exactly-the-same-on-all-platforms format.
It isn't a Microsoft issue, it's an industry-wide issue.
... that seemed like an odd title, lemme read that again.
Oh.
Well I was close enough.
How many of us have used our creative talents to amass a huge personal fortune from next to nothing? I submit that it's unlikely that an idiot could pull off such a feat.
There is no need to insult George's mental or artistic abilities simply because we disagree with his vision. It's not as if he is leading our country further into geo-political chaos.... <g>
Because they are were elected by the people. Not trying to get modded as flamebait here; seriously: with whom would you file a complaint regarding the lack of diversity in the White House? There is no one because it's up to everyone.
Personally, I look forward to the day when the White House receives a qualified, effective leader that breaks the U.S. presidential stereotype.
While many of these features used to be premium add-ons, now the cost of engineering multiple configurations (one with power doors, one without), combined with Americans' ever-present desire for the luxurious, outweighs the potential cost savings and lost sales incurred by simply not including these features as part of the base product.
Also, transmission/transaxle technology has come quite a long way from when you and I first learned to drive. While it used to be true that manual transmissions had advantages with lower price, lower repairs, and better gas mileage, engineering has now reduced the choice to simply that of personal preference. You'd be hard-pressed to find an automatic transmission that has fewer than four gears (many have 5 or even 6) which does not last the life of the car.
Lastly, I too looked at Subaru Foresters about five years ago, and was dismayed that this company in particular listed many of their amenities as cost-extra options, but failed to actually deliver vehicles to dealerships that didn't have these amenities pre-installed. When I questioned the dealer about getting a base car without the extras, he indicated he'd have to charge me labor costs to remove them.
I ended up with a Honda CR-V. One with a manual transmission at that! <g>
A few of the "facts" are open to debate when you consider things from a business person's point of view:
ARGUMENT: License cost is only a small part of the total cost of ownership.
FACT: License cost is a significant part of the cost at $369-479 per PC (per CDW.com) for MS-Office 2003 Standard/Professional.
TCAF : The license cost includes phone support from Microsoft; while you may not use it, there are many who do.
ARGUMENT: Installation and deployment costs
FACT: Many of the same methods used to deploy MS-Office work equally well, or better with Open Office. There are no software keys or other serial numbers to deal with in Open Office. You do not need to invest time and money into administering software licenses, audit trails and license compliance reports with Open Office. You do not need to worry about entering 25-digit CDKey codes on each PC or performing Microsoft Product Activation. You do not need a Microsoft Passport or the risk of associated unintentional information disclosure to use Open Office.
TCAF : Passport is unrelated to Office, and how well does OO support network/remote administration?.
ARGUMENT: Existing MS-Office users will need retraining to use Open Office.
FACT: Like the retraining necessary when MS-Office 95 users were forced to move to MS-Office 97? And again to MS-Office 2000? And again to XP/2002? And, though to a lesser extent, again to 2003?
What happens when students, either due to school policy or an individual effort to save money, grow up using Open Office instead of Microsoft office? Won't this argument then get turned on its head?
TCAF : Version upgrades tend to (for better or worse) heap on new features and refine existing features, while other software packages simply work *differently*. It may not be a big deal to one who simply needs to type a term paper, but to those thousands of office drones who work up to their armpits in documents and spreadsheets every day, it does represent a huge productivity impact.
ARGUMENT: Open Office does not have an email client, so customers may incur cost to get one.
FACT: Netscape? Mozilla? Pheonix? Eudora? Pegasus Mail? Outlook Express? Need I go on?
TCAF : Which of those support Microsoft Exchange Server? Businesses usually need an "email client" that is more than that: they need collaboration. (Is Jane available for a meeting next Tuesday? Let me attach this agenda to the calendar appointment.) Notes supported this, but rather clumsily.
ARGUMENT: Businesses need to exchange documents with other businesses.
FACT: HTML and PDF are the two most widely used formats for sharing documents with other businesses, and both are natively written and read in Open Office, without the need to spend $200 more on Acrobat Writer. Microsoft's argument exposes their belief that they should and do monopolize the office productivity marketplace, or else how could they argue that MS-Office format files are more portable than PDF or HTML?
TCAF : No strong argument here except that PDF and HTML themselves are not true standards. Everyone's familiar with HTML pages that render 101 different ways given 80 different programs, but the same often happens with PDF. (I work in the publications industry, and the PDF sent in by authors, rendered by all kinds of PDF-generating software, is all over the map; many times only the same program that wrote it can read it.)
ARGUMENT: Ensure their mission-critical data is protected from virus attack.
FACT: Like those pesky office macro viruses? Or the dozens of exploits for Outlook? Or the fact that VBScript does not properly implement sandbox security? And since when is Microsoft so concerned about viruses? Hell, they used to include antivirus software at no additional charge with Windows 3.x. We now pay 4x more for Win
But, it is *their* site to do with as they please, regardless whether it is from explicit intention or stupidity. The company owning the site does not "owe it" to you or anyone else to ensure compatibility with BubbasSchoolProjectWebBrowser or whatever else you prefer to use. If *your* browser doesn't work on *their* site, then you can either choose another browser, or choose another site. Maybe once you have a real job, repsonsible for ensuring near-flawless operation of a banking website with millions of users, you'll appreciate the need to limit compatitibilty support and testing to the top 98% platforms....
Two reasons:
1) You don't actually OWN the software: if you read the ageement, you are LEASING the software from the company. So, it'd be like tinkering with a leased car.
2) After you and your buddy finished making your mods to your car, you can't press a button and create thousands of identical copies for each of your friends and their friends, thereby bypassing the auto manufacturer's intended design, let alone the lost sales.