Making the front cover of Time means your product is better?
If anything, it's a unified ability to get people to "do their best work". And it shouldn't stop there, and that shouldn't be as painful as it has often gotten. It can and should be par for the course, no unpleasantness required. Much research has gone into this area of corporate culture - the unpleasantness isn't required.
It's interesting, you know -- it seems that Apple is Steve, and perhaps vice versa. And Steve has this "thing" for "devices". He's obsessed with the device. The black cube, the sleek sexy all-in-ones, and that's cool...
But did you ever notice how it really wouldn't mean anything if Microsoft wasn't ubiquitous? In other words -- to have that cover of Time magazine (and to have it mean anything significant), Apple has given up 35%-45% of desktop market share (or better). How on earth is that worth it? Price of success? Hardly.
Apple plays off of Microsoft's ubiquity and plainness. In a world where 90% is Windows, Apple stands out. In any other world, it would be more like Frank Lloyd Wright or Pininfarina. Nice, interesting, beautiful, but decidedly niche. It's front page material because of everything it's given up to not compete with Microsoft. Of course, then the question is does Wall Street value market share, or is it more important to go after and get 91% of the $1000+ PC market? Passion for the "The Device".
It's the only way to make the concept of a "device" work in the marketplace. Play it off MS's ubiquity. Bounce it off Windows' boring and often generic nature. Migrate the focus to uncharted territories -- wireless, controversial Napster territory, and so forth. Contrast it to ubiquity, blandness, and low-budget compromises, and use your awesome resources to leverage your way into entrenched, stifled areas. Not so much to help the consumer, but to peddle "The Device". Point being, Apple can do better. Apple should do better.
Is it really necessary to make the front cover of time to give stockholders a good deal? To give customers a good deal? Is my consumer experience made better if my device is on the front cover of Time? Or is it purely stroking someone's ego? Could tens of millions of dollars be made by simply COMPETING with Microsoft (something Apple is capable of doing quite well at this point in time)?
Unfortunately, great leaders tend to "go nuts", sometimes, taking down entire leagues of followers with them. It's the nature of genius, perhaps. Seeing things others don't see, while fixated on a narrow goal -- in this case, "The Device". A flying saucer landed in my back yard and left me with this unique, fascinating object. Get over it, man. Apple, essentially, wants to have its "devices" (at least in the PC world) stick out so much, it's willing to give up perhaps 45% market share on the desktop to Windows, perhaps similarly significant market share to Linux on the server side, simply to have its devices "stick out". And the consumer loses choice, the developer gets frustrated, the employee loses significant quality of life. Pointless pain and suffering, unnecessary inconvenience.
To some extent, this "sticking out" is leveraged by gains and innovations with the ipod and the iphone, perhaps the tablet -- but man oh man -- an MSI Wind or Dell Mini 9 running OSX86 rocks. Where's Apple? Do they care about the consumer at all? Or just the image? Exactly how much do they sacrifice to maintain that image?
It's such a shame too. I guess it all boils down to this -- Steve is an inspirational dude, he runs a tight ship, and that tight ship has historically churned out some nice, innovative hardware and software products -- and continues to do so. But... consequently... Apple is CAPABLE of much more. We KNOW Apple can do better than it's doing. You may say it's doing great, but we KNOW it can do BETTER. Much, much, much better.
Apple is capable of doing better. It's the genius student, the teacher's pet. Yes, those are unr
These "electronic papers" are very new, anyway. There's the pauses and other nonsense. Even PDF is "locked up", in a way.
So is Postscript.
What about XML?
I'll hold out for a universal standard for electronic paper -- an open source one. One where I can purchase an e-copy as I would a PDF and just be trusted with it.
This e-copy then, like a flac or an mp3, would go onto one of many digital devices (just as a PDF would go onto one of potentially many computers or laptops or whatever).
So let's just say -- no to PDF and PS, and yes to open standards for some sort of e-paper thing, and lots of competing e-paper devices that display color and don't have strange pauses and flashes and whatever.
It's a good idea, but it needs competition. Lots of competition.
But I guess the real question is this... I download a PDF of an e-book. Can I sell it to someone? I wonder if that question is yes, because how is that supposed to work?
Could I register myself somewhere? Register my purchase and register my sale? How about the person purchasing it from me - if s/he goes through the same registering process that I went through when I purchased it, then s/he'd be registered and would be able to sell it whenever s/he chose to.
This is a problem that needs a solution. It wouldn't make much sense to drop the price more than the cost of producing a digital copy vs the cost of producing a hard copy.
This isn't anyone's fault -- this is something we need to figure out a solution to.
Luckily, we still have the option of purchasing the hard copy. Perhaps we could get the rights to the e-stuff along with a hard copy? Or download the e-copy while the hard copy is arriving in the mail?
Looks like this might operate in a "blacklist" sort of way - a copyright holder notifies the ISP what they want blocked, the "DNA" of that content is added to the filtering device, and it filters away.
Someone uploads an infringing video to YouTube, you go to view it, and it doesn't get through.
Someone shares an infringing mp3, you go to download it, and it doesn't get through.
It doesn't appear to be arbitrary -- not traffic shaping -- not protocol dropping or packet spoofing -- you need to add the "DNA" of the particular copyrighted "work" to the device.
Some record label releases "DRM-free" mp3's somewhere for download, and at the same time adds the "DNA" of those DRM-free mp3's to the devices (or sends them to the ISP to have the ISP add it to the device).
So in that sense, it sounds sort of like a pre-emptive DMCA takedown notice. You do it copyrighted work by copyrighted work.
All this kind of stuff seems slightly reminiscent of 3-D glasses in movie theatres or something like that. In the long run, it's probably unnecessary and more hassle than it's worth. Soon enough, people will get sick of scouring p2p, they'll just want the music now. Places like OiNK are few and far between. Certainly an exception to the rule. Most people just want what they want, and they want it now. P2P can't compete with what major labels COULD come up with, and soon, those things are going to be come up with, and this filtering stuff will be completely unnecessary.
The simplest way to solve the problem for the short haul is to realize that a "non-commercial, personal use" exemption to the copyright law more or less exists, whether or not it's on the books or not. We simply need to recognize that a non-commerical, personal use exemption is the best way to move forward on this. Takedown notices are a good recourse to have, because in a sense they protect all of us from having our stuff stolen. Pre-emptive takedown notices in the form of DNA fingerprinting of multimedia files? That's probably only something that's going to be useful for something that has lots of "hype". We get back to the same business model -- planning for large quantities. A few artists, large quantities, preemptive takedown notice.
At the rate it's taking them to roll out U-verse, for instance, this might be completely obsolete and unnecessary by the time it goes live. If wimax takes off faster, no one will need to download anything ever again -- it'll just be streaming all the way. The future is probably a subscription service with tens of thousands of music files - it certainly seems the way we're headed. It's just easier for most folks. Subscription services will make these types of filtering devices completely unnecessary.
It's not impossible to outcompete p2p on ease of use, security, selection, and value. Once that happens, these filtering devices will just end up being more or less a complete waste of time.
What happened was the old Napster caught everyone off guard, so now they all think that there's some kind of "magic" or whatever with regards to downloading stuff. They're still stuck on the original "defeat", or the original "surprise", or whatever you want to call it. A bad case of a deeply wounded ego, perhaps.
And now, with many ISP's seeing lots of big green dollar signs when they realize this gives them an opportunity to reduce traffic and delay upgrading the networks, the reality of actually turning the internet into a delivery method for content is slowly being eroded as well.
Even if they succeed at eliminating the ability of people to download stuff, that's not going to stop people from making copies for personal use. People will always find ways to get together and share stuff they like and enjoy. That's what music and movies are about - a type of communal experience. It's probably been that way since the dawn of the human race - if you believe in evolution, storytelling and musicmaking as such may very well predate the existence of the human being. People getting together online, anonymously, via p2p networks, is just an evolution of these primitive instincts. No, it's not "real" human contact, but in a sense, it's just as communal, even though it's largely anonymous or semi-anonymous and done electronically.
Napster caught everyone by surprise, sales took a hit, and so for some reason these dimly-witted morons think that the solution to reverse this situation can also be found online. What the content industry wants is more sales. What the artists want is the ability to quit their day jobs and make ends meet. What the consumers want is diversity and a fair price. These issues, unfortunately, are not being addressed to the extent that they need to be addressed.
It is important that ISPs upgrade their networks, and eliminate bandwidth hogs by making the pipes so large there are no bottlenecks. You can't hog the bandwidth if there's enough of it go around. It is also important for ISPs to continue to try to reach more people with broadband options. By doing this, it will create an opportunity for third-party companies (such as Netflix) to offer content delivery over the internet. This would be an extremely user-friendly method that would generate significant amounts of royalties. No CD's or DVD's to press, no packaging to print, no inventory, no warehousing -- none of that. Royalties happening every time someone clicks a button on their remote. We have lots of PC's connected to the internet. What we need now is TV's - televisions connecting to the internet. Yes, it will shake things up to do this, but in the long run, everyone is going to win. This is the battle. This is the struggle. Connecting the internet to the television. The ramifications are immense.
They complain they're losing money, while their actions are directly and indirectly slowly destroying an opportunity to generate significant amounts of royalties. They must be missing something - perhaps they're missing an ability to "see the big picture". The members just feed them money, and they just keep rubbing more salt into the wound. The record player is broken -- the record is stuck -- the damage to the groove is too great.
If you get audited, and you're running software you don't own, you can bring your own from home. The "theory" is that you brought your copy from home to fool the auditors. They want to eliminate that possibility.
Losing the invoice altogether might also be a way to purchase the software only once you realize that you're getting audited. They couldn't allow that, now could they?
These folks have no legal authority over you whatsoever. The only thing they have is the threat of a lawsuit, the consequences of which -- i.e. -- the fine you could be "facing" -- are greater than you would want to deal with, and they'll attach themselves to you like superglue, so you're going to have to deal with them sooner or later. That's why everyone either settles or whatever.
The "proper" procedure is to 1) understand what they require, and 2) have a lawyer do the audit. Yes, it drags it out, but if you truly have nothing to hide (i.e. you're completely legit), you might as well have a lawyer get that point across to them. They have no legal authority over you whatsoever. Just threats.
Also, it might help to make it clear to new hires (sort of in an around-about way) what the deal is with these folks and why proper procedures are necessary, and how they'll get fired if they don't follow proper procedures wrt licensing to the T. If you're well protected, and documented, and employees know it, and participate in the process, they won't "drop a dime" to piss you off because they'll realize there will be no award, so it won't be worth their time and effort to do it all for nothing.
There's ways to deal with it, but it just seems to me that using Linux and other free software unless absolutely necessary is one small step that you can take.
As far as ebay, apparently ebay vendors aren't "real", in the sense of that you need a "real" invoice.
It's crazy that you can't buy used software from a bankrupting business, though. Bizarre. You can get a good deal in situations like that. What it also says is that you'll never be able to sell YOUR software to another party, even if the EULA allows you to. At least not as far as audits are concerned.
And it's something like 40% of all small businesses that have been audited like this, so this is by no means a rare occurence. Without a competent lawyer, you could be looking at fines in the five to seven digit range. Perhaps even tens of millions or more...
While I understand that some companies may actually put the IT folks under pressure to do stuff that is not above board, the flip side of that is that most businesses don't even realize they're not in compliance.
1. You have to have an invoice. Period. If you lose it, you're a software pirate and owe them at least 3x retail + 3500 legal. No ifs, ands or buts. Being genuine doesn't count. Having the original CD with the hologram or what not doesn't count. You MUST have the invoice.
2. The invoice has to be IN THE NAME OF THE BUSINESS. Not in the name of the CEO, CFO, or whomever. If the invoice is not in the name of the business, you're a software pirate and owe them at least 3x retail + 3500 legal. No ifs, ands, or buts.
3. Obviously, the invoice has to be dated prior to the audit.
If you purchase the software from Ebay, it's no good. Minimum fine 3x retail + 3500 legal.
There also might be the issue that if you purchase used software, the invoice won't be in your name. So, practically speaking, you can't sell your software to another business. If you buy software used, from another business, you're a software pirate. Minimum 3x retail + 3500 legal.
So, the audit is the problem. Whether or not you're in compliance is the next step. Dealing with the audit is the first. Understanding what you should have done in the first place, and doing it, that's your best defense. You absolutely positively have to hire a lawyer (well, not really, but you should) - if you get audited. That's your first problem.
Don't get audited. It's not even about being in compliance with the licensing -- well, actually, that's not true - that's your second line of defense - and it's certainly in your best interests to be above board on everything.
Main thing is that you don't want to get audited. It means that it's strongly in your best interests to hire a laywer, and the entire process can take up to two years. The audit is the problem. Not being in compliance is just icing on the cake. Monetarily speaking, it's a semi-truck of icing, but the point is that first, you need to avoid the audit - then as a second line of defense make sure you've got invoices for everyrhing, multiple copies of those invoices in safety deposit boxes, and that those invoices are in the name of the business. Don't get audited first, but be prepared, and know what's up, so that you don't make it harder on yourself if you do get audited. It's not about proving to them that you're in compliance, it's about not getting audited in the first place. This has probably much to do with limited use of proprietary software (only when absolutely necessary), perhaps going so far as outsourcing stuff that needs it (Quickbooks, etc...), and also quite a bit about HR and whom you hire and how you treat them. Remember, being in compliance doesn't solve your problem. Getting audited is the problem.
How many sole proprietorships have all of their OS's purchased in THE NAME OF THE BUSINESS, and how many people keep copies of all original invoices?
Best thing you can do as a small business is go 100% open source - BSD, if you must. Open source all the way - send those extortionist bastards packing with a retractable baton.
On Linux, at least, it seems to happen with more than just Firefox. I just randomly checked my "top", and the browser I use, Opera, is consuming 424megs resident and 738 virtual. As I have 2 gigs of RAM, I usually restart Opera when it tops 1.0 g or more virtual. The memory usage will only continue to grow over time.
Firefox does the same thing. The complication with Firefox is the fact that it spikes to 100% CPU usage from time to time. So you've not restarted the app for a while, it's eaten up your memory without your knowledge (of course you're used to keeping your Linux system up for months, why not one of your favorite apps, right?), and it's swapping like there's no tomorrow, now it pegs your cpu on top. Pretty please?
This is in fact the last time I remember having anything even slightly resembling a BSOD on a Linux system in the past few years (with the exception of some ATA driver changes and a mismatched kernel). I actually went Ctrl-Alt-F2 and logged in as root, killed Firefox. This was a couple of weeks after Opera went free, so I switched and never looked back. At least with Opera, when you restart (which you eventually have to do), you're back where you started. It's no sweat to restart. I do it often.
I still use Firefox sometimes, but only because my cookies are turned off on Opera, and so I only use Firefox todo something that requires cookies. Nothing else.
This is a problem with all web browsers (at least on Linux), but the two bigger problems with Firefox are the 100% CPU utilization bug and the fact that you can't restart - out of the box - and take up where you left off. Fix those, and the memory thing is more or less irrelevant.
Just the other day, my brother called me and asked me to investigate his laptop, and why their web surfing slowed down. Did he have a virus? Well, turns out he tends to put his laptop to sleep, and keep Firefox open for days or more. His wife does the same thing, on another account. Problem solved, although it didn't occur to me right away. Restart Firefox. I downloaded and installed Opera for them and told them to use it instead.
Anyway -- you have to restart the app eventually. Priority #1 is to remember where you were out of the box. #2 it would be nice to not have the 100% CPU utilization bug. If someone can figure out how to do garbage collection without a restart, that would be brilliant - pure genius.
What it all boils down to is that with Opera, your CPU doesn't peg in strange ways, and you can very comfortably restart and take up where you left off. It may not seem like a big deal, but in fact, these two things really cut to the heart of the matter. If you forget to restart or put off restarting Firefox because you're doing something important and don't feel like engaging in a massive bookmarks session when you fire it back up, but you push it too close, your memory gets eaten up (which is more likely when you have more stuff open - which is when you're least like to want to restart), and then your CPU unexpectedly peaks, and it's already swapping like crazy, then your wonderfully stable Linux system can go into a semi-freeze like state, swapping and pegging your CPU. Your mouse doesn't move, your menus don't respond -- well actually, it's just that the boomerang is a thousand miles away (which complicates the situation) -- you get the idea.
As much as I love Linux, and am a strong supporter of Open Source stuff, I just don't like Firefox. I'm fine with Opera, and then if that doesn't work, I just go straight to IE (which is not very often).
I tried out 10.4 for a little while, after having used Linux for a long time. I felt a little lost, honestly. I installed Quicksilver, which helped a lot. I installed iterm, which helped a lot. I never got around to installing fink, and perhaps something like openbox on top, and I don't have the laptop anymore - but that might have helped.
Definitely, I am much more productive in Linux, I can customize things much better in Linux.
I'm excited by the technical nature of OS X, the fact that it's BSD, the fact that it's secure, that I don't have to constantly worry about viruses or updates or whatever, but usability wise, I felt like I was hanging upside down, heavily sedated, not sure where I was or what was going on. Almost makes me sick to my stomach.
For me, clearly the solution lies in installing Fink or Darwin ports, and installing a window manager where I can edit my own menus. Unfortunately I was only experimenting with the laptop, and I wasn't really in a position to install tons of software or whatever.
I bet you anything that as it is with learning - different people learn differently - so it is with user interfaces. Now I'm no fan of Windows, as I use Linux for most everything day in and out - but user-interface wise, I'd rather use Windows. Not-having-to-worry-about viruses wise, OS X is better than Windows.
For me, personally, the user interface in OS X just didn't work. I've used BSDs before, and I'm a big fan of their stability, but in the end, it's the configurability that makes the cake.
I can't build my own Mac (legally, at least).
I'm stuck with a single desktop environment (without Fink or Darwin Ports)
It makes me physically uncomfortable to use the interface (having almost exclusively used Linux for about a decade).
The truth, I think, it seems, as much as I _HATE_ to admit it, as much as I really, really, _WANT_ to love OS X, is that I'm better served by running Linux, and then using Windows only if there is absolutely no other way to accomplish that which I need to accomplish. It's not a huge problem to have XP running on a second-hand computer in the corner somewhere "just in case" I need to do something. I can even vnc in from the Linux machine...
I was excited about OS X, I tried OS X for a couple of months (10.4), and my conclusion is that Linux is better.
I can build my own machines, I don't have to pay ridiculous sums of money for hardware, I can use AMD, I can use my own cooling solutions, pick and choose which components I want, and then I can configure my GUI as I see fit.
If I didn't have the computer skills that I have, I would probably go for Apple over Windows, that's true. But knowing what I know, I simply couldn't make that choice. As a matter of fact, I wonder if the people who do make that choice actually realize what they're doing...
If Apple were to release OS X into the wild, so I could build my own PC (legally, that is - I know you can do it in an unofficial capacity - even on AMD - but that's not the point) and then install OS X on it, and then install Xcode and then install Fink and then customize - I would then use it as the "go to" system whenever Linux couldn't do what I needed done.
I love OS X, but I hate the user interface - and it looks like they just made it worse. AND I don't like being ripped off on my hardware -- $329 for a 500 gig hard drive? A 500 gig Seagate 7200.10 runs $119! C'mon man...
I'm sorry... Apple just doesn't cut it, as MUCH as I would LOVE to love this OS... I can get better functionality with Linux + Windows whenever I absolutely need Windows because Linux can't do something I absolutely can't live without.
At this point in time, I do NOT see an Apple in my future. I guess that makes me love Linux ever so much more...
What we might end up with, if we're lucky, is a Usenet devoid of anything even remotely related to the RIAA.
That, my friends, would be a good thing.
At this point -- seriously -- I'm actually quite interested in knowing whether or not an artist I am interested in purchasing an album from is with a label that is part of the RIAA.
By promoting the downloading of commercial-type stuff, filesharing apps and sites are just "working" the same marketing machine set up by these huge organizations.
A maharishi that like Beastie Boys. A guru that leads a yoga session with Metallica.
Gimme a break.
What the music industry needs is something like the SEC.
Information.
At least that's what the SEC aims to provide -- in the first place. Information. A 10-K. An 8-K. Etc.
What do music fans need? Information.
Give me the name of an artist or a group and five seconds with Google and I'll have a website at my fingertips. Yet you want me to go down to the nonexistent Tower or whatever. Or perhaps wait a couple minutes for the sexy flash to load. I want a sample flac. Gimme a sample flac, mr. guru!!!
It's over. The game is over. NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) won't save it.
Filesharing (real filesharing, that is) provides a forum where music fans can discover new artists. What is needed is a "forum" of sorts, a "meeting place", or something along those lines -- a place (most likely virtual) where fans can meet artists and can make connections -- perhaps connections that can last a lifetime. NPD and corporate corruption can't provide even 0.00000% of what's necessary.
P2P is a forum. It's a meeting place.
Listen to me... Hendrix - Joplin - Morrison - Scott - Cobain - and many, many more. The industry has dues to pay. An industry that kills people for money. And bookcases full of unread spirutuality and bare feet aren't going to save anyone - they never have, and they never will.
Music that sells itself -- they sure are willing to discriminate - to take years - to present to the public music that sells itself. But do they care about art? Do they care about creativity? Perhaps if it makes money...
The "prospectus" and the "stock" need to be seperate things. The information about the music and the music need to be seperated. The "hook" reverses this situation. The "hook" incorporates the prospectus, the merchandising, the marketing, and the passion into the song. The song sells itself. You call this art? Gimme a break.
Only accepting songs that sell themselves? That's not art. It's BS.
Narcissism brought down Europe. Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler. All products of cold-bloodedness. Narcissism is obviously about to bring down the American "entertainment" industry. Bravo. What this really means is more art for the masses, which can only be good.
I think that ultimately the question that came about (and of course no one REALLY knows (which is the problem)) was that some folks began wondering if the data was incorrect - in other words - if the bandwidth numbers were mistakenly attributed to an individual who hadn't actually used anywhere near that much.
In other words - digging into the details, it became obvious that one very strong possibility was that (again, no one REALLY knows (which is the problem)) the person who got contacted was not the person who generated the bandwidth. In other words, Comcast keeps asking the poor fellow to cut back, they're looking at 250-300 gigs on their end, while the poor fellow is actually doing about 20-30 gigs and cutting back to even less than that. No matter how much the subscriber cuts back, the next month, erroneous data comes in again - Comcast's info is that he's done another 200+ gigs that month. So this ends up where they cut him off for 12 months (true story). There was no other logical explanation (other than the subscriber lying (which is a possibility, or course)).
This is where the secrecy creates problems, really. Sure, maybe an invisible something or another is better than a low explicit one, but you can't defend yourself if they've got it wrong, because there's no documentation. They don't even always tell the subscriber how much the subscriber has downloaded, and it appears that they may even lie about that. They don't want anyone knowing anything, basically. "Just cut back".
But "Just cut back" doesn't cut it when it's not you, now does it?
It's one thing to have rules, it's another thing to have flexible rules. But no matter how flexible those rules are, if you have this absolute secrecy thing going on, you stand no chance of defending yourself if you actually haven't done it and someone gets something mixed up somewhere.
Having a "counter" on your account - where you log into your account online and see how much you've downloaded, for instance - if you see data on there that isn't you, or if it's going up too fast, you can be proactive and call in and say "something's wrong here". If, for instance, the gigs are accumulating, and you disconnect your modem - pull it out of the wall -- and the gigs are still accumulating, then you can call in and notify. This isn't ME doing it. But if they won't even tell you how much you downloaded to get the call, or if they lie about it, (again, no one REALLY knows what happened (which is the problem)), how are you to trust that data is actually accurate? That it's not a mixup somewhere?
In that one particular situation, it did in fact appear that Comcast got the subscribers data mixed up (they actually turned the subscriber's internet back ON). They cancelled the 12-month cancellation because they reviewed their records and they figured out that it wasn't him doing it - they got it mixed up with someone else. The subscriber was downloading 15-30, and their data was saying 250-350. Month after month after month. Try cutting back on that!
It's creepy, is what it is. It's too secretive - you can't defend yourself. There's no data - no documentation.
They really ought to change the way they do this - it's very, very creepy.
Make the high-end surround sound, the high-end projectors, and the high-end screens a portable deal, just like the Stones can set up in a football stadium, a "movie" can set up in a performance hall where you might usually see orchestras and ballets. Movies taking advantage of venues.
Assigned seating, perhaps slightly more expensive tickets, no ads, professional employees working the aisles and the door, and perhaps not only just the newest releases.
Elevate movies to an artform (which many of them actually are). Create alternative venues. No popcorn. No sticky floors. No talking. No ads.
There is no reason for movies to be pushed down to an amusement park level. They are a current form of media expression. Music albums aren't dead, either. The problem is obviously the "suits", so the way around that is for people to get together and for the offerrers to offer a high-quality, advertisement-free movie experience, and for the recievers to be willing to shell out what is essentially chump change for a high-quality, advertisement-free, assigned-seating, professional-level venue in which to view a movie on the latest high-end surround sound, projector, and screen technology. Tomorrow, there may be a ballet there. Or perhaps even a football game. So what? Who says movies have to be seen only at places dedicated for movies.
Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Put a chlorine filter on that jazz and buy some organic baby shampoo.
Pop musicians will tend to get "trapped". Hendrix, for instance - what do they want to see? Guitar solos, playing with his teeth, behind his back, using the whammy bar (tremelo arm) to imitate rockets - what an insult to such a talented and groundbreaking musician to be lowered to the level of a circus freakshow of some kind. Clapton, similarly, has a strong focus on the cocaine-driven mind-blowing guitar solos - which are not necessarily unimpressive - but you kinda sorta need coke to do them properly (which is one hell of an occupational hazard), and then you need ethanol to take that edge off, so on and so forth. But first and foremost, it's limiting. As if there was nothing more to music than guitar solos and drugs. It's not true.
We need to redefine music, really, if we're going to get anywhere. You're probably doing that pop music star a favor by refusing to fuel their falsely informed beliefs. The industry provides us all (musicians and fans both) with a slot machine lever. We keep pulling it, but we never get what we want. Decorate that slot machine lever with recreational drugs, lots of money, and members of the opposite sex and we'll almost kill ourselves (and for musicians in particular, sometimes succeed) for another chance at that slot machine lever.
It's not really music - it's vice. For the musicians as well. The commercial stuff, that is. There's plenty of artists who aren't devout Catholics that don't do the commercial thing and actually approach music from a more artisitic, creative, or spiritual angle. Some use politics, and of course, that's just politics pretending to be music. Music transcends politics. Music transcends drugs, sex. Music transcends rock and roll. (Sorry). Rock and roll IS the suit. Straight jacket, to be more precise. Music can liberate us from that evil. Good, real, honest music, that is. Music made by artists who are interested in being artists, not artists who are lured and then trapped by money and whatever like some fish on a hook. Why is there an image of fame and fortune as a ticket out of poverty?
Going after folks who download? Forget it. Waste of time. If you don't want the file being shared, then don't sell the CD and go find a day job. It's the way things are. Give me filesharing anyday. There's a million things I'd rather do than have a contract with a major label. Filesharing is nowhere near as evil as a major recording contract. If you can survive a major recording contract, you can THRIVE with filesharing. Filesharing is nowhere near as big a financial burden as a major record label. In fact, it's arguably beneficial, depending on which data you choose to believe.
But the main thing is to focus on MUSIC, as an art form, not MU$IC as a slot machine lever. To understand what music can do for us, and to not expect things from it that it isn't capable of providing We still have this problem -- there is a general disinterest in music's (currently) untapped potential, as well as the regrettable circus-freakshow-slot-machine-handle atmosphere which prevents the trapped artists from exploring that (currently) untapped potential.
It just has to be believable - believable enough. Such and such person took someone's lunch money, and uh... it was lost, or there was a 95-year-old widow who needed groceries or whatever.
The desired end goal is this: You give Microsoft money. That's all there is to it. Whether it covers anything or not is besides the point. The point is that Microsoft gets your money. And, as long as they get your money, everything is peachy keen, so it doesn't matter what anything covers because nothing will happen as long as you pay up.
Basically, more or less.
The nice thing about this situation is that you can basically (more or less) tell them to go bother someone else. Everyone knows these patent cross-licensing deals are silly, and Linux just happens to be physically incapable of entering into them. That's the way Linux is, and the sooner people realize that, the sooner they'll realize it. Whether they realize it or not isn't going to change the fact that Linux is not "cross-licensable".
Used to be some time ago before there was an Open Solaris, you could download Solaris from Sun.
But... no tech support, no nothing. You're on your own.
And this is really sort of the reverse of that -- resale price maintenance.
The theory is that if you have a store that offers lots of customer service, gives you lots of information about the products, which creates more overhead, vs a store that has little customer service, gives no advice, has no information about the products, then customers will go the store with the customer service and product information, get their information, then go to the other store selling for cheaper there. It is in fact a true fact -- lack of resale price maintenance creates a free rider problem.
These resellers are "free-riding" on the customer service and advice given to their customers by the full-featured retail places.
Really, the question is how many substitutes there are for that product - amongst other things like anticompetitive effects - but if the product has lots of substitutes (and how many cosmetics brands are out there) then that company can do whatever it wants - vote with your dollars and don't buy their brand.
Many people feel this will actually stimulate competition - innovation, efficiency, etc. Instead of offering an inefficient manufacturer's goods at a discount, a competitor would start their own brand, perhaps handling customer service issues more efficiently, perhaps "toning down" the "consultations", or whatever - streamlining the whole deal, so that there aren't "official" retail outlets which are hugely inefficient and have to charge large markups which include the price of providing greater customer service, information, etc...
Some brands may feel it best to have some optimal amount of customer hand-holding be part of the product - it might make things more efficient - it might prevent unnecessary returns, it might help ensure greater customer satisfaction. If the customer doesn't like it, then they could buy a brand that doesn't hold their hand as much.
From another angle, you could argue, for instance - that people should be able to download a "free" version of Windows (perhaps without all the bells and whistles and IEs and Outlooks) of some sort, and install it, but the free version would offer no tech support, no nothing. If the customer couldn't figure it out, then they have to buy the real thing. Solaris was like this for quite some time.
OTOH -- Microsoft might be worried that this version of Windows would earn it a reputation that the software is difficult and doesn't work, so they may choose to only sell the product if there is hand-holding there, to ensure a smoother customer experience. The way things stand now, it's up to the brand - the manufacturer - this type of situation, provided there are substitutes and no significant anticompetitive effects, promotes "interbrand" competition (competition between brands). A "per se" vertical restraints rule, such as the OP is suggesting should exist ("per se" meaning that it's automatically illegal to tell the retailer how much to charge no matter what the situation) promotes "intrabrand" competition - competition "within" a particular brand, competition by retailers selling the SAME brand.
Now -- from the decision -- if I'm reading this right -- it said that the overruling of Dr. Miles is held and that vertical price restraints were to be judged by the rule of reason (i.e. how many substites for leather products, how many other companies, does this interfere with free trade, etc...). This is the way has been - RPM has been judged with the rule of reason. If they had reversed the overruling of Dr. Miles, then that would have been a change. Since the overruling is held, nothing has changed. The rule of reason is the "status quo", if SCOTUS had found that "per se" was the way to go, and that Dr. Miles should have been held, then a new "per se" rules would have been a precedent.
It WAS "rule of reason" before this case happened, so the
Yup, Linus is right. I wouldn't call it a "rant", either - it's a logical exposition of cutting-edge principles.
People will never agree on a personal level. Islamic states will tend to not find it "wrong" to slice off body parts as punishment. But we can make an international treaty that prevents amputation as punishment. You bypass the "right" or "wrong", "OK" or "not OK", and just make a law that says "We agree to not do this". It's pointless to require both parties to agree on a "personal" level, because if you do that, there will never be any agreement in the first place. You bypass the personal level, and just "use _pragmatic_". (for lack of better words).
We're becoming accustomed to this kind of stuff with the war on drugs, for instance - trying to argue that marijuana use (or outright abuse) is less harmuful than alcohol abuse doesn't go very far with people who have "power". It's wrong, but the fact that you point out a truthful point just simply is irrelevant - you're disagreeing with the "whatever", so you might as well be (and perhaps probably are, as far as "they" are concerned) a pothead or a potential pothead which means you are by default wrong. Apply logic like that to a BIOS and you'd never boot anything.
I think Linus hits the nail on the head. It's unfortunate, for instance, that it is difficult to have an OS be "mainstream" (online banking, college courses, etc...) if it's not an Apple or MS. Linux can't cross-license, no matter what. Novell can cross-license, Apple can cross-license - but neither Linux nor BSD can cross-license, because they are not "entities". Apple isn't cross-licensing patents that don't exist in BSD, they are cross-licensing their own patents that they have. Novell isn't cross-licensing patents that don't exist in Linux, they are cross-licensing patents that they have.
Linux, _pure_ Linux, can't crosslicense. Because of this, lots of stuff doesn't "work", out-of-the-box.
We all have hopes, we all have dreams. How we achieve them has a lot to do with our personal morality. Our perseverance, our unwillingness to give up even when others tell us we will fail...
But the facts are the facts, and I am glad there are people like Linus around to remind us of those simple facts of life that we often tend to forget in a world where we are bombarded with nonsense.
What I would really like to see is more devices that play flac files which are archived on DVD's. It could be more convenient than uploading them to a device. There are quite a few that play mp3s archived to CD, but going lossless would probably require a larger storage medium, as flacs tend to be right around 50% or so of the size - so a DVD containing flacs, or a DVD DL containing flacs, and moving forward, Blu-Ray disks or whatever containing flacs.
Also, flacs can compress and read higher quality audio as well, I believe, if you compile the program with those particular options.
Perhaps having a laptop or something along those lines might be the best way to enjoy music going forward. Plop in a DVD with flacs on it, plug the laptop into your amplifier or whatever.
It's the way that the mhz capability of the wiring (twisted pair, coax, fiber, etc...) translates into data transfer capacity. Tuning it to what type of user? ADSL - residential - people download more than they upload. Webhosting company uploads more than it downloads, so symmetric is more appropriate there.
What you're saying is that you want the speed, but you don't want it all the time, so you should pay less money for it than someone who uses it all the time. Or maybe you don't want the speed, just an always-on connection for surfing?
The idea is that even the fastest most connections go - 6, 8. 15, and so on -- is slow. I can transfer something on a 100mbps ethernet LAN much faster than I can when it's 10mbps. It gives other people a chance.
No one wants to hog the pipes - the pipes are slow, so it takes time to transfer the data. If the pipes were faster, the data would be transferred lickedy-split, and no one would be hogging the pipes.
No one is really "paying" for 24/7/365. It's a statistics thing. The statistics are known, and some people use their connections a lot. The rest of the folks aren't billed in such a way - what you're paying now is probably based on how 90%-95% of the people use the internet. The people who use the service a lot are just getting a really good deal.
I strongly support being able to use the bandwidth that you purchase. The wiring that you're connected to has certain capabilities, and it's those capabilities that you are purchasing. The prices certainly aren't going to come down. These goody-goody two shoes mentalities are very destructive to the overall intelligence of a country's population.
It's none of my business, really, what's going on with my neighbor's internet connection. If there is a crime going on, then it's law enforcement's job to investigate, pursue, and incarcerate. Once it get to the point where there is a trial, then it's public information, and I can go down to the courtroom and watch the proceedings.
Most residential broadband connections are not priced in such a way as to facilitate large profits on large quantities of data transfer. 90% of the subscribers only use 50% of the bandwidth. That's more than likely how it's dealt with. Cable companies place limitations on data transfer to delay spending money on fixed costs, not decrease variable costs. It all depends on how you set it up internally, dept to dept, but as long as a subscriber breaks even plus a little bit on top on the variable costs, it's good for the bottom line. Hardware upgrades have to happen eventually, but often times an ISP may prefer to hold off on the hardware, network upgrades if congestion pops up sooner than expected.
The price you pay is not based on being a bandwidth hog, and it's not the variable costs of bandwidth that are the problem - it's having to spend money on fixed costs sooner than expected. It's not the amount of data or if there's a loss going on there, it's how quickly the network needs to be upgraded and expanded. If that's sooner than expected, then preventing people from using their connections so much can stretch out the time between network upgrades.
People who use their connections a lot aren't creating a problem because of the "cost" of bandwidth itself, and the vast majority of the time, the other folks who don't use their connections aren't REALLY subsidising the BANDWIDTH in a pure sense. It's the network upgrades, the hardware, the infrastructure that gets bogged down - THAT'S the money sinkhole. They're behind schedule already, so...
If you really use your brain, and think about it, what these morons call "bandwidth hogs" are really just early adopters, the cutting edge. You'll see -- the internet is going to become a place where multimedia content is increasingly delivered to your television free from the grips of the cable & etc. Probably better to think of it as future technologies trying to get delivered on yesterday's network infrastructure. It's a two-way street.
Pretty much everywhere you go, any ISP, any newsgroups provider, etc... it's all the same.
You've got pretty much something like 5-10% of the subscribers using 50% of the bandwidth.
This is more or less a known fact. This is "the way it is".
Cable and sat, some less-well connected DSL providers have no choice but to do something about it. There's no way you can advertise 8 or 16 or more megabit service that's essentially a TV channel that can handle 36 or megs which is shared by many people (perhaps hundreds) and not implement some way to keep usage down.
Without TW's shaping, without Comcast's strange termination policies, without Cox's selectively enforced official caps, the speeds wouldn't be there. At least not the faster speeds that are trying to compete with Verizon's fiber.
Any ISP that can be called an ISP more than likely has someone who knows what the numbers are. 50% of the bandwidth by 5-10% of the customers. That's life. That's the way "it is". You either leave it that way, and see the glass as half full, or try to change it. If cable is going to offer these faster speeds, they HAVE to do something about it.
Seems kind of silly, you know - you've got customers who want bandwidth (data transfer), you're in the business of providing data transfer services, there's more demand than you can reasonably fulfill, so you view it as customers misbehaving or something along those lines.
The answer is the cable co's are incapable of providing the bandwidth that the customers want (at the present time with the present technology at the present speeds they need to compete). They know this. Everyone knows - 50% of the bandwidth is used by... etc...
Maybe someday more ISP will figure out ways to use new technology to deliver the bandwidth to the customers that the customers want. Perhaps those customers are also willing to pay more, so it could actually be a win-win situation. But at the present time, it's basically just a technical limitation.
The numbers are known, and are relatively static. Cable companies have no choice. They have to do something. The majority of the customers want speed, not quantity. No solution is perfect, every solution has its pros and cons.
We have a president that is very comitted to the particular brand of Christianity. I went to a "fundamentalist" Christian grade school; I was taught early on that I might fail tests that asked questions about the age of the earth were I to enter a public high school or university, that this was just a test from God and it was the right thing to do answer the questions "wrong", (i.e. write an account of the creation story in the Bible on an essay question, or stick to the young earth theory) - regardless of the consequences to my grade in the course. All those scientists are wrong. Rocks aren't billions of years old, God is just testing our faith in him by making it look like they are. The universe appears to be expanding because God made it look that way, in order to test our faith and see how strong it is; it's actually only 4000 years old.
Yes, the Earth is 4000 years old, and God created it in seven days. That's what it says in the Bible, and obviously that's how the American people feel about it. Why have some gizmo up there that's costing billions of dollars telling us that the Bible is wrong?
A mission to Mars is not incompatible with the Bible at all (even though the science involved might make certain assumptions about gravity and time) - but the Hubble is incompatible with the Bible, which is incompatible with "what the majority of God-fearing Americans want", so how can you ask for people's tax dollars to send gizmos up there that keep telling us that the Bible is wrong and that the universe is billions and billions of years old?
Of course, I AM wrong about this; that's not the deal at all. It must be just a strange coincidence.
"ensuring that the "contract" defined by a specification is successfully implemented in software"
Geez, I wonder why you'd call it a contract... is that an analogy that the computer-illiterate business or management guru can relate to?
"We publish APIs, protocols and software development kits, and license our underlying intellectual property associated with this technology, to help others deliver interoperable software."
So the road to "interoperability" entails the licensing of Microsoft's intellectual property.
Let's see. I'll pretend that I have an electronic ID card. Let's say that I'm paranoid and I just don't feel like using my electronic ID card in combination with Microsoft product (which I think many people would feel is perfectly reasonable) - or online generally.
So then what's the worst thing that could happen - I wouldn't be able to use Microsoft products? Aw, gee... what a letdown.
Sort of like trusting your SSN to a Microsoft product - would you use your SSN to identify you in an online chat room? C'mon get real.
I would gladly just refrain from using those software products that required me to provide my electronic ID number.
Bodybilt - around $1000 or so. Fancy armrests will raise that price. Check them out. Herman Millers are OK too, I hear, they're about $750. It's incredibly important to have one. Spend 5 hours in front of the computer on a Saturday morning without even noticing it (so much for the yardwork).
Trackball, for instance - ITAC systems 6-buttons - button for doubeclick, click & hold, plus the three buttons for unix, ball bearing, very fine motion control.. about $100.
Northgate Evolutions go for about $200 retail, probably around $100 on e-bay; Kinesis' are in the 300-500 range; they have footpedals for mouse buttons, Maltrons from England come close to $1000 (built-in trackball) - then there are even fancier ones that are more expensive but not necessarily always the best for everyone.
These are one-time investments that can make it relatively enjoyable to spend 8 hours in front of a monitor, even on a bad day. Just take your regular breaks and so on.
The website should have taken down the links when they were asked to. That's probably the first thing. They refused to take down the links over and over and over again. Bad idea.
Also, wouldn't it be interesting if the next time you turned up your stereo too loud, and the neighbors got upset, instead of violating a noise ordinance, you were charged with copyright violation? If it must be contained within a private room, then no more of the blaring music out of a car in the summer on the street, no more loud parties where you can hear the music a mile away - all of these could technically constitute copyright infringement? RIAA could make a fortune crawling college campuses handing out tickets for public peformance of copyright-protected works.
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Which helps the consumer.... how?
Making the front cover of Time means your product is better?
If anything, it's a unified ability to get people to "do their best work". And it shouldn't stop there, and that shouldn't be as painful as it has often gotten. It can and should be par for the course, no unpleasantness required. Much research has gone into this area of corporate culture - the unpleasantness isn't required.
It's interesting, you know -- it seems that Apple is Steve, and perhaps vice versa. And Steve has this "thing" for "devices". He's obsessed with the device. The black cube, the sleek sexy all-in-ones, and that's cool...
But did you ever notice how it really wouldn't mean anything if Microsoft wasn't ubiquitous? In other words -- to have that cover of Time magazine (and to have it mean anything significant), Apple has given up 35%-45% of desktop market share (or better). How on earth is that worth it? Price of success? Hardly.
Apple plays off of Microsoft's ubiquity and plainness. In a world where 90% is Windows, Apple stands out. In any other world, it would be more like Frank Lloyd Wright or Pininfarina. Nice, interesting, beautiful, but decidedly niche. It's front page material because of everything it's given up to not compete with Microsoft. Of course, then the question is does Wall Street value market share, or is it more important to go after and get 91% of the $1000+ PC market? Passion for the "The Device".
It's the only way to make the concept of a "device" work in the marketplace. Play it off MS's ubiquity. Bounce it off Windows' boring and often generic nature. Migrate the focus to uncharted territories -- wireless, controversial Napster territory, and so forth. Contrast it to ubiquity, blandness, and low-budget compromises, and use your awesome resources to leverage your way into entrenched, stifled areas. Not so much to help the consumer, but to peddle "The Device". Point being, Apple can do better. Apple should do better.
Is it really necessary to make the front cover of time to give stockholders a good deal? To give customers a good deal? Is my consumer experience made better if my device is on the front cover of Time? Or is it purely stroking someone's ego? Could tens of millions of dollars be made by simply COMPETING with Microsoft (something Apple is capable of doing quite well at this point in time)?
Unfortunately, great leaders tend to "go nuts", sometimes, taking down entire leagues of followers with them. It's the nature of genius, perhaps. Seeing things others don't see, while fixated on a narrow goal -- in this case, "The Device". A flying saucer landed in my back yard and left me with this unique, fascinating object. Get over it, man. Apple, essentially, wants to have its "devices" (at least in the PC world) stick out so much, it's willing to give up perhaps 45% market share on the desktop to Windows, perhaps similarly significant market share to Linux on the server side, simply to have its devices "stick out". And the consumer loses choice, the developer gets frustrated, the employee loses significant quality of life. Pointless pain and suffering, unnecessary inconvenience.
To some extent, this "sticking out" is leveraged by gains and innovations with the ipod and the iphone, perhaps the tablet -- but man oh man -- an MSI Wind or Dell Mini 9 running OSX86 rocks. Where's Apple? Do they care about the consumer at all? Or just the image? Exactly how much do they sacrifice to maintain that image?
It's such a shame too. I guess it all boils down to this -- Steve is an inspirational dude, he runs a tight ship, and that tight ship has historically churned out some nice, innovative hardware and software products -- and continues to do so. But... consequently... Apple is CAPABLE of much more. We KNOW Apple can do better than it's doing. You may say it's doing great, but we KNOW it can do BETTER. Much, much, much better.
Apple is capable of doing better. It's the genius student, the teacher's pet. Yes, those are unr
It's not like you can't buy the book.
You have a choice.
Buy the book. Then it's not a problem anymore.
These "electronic papers" are very new, anyway. There's the pauses and other nonsense. Even PDF is "locked up", in a way.
So is Postscript.
What about XML?
I'll hold out for a universal standard for electronic paper -- an open source one. One where I can purchase an e-copy as I would a PDF and just be trusted with it.
This e-copy then, like a flac or an mp3, would go onto one of many digital devices (just as a PDF would go onto one of potentially many computers or laptops or whatever).
So let's just say -- no to PDF and PS, and yes to open standards for some sort of e-paper thing, and lots of competing e-paper devices that display color and don't have strange pauses and flashes and whatever.
It's a good idea, but it needs competition. Lots of competition.
But I guess the real question is this... I download a PDF of an e-book. Can I sell it to someone? I wonder if that question is yes, because how is that supposed to work?
Could I register myself somewhere? Register my purchase and register my sale? How about the person purchasing it from me - if s/he goes through the same registering process that I went through when I purchased it, then s/he'd be registered and would be able to sell it whenever s/he chose to.
This is a problem that needs a solution. It wouldn't make much sense to drop the price more than the cost of producing a digital copy vs the cost of producing a hard copy.
This isn't anyone's fault -- this is something we need to figure out a solution to.
Luckily, we still have the option of purchasing the hard copy. Perhaps we could get the rights to the e-stuff along with a hard copy? Or download the e-copy while the hard copy is arriving in the mail?
This isn't anyone's fault.
Looks like this might operate in a "blacklist" sort of way - a copyright holder notifies the ISP what they want blocked, the "DNA" of that content is added to the filtering device, and it filters away.
Someone uploads an infringing video to YouTube, you go to view it, and it doesn't get through.
Someone shares an infringing mp3, you go to download it, and it doesn't get through.
It doesn't appear to be arbitrary -- not traffic shaping -- not protocol dropping or packet spoofing -- you need to add the "DNA" of the particular copyrighted "work" to the device.
Some record label releases "DRM-free" mp3's somewhere for download, and at the same time adds the "DNA" of those DRM-free mp3's to the devices (or sends them to the ISP to have the ISP add it to the device).
So in that sense, it sounds sort of like a pre-emptive DMCA takedown notice. You do it copyrighted work by copyrighted work.
All this kind of stuff seems slightly reminiscent of 3-D glasses in movie theatres or something like that. In the long run, it's probably unnecessary and more hassle than it's worth. Soon enough, people will get sick of scouring p2p, they'll just want the music now. Places like OiNK are few and far between. Certainly an exception to the rule. Most people just want what they want, and they want it now. P2P can't compete with what major labels COULD come up with, and soon, those things are going to be come up with, and this filtering stuff will be completely unnecessary.
The simplest way to solve the problem for the short haul is to realize that a "non-commercial, personal use" exemption to the copyright law more or less exists, whether or not it's on the books or not. We simply need to recognize that a non-commerical, personal use exemption is the best way to move forward on this. Takedown notices are a good recourse to have, because in a sense they protect all of us from having our stuff stolen. Pre-emptive takedown notices in the form of DNA fingerprinting of multimedia files? That's probably only something that's going to be useful for something that has lots of "hype". We get back to the same business model -- planning for large quantities. A few artists, large quantities, preemptive takedown notice.
At the rate it's taking them to roll out U-verse, for instance, this might be completely obsolete and unnecessary by the time it goes live. If wimax takes off faster, no one will need to download anything ever again -- it'll just be streaming all the way. The future is probably a subscription service with tens of thousands of music files - it certainly seems the way we're headed. It's just easier for most folks. Subscription services will make these types of filtering devices completely unnecessary.
It's not impossible to outcompete p2p on ease of use, security, selection, and value. Once that happens, these filtering devices will just end up being more or less a complete waste of time.
What happened was the old Napster caught everyone off guard, so now they all think that there's some kind of "magic" or whatever with regards to downloading stuff. They're still stuck on the original "defeat", or the original "surprise", or whatever you want to call it. A bad case of a deeply wounded ego, perhaps.
And now, with many ISP's seeing lots of big green dollar signs when they realize this gives them an opportunity to reduce traffic and delay upgrading the networks, the reality of actually turning the internet into a delivery method for content is slowly being eroded as well.
Even if they succeed at eliminating the ability of people to download stuff, that's not going to stop people from making copies for personal use. People will always find ways to get together and share stuff they like and enjoy. That's what music and movies are about - a type of communal experience. It's probably been that way since the dawn of the human race - if you believe in evolution, storytelling and musicmaking as such may very well predate the existence of the human being. People getting together online, anonymously, via p2p networks, is just an evolution of these primitive instincts. No, it's not "real" human contact, but in a sense, it's just as communal, even though it's largely anonymous or semi-anonymous and done electronically.
Napster caught everyone by surprise, sales took a hit, and so for some reason these dimly-witted morons think that the solution to reverse this situation can also be found online. What the content industry wants is more sales. What the artists want is the ability to quit their day jobs and make ends meet. What the consumers want is diversity and a fair price. These issues, unfortunately, are not being addressed to the extent that they need to be addressed.
It is important that ISPs upgrade their networks, and eliminate bandwidth hogs by making the pipes so large there are no bottlenecks. You can't hog the bandwidth if there's enough of it go around. It is also important for ISPs to continue to try to reach more people with broadband options. By doing this, it will create an opportunity for third-party companies (such as Netflix) to offer content delivery over the internet. This would be an extremely user-friendly method that would generate significant amounts of royalties. No CD's or DVD's to press, no packaging to print, no inventory, no warehousing -- none of that. Royalties happening every time someone clicks a button on their remote. We have lots of PC's connected to the internet. What we need now is TV's - televisions connecting to the internet. Yes, it will shake things up to do this, but in the long run, everyone is going to win. This is the battle. This is the struggle. Connecting the internet to the television. The ramifications are immense.
They complain they're losing money, while their actions are directly and indirectly slowly destroying an opportunity to generate significant amounts of royalties. They must be missing something - perhaps they're missing an ability to "see the big picture". The members just feed them money, and they just keep rubbing more salt into the wound. The record player is broken -- the record is stuck -- the damage to the groove is too great.
If you get audited, and you're running software you don't own, you can bring your own from home. The "theory" is that you brought your copy from home to fool the auditors. They want to eliminate that possibility.
Losing the invoice altogether might also be a way to purchase the software only once you realize that you're getting audited. They couldn't allow that, now could they?
These folks have no legal authority over you whatsoever. The only thing they have is the threat of a lawsuit, the consequences of which -- i.e. -- the fine you could be "facing" -- are greater than you would want to deal with, and they'll attach themselves to you like superglue, so you're going to have to deal with them sooner or later. That's why everyone either settles or whatever.
The "proper" procedure is to 1) understand what they require, and 2) have a lawyer do the audit. Yes, it drags it out, but if you truly have nothing to hide (i.e. you're completely legit), you might as well have a lawyer get that point across to them. They have no legal authority over you whatsoever. Just threats.
Also, it might help to make it clear to new hires (sort of in an around-about way) what the deal is with these folks and why proper procedures are necessary, and how they'll get fired if they don't follow proper procedures wrt licensing to the T. If you're well protected, and documented, and employees know it, and participate in the process, they won't "drop a dime" to piss you off because they'll realize there will be no award, so it won't be worth their time and effort to do it all for nothing.
There's ways to deal with it, but it just seems to me that using Linux and other free software unless absolutely necessary is one small step that you can take.
As far as ebay, apparently ebay vendors aren't "real", in the sense of that you need a "real" invoice.
It's crazy that you can't buy used software from a bankrupting business, though. Bizarre. You can get a good deal in situations like that. What it also says is that you'll never be able to sell YOUR software to another party, even if the EULA allows you to. At least not as far as audits are concerned.
And it's something like 40% of all small businesses that have been audited like this, so this is by no means a rare occurence. Without a competent lawyer, you could be looking at fines in the five to seven digit range. Perhaps even tens of millions or more...
While I understand that some companies may actually put the IT folks under pressure to do stuff that is not above board, the flip side of that is that most businesses don't even realize they're not in compliance.
1. You have to have an invoice. Period. If you lose it, you're a software pirate and owe them at least 3x retail + 3500 legal. No ifs, ands or buts. Being genuine doesn't count. Having the original CD with the hologram or what not doesn't count. You MUST have the invoice.
2. The invoice has to be IN THE NAME OF THE BUSINESS. Not in the name of the CEO, CFO, or whomever. If the invoice is not in the name of the business, you're a software pirate and owe them at least 3x retail + 3500 legal. No ifs, ands, or buts.
3. Obviously, the invoice has to be dated prior to the audit.
If you purchase the software from Ebay, it's no good. Minimum fine 3x retail + 3500 legal.
There also might be the issue that if you purchase used software, the invoice won't be in your name. So, practically speaking, you can't sell your software to another business. If you buy software used, from another business, you're a software pirate. Minimum 3x retail + 3500 legal.
So, the audit is the problem. Whether or not you're in compliance is the next step. Dealing with the audit is the first. Understanding what you should have done in the first place, and doing it, that's your best defense. You absolutely positively have to hire a lawyer (well, not really, but you should) - if you get audited. That's your first problem.
Don't get audited. It's not even about being in compliance with the licensing -- well, actually, that's not true - that's your second line of defense - and it's certainly in your best interests to be above board on everything.
Main thing is that you don't want to get audited. It means that it's strongly in your best interests to hire a laywer, and the entire process can take up to two years. The audit is the problem. Not being in compliance is just icing on the cake. Monetarily speaking, it's a semi-truck of icing, but the point is that first, you need to avoid the audit - then as a second line of defense make sure you've got invoices for everyrhing, multiple copies of those invoices in safety deposit boxes, and that those invoices are in the name of the business. Don't get audited first, but be prepared, and know what's up, so that you don't make it harder on yourself if you do get audited. It's not about proving to them that you're in compliance, it's about not getting audited in the first place. This has probably much to do with limited use of proprietary software (only when absolutely necessary), perhaps going so far as outsourcing stuff that needs it (Quickbooks, etc...), and also quite a bit about HR and whom you hire and how you treat them. Remember, being in compliance doesn't solve your problem. Getting audited is the problem.
How many sole proprietorships have all of their OS's purchased in THE NAME OF THE BUSINESS, and how many people keep copies of all original invoices?
Best thing you can do as a small business is go 100% open source - BSD, if you must. Open source all the way - send those extortionist bastards packing with a retractable baton.
On Linux, at least, it seems to happen with more than just Firefox. I just randomly checked my "top", and the browser I use, Opera, is consuming 424megs resident and 738 virtual. As I have 2 gigs of RAM, I usually restart Opera when it tops 1.0 g or more virtual. The memory usage will only continue to grow over time.
Firefox does the same thing. The complication with Firefox is the fact that it spikes to 100% CPU usage from time to time. So you've not restarted the app for a while, it's eaten up your memory without your knowledge (of course you're used to keeping your Linux system up for months, why not one of your favorite apps, right?), and it's swapping like there's no tomorrow, now it pegs your cpu on top. Pretty please?
This is in fact the last time I remember having anything even slightly resembling a BSOD on a Linux system in the past few years (with the exception of some ATA driver changes and a mismatched kernel). I actually went Ctrl-Alt-F2 and logged in as root, killed Firefox. This was a couple of weeks after Opera went free, so I switched and never looked back. At least with Opera, when you restart (which you eventually have to do), you're back where you started. It's no sweat to restart. I do it often.
I still use Firefox sometimes, but only because my cookies are turned off on Opera, and so I only use Firefox todo something that requires cookies. Nothing else.
This is a problem with all web browsers (at least on Linux), but the two bigger problems with Firefox are the 100% CPU utilization bug and the fact that you can't restart - out of the box - and take up where you left off. Fix those, and the memory thing is more or less irrelevant.
Just the other day, my brother called me and asked me to investigate his laptop, and why their web surfing slowed down. Did he have a virus? Well, turns out he tends to put his laptop to sleep, and keep Firefox open for days or more. His wife does the same thing, on another account. Problem solved, although it didn't occur to me right away. Restart Firefox. I downloaded and installed Opera for them and told them to use it instead.
Anyway -- you have to restart the app eventually. Priority #1 is to remember where you were out of the box. #2 it would be nice to not have the 100% CPU utilization bug. If someone can figure out how to do garbage collection without a restart, that would be brilliant - pure genius.
What it all boils down to is that with Opera, your CPU doesn't peg in strange ways, and you can very comfortably restart and take up where you left off. It may not seem like a big deal, but in fact, these two things really cut to the heart of the matter. If you forget to restart or put off restarting Firefox because you're doing something important and don't feel like engaging in a massive bookmarks session when you fire it back up, but you push it too close, your memory gets eaten up (which is more likely when you have more stuff open - which is when you're least like to want to restart), and then your CPU unexpectedly peaks, and it's already swapping like crazy, then your wonderfully stable Linux system can go into a semi-freeze like state, swapping and pegging your CPU. Your mouse doesn't move, your menus don't respond -- well actually, it's just that the boomerang is a thousand miles away (which complicates the situation) -- you get the idea.
As much as I love Linux, and am a strong supporter of Open Source stuff, I just don't like Firefox. I'm fine with Opera, and then if that doesn't work, I just go straight to IE (which is not very often).
I tried out 10.4 for a little while, after having used Linux for a long time. I felt a little lost, honestly. I installed Quicksilver, which helped a lot. I installed iterm, which helped a lot. I never got around to installing fink, and perhaps something like openbox on top, and I don't have the laptop anymore - but that might have helped.
Definitely, I am much more productive in Linux, I can customize things much better in Linux.
I'm excited by the technical nature of OS X, the fact that it's BSD, the fact that it's secure, that I don't have to constantly worry about viruses or updates or whatever, but usability wise, I felt like I was hanging upside down, heavily sedated, not sure where I was or what was going on. Almost makes me sick to my stomach.
For me, clearly the solution lies in installing Fink or Darwin ports, and installing a window manager where I can edit my own menus. Unfortunately I was only experimenting with the laptop, and I wasn't really in a position to install tons of software or whatever.
I bet you anything that as it is with learning - different people learn differently - so it is with user interfaces. Now I'm no fan of Windows, as I use Linux for most everything day in and out - but user-interface wise, I'd rather use Windows. Not-having-to-worry-about viruses wise, OS X is better than Windows.
For me, personally, the user interface in OS X just didn't work. I've used BSDs before, and I'm a big fan of their stability, but in the end, it's the configurability that makes the cake.
I can't build my own Mac (legally, at least).
I'm stuck with a single desktop environment (without Fink or Darwin Ports)
It makes me physically uncomfortable to use the interface (having almost exclusively used Linux for about a decade).
The truth, I think, it seems, as much as I _HATE_ to admit it, as much as I really, really, _WANT_ to love OS X, is that I'm better served by running Linux, and then using Windows only if there is absolutely no other way to accomplish that which I need to accomplish. It's not a huge problem to have XP running on a second-hand computer in the corner somewhere "just in case" I need to do something. I can even vnc in from the Linux machine...
I was excited about OS X, I tried OS X for a couple of months (10.4), and my conclusion is that Linux is better.
I can build my own machines, I don't have to pay ridiculous sums of money for hardware, I can use AMD, I can use my own cooling solutions, pick and choose which components I want, and then I can configure my GUI as I see fit.
If I didn't have the computer skills that I have, I would probably go for Apple over Windows, that's true. But knowing what I know, I simply couldn't make that choice. As a matter of fact, I wonder if the people who do make that choice actually realize what they're doing...
If Apple were to release OS X into the wild, so I could build my own PC (legally, that is - I know you can do it in an unofficial capacity - even on AMD - but that's not the point) and then install OS X on it, and then install Xcode and then install Fink and then customize - I would then use it as the "go to" system whenever Linux couldn't do what I needed done.
I love OS X, but I hate the user interface - and it looks like they just made it worse. AND I don't like being ripped off on my hardware -- $329 for a 500 gig hard drive? A 500 gig Seagate 7200.10 runs $119! C'mon man...
I'm sorry... Apple just doesn't cut it, as MUCH as I would LOVE to love this OS... I can get better functionality with Linux + Windows whenever I absolutely need Windows because Linux can't do something I absolutely can't live without.
At this point in time, I do NOT see an Apple in my future. I guess that makes me love Linux ever so much more...
What we might end up with, if we're lucky, is a Usenet devoid of anything even remotely related to the RIAA.
That, my friends, would be a good thing.
At this point -- seriously -- I'm actually quite interested in knowing whether or not an artist I am interested in purchasing an album from is with a label that is part of the RIAA.
By promoting the downloading of commercial-type stuff, filesharing apps and sites are just "working" the same marketing machine set up by these huge organizations.
Better to get rid of that music.
This could turn out well.
They don't get it.
Ok. Whatever.
A maharishi that like Beastie Boys. A guru that leads a yoga session with Metallica.
Gimme a break.
What the music industry needs is something like the SEC.
Information.
At least that's what the SEC aims to provide -- in the first place. Information. A 10-K. An 8-K. Etc.
What do music fans need? Information.
Give me the name of an artist or a group and five seconds with Google and I'll have a website at my fingertips. Yet you want me to go down to the nonexistent Tower or whatever. Or perhaps wait a couple minutes for the sexy flash to load. I want a sample flac. Gimme a sample flac, mr. guru!!!
It's over. The game is over. NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) won't save it.
Filesharing (real filesharing, that is) provides a forum where music fans can discover new artists. What is needed is a "forum" of sorts, a "meeting place", or something along those lines -- a place (most likely virtual) where fans can meet artists and can make connections -- perhaps connections that can last a lifetime. NPD and corporate corruption can't provide even 0.00000% of what's necessary.
P2P is a forum. It's a meeting place.
Listen to me... Hendrix - Joplin - Morrison - Scott - Cobain - and many, many more. The industry has dues to pay. An industry that kills people for money. And bookcases full of unread spirutuality and bare feet aren't going to save anyone - they never have, and they never will.
Music that sells itself -- they sure are willing to discriminate - to take years - to present to the public music that sells itself. But do they care about art? Do they care about creativity? Perhaps if it makes money...
The "prospectus" and the "stock" need to be seperate things. The information about the music and the music need to be seperated. The "hook" reverses this situation. The "hook" incorporates the prospectus, the merchandising, the marketing, and the passion into the song. The song sells itself. You call this art? Gimme a break.
Only accepting songs that sell themselves? That's not art. It's BS.
Narcissism brought down Europe. Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler. All products of cold-bloodedness. Narcissism is obviously about to bring down the American "entertainment" industry. Bravo. What this really means is more art for the masses, which can only be good.
Long live art.
I think that ultimately the question that came about (and of course no one REALLY knows (which is the problem)) was that some folks began wondering if the data was incorrect - in other words - if the bandwidth numbers were mistakenly attributed to an individual who hadn't actually used anywhere near that much.
In other words - digging into the details, it became obvious that one very strong possibility was that (again, no one REALLY knows (which is the problem)) the person who got contacted was not the person who generated the bandwidth. In other words, Comcast keeps asking the poor fellow to cut back, they're looking at 250-300 gigs on their end, while the poor fellow is actually doing about 20-30 gigs and cutting back to even less than that. No matter how much the subscriber cuts back, the next month, erroneous data comes in again - Comcast's info is that he's done another 200+ gigs that month. So this ends up where they cut him off for 12 months (true story). There was no other logical explanation (other than the subscriber lying (which is a possibility, or course)).
This is where the secrecy creates problems, really. Sure, maybe an invisible something or another is better than a low explicit one, but you can't defend yourself if they've got it wrong, because there's no documentation. They don't even always tell the subscriber how much the subscriber has downloaded, and it appears that they may even lie about that. They don't want anyone knowing anything, basically. "Just cut back".
But "Just cut back" doesn't cut it when it's not you, now does it?
It's one thing to have rules, it's another thing to have flexible rules. But no matter how flexible those rules are, if you have this absolute secrecy thing going on, you stand no chance of defending yourself if you actually haven't done it and someone gets something mixed up somewhere.
Having a "counter" on your account - where you log into your account online and see how much you've downloaded, for instance - if you see data on there that isn't you, or if it's going up too fast, you can be proactive and call in and say "something's wrong here". If, for instance, the gigs are accumulating, and you disconnect your modem - pull it out of the wall -- and the gigs are still accumulating, then you can call in and notify. This isn't ME doing it. But if they won't even tell you how much you downloaded to get the call, or if they lie about it, (again, no one REALLY knows what happened (which is the problem)), how are you to trust that data is actually accurate? That it's not a mixup somewhere?
In that one particular situation, it did in fact appear that Comcast got the subscribers data mixed up (they actually turned the subscriber's internet back ON). They cancelled the 12-month cancellation because they reviewed their records and they figured out that it wasn't him doing it - they got it mixed up with someone else. The subscriber was downloading 15-30, and their data was saying 250-350. Month after month after month. Try cutting back on that!
It's creepy, is what it is. It's too secretive - you can't defend yourself. There's no data - no documentation.
They really ought to change the way they do this - it's very, very creepy.
Make the high-end surround sound, the high-end projectors, and the high-end screens a portable deal, just like the Stones can set up in a football stadium, a "movie" can set up in a performance hall where you might usually see orchestras and ballets. Movies taking advantage of venues.
Assigned seating, perhaps slightly more expensive tickets, no ads, professional employees working the aisles and the door, and perhaps not only just the newest releases.
Elevate movies to an artform (which many of them actually are). Create alternative venues. No popcorn. No sticky floors. No talking. No ads.
There is no reason for movies to be pushed down to an amusement park level. They are a current form of media expression. Music albums aren't dead, either. The problem is obviously the "suits", so the way around that is for people to get together and for the offerrers to offer a high-quality, advertisement-free movie experience, and for the recievers to be willing to shell out what is essentially chump change for a high-quality, advertisement-free, assigned-seating, professional-level venue in which to view a movie on the latest high-end surround sound, projector, and screen technology. Tomorrow, there may be a ballet there. Or perhaps even a football game. So what? Who says movies have to be seen only at places dedicated for movies.
Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Put a chlorine filter on that jazz and buy some organic baby shampoo.
Pop musicians will tend to get "trapped". Hendrix, for instance - what do they want to see? Guitar solos, playing with his teeth, behind his back, using the whammy bar (tremelo arm) to imitate rockets - what an insult to such a talented and groundbreaking musician to be lowered to the level of a circus freakshow of some kind. Clapton, similarly, has a strong focus on the cocaine-driven mind-blowing guitar solos - which are not necessarily unimpressive - but you kinda sorta need coke to do them properly (which is one hell of an occupational hazard), and then you need ethanol to take that edge off, so on and so forth. But first and foremost, it's limiting. As if there was nothing more to music than guitar solos and drugs. It's not true.
We need to redefine music, really, if we're going to get anywhere. You're probably doing that pop music star a favor by refusing to fuel their falsely informed beliefs. The industry provides us all (musicians and fans both) with a slot machine lever. We keep pulling it, but we never get what we want. Decorate that slot machine lever with recreational drugs, lots of money, and members of the opposite sex and we'll almost kill ourselves (and for musicians in particular, sometimes succeed) for another chance at that slot machine lever.
It's not really music - it's vice. For the musicians as well. The commercial stuff, that is. There's plenty of artists who aren't devout Catholics that don't do the commercial thing and actually approach music from a more artisitic, creative, or spiritual angle. Some use politics, and of course, that's just politics pretending to be music. Music transcends politics. Music transcends drugs, sex. Music transcends rock and roll. (Sorry). Rock and roll IS the suit. Straight jacket, to be more precise. Music can liberate us from that evil. Good, real, honest music, that is. Music made by artists who are interested in being artists, not artists who are lured and then trapped by money and whatever like some fish on a hook. Why is there an image of fame and fortune as a ticket out of poverty?
Going after folks who download? Forget it. Waste of time. If you don't want the file being shared, then don't sell the CD and go find a day job. It's the way things are. Give me filesharing anyday. There's a million things I'd rather do than have a contract with a major label. Filesharing is nowhere near as evil as a major recording contract. If you can survive a major recording contract, you can THRIVE with filesharing. Filesharing is nowhere near as big a financial burden as a major record label. In fact, it's arguably beneficial, depending on which data you choose to believe.
But the main thing is to focus on MUSIC, as an art form, not MU$IC as a slot machine lever. To understand what music can do for us, and to not expect things from it that it isn't capable of providing We still have this problem -- there is a general disinterest in music's (currently) untapped potential, as well as the regrettable circus-freakshow-slot-machine-handle atmosphere which prevents the trapped artists from exploring that (currently) untapped potential.
you can have all the secrets you want
they'll show up even when you don't want them to (your own from you, that is)
it's all one big secret, isn't it?
Nothing to be afraid of.
Theoretically, anything can be anything.
But that doesn't mean anything.
Worry about it, and someone somewhere is going to acquire something they value.
Realize it or not, there are people out there who get off in getting you to worry about stuff. As in...
Life is short. Death is certain. You probably don't have as long as you think you might.
There are people out there who want you to worry about stuff. It's "in style" to worry about stuff.
Perhaps in some alternate universe there will be a law passed that makes it a felony to encrypt BT traffic.
Who cares? It's an alternate universe.
It just has to be believable - believable enough. Such and such person took someone's lunch money, and uh... it was lost, or there was a 95-year-old widow who needed groceries or whatever.
The desired end goal is this: You give Microsoft money. That's all there is to it. Whether it covers anything or not is besides the point. The point is that Microsoft gets your money. And, as long as they get your money, everything is peachy keen, so it doesn't matter what anything covers because nothing will happen as long as you pay up.
Basically, more or less.
The nice thing about this situation is that you can basically (more or less) tell them to go bother someone else. Everyone knows these patent cross-licensing deals are silly, and Linux just happens to be physically incapable of entering into them. That's the way Linux is, and the sooner people realize that, the sooner they'll realize it. Whether they realize it or not isn't going to change the fact that Linux is not "cross-licensable".
Used to be some time ago before there was an Open Solaris, you could download Solaris from Sun.
But... no tech support, no nothing. You're on your own.
And this is really sort of the reverse of that -- resale price maintenance.
The theory is that if you have a store that offers lots of customer service, gives you lots of information about the products, which creates more overhead, vs a store that has little customer service, gives no advice, has no information about the products, then customers will go the store with the customer service and product information, get their information, then go to the other store selling for cheaper there. It is in fact a true fact -- lack of resale price maintenance creates a free rider problem.
These resellers are "free-riding" on the customer service and advice given to their customers by the full-featured retail places.
Really, the question is how many substitutes there are for that product - amongst other things like anticompetitive effects - but if the product has lots of substitutes (and how many cosmetics brands are out there) then that company can do whatever it wants - vote with your dollars and don't buy their brand.
Many people feel this will actually stimulate competition - innovation, efficiency, etc. Instead of offering an inefficient manufacturer's goods at a discount, a competitor would start their own brand, perhaps handling customer service issues more efficiently, perhaps "toning down" the "consultations", or whatever - streamlining the whole deal, so that there aren't "official" retail outlets which are hugely inefficient and have to charge large markups which include the price of providing greater customer service, information, etc...
Some brands may feel it best to have some optimal amount of customer hand-holding be part of the product - it might make things more efficient - it might prevent unnecessary returns, it might help ensure greater customer satisfaction. If the customer doesn't like it, then they could buy a brand that doesn't hold their hand as much.
From another angle, you could argue, for instance - that people should be able to download a "free" version of Windows (perhaps without all the bells and whistles and IEs and Outlooks) of some sort, and install it, but the free version would offer no tech support, no nothing. If the customer couldn't figure it out, then they have to buy the real thing. Solaris was like this for quite some time.
OTOH -- Microsoft might be worried that this version of Windows would earn it a reputation that the software is difficult and doesn't work, so they may choose to only sell the product if there is hand-holding there, to ensure a smoother customer experience. The way things stand now, it's up to the brand - the manufacturer - this type of situation, provided there are substitutes and no significant anticompetitive effects, promotes "interbrand" competition (competition between brands). A "per se" vertical restraints rule, such as the OP is suggesting should exist ("per se" meaning that it's automatically illegal to tell the retailer how much to charge no matter what the situation) promotes "intrabrand" competition - competition "within" a particular brand, competition by retailers selling the SAME brand.
Now -- from the decision -- if I'm reading this right -- it said that the overruling of Dr. Miles is held and that vertical price restraints were to be judged by the rule of reason (i.e. how many substites for leather products, how many other companies, does this interfere with free trade, etc...). This is the way has been - RPM has been judged with the rule of reason. If they had reversed the overruling of Dr. Miles, then that would have been a change. Since the overruling is held, nothing has changed. The rule of reason is the "status quo", if SCOTUS had found that "per se" was the way to go, and that Dr. Miles should have been held, then a new "per se" rules would have been a precedent.
It WAS "rule of reason" before this case happened, so the
Yup, Linus is right. I wouldn't call it a "rant", either - it's a logical exposition of cutting-edge principles.
People will never agree on a personal level. Islamic states will tend to not find it "wrong" to slice off body parts as punishment. But we can make an international treaty that prevents amputation as punishment. You bypass the "right" or "wrong", "OK" or "not OK", and just make a law that says "We agree to not do this". It's pointless to require both parties to agree on a "personal" level, because if you do that, there will never be any agreement in the first place. You bypass the personal level, and just "use _pragmatic_". (for lack of better words).
We're becoming accustomed to this kind of stuff with the war on drugs, for instance - trying to argue that marijuana use (or outright abuse) is less harmuful than alcohol abuse doesn't go very far with people who have "power". It's wrong, but the fact that you point out a truthful point just simply is irrelevant - you're disagreeing with the "whatever", so you might as well be (and perhaps probably are, as far as "they" are concerned) a pothead or a potential pothead which means you are by default wrong. Apply logic like that to a BIOS and you'd never boot anything.
I think Linus hits the nail on the head. It's unfortunate, for instance, that it is difficult to have an OS be "mainstream" (online banking, college courses, etc...) if it's not an Apple or MS. Linux can't cross-license, no matter what. Novell can cross-license, Apple can cross-license - but neither Linux nor BSD can cross-license, because they are not "entities". Apple isn't cross-licensing patents that don't exist in BSD, they are cross-licensing their own patents that they have. Novell isn't cross-licensing patents that don't exist in Linux, they are cross-licensing patents that they have.
Linux, _pure_ Linux, can't crosslicense. Because of this, lots of stuff doesn't "work", out-of-the-box.
We all have hopes, we all have dreams. How we achieve them has a lot to do with our personal morality. Our perseverance, our unwillingness to give up even when others tell us we will fail...
But the facts are the facts, and I am glad there are people like Linus around to remind us of those simple facts of life that we often tend to forget in a world where we are bombarded with nonsense.
What I would really like to see is more devices that play flac files which are archived on DVD's. It could be more convenient than uploading them to a device. There are quite a few that play mp3s archived to CD, but going lossless would probably require a larger storage medium, as flacs tend to be right around 50% or so of the size - so a DVD containing flacs, or a DVD DL containing flacs, and moving forward, Blu-Ray disks or whatever containing flacs.
Also, flacs can compress and read higher quality audio as well, I believe, if you compile the program with those particular options.
Perhaps having a laptop or something along those lines might be the best way to enjoy music going forward. Plop in a DVD with flacs on it, plug the laptop into your amplifier or whatever.
You don't, actually. No one does.
It's the way that the mhz capability of the wiring (twisted pair, coax, fiber, etc...) translates into data transfer capacity. Tuning it to what type of user? ADSL - residential - people download more than they upload. Webhosting company uploads more than it downloads, so symmetric is more appropriate there.
What you're saying is that you want the speed, but you don't want it all the time, so you should pay less money for it than someone who uses it all the time. Or maybe you don't want the speed, just an always-on connection for surfing?
The idea is that even the fastest most connections go - 6, 8. 15, and so on -- is slow. I can transfer something on a 100mbps ethernet LAN much faster than I can when it's 10mbps. It gives other people a chance.
No one wants to hog the pipes - the pipes are slow, so it takes time to transfer the data. If the pipes were faster, the data would be transferred lickedy-split, and no one would be hogging the pipes.
No one is really "paying" for 24/7/365. It's a statistics thing. The statistics are known, and some people use their connections a lot. The rest of the folks aren't billed in such a way - what you're paying now is probably based on how 90%-95% of the people use the internet. The people who use the service a lot are just getting a really good deal.
I strongly support being able to use the bandwidth that you purchase. The wiring that you're connected to has certain capabilities, and it's those capabilities that you are purchasing. The prices certainly aren't going to come down. These goody-goody two shoes mentalities are very destructive to the overall intelligence of a country's population.
It's none of my business, really, what's going on with my neighbor's internet connection. If there is a crime going on, then it's law enforcement's job to investigate, pursue, and incarcerate. Once it get to the point where there is a trial, then it's public information, and I can go down to the courtroom and watch the proceedings.
Most residential broadband connections are not priced in such a way as to facilitate large profits on large quantities of data transfer. 90% of the subscribers only use 50% of the bandwidth. That's more than likely how it's dealt with. Cable companies place limitations on data transfer to delay spending money on fixed costs, not decrease variable costs. It all depends on how you set it up internally, dept to dept, but as long as a subscriber breaks even plus a little bit on top on the variable costs, it's good for the bottom line. Hardware upgrades have to happen eventually, but often times an ISP may prefer to hold off on the hardware, network upgrades if congestion pops up sooner than expected.
The price you pay is not based on being a bandwidth hog, and it's not the variable costs of bandwidth that are the problem - it's having to spend money on fixed costs sooner than expected. It's not the amount of data or if there's a loss going on there, it's how quickly the network needs to be upgraded and expanded. If that's sooner than expected, then preventing people from using their connections so much can stretch out the time between network upgrades.
People who use their connections a lot aren't creating a problem because of the "cost" of bandwidth itself, and the vast majority of the time, the other folks who don't use their connections aren't REALLY subsidising the BANDWIDTH in a pure sense. It's the network upgrades, the hardware, the infrastructure that gets bogged down - THAT'S the money sinkhole. They're behind schedule already, so...
If you really use your brain, and think about it, what these morons call "bandwidth hogs" are really just early adopters, the cutting edge. You'll see -- the internet is going to become a place where multimedia content is increasingly delivered to your television free from the grips of the cable & etc. Probably better to think of it as future technologies trying to get delivered on yesterday's network infrastructure. It's a two-way street.
Pretty much everywhere you go, any ISP, any newsgroups provider, etc... it's all the same.
You've got pretty much something like 5-10% of the subscribers using 50% of the bandwidth.
This is more or less a known fact. This is "the way it is".
Cable and sat, some less-well connected DSL providers have no choice but to do something about it. There's no way you can advertise 8 or 16 or more megabit service that's essentially a TV channel that can handle 36 or megs which is shared by many people (perhaps hundreds) and not implement some way to keep usage down.
Without TW's shaping, without Comcast's strange termination policies, without Cox's selectively enforced official caps, the speeds wouldn't be there. At least not the faster speeds that are trying to compete with Verizon's fiber.
Any ISP that can be called an ISP more than likely has someone who knows what the numbers are. 50% of the bandwidth by 5-10% of the customers. That's life. That's the way "it is". You either leave it that way, and see the glass as half full, or try to change it. If cable is going to offer these faster speeds, they HAVE to do something about it.
Seems kind of silly, you know - you've got customers who want bandwidth (data transfer), you're in the business of providing data transfer services, there's more demand than you can reasonably fulfill, so you view it as customers misbehaving or something along those lines.
The answer is the cable co's are incapable of providing the bandwidth that the customers want (at the present time with the present technology at the present speeds they need to compete). They know this. Everyone knows - 50% of the bandwidth is used by... etc...
Maybe someday more ISP will figure out ways to use new technology to deliver the bandwidth to the customers that the customers want. Perhaps those customers are also willing to pay more, so it could actually be a win-win situation. But at the present time, it's basically just a technical limitation.
The numbers are known, and are relatively static. Cable companies have no choice. They have to do something. The majority of the customers want speed, not quantity. No solution is perfect, every solution has its pros and cons.
We have a president that is very comitted to the particular brand of Christianity. I went to a "fundamentalist" Christian grade school; I was taught early on that I might fail tests that asked questions about the age of the earth were I to enter a public high school or university, that this was just a test from God and it was the right thing to do answer the questions "wrong", (i.e. write an account of the creation story in the Bible on an essay question, or stick to the young earth theory) - regardless of the consequences to my grade in the course. All those scientists are wrong. Rocks aren't billions of years old, God is just testing our faith in him by making it look like they are. The universe appears to be expanding because God made it look that way, in order to test our faith and see how strong it is; it's actually only 4000 years old.
Yes, the Earth is 4000 years old, and God created it in seven days. That's what it says in the Bible, and obviously that's how the American people feel about it. Why have some gizmo up there that's costing billions of dollars telling us that the Bible is wrong?
A mission to Mars is not incompatible with the Bible at all (even though the science involved might make certain assumptions about gravity and time) - but the Hubble is incompatible with the Bible, which is incompatible with "what the majority of God-fearing Americans want", so how can you ask for people's tax dollars to send gizmos up there that keep telling us that the Bible is wrong and that the universe is billions and billions of years old?
Of course, I AM wrong about this; that's not the deal at all. It must be just a strange coincidence.
Geez, I wonder why you'd call it a contract... is that an analogy that the computer-illiterate business or management guru can relate to?
So the road to "interoperability" entails the licensing of Microsoft's intellectual property.
Well, anyway...
Let's see. I'll pretend that I have an electronic ID card. Let's say that I'm paranoid and I just don't feel like using my electronic ID card in combination with Microsoft product (which I think many people would feel is perfectly reasonable) - or online generally.
So then what's the worst thing that could happen - I wouldn't be able to use Microsoft products? Aw, gee... what a letdown.
Sort of like trusting your SSN to a Microsoft product - would you use your SSN to identify you in an online chat room? C'mon get real.
I would gladly just refrain from using those software products that required me to provide my electronic ID number.
Bodybilt - around $1000 or so. Fancy armrests will raise that price. Check them out. Herman Millers are OK too, I hear, they're about $750. It's incredibly important to have one. Spend 5 hours in front of the computer on a Saturday morning without even noticing it (so much for the yardwork).
Trackball, for instance - ITAC systems 6-buttons - button for doubeclick, click & hold, plus the three buttons for unix, ball bearing, very fine motion control.. about $100.
Northgate Evolutions go for about $200 retail, probably around $100 on e-bay; Kinesis' are in the 300-500 range; they have footpedals for mouse buttons, Maltrons from England come close to $1000 (built-in trackball) - then there are even fancier ones that are more expensive but not necessarily always the best for everyone.
These are one-time investments that can make it relatively enjoyable to spend 8 hours in front of a monitor, even on a bad day. Just take your regular breaks and so on.
Trust me, it DOES make a difference.
The website should have taken down the links when they were asked to. That's probably the first thing. They refused to take down the links over and over and over again. Bad idea.
Also, wouldn't it be interesting if the next time you turned up your stereo too loud, and the neighbors got upset, instead of violating a noise ordinance, you were charged with copyright violation? If it must be contained within a private room, then no more of the blaring music out of a car in the summer on the street, no more loud parties where you can hear the music a mile away - all of these could technically constitute copyright infringement? RIAA could make a fortune crawling college campuses handing out tickets for public peformance of copyright-protected works.