Unfortunately, it doesn't always give a very good choice: if you google for the French Presidential Election results in 2002 you will see what I mean.
The system works on 2 rounds, the top 2 candidates from the first round (% of the vote) progress to the second round, where they go head-to-head.
There are different kinds of run-off voting, probably the one that is most widespread is where only the two candidates with the best result in the first round can run in the second round. But in Switzerland (for the kinds of elections that are not proportional), there are no restrictions as to who can run in the second round.
So, if no candidate gets more than 50% of the votes it the first round, it has no direct effect on the eventual outcome on the elections, it is more like a kind of official survey, and the second round is then just a plurality vote.
That way, something like in the 2002 elections in France cannot happen (Jospin could still have run in the second run, some minority candidates would probably not have run in the second round and others would have get fewer votes because of the results of the first round). On the other hand, candidates with little chances can still run in the first round without being spoilers.
No, it's just called run-off voting (voting with two rounds). Instant run-off voting is when there is only one voting round, but a run-off is simulated (people can vote for several candidates, ordered by preference, if the candidate they want most has no chance of winning, the one they want second most is elected etc.).
In continental Europe, mostly (non-instant) run-off voting is used, instant run-off seems to be more widespread in Anglosaxon countries (Australia, special elections in Britain, such as London City Council).
It's still ironic that BBC has a antiauthoritarian streak to them. Authority is decidedly in their interest.
Why should authority be in their interest? If they bowed to authority too much, they would lose their reputation.
They would only be interested in supporting authority if they had to fear that the government could interfere - but if a government tried to do so, that wouldn't be accepted. In other countries, too, publicly funded information services have the programs that are most critical of the government (e.g. the public German stations often have programs with a critical attitude towards the government, the commercial ones deal much less with politics).
A country where the situation is very bad is Italy. Berlusconi, the prime-minister, owns most private TV stations and the threats he and his party use for influencing the public media aren't even veiled.
When will they learn that you can't solve everyone problem by adding more layers of legislation.
This is insightful?? It has been pointed out in countless other threads that this is not about legislation, but the about the application of existing laws. The laws that had been applied in this case are from 1909, when Germany still had an emperor - certainly not a good occasion for complaining about "more layers of legislation" being added.
If your conception about free speech is putting deceptive meta-tags that don't have anything to do with the content on commercial websites, you probably haven't understood this principle.
By the way, this doesn't have anything to do with differences between Europe, America and other continents (are you allowed to sell products with deceptive labels, e.g. water labeled as vodka, or to lure people to your store by wrongly claiming in advertisements that you sell a certain product for a low price although?)
I'm afraid the German government might waste all kinds of money and resources trying to actually enforce this.
Nonsense, deceptive advertisement is not a criminal offense. The ruling described in the article was in a lawsuit in a civil court. Unless a competitor (or perhaps a consumer organization if that's possible in this case) sues, nothing is done.
The ruling doesn't have anything to do with the Internet in particular. Something similar would be applied to any kind of deceptive advertisement of a commercial offer, whether on paper or in any kind of old or new electronic system.
One difference between the Internet in the "good ol' days" and today's Internet is that it used to be less commercialized, and such regulations about business practices ("unfairer Wettbewerb") are irrelevant for non-commercial websites.
As a few have already pointed out, such a system cannot be effectively enforced. Why do we need more pointless legislation like this?
it's not legislation, but the application of existing laws
Who cares if it's not always enforced? If deceptive meta-tags, which hardly anyone uses in searches, are used, it's not a problem. But if competitors who legitimately use keywords get lower ranks because of others that use the same keywords although they don't have anything to do with their offering, they will care and try to enforce it (with other kinds of deceptive advertising it's the same, no one will screen all advertisements, but in some cases a competitor takes action).
They should attempt, if they really feel the need, to generalize the law a bit more to cover all superfluous data that is intended to artificially boost search ranking.
It's not a special law about meta-tags, they have just applied general laws about advertizing. So, there is no reason why this couldn't be applied to other deceptive technique to boost the ranking of a commercial website.
Mobile phone use is about the same in America as it is in Europe.
I don't know if there are statistics about actual mobile phone use (many people in Europa carry their mobile phone around, but don't telephone very often), but there is a big difference in market penetration.
2002 data about mobile phone penetration from http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techres earch/pdfs/2003TMT.pdf
Sweden 89%, Finland 86%, Italy, Portugal and Hong Kong 85%, Spain, Ireland and Czech Republic 84%, Austria and UK 82%, Netherlands 79%, Switzerland 78%, Denmark and Norway 77%, Singapore 73%, Germany 72%, Hungary 68%, South Korea 67%, France 65%, Japan 62%,...
US 50%
By the time mobiles are coming with 5 Gig hard drives, the new iPods will probably have 160Gig.
I wonder what all that storage would be needed for... I suppose most people don't have that much music, anyway, and if they have - isn't it better to store the music on the computer hard drive or DVDs? Certainly, there are probably some people for whom it is important to be able to access thousands of songs when their on the way. But I think for most people 512 MB on an SD card are enough - after all, you can change the selection of songs all the time. I only have an SD card with 256 MB, and that's more than enough for me to listen to music (on a Tréo 600).
People have been trying to combine ridiculous devices for years. When the industrial age came around people attempted to converge household and appliances with each other, various tools with other tools, etc etc
Well, you don't have to carry around household appliances most of the time. But you usually carry around your mobile phone, your music player and similar devices. When I read all these slashdotters wanting a separate gadget for every single function, I think I haven't been informed, yet, about the production of new fashion clothes with enormous pockets...
but its not going to replace or come close to matching the quality of a stand alone device
Actually, the standard quality used by Apple is rather low. If you use MP3 or ogg files, you can choose the quality yourself. And what's the advantage of a hard drive over flashcards? Being able to change the cards is only an advantage. Apart from the bigger storage, I really don't know what superior quality the iPod should have that e.g. the Tréo doesn't have.
on my recent trip to OSCON in Portland, my laptop bag contained
Yes, your laptop bag... But what's about your pocket? If people want a separate gadget for every function, they will probably always have to carry around a laptop bag...
That was probably different in different countries. In Switzerland, SMS messages were never free (when sent from the phone), and, as far as I know, neither were they in Germany.
The enormous success of SMS in Europe (I don't know about Asia) probably has many causes. There are practical aspects - in many situations, you cannot answer the phone (e.g. when you're at meetings), but you can read and answer the message in a break - with SMS, people don't have to communicate synchronically. It's also very good for sending things like addresses or phone numbers - dictating them on the phone is not very convenient, and SMS messages can be archived much more easily than phone calls (if at all).
But I think it was clearly teenagers who started using SMS heavily, and older people only realized its usefulness later. Teenagers often use messages for flirting, and it may be easier to express oneself that way than by telephoning, especially when someone's shy. Many uses of SMS are a very different kind of communicating than telephoning, e.g. few people in Europe would call someone and recite a poem on the phone, but it's quite common to send poems by SMS. When it's used for personal matters, it's also better because people around you don't hear it (e.g. in a bus or train) when you write it by SMS. Or when you're with a group of people you know, they will inevitably listen to you when you telephone someone - if you don't want them to know what you're communicating to an absent person, better use SMS (they could look at the screen, but it's hard to read).
Then, it's somehow a more "gentle" way of communicating - if you telephone someone, this person *has* to answer the phone, or it is considered unfriendly, but with SMS, you can (depending on the content) just write a message, maybe an answer comes back at once, maybe in an hour or maybe none at all, it's more non-committal. I also read that it's quite common that younger people who have a relationship "control" each other via SMS (asking where the other one is, what s/he is doing etc.). Of course, that could be done by phoning all the time, but that would be much too intrusive, with SMS the level of intrusiveness is just right for the purpose.
Then, of course, there are many places where telephoning if impractical because it's too loud (e.g. concerts, discotheques) or because you are expected to be silent (e.g. in the classroom), so SMS comes in handy.
The use of SMS is now very widespread in Switzerland, but it seems that there is still the tendency that younger people use it much more often and more extensively than older people.
There are cell phones / PDAs, with which you can use SD cards (e.g. Palm's Treo). I only have an SD card for 256 MB, but as far as I know, there are also SD cards with more storage that can be used. I think many people prefer having a bit less than the many GBs of an iPod but have a convenient way to switch the memory cards. Transferring files is also very easy that way, especially when you have a card reader / writer on your computer, it also works perfectly with Linux, no iTunes is needed.
And about the interface... I think PocketTunes for Palm OS is quite good, and everyone could program a new one, the interface is open, and probably similar programs exist for other OSs. I really don't see the need of carrying one more gadget (an iPod) in my pocket when another device I carry around, anyway, offers the same as far as music is concerned.
I don't think cameras on phones are an embarassment. Of course, most of them aren't that good, but many people wouldn't have bought a digital camera, anyway, and they certainly wouldn't carry it around all the time. I've seen many people using the camera on their phone, mainly young people when they take pictures just for fun.
I find the combination of phone and music player very convenient (I use a Treo 600). I think it's quite awkward when these two devices are separate. If you listen to music and someone telephones you, you a) have to notice the call (possible, of course, with vibration, but it's even better if a signal interrupts the music) b) take off the headphones and take the telephone out of the pocket. When it's combined, it's much easier, there are headsets that can be used both for telephoning (with microphone) and listening to music.
I have no problem with battery use with a Treo 600 when I listen to music for hours, recharging every night is completely enough. So, I think it's just a problem with some versions of the iPod, at least existing cell phones / palmtops that allow listening to music are much better in that respect.
I will never, ever, ever let the phone company come between me and my music collection. They'll decide they want to bill me for every minute I spend listening to stuff I've got stored on my hardware.
At least, with current hardware, they can't do that. I have a Treo 600, which I use both for telephoning and listening to music (and many other things), but of course, the phone company does not know anything I do with the device except telephoning and sending SMSs and MMSs.
The real long term investment is research and inventing new things. A ton of monkeys re-implementing the stone wheel doesn't produce any progress. Sure, you have cheap wheels, but you're still in the stone age.
If someone had a patent on wheels, it would cover all wheels if similar practices like with software patents were used. So, there would be no incentive to try out other materials and design details - the one company that would have a patent on wheels could make huge profits with expensive wheels and no other company could design and sell better wheels (for the duration of the patent monopoly).
If you can drive a car or ride a bus, blimey, it's because someone had the financial incentive to invest in research. Again, it involved patents.
Yes, patents were involved. Because of a patent of Otto on the four-stroke gas engine, Benz, who was ultimately much more successful, had to wait until the patent expired (in the meantime, he could only build cars with two-stroke engines). That's an example that shows that those who come up with an idea first often aren't the ones that implement it the most successful way, and when the first ones are given a monopoly, progress is delayed.
And let me give you another thought to chew on: the real _waste_ is in the re-implementation. Do we need 100,000 different re-implementations of a simple e-commerce web site? Not really. One would be enough.
What is a simple e-commerce website? If you look at the development of e-commerce websites, there has been a lot of progress, especially if you don't only consider at what the customer sees, but also at the integration into the integration into the internal procedures of a company. If one company had had a monopoly on e-commerce software, it is unlikely that this field could have developed in such a way. Furthermore, I think you contradict yourself somehow with the "waste" by developing new "simple" e-commerce websites. When really simple e-commerce websites are created from scratch, little is wasted because not much effort is needed (once, I wrote a PHP application for a simple webshop, too, I could have used existing solutions, some of them free, but if the customer needs just the basic functionality writing a new application can require less effort when there are additional requirememnts, such as using an existing website layout). In contrast, a lot of effort is put into developing e-commerce solutions that are not simple, at all. But then, it's not a waste because they contain different functionality.
Those hundreds of billions would be better invested in either creating something new for a change, or just building a few new factories. Wasting them on reimplementing the same tired crap is _not_ a benefit.
What is "something new" and what is "reimplementing the same tired crap"? Can you show a clear boundary between these two things? Most progress is done on the basis of ideas and applications that already exist. If you can't improve, extend and transform existing applications and are restricted to things that are radically new (that's very rare), there is much less room for development.
Or maybe then someone will invest in research, instead of just copy-and-pasting other people's work.
The remark about copy-and-pasting is offtopic. You should be able to distinguish between copyright and patents.
Studies about the relationship between patents and investment in research are interesting. In the area of software patents, most show that the introduction of patents lead to a decrease in research (possibly because more expenses are needed for patent lawyers, which leads to cuts in research and development, and also because the exclusion of competitors with patent monopolies leads to less competition, which stifles the incentive for innovation), see e.g. economic study by Bessen & Hunt 2003.
Given that the judge ruled that mod chips are illegal due to the European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) and that other EU nations (Italy, Spain) have already ruled the chips to be legal, is there any scope for this ruling to be challenged in a higher court because of misinterpretation of the directive?
While an appeal might be possible, the fact that mod chips are legal in other countries doesn't tell much about the chances. The EU directives aren't directly applicable, and it is common that laws in different countries of the EU that implement the same directive differ substantially. So, it may well be that mod chips are legal in Spain and Italy, but not in Britain.
No, as far as I know, SMS spam is easier to block (by the network operators, not by the individual users) than e-mail spam.
The most important point here is that sending SMSs costs something (lower prices for bulk sending of SMS messages are offered, but the typical spammer's business model still won't work, even if they just have to pay ~5 cents per message, it's too expensive for spamming). Then, the fact that money has to be paid also helps identifying the source (as far as I know, the identification for billing cannot be forged, so the telephone companies can find out who spammed).
In many European countries, SMS has become absolutely indispensable (and a major source of profit for the telephone companies). I read that in the US (at least under certain circumstances) the recipient rather than the sender has to pay for SMS messages - that's really an idiotic arrangement. I think Americans should rather look how SMS has been implemented in other countries than contemplating to give it up and missing the huge advantages it offers (being able to deliver a message to someone who is too busy to pick up a phone, sending telephone numbers etc.).
I have been using SMS for many years (in Switzerland) and I don't think I have ever received SMS spam.
The major Linux distributions that I've tried don't include a media player for fear they might get sued, don't include a NTFS driver for fear they might get sued... This makes it very hard for people like me, who don't know how to find and compile all the right modules, to use linux.
The Linux distributions I know do include a NTFS driver and a media player. But they don't contain a media player that can play encrypted DVDs. Of course, there are ways to download plugins for media players, but I found that very difficult. I think there should be Linux distributions with a working DVD player - it's perfectly legal in many countries, so why cripple the media players for everyone because of stupid laws in some countries?
In fact, changing minor details of a system is sometimes enough for you to be able to patent your own design. Take a look at the hundreds of different patents for the revolver mechanism on a gun, or ways of making a shock absorber, you'll see what I'm talking about.
Many patents in other fields are quite specific. But for software, many patents are very broad (see examples e.g. at http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/samples/index.en.htm l). Even those software patents that seem to describe something specific contain formulations like
"While the invention has been particularly shown and described with reference to a preferred embodiment thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various other changes in the form and details may be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention." (Sun's patent on converting Windows file names)
"While we have described our preferred embodiments of our invention, it will be understood that those skilled in the art, both now and in the future, may make various improvements and enhancements which fall within the scope of the claims which follow. These claims should be construed to maintain the proper protection for the invention first disclosed." (IBM's patent on extensible web servers)
"What has been described is merely illustrative of the application of the principles of the present invention. Other arrangements and methods can be implemented by those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention." (ATT patent on single object file naming conventions)
... (countless other examples)
I really don't agree that there is a tendency for narrow software patents (that may be the case with guns...), on the contrary, attempts to make patents as broad as possible are ubiquitous, which is understandable, since these patents are used for building large patent portfolios for threatening, not necessarily to be valid.
When you do things in an original way, the best means of maintaining economic viability in the software industry these days is to ensure that somebody can't clone your work and offer it for less, or in the case of OSS, for free. The best way to do that is to patent it.
Oh yes, for those who have patents it is obviously good - they can overcharge and don't have to deal with competition. For everyone else, it is bad - customers a) have to pay more b) have worse products because if only one company is allowed to implement an idea, fewer optimization will happen.
Theft of intellectual property (e.g. product design) should not be accepted as business as usual.
You call competition theft... It's just a question of competition or monopolies, and - apart from those few that would have their monopolies -, competition is better (except perhaps some natural monopolies that should be under democratic public control).
spent three months working on the interface for my last program and my boss is so worried that somebody will just clone it and sell a look-alike for cheaper that he doesn't want to put screenshots on the web!
A clear indication that your overcharge for your product. If the functionality behind the interface is so easy to implement that the main concern is that the interface could be cloned, it is obviously a program that should be cheap.
In our industry, price is a BIG concern and we're already selling things as cheaply as we can without cutting big corners, like our R&D budget. Being able to have the peace of mind that, for twenty years, nobody else in this industry could do what the core of our product does in the way it does it without our permission, would be a great boon to the maintenance of our MASSIVE R&D budget.
And for your customers, which would have to pay too much for 20 years because your apparently more efficient competitors are banned pri
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, it doesn't always give a very good choice: if you google for the French Presidential Election results in 2002 you will see what I mean.
The system works on 2 rounds, the top 2 candidates from the first round (% of the vote) progress to the second round, where they go head-to-head.
There are different kinds of run-off voting, probably the one that is most widespread is where only the two candidates with the best result in the first round can run in the second round. But in Switzerland (for the kinds of elections that are not proportional), there are no restrictions as to who can run in the second round.
So, if no candidate gets more than 50% of the votes it the first round, it has no direct effect on the eventual outcome on the elections, it is more like a kind of official survey, and the second round is then just a plurality vote.
That way, something like in the 2002 elections in France cannot happen (Jospin could still have run in the second run, some minority candidates would probably not have run in the second round and others would have get fewer votes because of the results of the first round). On the other hand, candidates with little chances can still run in the first round without being spoilers.
No, it's just called run-off voting (voting with two rounds). Instant run-off voting is when there is only one voting round, but a run-off is simulated (people can vote for several candidates, ordered by preference, if the candidate they want most has no chance of winning, the one they want second most is elected etc.).
In continental Europe, mostly (non-instant) run-off voting is used, instant run-off seems to be more widespread in Anglosaxon countries (Australia, special elections in Britain, such as London City Council).
It's still ironic that BBC has a antiauthoritarian streak to them. Authority is decidedly in their interest.
Why should authority be in their interest? If they bowed to authority too much, they would lose their reputation.
They would only be interested in supporting authority if they had to fear that the government could interfere - but if a government tried to do so, that wouldn't be accepted. In other countries, too, publicly funded information services have the programs that are most critical of the government (e.g. the public German stations often have programs with a critical attitude towards the government, the commercial ones deal much less with politics).
A country where the situation is very bad is Italy. Berlusconi, the prime-minister, owns most private TV stations and the threats he and his party use for influencing the public media aren't even veiled.
When will they learn that you can't solve everyone problem by adding more layers of legislation.
This is insightful?? It has been pointed out in countless other threads that this is not about legislation, but the about the application of existing laws. The laws that had been applied in this case are from 1909, when Germany still had an emperor - certainly not a good occasion for complaining about "more layers of legislation" being added.
They don't even believe in free speech.
If your conception about free speech is putting deceptive meta-tags that don't have anything to do with the content on commercial websites, you probably haven't understood this principle.
By the way, this doesn't have anything to do with differences between Europe, America and other continents (are you allowed to sell products with deceptive labels, e.g. water labeled as vodka, or to lure people to your store by wrongly claiming in advertisements that you sell a certain product for a low price although?)
I'm afraid the German government might waste all kinds of money and resources trying to actually enforce this.
Nonsense, deceptive advertisement is not a criminal offense. The ruling described in the article was in a lawsuit in a civil court. Unless a competitor (or perhaps a consumer organization if that's possible in this case) sues, nothing is done.
The ruling doesn't have anything to do with the Internet in particular. Something similar would be applied to any kind of deceptive advertisement of a commercial offer, whether on paper or in any kind of old or new electronic system.
One difference between the Internet in the "good ol' days" and today's Internet is that it used to be less commercialized, and such regulations about business practices ("unfairer Wettbewerb") are irrelevant for non-commercial websites.
They should attempt, if they really feel the need, to generalize the law a bit more to cover all superfluous data that is intended to artificially boost search ranking.
It's not a special law about meta-tags, they have just applied general laws about advertizing. So, there is no reason why this couldn't be applied to other deceptive technique to boost the ranking of a commercial website.
I use SuSE Linux 9.0 on a IBM Thinkpad R32, and suspend/resume works well (with APM, not ACPI).
Mobile phone use is about the same in America as it is in Europe.
s earch/pdfs/2003TMT.pdf ...
I don't know if there are statistics about actual mobile phone use (many people in Europa carry their mobile phone around, but don't telephone very often), but there is a big difference in market penetration. 2002 data about mobile phone penetration from http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techre
Sweden 89%, Finland 86%, Italy, Portugal and Hong Kong 85%, Spain, Ireland and Czech Republic 84%, Austria and UK 82%, Netherlands 79%, Switzerland 78%, Denmark and Norway 77%, Singapore 73%, Germany 72%, Hungary 68%, South Korea 67%, France 65%, Japan 62%,
US 50%
By the time mobiles are coming with 5 Gig hard drives, the new iPods will probably have 160Gig.
I wonder what all that storage would be needed for... I suppose most people don't have that much music, anyway, and if they have - isn't it better to store the music on the computer hard drive or DVDs? Certainly, there are probably some people for whom it is important to be able to access thousands of songs when their on the way. But I think for most people 512 MB on an SD card are enough - after all, you can change the selection of songs all the time. I only have an SD card with 256 MB, and that's more than enough for me to listen to music (on a Tréo 600).
People have been trying to combine ridiculous devices for years. When the industrial age came around people attempted to converge household and appliances with each other, various tools with other tools, etc etc
Well, you don't have to carry around household appliances most of the time. But you usually carry around your mobile phone, your music player and similar devices. When I read all these slashdotters wanting a separate gadget for every single function, I think I haven't been informed, yet, about the production of new fashion clothes with enormous pockets...
but its not going to replace or come close to matching the quality of a stand alone device
Actually, the standard quality used by Apple is rather low. If you use MP3 or ogg files, you can choose the quality yourself. And what's the advantage of a hard drive over flashcards? Being able to change the cards is only an advantage. Apart from the bigger storage, I really don't know what superior quality the iPod should have that e.g. the Tréo doesn't have.
on my recent trip to OSCON in Portland, my laptop bag contained
Yes, your laptop bag... But what's about your pocket? If people want a separate gadget for every function, they will probably always have to carry around a laptop bag...
That was probably different in different countries. In Switzerland, SMS messages were never free (when sent from the phone), and, as far as I know, neither were they in Germany.
The enormous success of SMS in Europe (I don't know about Asia) probably has many causes. There are practical aspects - in many situations, you cannot answer the phone (e.g. when you're at meetings), but you can read and answer the message in a break - with SMS, people don't have to communicate synchronically. It's also very good for sending things like addresses or phone numbers - dictating them on the phone is not very convenient, and SMS messages can be archived much more easily than phone calls (if at all).
But I think it was clearly teenagers who started using SMS heavily, and older people only realized its usefulness later. Teenagers often use messages for flirting, and it may be easier to express oneself that way than by telephoning, especially when someone's shy. Many uses of SMS are a very different kind of communicating than telephoning, e.g. few people in Europe would call someone and recite a poem on the phone, but it's quite common to send poems by SMS. When it's used for personal matters, it's also better because people around you don't hear it (e.g. in a bus or train) when you write it by SMS. Or when you're with a group of people you know, they will inevitably listen to you when you telephone someone - if you don't want them to know what you're communicating to an absent person, better use SMS (they could look at the screen, but it's hard to read).
Then, it's somehow a more "gentle" way of communicating - if you telephone someone, this person *has* to answer the phone, or it is considered unfriendly, but with SMS, you can (depending on the content) just write a message, maybe an answer comes back at once, maybe in an hour or maybe none at all, it's more non-committal. I also read that it's quite common that younger people who have a relationship "control" each other via SMS (asking where the other one is, what s/he is doing etc.). Of course, that could be done by phoning all the time, but that would be much too intrusive, with SMS the level of intrusiveness is just right for the purpose.
Then, of course, there are many places where telephoning if impractical because it's too loud (e.g. concerts, discotheques) or because you are expected to be silent (e.g. in the classroom), so SMS comes in handy.
The use of SMS is now very widespread in Switzerland, but it seems that there is still the tendency that younger people use it much more often and more extensively than older people.
There are cell phones / PDAs, with which you can use SD cards (e.g. Palm's Treo). I only have an SD card for 256 MB, but as far as I know, there are also SD cards with more storage that can be used. I think many people prefer having a bit less than the many GBs of an iPod but have a convenient way to switch the memory cards. Transferring files is also very easy that way, especially when you have a card reader / writer on your computer, it also works perfectly with Linux, no iTunes is needed.
And about the interface... I think PocketTunes for Palm OS is quite good, and everyone could program a new one, the interface is open, and probably similar programs exist for other OSs. I really don't see the need of carrying one more gadget (an iPod) in my pocket when another device I carry around, anyway, offers the same as far as music is concerned.
I don't think cameras on phones are an embarassment. Of course, most of them aren't that good, but many people wouldn't have bought a digital camera, anyway, and they certainly wouldn't carry it around all the time. I've seen many people using the camera on their phone, mainly young people when they take pictures just for fun.
I find the combination of phone and music player very convenient (I use a Treo 600). I think it's quite awkward when these two devices are separate. If you listen to music and someone telephones you, you a) have to notice the call (possible, of course, with vibration, but it's even better if a signal interrupts the music) b) take off the headphones and take the telephone out of the pocket. When it's combined, it's much easier, there are headsets that can be used both for telephoning (with microphone) and listening to music.
I have no problem with battery use with a Treo 600 when I listen to music for hours, recharging every night is completely enough. So, I think it's just a problem with some versions of the iPod, at least existing cell phones / palmtops that allow listening to music are much better in that respect.
I will never, ever, ever let the phone company come between me and my music collection. They'll decide they want to bill me for every minute I spend listening to stuff I've got stored on my hardware. At least, with current hardware, they can't do that. I have a Treo 600, which I use both for telephoning and listening to music (and many other things), but of course, the phone company does not know anything I do with the device except telephoning and sending SMSs and MMSs.
If someone had a patent on wheels, it would cover all wheels if similar practices like with software patents were used. So, there would be no incentive to try out other materials and design details - the one company that would have a patent on wheels could make huge profits with expensive wheels and no other company could design and sell better wheels (for the duration of the patent monopoly).
If you can drive a car or ride a bus, blimey, it's because someone had the financial incentive to invest in research. Again, it involved patents.
Yes, patents were involved. Because of a patent of Otto on the four-stroke gas engine, Benz, who was ultimately much more successful, had to wait until the patent expired (in the meantime, he could only build cars with two-stroke engines). That's an example that shows that those who come up with an idea first often aren't the ones that implement it the most successful way, and when the first ones are given a monopoly, progress is delayed.
And let me give you another thought to chew on: the real _waste_ is in the re-implementation. Do we need 100,000 different re-implementations of a simple e-commerce web site? Not really. One would be enough.
What is a simple e-commerce website? If you look at the development of e-commerce websites, there has been a lot of progress, especially if you don't only consider at what the customer sees, but also at the integration into the integration into the internal procedures of a company. If one company had had a monopoly on e-commerce software, it is unlikely that this field could have developed in such a way. Furthermore, I think you contradict yourself somehow with the "waste" by developing new "simple" e-commerce websites. When really simple e-commerce websites are created from scratch, little is wasted because not much effort is needed (once, I wrote a PHP application for a simple webshop, too, I could have used existing solutions, some of them free, but if the customer needs just the basic functionality writing a new application can require less effort when there are additional requirememnts, such as using an existing website layout). In contrast, a lot of effort is put into developing e-commerce solutions that are not simple, at all. But then, it's not a waste because they contain different functionality.
Those hundreds of billions would be better invested in either creating something new for a change, or just building a few new factories. Wasting them on reimplementing the same tired crap is _not_ a benefit.
What is "something new" and what is "reimplementing the same tired crap"? Can you show a clear boundary between these two things? Most progress is done on the basis of ideas and applications that already exist. If you can't improve, extend and transform existing applications and are restricted to things that are radically new (that's very rare), there is much less room for development.
Or maybe then someone will invest in research, instead of just copy-and-pasting other people's work.
Given that the judge ruled that mod chips are illegal due to the European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) and that other EU nations (Italy, Spain) have already ruled the chips to be legal, is there any scope for this ruling to be challenged in a higher court because of misinterpretation of the directive?
While an appeal might be possible, the fact that mod chips are legal in other countries doesn't tell much about the chances. The EU directives aren't directly applicable, and it is common that laws in different countries of the EU that implement the same directive differ substantially. So, it may well be that mod chips are legal in Spain and Italy, but not in Britain.
No, as far as I know, SMS spam is easier to block (by the network operators, not by the individual users) than e-mail spam.
The most important point here is that sending SMSs costs something (lower prices for bulk sending of SMS messages are offered, but the typical spammer's business model still won't work, even if they just have to pay ~5 cents per message, it's too expensive for spamming). Then, the fact that money has to be paid also helps identifying the source (as far as I know, the identification for billing cannot be forged, so the telephone companies can find out who spammed).
In many European countries, SMS has become absolutely indispensable (and a major source of profit for the telephone companies). I read that in the US (at least under certain circumstances) the recipient rather than the sender has to pay for SMS messages - that's really an idiotic arrangement. I think Americans should rather look how SMS has been implemented in other countries than contemplating to give it up and missing the huge advantages it offers (being able to deliver a message to someone who is too busy to pick up a phone, sending telephone numbers etc.).
I have been using SMS for many years (in Switzerland) and I don't think I have ever received SMS spam.
The major Linux distributions that I've tried don't include a media player for fear they might get sued, don't include a NTFS driver for fear they might get sued... This makes it very hard for people like me, who don't know how to find and compile all the right modules, to use linux.
The Linux distributions I know do include a NTFS driver and a media player. But they don't contain a media player that can play encrypted DVDs. Of course, there are ways to download plugins for media players, but I found that very difficult. I think there should be Linux distributions with a working DVD player - it's perfectly legal in many countries, so why cripple the media players for everyone because of stupid laws in some countries?
Many patents in other fields are quite specific. But for software, many patents are very broad (see examples e.g. at http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/samples/index.en.htm l). Even those software patents that seem to describe something specific contain formulations like
I really don't agree that there is a tendency for narrow software patents (that may be the case with guns...), on the contrary, attempts to make patents as broad as possible are ubiquitous, which is understandable, since these patents are used for building large patent portfolios for threatening, not necessarily to be valid.
When you do things in an original way, the best means of maintaining economic viability in the software industry these days is to ensure that somebody can't clone your work and offer it for less, or in the case of OSS, for free. The best way to do that is to patent it.
Oh yes, for those who have patents it is obviously good - they can overcharge and don't have to deal with competition. For everyone else, it is bad - customers a) have to pay more b) have worse products because if only one company is allowed to implement an idea, fewer optimization will happen.
Theft of intellectual property (e.g. product design) should not be accepted as business as usual.
You call competition theft... It's just a question of competition or monopolies, and - apart from those few that would have their monopolies -, competition is better (except perhaps some natural monopolies that should be under democratic public control).
spent three months working on the interface for my last program and my boss is so worried that somebody will just clone it and sell a look-alike for cheaper that he doesn't want to put screenshots on the web!
A clear indication that your overcharge for your product. If the functionality behind the interface is so easy to implement that the main concern is that the interface could be cloned, it is obviously a program that should be cheap.
In our industry, price is a BIG concern and we're already selling things as cheaply as we can without cutting big corners, like our R&D budget. Being able to have the peace of mind that, for twenty years, nobody else in this industry could do what the core of our product does in the way it does it without our permission, would be a great boon to the maintenance of our MASSIVE R&D budget.
And for your customers, which would have to pay too much for 20 years because your apparently more efficient competitors are banned pri