And for all those bringing up fair use rights and the like, those are rights you have in the absense of more restrictive agreements. If the next audio CD you buy comes in a shrink-wrap license that limits your use, then there's potentially no fair use for that either.
I call bullshit on that statement. First of all, the ruling authority is the Sony vs. Universal (Betamax) case which grants individuals the fair use right to record television shows for personal viewing and sharing, also called timeshifting.
It would seem that the same rule would apply to radio broadcasts. Therefore, your argument is that a stated more restrictive license would overrule this fair use right. That is completely untested in court and there are no legal authorities which support that specific position.
The counter-argument is that there are certain rights that simply cannot be contracted away, even if they are explicitly restricted in a license. For example, take the reverse engineering restriction found in almost all licenses. It's basically unenforceable. In every case where there was pure reverse engineering, the licensor who sues has lost on the fair use grounds.
None of us knows what courts will decide. The DMCA throws another challenge into the point because I am sure XM Radio encrypts their data so the technical method for doing the timeshifting could be important to some judges. But in the end, until a court says so, the issue is not clear.
Wow. You should be banned from watching South Park because you are too stupid. In your cited examples, the "lesson learned" is actually doing two things. First, it is making fun of the way sitcoms always have to spout off some lesson at the end of the show. Second, it is making fun of the whole concept that there is a right answer to most issues. The so-called right answer inevitably comes down to a person's own views, which bias how we each look at situations.
The idea of trying to stick Trey and Matt into some political category is ridiculous. They make fun of everything and clearly show that they don't find anything beyond reproach. That's why many of us love their comedy, not because we think they agree with our particular political bias.
The only problem is that morons like you come along and "see" that Matt and Trey are really making some moral statement that reinforces your own biases. I mean, if you can watch the Underpants Gnomes episode and read into it a pro big business message, you are using some concentrated crack. Who knows if Matt and Trey feel that way and who cares if they do, but they sure didn't stick the message into the episode to teach you that lesson.
Whatever. Far Cry beats Doom 3 single player hands down. And to be honest, I think the engine is better too.
In the end, id Software (i.e. Carmack) did what he always has done. He made a really good engine. Now we have to wait for someone else to do something really interesting with the engine.
When I stood in front of a mirror and tried to shoot it out, only to be met with temporary black marks on the image (which disappeared after a few seconds) then I knew id still had not learned their lessons about how to actually make the game good. They fail to understand that people want an immersive environment.
So I move in for free with a guy for the summer. Very nice house, but he has this old 450p3 Gateway, Win98, and it's dying (Southbridge going out). I've spent prolly 60 hours on that sucker, and now it runs, albeit barely. What a nightmare. And I feel obligated to get things working, as I'm living there for free.
Be honest. You aren't living there for "free", are you? I think you are paying him with other, non-computer services, maybe?
Too many people are posting stupid things (like usual) without knowing jack about the facts.
Real took publically accessible information or did a clean room reverse engineering of the iTunes authentication and DRM. That is 100% legal under all laws because they did it 1) to allow for interoperability and 2) they are not circumventing the Fairplay copyprotection, they are actually adding it to the Real files.
Apple can complain all they want, but unless Real violated a patent on the Fairplay DRM software or actually stole copyrighted code to implement their version of the Fairplay DRM, Apple can go fuck itself.
Just to be clear, I have 2 iPods (a 3G and a 4G) and am a periodic customer of iTunes. Anything I buy, I immediately remove the DRM using Playfair. I will never comply with any law which seeks to restrict my fair use rights, especially the DMCA. Yep. I'm a violater. In more ways than one. But I buy all my copyrighted stuff. Once.
However, do you really think any iTunes customers give a crap if people can also use other, non iTunes, music stores? If you wanna use Real's service on your iPod, enjoy!
You don't understand the DMCA. You violate the law when you circumvent copyprotection mechanisms. No copyright infringment is required. That's covered by a different law.
Of course, it does not matter because Real is not circumventing copyprotection. In fact, Real is adding the DRM copyprotection to their own AAC files.
You need to get out of your flatland. Maybe I am Jim on machine A one day and a different Jim on machine A the next day. In your world, I am the same Jim.
You need to move away from this flat mentality that both Windows and *nix try to force on you. Although both platforms support authentication to alternative sources like an LDAP directory, neither one fully supports the use of the object-oriented structure of such a directory on the filesystem ACLs. Only Novell with Netware truly supports it.
In the LDAP world, you can have more than one Jim. And you can even have more than one Jim in the same context now. You distinguish them in ways other than a machine identified or even just the name of the object. The object type should be irrelevant. A user, machine, context, or even a folder (in a machine-to-machine communication) should be able to be used when setting the ACL.
I never defended *nix's native method versus the Windows method. I simply pointed out that they are both crap. At least *nix can defend its native method because it is a 30+ year old design. Microsoft has no such defense. Their method is just a crappy holdover from the LAN Manager days.
Sorry, but distinguishing a user based on a unique identifier from a machine is just plain stupid. The Windows method is total crap and also quite annoying.
If you are Jim, what the hell difference does it make if you are on machine A or B? You are Jim. Be Jim. If you are a different Jim than that other Jim, then you should be distinguished appropriately. However, definitely not by your machine ID.
Novell actually got this right in 1993 with NDS/eDirectory. LDAP works the same way. You can identify any number of different types of objects (users, machines, whole contexts) and then assign appropriate ACLs based on those object types.
I'm not gonna defend the *nix method either, because I think it is crap too. But to say the MS way is an improvement is a stretch beyond comprehension.
I suspect that, with add-ons, you can probably do this on both Windows and *nix systems but it should be native in my opinion. In fact, LDAP-based administration for both user access and file ACLs is hands down the only decent way to do it.
Uh, no it is not comparable to the insurance business at all because the insurance business has no excess capacity or limits to the service it provides.
Telecoms invest capital on equipment and create a certain amount of service capacity based on that capital investment. They want to generate the most revenue possible based on that limited capacity. If they get one high revenue customer that is profitable, that is not nearly as good as 10 customers who are less profitable on average but generate more total revenue. So long as a customer covers the variable costs associated to serve them (which is only a small portion, I am sure, to handle things like installation and invoicing) then that customer is net positive in your cash flow. You already invested the capital, now you have to recuperate those costs. Even Karl Marx knew that.
You are not including excess capacity in your profit calculation at all. The key point is that excess capacity generates zero revenue, which is the worst possible situation when you have a limited capacity to sell. You are much better off selling all your excess capacity at a loss than to let it sit there and generate no revenue.
Without the loss limiting revenue, your single profitable customer no longer really generates any profit at all. He only limits your losses.
Your statement were true that "the more it is utilized, the higher the cost" is ridiculously false. While there are both fixed costs and variable costs based on delivering the service, the fixed costs are the much bigger piece. The more the telecom utilizes the capacity they created does not mean the higher the cost. The more they generate revenue across that capacity, the more they limit their losses, up until the point that they utilize it enough (and therefore generate revenue) which makes the investment profitable.
It has been held to be perfectly legal to reverse engineer software for the sake of compability in various jurisdictions in the USA. I suspect that Real knew it had to keep some pretty tight records about their clean room practices to ensure they had an air tight defense if Apple comes after them.
Both Nintendo and Sony have sued companies that reverse engineered their cartridge technologies (Nintendo) and various software functions (Sony on the PS). In all situations where it went to court, they lost.
Now these were pre-DMCA so who knows, but I do not see how Real is circumventing copy protection and that the DMCA applies at all in this situation. If you read the article, you will see that Real is actually adding the copy protection to achieve compatibility.
This is a copyright issue, pure and simple. And it is between FairPlay (the DRM that Apple licenses) and Real, not Apple and Real. If Real did a clean room implementation, the conversation is over and Real can continue.
No no no NO! Completely wrong understanding of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The interstate commerce section was used as the reason Congress had the power to require restaurants and hotels not to discriminate based on race.
The federal law needed a basis for why Congress had the authority to do it. The Supreme upheld the use of the interstate commerce clause as the grant of power.
There is absolutely no exception that a business can make in one of the defined areas (hotels and restaurants being two of them) that would allow them to discriminate based on race. None! I don't care if it is a small mom-n-pop hotel in the middle of a swamp. If they rent rooms to the public, then they cannot discriminate.
Carmack has always apparently written clean code. When the Quake source code was leaked years ago, it took someone about 48 hours to port it to OS/2. That was especially funny considering id Software absolutely refused to do it themselves, citing the hassle and lack of interest.
Of course, you still needed the content files from the DOS version.
You are not calculating it properly. As I mentioned, excess bandwidth generates zero revenue. A bandwidth "hog" is not necessarily a more expensive customer so long as you have excess bandwidth. It is only in the situation where capacity becomes more limited that there is a calculatable revenue affect.
There is nothing inherently more profitable about a low usage user in a situation where there is excess capacity.
Compare it to how low cost airlines stay profitable. They keep their costs low and make sure they avoid any excess capacity. An empty seat is a revenue loss. Even if they sell it for $20, that's $20 more than they were going to get if the seat was empty. Now, they do have a lot of actuaries who are predicting in advance how many seats they can sell at higher prices versus how many might end up empty. Based on those calculations, they allow themselves to sell some seats early at the lower cost.
Even if a particular customer is not profitable, they are helping reduce the losses which impact on the profitability of your other "high value" customers. In today's world, there are some customers who pay a disproportionate amount of the costs for services. These are the "Aunt Susies" that you mentioned. They are not getting $30/mo of value for their fees, but the high users are getting more than $30/mo of value. It's the average that works out to the profitability for the provider.
A settlement agreement is not a legal precent. If anything, Microsoft paid to avoid a legal precedent. I really wonder if a court would uphold the use a generic word as a trademark.
They may "rape" one part of their business (i.e. the $210/mo subscriber) but if they get an additional 10 people who were not going to sign up because of the pricing, then they are way ahead. Excess bandwidth generates $0.
Linspire will change their name from Lindows to Linspire.
Linspire will not longer use any form of "Lindows" or even a named with "indows" in it.
Linspire will transfer all related domains to the Lindows name to Microsoft.
Linspire will no longer bundle Microsoft's media DLLs in its distribution.
Microsoft will license the SDK for their media components to Linspire.
Linspire accepts Microsoft's claim that "Windows" is a Microsoft trademark. Is it? I doubt it as generic terms are not trademarkable. I think "Microsoft Windows" is trademarked.
Microsoft will pay Linspire $20 million.
The terms of settlement will be absolutely confidential and only made available where required by law...like on the SEC website during Linspire's IPO.
So I have a question. Can Linus Torvalds sue Linspire for using the "Lin" part in its name? Wait. Bad idea. Because then Linus would have to pay Linspire $20 million!
For less than that price, I just bought a Creative Zen 40GB. It doesn 90% of the same things and I don't really have a need to hook up little attachements like a voice recorder to it.
You probably applied the same rule to the car you purchased. While your Geo Metro will also get you to work and back, my Audi A4 with Quattro, a Bose sound system, and leather interior gives me more pleasure when driving it.
I am not critizing, I am only trying to remind you that people put different values on different things. There is a reason why brands are important to their owners because they convey a lot of things: image, lifestyle, costs, etc. What may float your boat may not float someone else's. Different strokes for different folks.
And lest you fail to see my point that you also have the same character trait, take a look in your cabinet and tell me how many generic products you have. I can guarantee that there are generic versions of almost everything you buy. Cheaper? Yes. Better? Maybe...maybe not.
I gave them my home phone number and cell number. I am beginning to worry that it was not such a good idea.
Actually, the site is pretty funny. Let's see, when you register you can select the occupation of "soldier", something I have never seen before. But I guess when 70% of your population fits that label...
Or the page where they act as if Kim Il Sung is still alive (kind of). The guy died years ago and they are celebrating his 92nd birthday. The page says 1912-2004, as if they just recently decided to acknowledge his death.
I just picture the people who put the site together. "We're finished!" And then they were shot.
Technically, you are right that the Xbox alone is not successful because it is not profitable. But that is not how console companies work. Profitability is based on the console PLUS the average number of games purchased by each console owner. The Xbox seems to do quite well in this area.
The other part you are not factoring in is brand awareness. Three years ago, there was no Xbox and Microsoft was not a player at all in the console market. Now they are the number 2 brand worldwide, at least in sales. And in brand awareness, they are definitely in the top 3. You think that is easy? Ask Sega. They essentially disappeared overnight.
Microsoft is in the console market for the long haul, and profitably of their first attempt at the market was never their goal.
Your comparison of dot-coms is pretty much irrelevant because the failure of most dot-coms was because they had no real revenue model over the longterm. Those that did and who did not waste the majority of their capital on an attempt at brand awareness are still around today. In the case of Microsoft, they have a lot of capital to invest in the console market and they definitely have a company-wide revenue model to support that investment.
I also work for a company that is all about the brand and when we open a new market, we expect fully to lose money in that market during the first years. We take a long term view of the situation. We don't work off quarterly results and profitability reports. Why? Because, in the end, we want a viable company and set of products well into the future. Microsoft's entry into the console market is exactly the same approach. They never thought of making a profit with the first generation of the Xbox. Instead, they wanted a strong showing in the console market. And they definitely achieved it.
Slashdot Mirror
I call bullshit on that statement. First of all, the ruling authority is the Sony vs. Universal (Betamax) case which grants individuals the fair use right to record television shows for personal viewing and sharing, also called timeshifting.
It would seem that the same rule would apply to radio broadcasts. Therefore, your argument is that a stated more restrictive license would overrule this fair use right. That is completely untested in court and there are no legal authorities which support that specific position.
The counter-argument is that there are certain rights that simply cannot be contracted away, even if they are explicitly restricted in a license. For example, take the reverse engineering restriction found in almost all licenses. It's basically unenforceable. In every case where there was pure reverse engineering, the licensor who sues has lost on the fair use grounds.
None of us knows what courts will decide. The DMCA throws another challenge into the point because I am sure XM Radio encrypts their data so the technical method for doing the timeshifting could be important to some judges. But in the end, until a court says so, the issue is not clear.
The idea of trying to stick Trey and Matt into some political category is ridiculous. They make fun of everything and clearly show that they don't find anything beyond reproach. That's why many of us love their comedy, not because we think they agree with our particular political bias.
The only problem is that morons like you come along and "see" that Matt and Trey are really making some moral statement that reinforces your own biases. I mean, if you can watch the Underpants Gnomes episode and read into it a pro big business message, you are using some concentrated crack. Who knows if Matt and Trey feel that way and who cares if they do, but they sure didn't stick the message into the episode to teach you that lesson.
Whatever. Far Cry beats Doom 3 single player hands down. And to be honest, I think the engine is better too. In the end, id Software (i.e. Carmack) did what he always has done. He made a really good engine. Now we have to wait for someone else to do something really interesting with the engine.
When I stood in front of a mirror and tried to shoot it out, only to be met with temporary black marks on the image (which disappeared after a few seconds) then I knew id still had not learned their lessons about how to actually make the game good. They fail to understand that people want an immersive environment.
Be honest. You aren't living there for "free", are you? I think you are paying him with other, non-computer services, maybe?
That's not a bug, it's a feature.
You sure can polish a turd. There are plenty of cultures that polish them, encase them in some type of clear material, and then sell them as jewelry.
Real took publically accessible information or did a clean room reverse engineering of the iTunes authentication and DRM. That is 100% legal under all laws because they did it 1) to allow for interoperability and 2) they are not circumventing the Fairplay copyprotection, they are actually adding it to the Real files.
Apple can complain all they want, but unless Real violated a patent on the Fairplay DRM software or actually stole copyrighted code to implement their version of the Fairplay DRM, Apple can go fuck itself.
Just to be clear, I have 2 iPods (a 3G and a 4G) and am a periodic customer of iTunes. Anything I buy, I immediately remove the DRM using Playfair. I will never comply with any law which seeks to restrict my fair use rights, especially the DMCA. Yep. I'm a violater. In more ways than one. But I buy all my copyrighted stuff. Once.
However, do you really think any iTunes customers give a crap if people can also use other, non iTunes, music stores? If you wanna use Real's service on your iPod, enjoy!
Of course, it does not matter because Real is not circumventing copyprotection. In fact, Real is adding the DRM copyprotection to their own AAC files.
You need to move away from this flat mentality that both Windows and *nix try to force on you. Although both platforms support authentication to alternative sources like an LDAP directory, neither one fully supports the use of the object-oriented structure of such a directory on the filesystem ACLs. Only Novell with Netware truly supports it.
In the LDAP world, you can have more than one Jim. And you can even have more than one Jim in the same context now. You distinguish them in ways other than a machine identified or even just the name of the object. The object type should be irrelevant. A user, machine, context, or even a folder (in a machine-to-machine communication) should be able to be used when setting the ACL.
I never defended *nix's native method versus the Windows method. I simply pointed out that they are both crap. At least *nix can defend its native method because it is a 30+ year old design. Microsoft has no such defense. Their method is just a crappy holdover from the LAN Manager days.
Besides, I don't think the RF signal can get through my foil hat.
If you are Jim, what the hell difference does it make if you are on machine A or B? You are Jim. Be Jim. If you are a different Jim than that other Jim, then you should be distinguished appropriately. However, definitely not by your machine ID.
Novell actually got this right in 1993 with NDS/eDirectory. LDAP works the same way. You can identify any number of different types of objects (users, machines, whole contexts) and then assign appropriate ACLs based on those object types.
I'm not gonna defend the *nix method either, because I think it is crap too. But to say the MS way is an improvement is a stretch beyond comprehension.
I suspect that, with add-ons, you can probably do this on both Windows and *nix systems but it should be native in my opinion. In fact, LDAP-based administration for both user access and file ACLs is hands down the only decent way to do it.
Telecoms invest capital on equipment and create a certain amount of service capacity based on that capital investment. They want to generate the most revenue possible based on that limited capacity. If they get one high revenue customer that is profitable, that is not nearly as good as 10 customers who are less profitable on average but generate more total revenue. So long as a customer covers the variable costs associated to serve them (which is only a small portion, I am sure, to handle things like installation and invoicing) then that customer is net positive in your cash flow. You already invested the capital, now you have to recuperate those costs. Even Karl Marx knew that.
You are not including excess capacity in your profit calculation at all. The key point is that excess capacity generates zero revenue, which is the worst possible situation when you have a limited capacity to sell. You are much better off selling all your excess capacity at a loss than to let it sit there and generate no revenue.
Without the loss limiting revenue, your single profitable customer no longer really generates any profit at all. He only limits your losses.
Your statement were true that "the more it is utilized, the higher the cost" is ridiculously false. While there are both fixed costs and variable costs based on delivering the service, the fixed costs are the much bigger piece. The more the telecom utilizes the capacity they created does not mean the higher the cost. The more they generate revenue across that capacity, the more they limit their losses, up until the point that they utilize it enough (and therefore generate revenue) which makes the investment profitable.
Both Nintendo and Sony have sued companies that reverse engineered their cartridge technologies (Nintendo) and various software functions (Sony on the PS). In all situations where it went to court, they lost.
Now these were pre-DMCA so who knows, but I do not see how Real is circumventing copy protection and that the DMCA applies at all in this situation. If you read the article, you will see that Real is actually adding the copy protection to achieve compatibility.
This is a copyright issue, pure and simple. And it is between FairPlay (the DRM that Apple licenses) and Real, not Apple and Real. If Real did a clean room implementation, the conversation is over and Real can continue.
The federal law needed a basis for why Congress had the authority to do it. The Supreme upheld the use of the interstate commerce clause as the grant of power.
There is absolutely no exception that a business can make in one of the defined areas (hotels and restaurants being two of them) that would allow them to discriminate based on race. None! I don't care if it is a small mom-n-pop hotel in the middle of a swamp. If they rent rooms to the public, then they cannot discriminate.
Nothing says Star Wars like Bea Arthur and Art Carney.
Don't know about the Star Wars Holiday Special? Google for it. You won't be disappointed.
Of course, you still needed the content files from the DOS version.
There is nothing inherently more profitable about a low usage user in a situation where there is excess capacity.
Compare it to how low cost airlines stay profitable. They keep their costs low and make sure they avoid any excess capacity. An empty seat is a revenue loss. Even if they sell it for $20, that's $20 more than they were going to get if the seat was empty. Now, they do have a lot of actuaries who are predicting in advance how many seats they can sell at higher prices versus how many might end up empty. Based on those calculations, they allow themselves to sell some seats early at the lower cost.
Even if a particular customer is not profitable, they are helping reduce the losses which impact on the profitability of your other "high value" customers. In today's world, there are some customers who pay a disproportionate amount of the costs for services. These are the "Aunt Susies" that you mentioned. They are not getting $30/mo of value for their fees, but the high users are getting more than $30/mo of value. It's the average that works out to the profitability for the provider.
A settlement agreement is not a legal precent. If anything, Microsoft paid to avoid a legal precedent. I really wonder if a court would uphold the use a generic word as a trademark.
They may "rape" one part of their business (i.e. the $210/mo subscriber) but if they get an additional 10 people who were not going to sign up because of the pricing, then they are way ahead. Excess bandwidth generates $0.
So I have a question. Can Linus Torvalds sue Linspire for using the "Lin" part in its name? Wait. Bad idea. Because then Linus would have to pay Linspire $20 million!
You probably applied the same rule to the car you purchased. While your Geo Metro will also get you to work and back, my Audi A4 with Quattro, a Bose sound system, and leather interior gives me more pleasure when driving it.
I am not critizing, I am only trying to remind you that people put different values on different things. There is a reason why brands are important to their owners because they convey a lot of things: image, lifestyle, costs, etc. What may float your boat may not float someone else's. Different strokes for different folks.
And lest you fail to see my point that you also have the same character trait, take a look in your cabinet and tell me how many generic products you have. I can guarantee that there are generic versions of almost everything you buy. Cheaper? Yes. Better? Maybe...maybe not.
Actually, the site is pretty funny. Let's see, when you register you can select the occupation of "soldier", something I have never seen before. But I guess when 70% of your population fits that label...
Or the page where they act as if Kim Il Sung is still alive (kind of). The guy died years ago and they are celebrating his 92nd birthday. The page says 1912-2004, as if they just recently decided to acknowledge his death.
I just picture the people who put the site together. "We're finished!" And then they were shot.
I guess an Apple one cannot be far behind.
The other part you are not factoring in is brand awareness. Three years ago, there was no Xbox and Microsoft was not a player at all in the console market. Now they are the number 2 brand worldwide, at least in sales. And in brand awareness, they are definitely in the top 3. You think that is easy? Ask Sega. They essentially disappeared overnight.
Microsoft is in the console market for the long haul, and profitably of their first attempt at the market was never their goal.
Your comparison of dot-coms is pretty much irrelevant because the failure of most dot-coms was because they had no real revenue model over the longterm. Those that did and who did not waste the majority of their capital on an attempt at brand awareness are still around today. In the case of Microsoft, they have a lot of capital to invest in the console market and they definitely have a company-wide revenue model to support that investment.
I also work for a company that is all about the brand and when we open a new market, we expect fully to lose money in that market during the first years. We take a long term view of the situation. We don't work off quarterly results and profitability reports. Why? Because, in the end, we want a viable company and set of products well into the future. Microsoft's entry into the console market is exactly the same approach. They never thought of making a profit with the first generation of the Xbox. Instead, they wanted a strong showing in the console market. And they definitely achieved it.