Microsoft are forced to offer the same price for OEM licenses to all retailers
This is nothing more than a resurrection of the old price-fixing scheme - the "fair trade price" - intended to drive the volume purchaser - the discount retailer - out of the market.
No, it's recognition of the fact that software and IP in general is an unusual product. Particularly when sold by a monopoly.
Retailers are forced to offer systems without an OEM license, should the customer ask for it, with the cost reduced in accordance with the price of the license
In other words, retailers should be forced to offer a product that their mass market customers abandoned twenty-five years - thirty years ago - because it appeals only to the technical hobbyist and the IT pro.
No matter that the "naked box" has its own marketing, inventory and support costs. No matter that the OEM Windows box usually ships with popular and profitable OEM installs like Microsoft Office.
Stop exaggerating, those overheads are minimal to non-existent. You mean they're bundling and hiding the true cost of the product from the consumer? One of the tenets of a functioning free market is an informed consumer. This is doing nothing more than making sure the consumer is informed by forcing the vendor to unbundle.
Microsoft is banned from charging more for their retail version than the OEM license.
Now THAT would actually cause them to shit themselves.
Nope.
Yep, particularly when you look at the price fixing they engage in with differential pricing in different parts of the world. They wouldn't be able to do that if first sale doctrine was enforced and on-selling was possible. A free market in other words.
That would cause the geek to shit himself because he knows damn well that pirated Windows is the OS of choice world-wide. The steeply discounted legit installer is another nail in the coffin.
No, the average geek would be happy that M$ was no longer able to enforce monopoly differential pricing to subsidize different parts of their market and the $40,000,000,000+ per year that M$ currently taxes the world for and does bug all to earn would likely be significantly reduced.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion.
a) The price may depend on the number of licenses sold.
No, that's price fixing. There is no reason why they should be able to charge less for volume with software. Overheads should be charged separately and be justifiable/controlled, otherwise it's a form of bundling.
b) Any PC manufacturers can get the OEM license, without further conditions. This makes retailers free to offer dual boot Windows/Linux systems. It is something we currently don't see,
Agreed, but I would put it in terms of saying all copies of windows are transferable. In other words first sale doctrine applies. There is no reason to treat OEM licenses from any other form of license - it's exactly the same product.
c) The retail version may be up to $50 more expensive than the OEM license (box, manual, profit for retailers etc. cost money too)
No, that's price fixing and bundling. All of the services that the OEM and retailer provides should be charged separately.
d) any protocol/file format must be open and clear.
e) A user is free to run a legal copy of the OS in a virtual environment; and the manufacturer may take no measures to prevent that.
f) A single copy of the OS on a computer may both be used for direct boot, or for use in a virtual environment, and the manufacturer may not take any measures to prevent that.
All agreed however I would phrase f by saying that one copy can run anywhere. Where a customer puts a licensed copy of software is their own business and the vendor should not be able to control that. If they can it's not a free market.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work. It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons. Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
Nonsense. The only reason why M$ can charge differently is because they are a monopoly and can price fix.
As I understand things the principle of the OEM license is that the OEM provides first-line support.
So they unbundle and charge for support separately.
In a true free market where there was competition and the first sale doctrine actually applied a vendor like M$ wouldn't be able to price fix because customers would on-sell cheaper copies of Windows. Since there is no free market having legislation to at least partially enforce it is a good idea.
---
Don't be fooled, slashdot has many lying astroturfers fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as third party opinion. FUD too.
DRM can and does provide a useful set of tools for the protection of sensitive data that needs to be validated to ensure it's integrity and helps to reduce the likelihood of it leaving the corporate domain.
This is corporate double-speak for "stops people from doing things". In this sense DRM is always theft and DRM has no useful positive purpose.
DRM has nothing to do with integrity (code signing does that) and has nothing to do with code leaving the corporate domain (what you meant to say is that it stops additional copies of the software being propagated outside the corporate domain).
Quite apart from it's intrinsic fragility (software with DRM will always be more fragile than software without) and non-recognition of fundamental rights like copyright expiry, fair use and first sale doctrine, DRM breaks one of the most important software properties of all, the ability to copy.
---
Unregulated DRM = Total Customer Control = Ultimate Customer Lock in = Death of the free market.
Creating your own copylefted data and ignoring other's claimed, so-called ownership of other data are not mutually exclusive activities as you imply. You can do both at the same time.
Some people respect current "IP" law. Others don't. It's the Prohibition all over again.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
Look, if you provide the facilities for someone to copy copywritten material, you should be liable. There is no other way for copyright to work.
You may or may not be liable for "incitement to copyright fringe". But that has little to do with actual copyright infringement.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work. It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons. Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
You did steal it because you did not pay the owner for the use of their music. You're simply fooling yourself if you can't see this.
Fanatics like you give copyright a bad name. By definition ownership is the right to control and by saying that somebody else can't do something because they don't own it you are engaged in a meaningless tautology.
It is just as valid an argument to say they have their copy and can what they like with it and I have my copy and I can do what I like with it. Different definition of ownership, that's all, and based on the actions of the majority of the population they don't take too seriously the current legal definition of copyright and "IP" ownership.
In any case this entire story is dubious. They may be guilty of some "incitement to copyright infringe" law but they are not guilty of copyright infringement.
---
It's not piracy, it's sharing. Didn't your parents teach you to share?
No, they are supposed to maximize return on capital to their investors.
Including dealing with the fact that their return will be reduced if they are perceived by the market and potential customers as being unethical.
By law that is what they are chartered to do,
Not precisely correct, it all depends on how the company is chartered. Some are non-profit and/or have mission statements that don't even mention profit. Most companies at least claim to be ethical though admittedly this is sometimes just talk. As some have said companies are sociopaths.
and the board and management can be held criminally and civilly liable for failing to do so.
Not really, they have enormous latitude due to the multi-year lag time sometimes needed when investing for future profit. Only if they do something completely stupid are they going to be held liable. The whole point of a company, as compared to a partnership, is limited liability. Company officers that claim ethical behavior is optional will quickly make lots of enemies and I've never heard of a company officer ever being held legally liable because they acted ethically. Have you?
As long as they are breaking no laws (or at least aren't currently under indictment), ethics don't enter into the picture. Only profit.
But profit is dependent on ethics and perception thereof. Unethical people and companies try to pretend ethics are irrelevant but for most people they're core and a company making enemies of potential customers is going to have trouble.
A company is just a group of people working together. As we expect individuals to act ethically we expect groups to act ethically also. Labelling that group a "company" doesn't change that expectation. When unethical behaviour gets too extreme we make a law to stop it, that applies to both individuals and companies, but the law is a very blunt instrument and sometimes social/market coercion works better.
Of course it would be easier to see the hows and whys in an open source application, but once you know, you know, and that's really at the core of the matter.
No, white box testing, by definition, is always going to be at least as good as black box testing. Black box testing is just a special case of white box testing. In the complex real world with many corner cases white box testing will be superior. From the point of view of the consumer open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
Lying astroturfers may continue to claim that closing the source somehow gives mystically additional properties useful to the consumer but they're just being dishonest.
They're doing exactly what's expected of them, and you're a fool if you think they are supposed to care more about you than their shareholders, and maybe employees.
You're a fool if you think unethical behaviour is somehow okay simply because they make money from it. I and many others expect them to act ethically.
They are "supposed" to do (whatever that means) whatever is in my and everybody else's best interests. Personally I want to live in a ethical society and will do everything in my power to penalize and control unethical companies. Most people think likewise.
[deleted] If you want to distribute a packet of any software and want to know if they are license compatible. ANd the real trouble starts if you want to use a loophole of some license to sell it bundled it together with your own commercial software.
You shouldn't apply arguments specifically to open source software that apply equally to any software. This entire/. story is misdirected and should be titled "License Proliferation Adding Complexity."
Many commercial software astroturfers frequently propagate OSS FUD while dishonestly pretending the FUD doesn't apply equally, if not more so, to closed source software. Closed software licenses frequently place arbitrary restrictions on software use and there are thousands of different versions. Open source software licenses aren't perfect but they are much better than the average closed source license for most applications.
---
Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
Please don't be any more silly than you have to be. I hope you're not one of the many astroturfer comments on this page fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Astroturfers are lying scum.
If an ad is unobtrusive it hasn't worked. The whole point of an ad is to be noticed and acted upon and Google will want to maximize that value, the value to their shareholders.
Just like google is currently doing on their search pages and elsewhere they'll keep on ratcheting up and "targeting" the ad's until the net value of the content to most viewers is marginally just above zero. This gradual increase is a shell game to fool viewers into accepting more ad's. Remember, viewers are not the consumer, they're the product they sell to the advertisers. In other words, just like broadcast TV, YouTube will be a wasteland. Just give it time.
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
---
"Advertising supported" just means you're paying twice over, once in time to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
Practically every single story on that site, including the name of the site itself, is a subtle OSS FUD piece. Many of the "third party" comments also.
Marketers aren't stupid; they know that overt FUD'ing doesn't always work so they do more subtle forms as well.
Many people greatly underestimate the financial resources that are spent on marketing in general and astroturfing in particular. Comments by company executives are just the tip of the iceberg. M$ and their "partners" probably have hundreds if not thousands of lying astroturf sites of various kinds and large nunmbers of people paid to "comment" (lie actually) on sites like slashdot. Part of the problem is that many of those people astroturfing believe their own propaganda and are in denial about the fact that they're frauds.
Among other things they will be regularly submitting company propaganda to slashdot. Some of it's bound to get through. Remember vista? Many months of practically daily content free trash. And that was before it was even released.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion.
The commercial software industry is full of bigotted marketers. If closed source is so great it should stand on its own merits, not need some marketers shoving its virtues down our throats. When I bought my PC(which I love, btw) I was confronted with multiple M$ marketing keys on a general purpose keyboard which I have no choice to use if I wanted to buy a reasonably priced PC. If special keys are needed for special functions that's fine, but don't try and mold my views or express your personal beliefs in place like that....
You get the idea.
A lot of people are commercial bigots. They think that companies, simply by the fact that they are profit making, should be allowed to do things that no other group in society is allowed to do. That's nonsense. In the example you gave Ubuntu is doing nothing but fighting fire with fire.
To claim that Ubuntu is being "evangelical" when they are doing nothing more than making the user aware of the situation is hypocritical. Commercial software marketing is every bit as political and much, much more bigoted. You're asking that other groups in society fight that extremism with one hand tied behind their back.
By using emotive language like "zealot", "religion" and "evangelical" lying astroturfers try to marginalize their competition. They paint the competition's attitudes as fringe and not widely accepted. Companies like M$ spend billions of dollars on marketing, much of it back door and hidden manipulation; if that's not extremism I don't know what is.
To those people reading this who aren't commercial software bigots; there's no reason why people should accept their extremely biased marketing unchallenged. Make sure to promote all points of view. They might have the money but others have the numbers.
---
"Advertising supported" just means you're paying twice over, once in time to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
It's not about blaming anyone. It's just that now, with increased prevalence of rich media web-apps, they can't continue to offer the same deal anymore.
Sorry, but that's typical marketer's reasoning. Either ISP's lied about the deal they were offering or the users and content providers somehow used more than the ISP offered. My money's on the first option.
Yes, ISP's built their business model based on customers and content providers not using all the bandwidth they paid for but that's the ISP's problem and nobody else's. Either the ISP's stop lying and cost things so they can provide what they say they will provide or they should rightly go bankrupt. Some countries with stronger consumer protection laws have already forced their ISP's to stop lying. The USA is at the rear of the pack on this one.
Differential pricing based on the ability to pay rather than the bandwidth used is a sign of a segmented, non-free market. In other words it's cartels engaged in price fixing and that unfortunately may require further government intervention to stop.
---
Any large public or private organisation paying recurring, per-seat licensing for software is being economically stupid.
Unlike copyright the patent concept is easy to defend.
No it isn't. Since people have not compared it to any alternative, just hand waved without evidence, this statement is nonsense. There is almost no evidence.
The benefit for progress of engineering and technological culture can be logically demonstrated
No it can't. I open a hardware store in a growing town. It's a new, original idea in a new area. Nobody's thought of opening a hardware store there before. The store is successful and somebody else wants to open a competing store. Why shouldn't I be able to get a patent to stop them copying my idea and opening a competing store? Think carefully about your answer. A big problem with patent proponents is that all they've got is a hammer and they think everything is a nail.
- and unlike copyright the limits on duration are not totally insane.
Just mildly insane. And that's ignoring all the other problems with patents including pretending independent invention doesn't exist, ignoring inventions whose time has come, the complete lack of an objective basis for deciding whether an idea is the same or different (that alone is sufficient to show patents as the emperor with no clothes), the silly basis they use for deciding whether an idea is original or not and the idiocy of assuming a small government bureaucracy is capable of assessing all of human invention to decide whether an idea is original or not, not to mention the idiocy of allowing a small government bureaucracy to act as a gatekeeper on all of technology. The list just goes on and on.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
but the alternative is that we just don't post those videos.
And that would be a good thing.
When the sole purpose of releasing a video is as a vehicle to push advertising the net value of the video to the viewer will approach zero; the video will just steal time and attention that could be better spent elsewhere.
---
"Advertising supported" just means you're paying twice over, once in time to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
I can't believe this thing is all that complicated as far as inputs go (like a guy blowing in a tube). To prove it works you'd only need to test it against a series of knowns. That'll easily prove it's not a "random number generator".
But won't prove much about whether it was operating correctly at the time of the alleged offence.
Even something as simple as ambient or historical temperature or gases could affect it's correctness, let alone more subtle scenarios like a bug in the code causing 1 in 100 readings, or readings at a particular time of day, to be incorrect. Given how incompetent the average programmer is when it comes to race conditions those scenarios are actually likely.
Black box testing is helpful but white box testing is much better at proving beyond reasonable doubt that there were no device problems at the time of the alleged offense.
---
Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
This is another part of the reason why I view the Linux "community" as such a toxic, virulent sociological sickness.
What a childish characterization. The fact that you don't appear to be able to cope with a bit of diversity and difference of opinion, a free market in other words, says more about your immaturity than anything else.
You are still dealing in unsolicited commercial mass emails that people don't want.
That's baloney. If they didn't want it, they wouldn't click on it and purchase. No money would be made off spam if that were not so. What people say is a lot different from what they do.
Way to rationalize. The spammer "business model" is based on stealing the time, money and attention of a large number of people to make a sale to one person. Unsolicited advertising is the same but with a smaller ratio.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
Because it's the kind of back door that the developers know full well is a risk, and so they design around that risk with things like digital signatures and techniques to confirm you're speaking to an authorised server.
That's true but my point is that an intelligence agency backdoor could have exactly the same digital signature protections etc. In other words unlike what bconway said official backdoors would would be no more a compromisable hole than Update. Keeping in mind that the NSA has two missions; to protect US intelligence (SELinix etc.) and to compromise enemy intelligence (ECHELON etc.). They wouldn't deliberately put in back doors unless the cost-benefit is good. Unfortunately the cost-benefit is very good.
At a minimum I suspect they have a sophisticated software spy package ready to be downloaded via M$ Update as needed. They'd probably stay very low profile on most PC's to avoid detection but selective "heavy" targeting would be almost undetectable. Lightweight keyword checking in the disk index process on every PC, perhaps only in certain countries/languages, is also very possible and fairly low risk; all the viruses around give them plausible deniability.
---
Windows and closed source software. The US intelligence agencies back door to every network connected country and business on earth.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft are forced to offer the same price for OEM licenses to all retailers
This is nothing more than a resurrection of the old price-fixing scheme - the "fair trade price" - intended to drive the volume purchaser - the discount retailer - out of the market.No, it's recognition of the fact that software and IP in general is an unusual product. Particularly when sold by a monopoly.
Retailers are forced to offer systems without an OEM license, should the customer ask for it, with the cost reduced in accordance with the price of the license
In other words, retailers should be forced to offer a product that their mass market customers abandoned twenty-five years - thirty years ago - because it appeals only to the technical hobbyist and the IT pro. No matter that the "naked box" has its own marketing, inventory and support costs. No matter that the OEM Windows box usually ships with popular and profitable OEM installs like Microsoft Office.Stop exaggerating, those overheads are minimal to non-existent. You mean they're bundling and hiding the true cost of the product from the consumer? One of the tenets of a functioning free market is an informed consumer. This is doing nothing more than making sure the consumer is informed by forcing the vendor to unbundle.
Microsoft is banned from charging more for their retail version than the OEM license.
Now THAT would actually cause them to shit themselves.
Nope.Yep, particularly when you look at the price fixing they engage in with differential pricing in different parts of the world. They wouldn't be able to do that if first sale doctrine was enforced and on-selling was possible. A free market in other words.
That would cause the geek to shit himself because he knows damn well that pirated Windows is the OS of choice world-wide. The steeply discounted legit installer is another nail in the coffin.No, the average geek would be happy that M$ was no longer able to enforce monopoly differential pricing to subsidize different parts of their market and the $40,000,000,000+ per year that M$ currently taxes the world for and does bug all to earn would likely be significantly reduced.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion.
a) The price may depend on the number of licenses sold.
No, that's price fixing. There is no reason why they should be able to charge less for volume with software. Overheads should be charged separately and be justifiable/controlled, otherwise it's a form of bundling.
b) Any PC manufacturers can get the OEM license, without further conditions. This makes retailers free to offer dual boot Windows/Linux systems. It is something we currently don't see,
Agreed, but I would put it in terms of saying all copies of windows are transferable. In other words first sale doctrine applies. There is no reason to treat OEM licenses from any other form of license - it's exactly the same product.
c) The retail version may be up to $50 more expensive than the OEM license (box, manual, profit for retailers etc. cost money too)
No, that's price fixing and bundling. All of the services that the OEM and retailer provides should be charged separately.
d) any protocol/file format must be open and clear.
e) A user is free to run a legal copy of the OS in a virtual environment; and the manufacturer may take no measures to prevent that.
f) A single copy of the OS on a computer may both be used for direct boot, or for use in a virtual environment, and the manufacturer may not take any measures to prevent that.
All agreed however I would phrase f by saying that one copy can run anywhere. Where a customer puts a licensed copy of software is their own business and the vendor should not be able to control that. If they can it's not a free market.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
I believe that your proposal is quite unfair.
Nonsense. The only reason why M$ can charge differently is because they are a monopoly and can price fix.
As I understand things the principle of the OEM license is that the OEM provides first-line support.
So they unbundle and charge for support separately.
In a true free market where there was competition and the first sale doctrine actually applied a vendor like M$ wouldn't be able to price fix because customers would on-sell cheaper copies of Windows. Since there is no free market having legislation to at least partially enforce it is a good idea.
---
Don't be fooled, slashdot has many lying astroturfers fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as third party opinion. FUD too.
The goal of running a business is to make money.
No, the goal of a business is to have a fun, interesting and worthwhile life. Money is just an, albeit important, tool to that end.
---
It's not piracy, it's sharing. Didn't your parents teach you to share?
DRM can and does provide a useful set of tools for the protection of sensitive data that needs to be validated to ensure it's integrity and helps to reduce the likelihood of it leaving the corporate domain.
This is corporate double-speak for "stops people from doing things". In this sense DRM is always theft and DRM has no useful positive purpose.
DRM has nothing to do with integrity (code signing does that) and has nothing to do with code leaving the corporate domain (what you meant to say is that it stops additional copies of the software being propagated outside the corporate domain).
Quite apart from it's intrinsic fragility (software with DRM will always be more fragile than software without) and non-recognition of fundamental rights like copyright expiry, fair use and first sale doctrine, DRM breaks one of the most important software properties of all, the ability to copy.
---
Unregulated DRM = Total Customer Control = Ultimate Customer Lock in = Death of the free market.
Creating your own copylefted data and ignoring other's claimed, so-called ownership of other data are not mutually exclusive activities as you imply. You can do both at the same time.
Some people respect current "IP" law. Others don't. It's the Prohibition all over again.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
Look, if you provide the facilities for someone to copy copywritten material, you should be liable. There is no other way for copyright to work.
You may or may not be liable for "incitement to copyright fringe". But that has little to do with actual copyright infringement.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
You did steal it because you did not pay the owner for the use of their music. You're simply fooling yourself if you can't see this.
Fanatics like you give copyright a bad name. By definition ownership is the right to control and by saying that somebody else can't do something because they don't own it you are engaged in a meaningless tautology.
It is just as valid an argument to say they have their copy and can what they like with it and I have my copy and I can do what I like with it. Different definition of ownership, that's all, and based on the actions of the majority of the population they don't take too seriously the current legal definition of copyright and "IP" ownership.
In any case this entire story is dubious. They may be guilty of some "incitement to copyright infringe" law but they are not guilty of copyright infringement.
---
It's not piracy, it's sharing. Didn't your parents teach you to share?
No, they are supposed to maximize return on capital to their investors.
Including dealing with the fact that their return will be reduced if they are perceived by the market and potential customers as being unethical.
By law that is what they are chartered to do,
Not precisely correct, it all depends on how the company is chartered. Some are non-profit and/or have mission statements that don't even mention profit. Most companies at least claim to be ethical though admittedly this is sometimes just talk. As some have said companies are sociopaths.
and the board and management can be held criminally and civilly liable for failing to do so.
Not really, they have enormous latitude due to the multi-year lag time sometimes needed when investing for future profit. Only if they do something completely stupid are they going to be held liable. The whole point of a company, as compared to a partnership, is limited liability. Company officers that claim ethical behavior is optional will quickly make lots of enemies and I've never heard of a company officer ever being held legally liable because they acted ethically. Have you?
As long as they are breaking no laws (or at least aren't currently under indictment), ethics don't enter into the picture. Only profit.
But profit is dependent on ethics and perception thereof. Unethical people and companies try to pretend ethics are irrelevant but for most people they're core and a company making enemies of potential customers is going to have trouble.
A company is just a group of people working together. As we expect individuals to act ethically we expect groups to act ethically also. Labelling that group a "company" doesn't change that expectation. When unethical behaviour gets too extreme we make a law to stop it, that applies to both individuals and companies, but the law is a very blunt instrument and sometimes social/market coercion works better.
---
Monopolies = Industrial feudalism
Of course it would be easier to see the hows and whys in an open source application, but once you know, you know, and that's really at the core of the matter.
No, white box testing, by definition, is always going to be at least as good as black box testing. Black box testing is just a special case of white box testing. In the complex real world with many corner cases white box testing will be superior. From the point of view of the consumer open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
Lying astroturfers may continue to claim that closing the source somehow gives mystically additional properties useful to the consumer but they're just being dishonest.
---
Beware deceptive astroturfers.
They're doing exactly what's expected of them, and you're a fool if you think they are supposed to care more about you than their shareholders, and maybe employees.
You're a fool if you think unethical behaviour is somehow okay simply because they make money from it. I and many others expect them to act ethically.
They are "supposed" to do (whatever that means) whatever is in my and everybody else's best interests. Personally I want to live in a ethical society and will do everything in my power to penalize and control unethical companies. Most people think likewise.
---
Monopolies = Industrial feudalism
[deleted] If you want to distribute a packet of any software and want to know if they are license compatible. ANd the real trouble starts if you want to use a loophole of some license to sell it bundled it together with your own commercial software.
You shouldn't apply arguments specifically to open source software that apply equally to any software. This entire /. story is misdirected and should be titled "License Proliferation Adding Complexity."
Many commercial software astroturfers frequently propagate OSS FUD while dishonestly pretending the FUD doesn't apply equally, if not more so, to closed source software. Closed software licenses frequently place arbitrary restrictions on software use and there are thousands of different versions. Open source software licenses aren't perfect but they are much better than the average closed source license for most applications.
---
Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
I'd rather ads, thanks.
Ad's pay for nothing. They're just a shell game that hides the true cost to you. You still pay. Twice.
You pay for the ad in your time and attention and you pay for the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
---
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
Hopefully they will stay small and unobtrusive,
Please don't be any more silly than you have to be. I hope you're not one of the many astroturfer comments on this page fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion. Astroturfers are lying scum.
If an ad is unobtrusive it hasn't worked. The whole point of an ad is to be noticed and acted upon and Google will want to maximize that value, the value to their shareholders.
Just like google is currently doing on their search pages and elsewhere they'll keep on ratcheting up and "targeting" the ad's until the net value of the content to most viewers is marginally just above zero. This gradual increase is a shell game to fool viewers into accepting more ad's. Remember, viewers are not the consumer, they're the product they sell to the advertisers. In other words, just like broadcast TV, YouTube will be a wasteland. Just give it time.
The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
---
"Advertising supported" just means you're paying twice over, once in time to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
Practically every single story on that site, including the name of the site itself, is a subtle OSS FUD piece. Many of the "third party" comments also.
Marketers aren't stupid; they know that overt FUD'ing doesn't always work so they do more subtle forms as well.
Many people greatly underestimate the financial resources that are spent on marketing in general and astroturfing in particular. Comments by company executives are just the tip of the iceberg. M$ and their "partners" probably have hundreds if not thousands of lying astroturf sites of various kinds and large nunmbers of people paid to "comment" (lie actually) on sites like slashdot. Part of the problem is that many of those people astroturfing believe their own propaganda and are in denial about the fact that they're frauds.
Among other things they will be regularly submitting company propaganda to slashdot. Some of it's bound to get through. Remember vista? Many months of practically daily content free trash. And that was before it was even released.
---
Astroturfing "marketers" are liars, fraudulently misrepresenting company propaganda as objective third party opinion.
The commercial software industry is full of bigotted marketers. If closed source is so great it should stand on its own merits, not need some marketers shoving its virtues down our throats. When I bought my PC(which I love, btw) I was confronted with multiple M$ marketing keys on a general purpose keyboard which I have no choice to use if I wanted to buy a reasonably priced PC. If special keys are needed for special functions that's fine, but don't try and mold my views or express your personal beliefs in place like that. ...
You get the idea.
A lot of people are commercial bigots. They think that companies, simply by the fact that they are profit making, should be allowed to do things that no other group in society is allowed to do. That's nonsense. In the example you gave Ubuntu is doing nothing but fighting fire with fire.
To claim that Ubuntu is being "evangelical" when they are doing nothing more than making the user aware of the situation is hypocritical. Commercial software marketing is every bit as political and much, much more bigoted. You're asking that other groups in society fight that extremism with one hand tied behind their back.
By using emotive language like "zealot", "religion" and "evangelical" lying astroturfers try to marginalize their competition. They paint the competition's attitudes as fringe and not widely accepted. Companies like M$ spend billions of dollars on marketing, much of it back door and hidden manipulation; if that's not extremism I don't know what is.
To those people reading this who aren't commercial software bigots; there's no reason why people should accept their extremely biased marketing unchallenged. Make sure to promote all points of view. They might have the money but others have the numbers.
---
"Advertising supported" just means you're paying twice over, once in time to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
It's not about blaming anyone. It's just that now, with increased prevalence of rich media web-apps, they can't continue to offer the same deal anymore.
Sorry, but that's typical marketer's reasoning. Either ISP's lied about the deal they were offering or the users and content providers somehow used more than the ISP offered. My money's on the first option.
Yes, ISP's built their business model based on customers and content providers not using all the bandwidth they paid for but that's the ISP's problem and nobody else's. Either the ISP's stop lying and cost things so they can provide what they say they will provide or they should rightly go bankrupt. Some countries with stronger consumer protection laws have already forced their ISP's to stop lying. The USA is at the rear of the pack on this one.
Differential pricing based on the ability to pay rather than the bandwidth used is a sign of a segmented, non-free market. In other words it's cartels engaged in price fixing and that unfortunately may require further government intervention to stop.
---
Any large public or private organisation paying recurring, per-seat licensing for software is being economically stupid.
Unlike copyright the patent concept is easy to defend.
No it isn't. Since people have not compared it to any alternative, just hand waved without evidence, this statement is nonsense. There is almost no evidence.
The benefit for progress of engineering and technological culture can be logically demonstrated
No it can't. I open a hardware store in a growing town. It's a new, original idea in a new area. Nobody's thought of opening a hardware store there before. The store is successful and somebody else wants to open a competing store. Why shouldn't I be able to get a patent to stop them copying my idea and opening a competing store? Think carefully about your answer. A big problem with patent proponents is that all they've got is a hammer and they think everything is a nail.
- and unlike copyright the limits on duration are not totally insane.
Just mildly insane. And that's ignoring all the other problems with patents including pretending independent invention doesn't exist, ignoring inventions whose time has come, the complete lack of an objective basis for deciding whether an idea is the same or different (that alone is sufficient to show patents as the emperor with no clothes), the silly basis they use for deciding whether an idea is original or not and the idiocy of assuming a small government bureaucracy is capable of assessing all of human invention to decide whether an idea is original or not, not to mention the idiocy of allowing a small government bureaucracy to act as a gatekeeper on all of technology. The list just goes on and on.
---
Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.
but the alternative is that we just don't post those videos.
And that would be a good thing.
When the sole purpose of releasing a video is as a vehicle to push advertising the net value of the video to the viewer will approach zero; the video will just steal time and attention that could be better spent elsewhere.
---
"Advertising supported" just means you're paying twice over, once in time to watch/avoid the ad and twice in the increased price of the product to pay for the ad.
I can't believe this thing is all that complicated as far as inputs go (like a guy blowing in a tube). To prove it works you'd only need to test it against a series of knowns. That'll easily prove it's not a "random number generator".
But won't prove much about whether it was operating correctly at the time of the alleged offence.
Even something as simple as ambient or historical temperature or gases could affect it's correctness, let alone more subtle scenarios like a bug in the code causing 1 in 100 readings, or readings at a particular time of day, to be incorrect. Given how incompetent the average programmer is when it comes to race conditions those scenarios are actually likely.
Black box testing is helpful but white box testing is much better at proving beyond reasonable doubt that there were no device problems at the time of the alleged offense.
---
Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
This is another part of the reason why I view the Linux "community" as such a toxic, virulent sociological sickness.
What a childish characterization. The fact that you don't appear to be able to cope with a bit of diversity and difference of opinion, a free market in other words, says more about your immaturity than anything else.
---
Beware deceptive astroturfers.
And it's freely implementable.
Come back to us when third parties can fully implement a standard with elements like autoSpaceLikeWord95.
Until then calling it "freely implementable" is an outright lie.
M$ really has some chutzpah claiming OOXML is anything but a manipulative POS.
---
Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.
I was addressing the particular point you made, not the overall post.
A lot of money is being made.
Spammers lie. Some money is being made. They lie about making lots of money to encourage suckers to buy their services.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
You are still dealing in unsolicited commercial mass emails that people don't want.
That's baloney. If they didn't want it, they wouldn't click on it and purchase. No money would be made off spam if that were not so. What people say is a lot different from what they do.
Way to rationalize. The spammer "business model" is based on stealing the time, money and attention of a large number of people to make a sale to one person. Unsolicited advertising is the same but with a smaller ratio.
---
Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.
Because it's the kind of back door that the developers know full well is a risk, and so they design around that risk with things like digital signatures and techniques to confirm you're speaking to an authorised server.
That's true but my point is that an intelligence agency backdoor could have exactly the same digital signature protections etc. In other words unlike what bconway said official backdoors would would be no more a compromisable hole than Update. Keeping in mind that the NSA has two missions; to protect US intelligence (SELinix etc.) and to compromise enemy intelligence (ECHELON etc.). They wouldn't deliberately put in back doors unless the cost-benefit is good. Unfortunately the cost-benefit is very good.
At a minimum I suspect they have a sophisticated software spy package ready to be downloaded via M$ Update as needed. They'd probably stay very low profile on most PC's to avoid detection but selective "heavy" targeting would be almost undetectable. Lightweight keyword checking in the disk index process on every PC, perhaps only in certain countries/languages, is also very possible and fairly low risk; all the viruses around give them plausible deniability.
---
Windows and closed source software. The US intelligence agencies back door to every network connected country and business on earth.