Second, I'm only pointing out the truth. In Britain it's perfectly acceptable to say "Sony are." You may disagree, and that's your right, but it's still the truth.
Every time I've tried Linux I've done a dual boot with Windows. Kind of like going swimming in cold water toes first.
However, there would always come a point where I couldn't do something I needed to do, I'd get frustrated, and simply boot in to Windows to do it rather than figure it out in Linux. After a while of booting back and forth I'd find it easier to just stay in Windows and I'd remove Linux.
I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better in the long run to just jump in and tough it out and do a clean install of Linux without any Windows as a backup. That'd force me to learn because I'd have nothing to fall back on.
What's Linux users' experience in switching? Did you take the easy way and dual boot or did you throw caution to the wind and just make the switch?
"How did that situation develop and why couldn't Apple/iTunes, or any other online music service, reach such a situation as well?"
I'm assuming you don't live in the US. In the US Wal-Mart dominates the retail consumer market. It has stores in nearly ever city, town, etc. It uses its huge marketshare to force lower prices from manufacturers. It then uses those lower prices to drive out all competition.
Almost needless to say, Apple will never obtain Wal-Mart's power in the marketplace.
Gee, I forgot all about that. However, Apple could get around that by simply spining off iTunes to a new company that does NOT use the Apple name. Remove the Apple name from the iTunes software and web site, incorporate iTunes, and there would be NO trademark violation.
No matter how many songs Apple sells, the music industry still holds the strings. At any time when Apple starts to gain too much power, those strings will be pulled. Apple will always be at the mercy of the industry, and that will never change.
The music industry is paranoid about services such as Apple's. If iTunes became dominate, Apple could sign artists directly. Those artists would make more money, Apple would make more money, and the music industry would be gone.
The music industry will ensure that will never happen. They will play the various internet music services against each other. Once Apple gets too big, they'll force price hikes on it.
The only service that could possibly stand up to the music industry is Wal-Mart. As I've written here before, because the music industry NEEDS Wal-Mart to sell its CDs, Wal-Mart currently holds the cards. I don't think the music industry has the guts to stand up to Wal-Mart.
I agree, patents hinder economic growth. Patents tied up both radio and the automobile for decades. Only after those patents expired or were found invalid did resulting products finally succeed.
And look at the computer industry. There was substantial grown after IBM's bios was reversed engineered and due to the internet being almost entirely free of intellectual property hindrances.
Does anyone seriously believe that there will be MORE growth in the computer industry with patents as asinine as Microsoft's double click patent in place?! A FREE market necessarily depends on freedom to compete. Patents are necessarily contrary to competition.
If Anti-cancer statins, GCMR heads for high capacity disk drives, and the Polymerase Chain Reaction are all as valid as you say, then they will be upheld as such. I see no problem with those in my system.
The way I see it, if we give someone a monopoly on an idea, the standard should be VERY high.
Where have you been? Nowadays patents have NOTHING to do with avoiding trade secrets. Can you imagine Microsoft trying to hide its double click patent? Amazon trying to hide one click purchases? Or MercExchange trying to hide its patent to have online auctions?!
Patents nowadays are simply monopolizing utterly obvious ideas.
From what I gather, their suggestion is to simply grant all patents, but let judges sort everything out. That doesn't seem much different from what we have now. Only the rich would be able to participate in the process.
My idea: Initially only 10 percent of patents should be granted. I.e., those that obviously should be granted. If a patent examiner grants more than 10 percent, he (or she) should be fired.
The remaining 90 percent should be forced to file a lawsuit to prove the patents grantability. (Yeah, I know grantability isn't a word!)
Even after the patent is granted, the burden should still be on the patent holder at any subsequent trial/hearing contenting the validity to prove that it is valid. Merely holding a patent should not be proof that it's valid.
And lastly, if a court ever rules that the patent is not valid in that subsequent trial/hearing, the patent holder should have to pay treble costs of the litigation to the winner.
That's shocking! How could a company spend that much money on research and development every year and not EVER create a compelling new product?!
DOS was bought from someone else. The original 16-bit Windows was crap when compared to Amiga or Macintosh. Win9x was merely a prettier version of Windows running on DOS. WinME was merely a delay until WinXP was released. Windows NT was based on VMS. Excel was stolen from VisiCalc and Word was stolen from WordPerfect.
Everyone says that Microsoft only hires the best and the brightest. I've never seen any proof of that.
...does not mean you have to buy it. I have an "old" Canon Powershot G2. I've upgraded it with a 1 gb flash card. It has 4 megapixels, which is enough for me. The pictures look great and it's small enough that I can carry it in my pocket. Why would I ever want to upgrade?
The FCC was asked to carve out an exception to the broadcast flag system for public domain programming. But the broadcasters complained and the FCC served its true purpose, to keep corporate america happy.
Thus, broadcasters in the US will have MORE rights over content than even the original copyright holder did!
The case was ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg 86 F.3d 1447 (1996). It held that a license agreement, even inside a box of software, or even in a file on the media, will consumers who use the software after an opportunity to read the terms, unless the terms of the agreement are objectionable on grounds applicable to contracts in general.
Slashdot Mirror
I use Firefox on my system. My wife uses IE. I recently ran a spyware scan on both. Can you guess which computer was infected?
First "The" implies singular.
Second, I'm only pointing out the truth. In Britain it's perfectly acceptable to say "Sony are." You may disagree, and that's your right, but it's still the truth.
Every time I've tried Linux I've done a dual boot with Windows. Kind of like going swimming in cold water toes first.
However, there would always come a point where I couldn't do something I needed to do, I'd get frustrated, and simply boot in to Windows to do it rather than figure it out in Linux. After a while of booting back and forth I'd find it easier to just stay in Windows and I'd remove Linux.
I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better in the long run to just jump in and tough it out and do a clean install of Linux without any Windows as a backup. That'd force me to learn because I'd have nothing to fall back on.
What's Linux users' experience in switching? Did you take the easy way and dual boot or did you throw caution to the wind and just make the switch?
Actually, in the rest of the English speaking world, groups such as Sony are considered plural. Thus, the original poster was correct.
It makes sense to me, even as an American. I find myself using both ways.
"How did that situation develop and why couldn't Apple/iTunes, or any other online music service, reach such a situation as well?"
I'm assuming you don't live in the US. In the US Wal-Mart dominates the retail consumer market. It has stores in nearly ever city, town, etc. It uses its huge marketshare to force lower prices from manufacturers. It then uses those lower prices to drive out all competition.
Almost needless to say, Apple will never obtain Wal-Mart's power in the marketplace.
Gee, I forgot all about that. However, Apple could get around that by simply spining off iTunes to a new company that does NOT use the Apple name. Remove the Apple name from the iTunes software and web site, incorporate iTunes, and there would be NO trademark violation.
No matter how many songs Apple sells, the music industry still holds the strings. At any time when Apple starts to gain too much power, those strings will be pulled. Apple will always be at the mercy of the industry, and that will never change.
The music industry is paranoid about services such as Apple's. If iTunes became dominate, Apple could sign artists directly. Those artists would make more money, Apple would make more money, and the music industry would be gone.
The music industry will ensure that will never happen. They will play the various internet music services against each other. Once Apple gets too big, they'll force price hikes on it.
The only service that could possibly stand up to the music industry is Wal-Mart. As I've written here before, because the music industry NEEDS Wal-Mart to sell its CDs, Wal-Mart currently holds the cards. I don't think the music industry has the guts to stand up to Wal-Mart.
Comics will never become novels any more than a bicycle will become an airplane.
What's happening is that comics are becoming more popular while novels are declining in popularity.
I agree, patents hinder economic growth. Patents tied up both radio and the automobile for decades. Only after those patents expired or were found invalid did resulting products finally succeed.
And look at the computer industry. There was substantial grown after IBM's bios was reversed engineered and due to the internet being almost entirely free of intellectual property hindrances.
Does anyone seriously believe that there will be MORE growth in the computer industry with patents as asinine as Microsoft's double click patent in place?! A FREE market necessarily depends on freedom to compete. Patents are necessarily contrary to competition.
If Anti-cancer statins, GCMR heads for high capacity disk drives, and the Polymerase Chain Reaction are all as valid as you say, then they will be upheld as such. I see no problem with those in my system.
The way I see it, if we give someone a monopoly on an idea, the standard should be VERY high.
Where have you been? Nowadays patents have NOTHING to do with avoiding trade secrets. Can you imagine Microsoft trying to hide its double click patent? Amazon trying to hide one click purchases? Or MercExchange trying to hide its patent to have online auctions?!
Patents nowadays are simply monopolizing utterly obvious ideas.
From what I gather, their suggestion is to simply grant all patents, but let judges sort everything out. That doesn't seem much different from what we have now. Only the rich would be able to participate in the process.
My idea: Initially only 10 percent of patents should be granted. I.e., those that obviously should be granted. If a patent examiner grants more than 10 percent, he (or she) should be fired.
The remaining 90 percent should be forced to file a lawsuit to prove the patents grantability. (Yeah, I know grantability isn't a word!)
Even after the patent is granted, the burden should still be on the patent holder at any subsequent trial/hearing contenting the validity to prove that it is valid. Merely holding a patent should not be proof that it's valid.
And lastly, if a court ever rules that the patent is not valid in that subsequent trial/hearing, the patent holder should have to pay treble costs of the litigation to the winner.
Now that'd fix our patent system!
Because satellite is MUCH cheaper than digital cable.
Greed killed it. I hope!
I have no problem with MILLIONS being spent. But I seriously doubt that any other corporation spends BILLIONS every year and comes up with NOTHING.
In the US a billion dollars is 1000 million dollars. That's a lot of money to come up with NOTHING.
That's shocking! How could a company spend that much money on research and development every year and not EVER create a compelling new product?!
DOS was bought from someone else. The original 16-bit Windows was crap when compared to Amiga or Macintosh. Win9x was merely a prettier version of Windows running on DOS. WinME was merely a delay until WinXP was released. Windows NT was based on VMS. Excel was stolen from VisiCalc and Word was stolen from WordPerfect.
Everyone says that Microsoft only hires the best and the brightest. I've never seen any proof of that.
...does not mean you have to buy it. I have an "old" Canon Powershot G2. I've upgraded it with a 1 gb flash card. It has 4 megapixels, which is enough for me. The pictures look great and it's small enough that I can carry it in my pocket. Why would I ever want to upgrade?
n/a
They're talking about stand-alone burners.
The FCC was asked to carve out an exception to the broadcast flag system for public domain programming. But the broadcasters complained and the FCC served its true purpose, to keep corporate america happy.
Thus, broadcasters in the US will have MORE rights over content than even the original copyright holder did!
Because after 2006 TV outputs on all television related equipment will itself be illegal.
The only time I ever used IE on my computer was to download Firefox. My wife steadfastly uses IE, with all the current updates.
I recently ran a spy/adware program to see if either system was infected. Can anyone guess which computer was infected?
... is Microsoft going to sue the Department of Homeland Security for defamation too?
What I meant to say was that the license agreement will BIND consumers....
The case was ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg 86 F.3d 1447 (1996). It held that a license agreement, even inside a box of software, or even in a file on the media, will consumers who use the software after an opportunity to read the terms, unless the terms of the agreement are objectionable on grounds applicable to contracts in general.