For all they do wrong, at least Christians believe in something that was always meant to be a religion, while Scientology believes in a science fiction novel.
Not meaning to be disrespectful, but how do you know the bible wasn't supposed to be a sci-fi novel?:)
What's wrong with them? I think I've got a good idea...
Don't forget they have actually had a number of terror related incidents... more than one the US has had.
Yup, and we had a whole load more terror related incidents in the decades prior to 2000 from the IRA. We didn't need to treat the whole population as potential terrorists to deal with the threat then so why do we need to now?
When I was younger, and we had a constant threat of IRA terrorism, everyone always downplayed the dangers in an effort to keep people calm. Ever since 9/11, the US have been making a big deal about terrorism and (rather stupidly) the UK government have aligned themselves with the US. These days, the UK government seems to be following the US's lead and actively *hyping up* the terrorist threat - trying to make the public as scared as possible so they can push through new legislation like this.
This is not helped by the modern media who try to sensationalise stories as much as possible, to the detriment of the society as a whole. You don't even need to look at terrorism to see the effects the media have - last year, sensationalist reporting caused a run on the Northern Rock bank which was only saved from collapse by being hurriedly nationalised.
Back in the IRA days, it was often said that if we change the way we live because of terrorist threats then the terrorists have won. Well I guess we know who's won now don't we?
Who are the terrorists these days? Extremists - yes, they are going around blowing people up as they always have. The government - definitely, they are now terrorising the public by overstating the extremist threat in an effort to further their own political agenda.
It would stop Google from burying information and propagating disinformation on behalf the Chinese government.
Google censors information in a lot of jurisdictions. For example, they censor certain violent and pornographic content in the EU (not sure about the US).
I've yet to see Google intentionally propagating disinformation.
What do you think the official Google.cn story regarding that event looks like?
I have no idea and wouldn't like to make any assumptions. Maybe you should have linked to the google.cn story if you thought that supported your case.
Your argument is the same as saying that the Chinese people are better off with TVs even if every broadcast station is nothing but round the clock propaganda.
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is that Google generally don't produce propaganda, and that complying with local censorship laws doesn't make them evil. If Google were to avoid doing business anywhere that has censorship laws, they wouldn't be doing business anywhere.
Besides, hiding evidence of a murder and lying about it is itself a very serious criminal offense in the US.
We're not talking about the US, we're talking about China. Also, I believe it is only a very serious offense in the US if you lie to the authorities. This is not what Google are doing - they are censoring public information in compliance with local laws.
Don't get me wrong, I don't trust big corporations to do the right thing, but I can't see any evidence of Google being "evil" by censoring content in compliance with Chinese laws any more than they are "evil" because they censor kiddie porn in compliance with western laws.
Let this be a reason for those who talk about "do no evil" and "Google" in same sentence (except me:) ), as if it is some person and not a corporation whose only thing they are looking for is more money for their shareholders.
I'm not quite sure how you can consider Google to be evil because they follow the law. Just because you disagree with the law doesn't mean you get to ignore it. Sure, they could decide to not do business in China at all, but how would that help anyone?
* violating the wishes of software creators â" bad (unless the creator is a big corporationy corporation);
* violating the wishes of music creators â" Ok, free muzak!
Creators of anything have the right to impose their wishes on other people to the extent of the law. This is fine.
For example, the Linux kernel is a copyrighted work (actually: large collection of copyrighted works) and you are not allowed to distribute it without being granted permission by the copyright holders. The permission is granted in the form of the GPL - the copyright holders have said "we will grant you the right to distribute the code so long as you comply with these terms". The law allows this. Similarly, the product of a big corporation, such as Windows, is protected by copyright law - you can't copy it unless they grant you a distribution licence. This is fine.
What is not so fine is imposing a shrink-wrap end user licence agreement (and expecting to enforce it) - the law does not allow for this. If you want to restrict someone's rights then you are, of course, allowed to do so - you just need to get them to sign a contract waiving those rights. The customer also has every right to refuse to sign that contract. The problem with the EULA is that you have already sold the customer some software and they thus have the right to do with it what they want so long as they don't distribute it - if they never sign the EULA they still have the right to use the software they purchased but are not bound by the EULA.
Vendors using EULAs try to get around this by building in technological restrictions, such as presenting the EULA with an "agree" button which must be pushed before the software can be used. The problem here is that if you violate the terms of the EULA there is no way they can prove you ever agreed to it - you could have bypassed the technological restriction. Or your 5 year old kid/dog/cat may have agreed to it. Maybe the "agree" button had already been clicked by someone else when you bought the computer. The only person you cn sue for breach of contract is the person who agreed to the contract in the first place - determining and proving who agreed is pretty much impossible with click-through licences since you don't have a signature on a bit of paper.
The same goes for music, video, etc., to some extent - they are protected by copyright, which is fine. But the publishers wanted to go further than the law would allow - they placed technological restrictions (DRM) on what you could do with the content. For example, region coding DVDs so that people couldn't play their legally purchased content if they didn't follow the content producer's wishes. There was, of course, nothing preventing people from removing these restrictions. And so the publishers lobbied the governments to have the law changed. As you can imagine, this has angered quite a lot of people who have suddenly seen a lot of their legal rights go straight out of the window and they see the moving goal-posts as rather unfair - it must be a nice world when you can just rewrite the laws to suit your new business model.
Well, it looks like business can no longer steal GPL code
Nope, we're talking about copyright infringement here, not theft. Just because the music industry seems to get them mixed up doesn't mean we should follow suit...
I have a question about that; I quite often browse the net for code samples. There are thousands of sites that people have posted "How to build a sample Direct3D application" or "How to access a parallel port" or whatnot. Sample code is presented, sometimes full (generally simple) programs, but no license is declared at all. I'm sure that as a practical matter, it's pretty safe to use those code snippets, because nobody will ever know or care. But legally, is code that has been freely published as training material, free without restrictions for those being trained to use?
Unless there is an explicit declaration putting it in public domain, the code is copyrighted and you need a licence if you want to distribute it. You may choose to use it anyway on the grounds that "no one will ever know", and you'll probably get away with it, but legally you are in the wrong and the copyright holder (who may not be the person who published it) is well within their rights to come and bash you around for infringing their copyright.
Websites providing such training materials should probably require their users to agree to put all the code they post into the public domain before they are allowed to post the code, but I suspect for the most part the people running the sites don't know/care enough about copyright to do that. It is also worth remembering that training materials aren't automatically in the public domain - if you go on a commercial training course you almost certainly won't be allowed to republish the material you receive.
In any case, even if someone gives you permission, you aren't completely protected since you don't necessarily know that it was their code in the first place. But if the true copyright holder comes after you, at least you have a defense that you believed you had the right to use it. The person who granted you the right will probably take some of the heat for the infringement. History is littered with companies licensing code, designs, etc. from other companies, only to later discover that the code/design wasn't the licensor's in the first place, so they had no right to sell the licence to you.
See how long you can get by without gcc. Even the iPhone relies on gcc.
The compiler simply converts code from one format (C) to another (object code) - the GPL doesn't contain any clauses regarding the output. gcc _does_ include some of its library code within the resulting object code though, but the licence explicitly states that the GPL does not apply to this.
So no, just compiling something with gcc does not mean you have to GPL it. As always, read the licence agreements for the software you use in your toolchain if you plan on distributing the resulting data.
...but if I write some software and post it on a web site, it doesn't have any license, does that mean no one can use it?
If you just post some code without saying anything about licensing, copyright, granting permissions, etc. then people should assume they don't have permission to distribute it. It may be difficult for you to enforce, but someone would be an idiot to just assume it was there for the taking. If you want to distribute some code that is published on a website like that, you should contact the author and get permission to do so.
Does all code have to have a license now?
No, you basically have 3 options: 1. don't provide a licence, the code remains under your copyright and no one can distribute it. 2. provide a licence, the code remains under your copyright and people can distribute it so long as they comply with the licence (the licence may be as simple as "do what the hell you like with this code"). 3. declare it as public domain, you no longer have a copyright claim on the code and people can do whatever they want with it.
Note that this only relates to distribution, not use - copyright law prevents distribution of copyrighted works (without an agreement with the copyright holder), but it doesn't prevent you _using_ the copyrighted work.
Well, for starters, a transistor has a base, an emitter and a collector. A current flows from the base to the emitter which also lets another current flow from the collector to the emitter.
You have described a bipolar transistor. However, with field effect transistors, there is no current between the gate (base) and the source/drain (collector/emitter). In the case of a bipolar transistor, the emitter/collector current is controlled by the base/emitter current, whereas the source/drain current of a FET is controlled by the gate *voltage*.
To make money selling proprietary software, you put in all the work up front in the development stage, then coast along (relatively speaking) with much less continuous effort.
Certainly the case for someone in MS's position. But in a market with strong competition, even a software vendor needs to put quite a lot of effort in to keep ahead of the game.
Also, when selling services you can usually charge much more, and on an ongoing basis (that subscription model that MS wants has existed in the services market since the dawn of time). Although often you may have less customers wanting a service than the software itself so it isn't clear cut.
Also, the proprietary-software model has the bookkeeping advantage of creating a more substantial asset on the balance sheet
Beancounter nonsense - if both models make similar amounts of money there really is no reason for one model to have more money on the asset list. Yes, the beancounters like to create this sort of fiction, but it doesn't mean anyone with sense should care too much.
He can't seem to fathom the concept of people developing software because they enjoy it rather than because they want money in return.
Not only this, but he can't understand the Free software business model. You don't sell Free software - you sell services based around Free software. If you need to improve the software in order to improve the services you sell (or sell new services) then you do that. Your improvements become available for other people to build on and thus the whole project is gradually improved.
On the other hand, if you are selling services based on closed software and you find you need to improve it, you probably can't. And in situations where you can licence the source code to improve it, your improvements are probably not going to be made available to other people so the project needs a lot more momentum from the top level to keep it improving.
What MS don't like about the Free software business model is probably that it doesn't really support big monopolies. Instead, it allows lots of small companies to find a niche, and both compete and cooperate with each other. I don't think you will ever find one big company like MS in the Free software world because getting into MS's position basically involves locking other people out of the market, which you can't do with the Free software business model. Sure, Red Hat, Novell, etc. are big companies, but I very much doubt there will be one overall "winner" in the end.
I thought Apple stated that if they shut the service down, they'd release the master keys.
Is that written into the contract the customer agreed to when they signed up to iTunes? I can't imagine the receivers honouring some verbal promise if Apple goes under...
Technically, it's different. The effective end result is the same though.
Not really - when a format becomes obsolete you usually get a bit more notice. I mean, I still have tapes and vinyl - I can still play them both (hell, I can still buy brand new players for them too...)
I have a solution. The solution is available in packs of 100 for ten dollars. It is called.... CD-R. Just burn them and re-rip....Which is illegal in the UK. So if you're going to break the law you may as well just crack the DRM (which is easier and cheaper anyway).
...or are most people blind to the fact that just about every corporation out there today (and yesterday) had participated in monopolistic behavior at some point. I can name off quite a bit, so do all these too need to be banned from doing business?? Lol, Let who is without Sin be the first to throw a Stone!
A crime is still a crime, even if lots of other people are doing it too. Abuses of monopoly positions are detrimental to competitors and customers - why shouldn't action be taken to prevent it?
And yes, other corporations currently abusing their position (and ignoring court rulings telling them to stop) should get the same treatment.
anytime there was a support query or we needed to transfer a domain with non-current details the turnaround was in the order of weeks.
I can't comment on this since I've never needed to make a support query.
However, I have always found that running your own name servers, rather than relying on the registrar's (or anyone else's) does make life a lot easier - you can make changes to your domain immediately instead of waiting around for someone else to do it, you have more chance of the changes being correct (the number of times someone has screwed up when copying and pasting from a change request email is mind-boggling) and you get to do stuff that commercial name servers usually won't let you do (set very low TTLs when shuffling servers around, set up records that aren't just the usual A and MX records, etc).
The less third parties you have to trust to run services for you, the better off you are.
I'm specifically talking about terrestrial broadcasts (DVB-T, ATSC OTA). My understanding is that the UK still uses MPEG-2 for its DVB-T transmissions, although BSkyB is talking about MPEG-4 for some of its multiplexes.
All standard definition broadcasts in the UK are MPEG-2, all HD broadcasts are H.264, although the only HD being broadcast on DVB-T is the Crystal Palace test transmission of BBC HD (which is H.264). BSkyB doesn't have any DVB-T multiplexes.
As for private cable and satellite systems, they have more ability to use what systems they like.
As far as I know, all the cable TV systems in the UK use DVB-C. Not sure what codec they use for HD, but I'd be very surprised if it wasn't H.264 since that is the format they get the source stream in.
As for satellite, European operators have to use DVB-S or DVB-S2 and all the UK operators seem to have settled on H.264 (BSkyB use H.264 over DVB-S2 with encryption, BBC use H.264 over DVB-S (although I understand it will be moving to DVB-S2) with no encryption and I understand ITV and C4 will both be using H.264 over DVB-S2 with no encryption. I think the use of H.264 over DVB-S2 for HD is pretty widespread across the whole of Europe (in fact, I've not heard of anyone doing MPEG2 HD satellite broadcasts here).
As a result, they can take a 1920x1080i 19.39Mbps 8VSB MPEG-2 terrestrial feed and convert it to 1280x1080i 8Mbps 256QAM MPEG-4/AVC cable signal, yet still get away with calling it "HD".
The bandwidth issue is a problem, but I think you're confusing the matter by talking about the modulation they use. There is no problem with using 256QAM instead of 8VSB so long as the signal to noise ratio is good enough.
I also don't think that regulating the amount of bandwidth used is necessarily the solution, purely because different types of content compress better than others - something like a gardening programme (lots of shots with very little movement in them) is going to need way less bandwidth than a pop video (fast cutting, lots of flashing lights, lots of movement). Regulating the amount of bandwidth being used is going to either waste a lot of bandwidth in the case of the former, or make the latter look like absolute crap.
As far as I know only the BBC in the UK has a "standard" They transmit HDTV in MPEG4 for some channels.
Both the BBC and Sky use H.264 for their HD channels. Channel 4 and ITV will both be using H.264 when their HD channels launch this year. Of course, Sky's channels are all encrypted and there is no CAM available, so you're stuck using Sky branded hardware - this is the primary reason there isn't a lot of standard kit in the UK. This will no doubt change once the FreeSat platform launches this year. (BBC HD is free to air, and ITV HD and C4 HD will be too).
As for having an HD tuner _in_ your TV, why would you want that? I would think that most people don't use the tuner in their HDTV anyway since they want to plug it into their PVR.
The United States, Germany, France, Japan and the UK have been broadcasting digital terrestrial transmissions for almost a decade now. Given that the MPEG-4 standard wasn't ratified until 1998, it was too late to be chosen for either the ATSC, DVB-T or ISDB-T standards.
As far as I'm aware, all the HD channels in the UK use H.264 (DVB-S, DVB-S2, DVB-C and the BBC's experimental DVB-T HD channel broadcast from Crystal Palace). I've got to say that the quoted bandwidths in the article (8.9-18.7 Mbps for FiOS, 8.9-14.5 for Comcast) really do suck considering it is MPEG2 - BBC HD is a 16Mbps H.264 stream (used to be 20Mbps H.264 until quite recently).
One example is the YATE (telephony) article. It got deleted by an editor who is tied with Asterix.
The OpenPBX article went the same way (there was a lot of evidence that the deleting editor was tied to Asterisk and was attempting to delete a lot of articles about Asterisk alternatives). It's one of the reasons I've given up editing Wikipedia - I've seen far too many genuinely useful articles be deleted, even though they cite external sources.
I'm convinced the AfD process is utterly flawed because most of the people who take part are either deletionists (who will vote "delete" no matter what), or already connected with the article (who will defend it and vote "keep", and be immediately discredited by the deletionists as being biassed). Unbiassed people just don't have an interest in taking part in this sort of petty politics, so if an article is entered into the AfD process the chances are it's going to get deleted.
No, most of the developed world already has a 3G infrastructure. Only technological backwaters like the US still use GSM.
3G coverage in most of the developed world is significantly worse than GSM - your 3G phone will drop back to GSM mode in poorly covered areas. Not to mention that most of the undeveloped world uses GSM almost exclusively.
(I also hesitate to point out, for risk of starting a flame war, that a certain recent over-hyped phone only does GSM)
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For all they do wrong, at least Christians believe in something that was always meant to be a religion, while Scientology believes in a science fiction novel.
:)
Not meaning to be disrespectful, but how do you know the bible wasn't supposed to be a sci-fi novel?
What's wrong with them? I think I've got a good idea...
Don't forget they have actually had a number of terror related incidents... more than one the US has had.
Yup, and we had a whole load more terror related incidents in the decades prior to 2000 from the IRA. We didn't need to treat the whole population as potential terrorists to deal with the threat then so why do we need to now?
When I was younger, and we had a constant threat of IRA terrorism, everyone always downplayed the dangers in an effort to keep people calm. Ever since 9/11, the US have been making a big deal about terrorism and (rather stupidly) the UK government have aligned themselves with the US. These days, the UK government seems to be following the US's lead and actively *hyping up* the terrorist threat - trying to make the public as scared as possible so they can push through new legislation like this.
This is not helped by the modern media who try to sensationalise stories as much as possible, to the detriment of the society as a whole. You don't even need to look at terrorism to see the effects the media have - last year, sensationalist reporting caused a run on the Northern Rock bank which was only saved from collapse by being hurriedly nationalised.
Back in the IRA days, it was often said that if we change the way we live because of terrorist threats then the terrorists have won. Well I guess we know who's won now don't we?
Who are the terrorists these days? Extremists - yes, they are going around blowing people up as they always have. The government - definitely, they are now terrorising the public by overstating the extremist threat in an effort to further their own political agenda.
It would stop Google from burying information and propagating disinformation on behalf the Chinese government.
Google censors information in a lot of jurisdictions. For example, they censor certain violent and pornographic content in the EU (not sure about the US).
I've yet to see Google intentionally propagating disinformation.
What do you think the official Google.cn story regarding that event looks like?
I have no idea and wouldn't like to make any assumptions. Maybe you should have linked to the google.cn story if you thought that supported your case.
Your argument is the same as saying that the Chinese people are better off with TVs even if every broadcast station is nothing but round the clock propaganda.
No, that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is that Google generally don't produce propaganda, and that complying with local censorship laws doesn't make them evil. If Google were to avoid doing business anywhere that has censorship laws, they wouldn't be doing business anywhere.
Besides, hiding evidence of a murder and lying about it is itself a very serious criminal offense in the US.
We're not talking about the US, we're talking about China. Also, I believe it is only a very serious offense in the US if you lie to the authorities. This is not what Google are doing - they are censoring public information in compliance with local laws.
Don't get me wrong, I don't trust big corporations to do the right thing, but I can't see any evidence of Google being "evil" by censoring content in compliance with Chinese laws any more than they are "evil" because they censor kiddie porn in compliance with western laws.
Let this be a reason for those who talk about "do no evil" and "Google" in same sentence (except me :) ), as if it is some person and not a corporation whose only thing they are looking for is more money for their shareholders.
I'm not quite sure how you can consider Google to be evil because they follow the law. Just because you disagree with the law doesn't mean you get to ignore it. Sure, they could decide to not do business in China at all, but how would that help anyone?
* violating the wishes of software creators â" bad (unless the creator is a big corporationy corporation);
* violating the wishes of music creators â" Ok, free muzak!
Creators of anything have the right to impose their wishes on other people to the extent of the law. This is fine.
For example, the Linux kernel is a copyrighted work (actually: large collection of copyrighted works) and you are not allowed to distribute it without being granted permission by the copyright holders. The permission is granted in the form of the GPL - the copyright holders have said "we will grant you the right to distribute the code so long as you comply with these terms". The law allows this. Similarly, the product of a big corporation, such as Windows, is protected by copyright law - you can't copy it unless they grant you a distribution licence. This is fine.
What is not so fine is imposing a shrink-wrap end user licence agreement (and expecting to enforce it) - the law does not allow for this. If you want to restrict someone's rights then you are, of course, allowed to do so - you just need to get them to sign a contract waiving those rights. The customer also has every right to refuse to sign that contract. The problem with the EULA is that you have already sold the customer some software and they thus have the right to do with it what they want so long as they don't distribute it - if they never sign the EULA they still have the right to use the software they purchased but are not bound by the EULA.
Vendors using EULAs try to get around this by building in technological restrictions, such as presenting the EULA with an "agree" button which must be pushed before the software can be used. The problem here is that if you violate the terms of the EULA there is no way they can prove you ever agreed to it - you could have bypassed the technological restriction. Or your 5 year old kid/dog/cat may have agreed to it. Maybe the "agree" button had already been clicked by someone else when you bought the computer. The only person you cn sue for breach of contract is the person who agreed to the contract in the first place - determining and proving who agreed is pretty much impossible with click-through licences since you don't have a signature on a bit of paper.
The same goes for music, video, etc., to some extent - they are protected by copyright, which is fine. But the publishers wanted to go further than the law would allow - they placed technological restrictions (DRM) on what you could do with the content. For example, region coding DVDs so that people couldn't play their legally purchased content if they didn't follow the content producer's wishes. There was, of course, nothing preventing people from removing these restrictions. And so the publishers lobbied the governments to have the law changed. As you can imagine, this has angered quite a lot of people who have suddenly seen a lot of their legal rights go straight out of the window and they see the moving goal-posts as rather unfair - it must be a nice world when you can just rewrite the laws to suit your new business model.
Well, it looks like business can no longer steal GPL code
Nope, we're talking about copyright infringement here, not theft. Just because the music industry seems to get them mixed up doesn't mean we should follow suit...
I have a question about that; I quite often browse the net for code samples. There are thousands of sites that people have posted "How to build a sample Direct3D application" or "How to access a parallel port" or whatnot. Sample code is presented, sometimes full (generally simple) programs, but no license is declared at all. I'm sure that as a practical matter, it's pretty safe to use those code snippets, because nobody will ever know or care. But legally, is code that has been freely published as training material, free without restrictions for those being trained to use?
Unless there is an explicit declaration putting it in public domain, the code is copyrighted and you need a licence if you want to distribute it. You may choose to use it anyway on the grounds that "no one will ever know", and you'll probably get away with it, but legally you are in the wrong and the copyright holder (who may not be the person who published it) is well within their rights to come and bash you around for infringing their copyright.
Websites providing such training materials should probably require their users to agree to put all the code they post into the public domain before they are allowed to post the code, but I suspect for the most part the people running the sites don't know/care enough about copyright to do that. It is also worth remembering that training materials aren't automatically in the public domain - if you go on a commercial training course you almost certainly won't be allowed to republish the material you receive.
In any case, even if someone gives you permission, you aren't completely protected since you don't necessarily know that it was their code in the first place. But if the true copyright holder comes after you, at least you have a defense that you believed you had the right to use it. The person who granted you the right will probably take some of the heat for the infringement. History is littered with companies licensing code, designs, etc. from other companies, only to later discover that the code/design wasn't the licensor's in the first place, so they had no right to sell the licence to you.
See how long you can get by without gcc. Even the iPhone relies on gcc.
The compiler simply converts code from one format (C) to another (object code) - the GPL doesn't contain any clauses regarding the output. gcc _does_ include some of its library code within the resulting object code though, but the licence explicitly states that the GPL does not apply to this.
So no, just compiling something with gcc does not mean you have to GPL it. As always, read the licence agreements for the software you use in your toolchain if you plan on distributing the resulting data.
...but if I write some software and post it on a web site, it doesn't have any license, does that mean no one can use it?
If you just post some code without saying anything about licensing, copyright, granting permissions, etc. then people should assume they don't have permission to distribute it. It may be difficult for you to enforce, but someone would be an idiot to just assume it was there for the taking. If you want to distribute some code that is published on a website like that, you should contact the author and get permission to do so.
Does all code have to have a license now?
No, you basically have 3 options:
1. don't provide a licence, the code remains under your copyright and no one can distribute it.
2. provide a licence, the code remains under your copyright and people can distribute it so long as they comply with the licence (the licence may be as simple as "do what the hell you like with this code").
3. declare it as public domain, you no longer have a copyright claim on the code and people can do whatever they want with it.
Note that this only relates to distribution, not use - copyright law prevents distribution of copyrighted works (without an agreement with the copyright holder), but it doesn't prevent you _using_ the copyrighted work.
(IANAL, yadda yadda)
Well, for starters, a transistor has a base, an emitter and a collector. A current flows from the base to the emitter which also lets another current flow from the collector to the emitter.
You have described a bipolar transistor. However, with field effect transistors, there is no current between the gate (base) and the source/drain (collector/emitter). In the case of a bipolar transistor, the emitter/collector current is controlled by the base/emitter current, whereas the source/drain current of a FET is controlled by the gate *voltage*.
The transistors used in CPUs are generally FETs.
To make money selling proprietary software, you put in all the work up front in the development stage, then coast along (relatively speaking) with much less continuous effort.
Certainly the case for someone in MS's position. But in a market with strong competition, even a software vendor needs to put quite a lot of effort in to keep ahead of the game.
Also, when selling services you can usually charge much more, and on an ongoing basis (that subscription model that MS wants has existed in the services market since the dawn of time). Although often you may have less customers wanting a service than the software itself so it isn't clear cut.
Also, the proprietary-software model has the bookkeeping advantage of creating a more substantial asset on the balance sheet
Beancounter nonsense - if both models make similar amounts of money there really is no reason for one model to have more money on the asset list. Yes, the beancounters like to create this sort of fiction, but it doesn't mean anyone with sense should care too much.
He can't seem to fathom the concept of people developing software because they enjoy it rather than because they want money in return.
Not only this, but he can't understand the Free software business model. You don't sell Free software - you sell services based around Free software. If you need to improve the software in order to improve the services you sell (or sell new services) then you do that. Your improvements become available for other people to build on and thus the whole project is gradually improved.
On the other hand, if you are selling services based on closed software and you find you need to improve it, you probably can't. And in situations where you can licence the source code to improve it, your improvements are probably not going to be made available to other people so the project needs a lot more momentum from the top level to keep it improving.
What MS don't like about the Free software business model is probably that it doesn't really support big monopolies. Instead, it allows lots of small companies to find a niche, and both compete and cooperate with each other. I don't think you will ever find one big company like MS in the Free software world because getting into MS's position basically involves locking other people out of the market, which you can't do with the Free software business model. Sure, Red Hat, Novell, etc. are big companies, but I very much doubt there will be one overall "winner" in the end.
I thought Apple stated that if they shut the service down, they'd release the master keys.
Is that written into the contract the customer agreed to when they signed up to iTunes? I can't imagine the receivers honouring some verbal promise if Apple goes under...
Technically, it's different. The effective end result is the same though.
Not really - when a format becomes obsolete you usually get a bit more notice. I mean, I still have tapes and vinyl - I can still play them both (hell, I can still buy brand new players for them too...)
the DRM can be circumvented by burning to and ripping from a CD.
Which in some jurisdictions is illegal...
I have a solution. The solution is available in packs of 100 for ten dollars. It is called.... CD-R. Just burn them and re-rip. ...Which is illegal in the UK. So if you're going to break the law you may as well just crack the DRM (which is easier and cheaper anyway).
...or are most people blind to the fact that just about every corporation out there today (and yesterday) had participated in monopolistic behavior at some point. I can name off quite a bit, so do all these too need to be banned from doing business?? Lol, Let who is without Sin be the first to throw a Stone!
A crime is still a crime, even if lots of other people are doing it too. Abuses of monopoly positions are detrimental to competitors and customers - why shouldn't action be taken to prevent it?
And yes, other corporations currently abusing their position (and ignoring court rulings telling them to stop) should get the same treatment.
anytime there was a support query or we needed to transfer a domain with non-current details the turnaround was in the order of weeks.
I can't comment on this since I've never needed to make a support query.
However, I have always found that running your own name servers, rather than relying on the registrar's (or anyone else's) does make life a lot easier - you can make changes to your domain immediately instead of waiting around for someone else to do it, you have more chance of the changes being correct (the number of times someone has screwed up when copying and pasting from a change request email is mind-boggling) and you get to do stuff that commercial name servers usually won't let you do (set very low TTLs when shuffling servers around, set up records that aren't just the usual A and MX records, etc).
The less third parties you have to trust to run services for you, the better off you are.
I tend to use Joker and 123-reg
I'm specifically talking about terrestrial broadcasts (DVB-T, ATSC OTA). My understanding is that the UK still uses MPEG-2 for its DVB-T transmissions, although BSkyB is talking about MPEG-4 for some of its multiplexes.
All standard definition broadcasts in the UK are MPEG-2, all HD broadcasts are H.264, although the only HD being broadcast on DVB-T is the Crystal Palace test transmission of BBC HD (which is H.264). BSkyB doesn't have any DVB-T multiplexes.
As for private cable and satellite systems, they have more ability to use what systems they like.
As far as I know, all the cable TV systems in the UK use DVB-C. Not sure what codec they use for HD, but I'd be very surprised if it wasn't H.264 since that is the format they get the source stream in.
As for satellite, European operators have to use DVB-S or DVB-S2 and all the UK operators seem to have settled on H.264 (BSkyB use H.264 over DVB-S2 with encryption, BBC use H.264 over DVB-S (although I understand it will be moving to DVB-S2) with no encryption and I understand ITV and C4 will both be using H.264 over DVB-S2 with no encryption. I think the use of H.264 over DVB-S2 for HD is pretty widespread across the whole of Europe (in fact, I've not heard of anyone doing MPEG2 HD satellite broadcasts here).
As a result, they can take a 1920x1080i 19.39Mbps 8VSB MPEG-2 terrestrial feed and convert it to 1280x1080i 8Mbps 256QAM MPEG-4/AVC cable signal, yet still get away with calling it "HD".
The bandwidth issue is a problem, but I think you're confusing the matter by talking about the modulation they use. There is no problem with using 256QAM instead of 8VSB so long as the signal to noise ratio is good enough.
I also don't think that regulating the amount of bandwidth used is necessarily the solution, purely because different types of content compress better than others - something like a gardening programme (lots of shots with very little movement in them) is going to need way less bandwidth than a pop video (fast cutting, lots of flashing lights, lots of movement). Regulating the amount of bandwidth being used is going to either waste a lot of bandwidth in the case of the former, or make the latter look like absolute crap.
As far as I know only the BBC in the UK has a "standard" They transmit HDTV in MPEG4 for some channels.
Both the BBC and Sky use H.264 for their HD channels. Channel 4 and ITV will both be using H.264 when their HD channels launch this year. Of course, Sky's channels are all encrypted and there is no CAM available, so you're stuck using Sky branded hardware - this is the primary reason there isn't a lot of standard kit in the UK. This will no doubt change once the FreeSat platform launches this year. (BBC HD is free to air, and ITV HD and C4 HD will be too).
As for having an HD tuner _in_ your TV, why would you want that? I would think that most people don't use the tuner in their HDTV anyway since they want to plug it into their PVR.
The United States, Germany, France, Japan and the UK have been broadcasting digital terrestrial transmissions for almost a decade now. Given that the MPEG-4 standard wasn't ratified until 1998, it was too late to be chosen for either the ATSC, DVB-T or ISDB-T standards.
As far as I'm aware, all the HD channels in the UK use H.264 (DVB-S, DVB-S2, DVB-C and the BBC's experimental DVB-T HD channel broadcast from Crystal Palace). I've got to say that the quoted bandwidths in the article (8.9-18.7 Mbps for FiOS, 8.9-14.5 for Comcast) really do suck considering it is MPEG2 - BBC HD is a 16Mbps H.264 stream (used to be 20Mbps H.264 until quite recently).
It could be like all other cell phones and not allow you to put anything on it.
Umm... My 4 year old phone lets me put software on it... And it isn't restricted to crappy Java stuff either...
One example is the YATE (telephony) article. It got deleted by an editor who is tied with Asterix.
The OpenPBX article went the same way (there was a lot of evidence that the deleting editor was tied to Asterisk and was attempting to delete a lot of articles about Asterisk alternatives). It's one of the reasons I've given up editing Wikipedia - I've seen far too many genuinely useful articles be deleted, even though they cite external sources.
I'm convinced the AfD process is utterly flawed because most of the people who take part are either deletionists (who will vote "delete" no matter what), or already connected with the article (who will defend it and vote "keep", and be immediately discredited by the deletionists as being biassed). Unbiassed people just don't have an interest in taking part in this sort of petty politics, so if an article is entered into the AfD process the chances are it's going to get deleted.
No, most of the developed world already has a 3G infrastructure. Only technological backwaters like the US still use GSM.
3G coverage in most of the developed world is significantly worse than GSM - your 3G phone will drop back to GSM mode in poorly covered areas. Not to mention that most of the undeveloped world uses GSM almost exclusively.
(I also hesitate to point out, for risk of starting a flame war, that a certain recent over-hyped phone only does GSM)