"They're essentially hackers and rippers," Hemming said. "Basically our brand name is being damaged quite significantly by these activities."
Apparently the whole Brilliant fiasco didn't damange their brand name. Nor did getting delisted by Download.com. Nor did being accused of being unethical by most of the major tech news sources in the United States.
The Kazaa brand name apparently came out unscathed by all of this, but just may be damaged by people using Kazaa Lite. Apparently, having a better user experience is going to lessen Kazaa's value in people's minds.
I am sure I am missing something here, but I just don't know what.
> If IE's Windows integration is a monopoly, > then I'm all for the removal of Konqueror from > KDE.
IE in Windows is not what was considered the monopoly. Windows is the monopoly; it is the desktop operating system used on over 90% of desktop PCs. IE's integration into Windows is a probably-illegal use of the Windows monopoly.
As soon as KDE has a monopoly in the desktop operating system market (which would be a REAL trick, since KDE is not an operating system), then I'll agree with you that Konqueror should be removed from KDE.
This will fail. I use Yahoo mail every day, and would have loved to use the service when it was free... but I never knew they even offered it!
That's actually a pretty important point to draw attention to. Yahoo didn't go out of their way to advertise that you COULD use their POP3 and SMTP servers. I remember the difficulty I had trying to re-sign up for this when I switched ISPs a while back. It took a LOT of digging to find how to access mail via POP and SMTP. (The server names are POP.MAIL.YAHOO.COM and SMTP.MAIL.YAHOO.COM, btw.)
I also use their webpages on occasion, so I see their ads then, but now that I would have to pay for my yahoo.com addresses (I'm not a fan of Webmail), I'm probably not going to use it anymore, which means that I won't be visiting their pages either.
I am in the exact opposite situation as you are. I use Yahoo's services extensively. My home page for all of my browsers is http://my.yahoo.com. I use (and prefer) Yahoo! Messenger. I use Yahoo! Maps instead of MapQuest (Yahoo is faster).
My problem is, if I were to pay for all of the services Yahoo! wants me to, I would be paying Yahoo! more per month than I pay my DSL provider. And my DSL provider ain't exactly cheap.
I think that Yahoo is going to need to switch to a bulk rate. Maybe do it incrementally... if a user buys one service, the charge is $29.99 a year. If the person buys two services, the charge is $34.99 a year. Or a person could buy access to all Yahoo's services for $39.99 a year.
This is why I don't subscribe to http://salon.com. I already pay Salon $15/month for my Well membership (biffster@). I'm not interested in paying another $40 a year to access Salon, too. Cut me a pricing deal, and I'll think about it. Give me full access to all of Salon's properties for $20/month, and I am there!
When I use Yahoo Instant Messenger and a new user tries to contact me I have to OK that new user.
That's not the default behavior for Yahoo! Messenger. By default, anyone can send you a message. However, if someone tries to add you to their contact list, THEN you are prompted to approve their request. You can set Y! Messenger to not allow contact from anyone not on your contact list, but that isn't the default settings.
I could live with an email protocl that was configurable; you could set up your account to not accept email from anyone not in your address book. But it seems like this would be a MAJOR undertaking.
I don't know, I have a few email addresses, I just don't do stupid things with them! It's also why I barely get any junkmail in the real mail system!
I would say that you are very lucky. Or you don't do much on the net. [grin]
I've found spam much easier to deal with now that I own a domain. I created an email address (nospam@weightjournal.com) and use that email address anywhere that is supsicious (or anywhere that requires me to register an email address, but that I am not interested in receiving email from). I have a recipe at the top of the list that moves all email TO nospam@weightjournal.com to the Spamfilter mail folder.
So far, the mail delivered into this mailbox has been 100% spam.
Hmmm.... I just checked out the results for my pet project (http://weightjournal.com). On Alta Vista, I am listed as link #2. On Google, I am in the middle of the second page.:(
Gnutella is practically useless unless you have a broadband modem.
I have a broadband connection; with one, gnutella rocks! [grin] But without one, gnutella is still usable. I had to go a month without DSL after FirstWorld shut down their home DSL service. I still used gnutella, and was still able to get the files I wanted. True, downloads took FOREVER. But that is the price one pays for connecting via dialup.
The benifits to using gnutella vs fasttrack are what?
Gnutella is an open standard; numerous clients exist for the network, including a number of native Linux clients. This provides a more diverse network and, theoretically, a larger amount of shared data.
audio galaxy design seems to work very well,
I do agree that AudioGalaxy's design rocks. I would love to see a p2p network using AG's architecture. One that didn't limit people to only sharing MP3 files.
Spyware aside (you can disable all the Kazaa junk with a few dll wipes & registry play), I actually could not do this with the latest version of KaZaa. AdAware found the spyware DLL and registry settings, and nicely deleted them for me. But then, when I tried to start KaZaa, I received an error, "A required component of KaZaa has been removed. KaZaa will now exit so you can re-run KaZaa setup and fix this problem." OOPS!
Sounds to me like KaZaa is now setting up their client so it won't run if you don't run the spyware version.
I like gnutella, but the problem with gnutella is the relative lack of people actually using it. Compare the, what, 5,000? 7,000? hosts normally connected to gnutella to the 600,000 hosts normally connected to Morpheus/Kazaa/??. The much-lower number of users means a much lower number of files available.
I tended to fire up Win4Lin and use Morpheus, simply to have access to the greater file selection available on that network. If Music City is able to move their Morpheus users over to Gnutella, I won't have to worry about that any more. Even if only 40,000-50,000 people move over, that still dramatically increases the number and types of files available via gnutella.
And we won't have to use a crappy Windows Morpheus client. Qtella will instantly gain access to those files.
If the gnutella network can handle the load, it sounds like a win-win situtation to me!
While I am usually not one to reply to a message that appears to be a troll, I do need to point out something. Your entire argument is that if a company cannot make money on a product, then that product is useless.
No, really, you actually did say this. To quote you:
a company isn't going to make money off open-sourced code. it loses all the money it spent paying developers and testers. therefore viral open-source code is useless
But many things are quite useful, even though no one can make money off of them. This part of your argument is false. Open source code is quite useful to a large number of people. It just isn't useful to Microsoft, or other companies that would like to use the hard work of open source programmers for the companies' good.
I also found the last part of your argument interesting:
therefore viral open-source code is useless and does nothing to improve software in most professionally developed applications.
Is one of the stated goals of open source software to improve professionally developed applications? Should that be the goal of open source projects?
I think what we have here, and what your argument points out, is two differences in philosophy. Apparently, you believe that the purpose of software development is to make money. A lot of people share your view. But a lot of people don't.
...that corporations have some type of right to modify someone else's software and then sell the results. I still don't understand the argument. "Well, I want to be able to use your code, but then sell what I've created." Why not just start from scratch?
....that mp3.com should've done this originally. If mp3.com had gotten agreements from the "big five" before launching mymp3.com, their wouldn't have been a lawsuit filed. It would've saved mp3.com at least a little bit of money.
On the plus side, assuming that the other four record companies follow suit, mymp3.com and BeamIt should be back up and running. I can't wait!
(A repost of a comment I posted on ZDNet's TalkBack...)
This has nothing to do with Microsoft being a successful and large company. This has nothing to do with Microsoft being a monopoly, per se. It is possible to have a legal monopoly.
This case is about Microsoft illegally using their monopoly to stifle competition. In this specific instance, it is about Microsoft using their monopoly on the desktop OS to stifle competition in the internet browser market.
Microsoft basically spent a billion dollars to develop a very good web browser. This, in and of itself, is not bad. Microsoft then gave this browser away, instead of selling it. Again, this is not bad in and of itself.
Microsoft then started packaging the web browser in every copy of its operating system that it sold. This starts getting into a grayer area. Since Microsoft has an effective monopoly on the desktop OS market, this means that almost everyone buying a new pc or the most up-to-date operating system received a free copy of the web browser. This gave Microsoft an advantage over all other browsers on the market. I dont' think that this is illegal, but it is a gray area.
The illegal part came when Microsoft started threatening PC manufacturers who wanted to install Netscape's browser instead of Microsoft's browser. These threats ran the gamut from prohibitive pricing for Microsoft OS licenses to actually not allowing PC manufacturers to sell Microsoft's OS (which would effectively destroy a PC manufacturers chance to sell PCs). Microsoft also limited what icons PC manufacturers could put on the desktop, what software could be installed, etc. Microsoft used their OS monopoly to dictate to PC manufacturers that only the Microsoft web browser would be installed when the PC shipped. And this is very definitely illegal.
If Microsoft had stuck to legal business practices, there would not be a problem. Microsoft could've continued with their monopoly in a completely legal way. They could've introduced Internet Explorer, but then left it up to PC manufacturers what web browser was installed on new computers. But Microsoft wanted to control the browser market, and used their OS monopoly to make this happen. THIS is what caused the breakup (if it ever happens).
They are pretty much forced into a corner here. If they don't sue, then they might lose their trademark (since they aren't trying to protect it from dilution). If they do sue, then they take the risk of looking like hypocrites.
These type of things always remind me of the giant contract that all of the children had to sign before entering the Chocolate Factory on Willie Wonka.
"Floods, fire, frost, or frippery?"
VIOLET: I can't see what it says in the bottom.
WONKA: Violet? You first. Sign here.
WONKA: Standard form of contract.
MR. BEAUREGARDE: Don't talk to me about contracts, Wonka; I use 'em myself. They're strictly for suckers.
That's an easy one; WMP doesn't work in Linux, so therefore it is out for me.
I use RealPlayer when at all possible for streaming audio/video on the net, both in Windows and Linux.
I consciously refuse to install RealJukebox or any other of Real's other packages, because of their privacy issues. But RealPlayer gets points from me for their Linux support.
I just hope they quickly port over their new, licensed WMP codecs to Linux RealPlayer.
So the obvious question that comes to my mind is: isn't this great news for the Dreamcast? Bleem is coming out with a Dreamcast port of their software. People will now be able to play a vast array of Playstation games on their Dreamcast, with the games looking better on the Dreamcast than they looked originally on the Playstation.
Using Bleem, Dreamcast owners will have access to 400 or so Playstation games, along with a projected 200 Dreamcast games, before Playstation 2 is even released in the US.
All of a sudden, AMD doesn't seem like the also-ran in the processor wars any longer. The Athlon has garnered favorable reviews, new marketshare, and even more loyal customers for AMD. Now the Duron will re-secure AMD's hold on low-end PCs.
No matter what happens, this should be great for consumers. At the very least, Intel will once again have to drop prices on the Celeron.
It seems to me that this is Microsoft's way of throwing a tempter tantrum. It seems that they are saying, "Okay, you want tighter security than Outlook provides? We'll release a patch that makes Outlook so secure that you can't access email attachments at all!"
It seems that they could've just disabled execution of attachments, yet left a way for those attachments to be saved.
It depends on how long you can live without a DVD player. I personally wasn't able to last beyond March 1999, and purchased my Pioneer DVD player at that time. And I am very glad that I did.
Of course, now I can't stand to watch movies on VHS!:-)
If you have a Playstation, or a bunch of old Playstation games, and you can hold out 'til October to join the DVD revolution, then there should be no problem holding out for the PSX2.
(Let's see... the least expensive DVD player on the market is $159. A Dreamcast is $199. Yeah, you'll still be saving money.)
It is amazing to me that the record industry has been able to fleece consumers for so many years. How long has it been cheaper to produce CDs than cassettes? Five years? Ten years?
When stamping CDs in bulk, the cost is next to nothing. I don't have any references off-hand, but I am positive that it is actually less expensive for the record companies to produce a CD than it is to produce a cassette.
So if the record companies can make a profit when cassettes are sold for $10, doesn't that mean that the extra $5 for a CD is pure profit? Doesn't that mean that the music companies have basically been sticking consumers $5 a pop for the millions of CDs that have been sold?
It's no wonder that the music industry so fears online music. One way or another, it is signalling the end of their consumer fleecing.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently the whole Brilliant fiasco didn't damange their brand name. Nor did getting delisted by Download.com. Nor did being accused of being unethical by most of the major tech news sources in the United States.
The Kazaa brand name apparently came out unscathed by all of this, but just may be damaged by people using Kazaa Lite. Apparently, having a better user experience is going to lessen Kazaa's value in people's minds.
I am sure I am missing something here, but I just don't know what.
> If IE's Windows integration is a monopoly,
> then I'm all for the removal of Konqueror from
> KDE.
IE in Windows is not what was considered the monopoly. Windows is the monopoly; it is the desktop operating system used on over 90% of desktop PCs. IE's integration into Windows is a probably-illegal use of the Windows monopoly.
As soon as KDE has a monopoly in the desktop operating system market (which would be a REAL trick, since KDE is not an operating system), then I'll agree with you that Konqueror should be removed from KDE.
(And I did do a "No +1" for this off-topic post.)
Huh? So what would you call Macromedia's flash player for Linux?
$2/minute would mean the phones were $120 for 60 minutes. I *think* you meant $0.50/minute.
Mind you, that still isn't the world's greatest pricing. But you DO get a cell phone in with that.
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/privacy/privacy-23.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/730862.asp?0dm=C18KT
That's actually a pretty important point to draw attention to. Yahoo didn't go out of their way to advertise that you COULD use their POP3 and SMTP servers. I remember the difficulty I had trying to re-sign up for this when I switched ISPs a while back. It took a LOT of digging to find how to access mail via POP and SMTP. (The server names are POP.MAIL.YAHOO.COM and SMTP.MAIL.YAHOO.COM, btw.)
I am in the exact opposite situation as you are. I use Yahoo's services extensively. My home page for all of my browsers is http://my.yahoo.com. I use (and prefer) Yahoo! Messenger. I use Yahoo! Maps instead of MapQuest (Yahoo is faster).
My problem is, if I were to pay for all of the services Yahoo! wants me to, I would be paying Yahoo! more per month than I pay my DSL provider. And my DSL provider ain't exactly cheap.
I think that Yahoo is going to need to switch to a bulk rate. Maybe do it incrementally... if a user buys one service, the charge is $29.99 a year. If the person buys two services, the charge is $34.99 a year. Or a person could buy access to all Yahoo's services for $39.99 a year.
This is why I don't subscribe to http://salon.com. I already pay Salon $15/month for my Well membership (biffster@). I'm not interested in paying another $40 a year to access Salon, too. Cut me a pricing deal, and I'll think about it. Give me full access to all of Salon's properties for $20/month, and I am there!
That's not the default behavior for Yahoo! Messenger. By default, anyone can send you a message. However, if someone tries to add you to their contact list, THEN you are prompted to approve their request. You can set Y! Messenger to not allow contact from anyone not on your contact list, but that isn't the default settings.
I could live with an email protocl that was configurable; you could set up your account to not accept email from anyone not in your address book. But it seems like this would be a MAJOR undertaking.
I would say that you are very lucky. Or you don't do much on the net. [grin]
I've found spam much easier to deal with now that I own a domain. I created an email address (nospam@weightjournal.com) and use that email address anywhere that is supsicious (or anywhere that requires me to register an email address, but that I am not interested in receiving email from). I have a recipe at the top of the list that moves all email TO nospam@weightjournal.com to the Spamfilter mail folder.
So far, the mail delivered into this mailbox has been 100% spam.
Hmmm.... I just checked out the results for my pet project (http://weightjournal.com). On Alta Vista, I am listed as link #2. On Google, I am in the middle of the second page. :(
Google SUCKS!!! hehehehe
I have a broadband connection; with one, gnutella rocks! [grin] But without one, gnutella is still usable. I had to go a month without DSL after FirstWorld shut down their home DSL service. I still used gnutella, and was still able to get the files I wanted. True, downloads took FOREVER. But that is the price one pays for connecting via dialup.
Gnutella is an open standard; numerous clients exist for the network, including a number of native Linux clients. This provides a more diverse network and, theoretically, a larger amount of shared data.
I do agree that AudioGalaxy's design rocks. I would love to see a p2p network using AG's architecture. One that didn't limit people to only sharing MP3 files.
I like gnutella, but the problem with gnutella is the relative lack of people actually using it. Compare the, what, 5,000? 7,000? hosts normally connected to gnutella to the 600,000 hosts normally connected to Morpheus/Kazaa/??. The much-lower number of users means a much lower number of files available.
I tended to fire up Win4Lin and use Morpheus, simply to have access to the greater file selection available on that network. If Music City is able to move their Morpheus users over to Gnutella, I won't have to worry about that any more. Even if only 40,000-50,000 people move over, that still dramatically increases the number and types of files available via gnutella.
And we won't have to use a crappy Windows Morpheus client. Qtella will instantly gain access to those files.
If the gnutella network can handle the load, it sounds like a win-win situtation to me!
No, really, you actually did say this. To quote you:
But many things are quite useful, even though no one can make money off of them. This part of your argument is false. Open source code is quite useful to a large number of people. It just isn't useful to Microsoft, or other companies that would like to use the hard work of open source programmers for the companies' good.
I also found the last part of your argument interesting:
Is one of the stated goals of open source software to improve professionally developed applications? Should that be the goal of open source projects?
I think what we have here, and what your argument points out, is two differences in philosophy. Apparently, you believe that the purpose of software development is to make money. A lot of people share your view. But a lot of people don't.
...that corporations have some type of right to modify someone else's software and then sell the results. I still don't understand the argument. "Well, I want to be able to use your code, but then sell what I've created." Why not just start from scratch?
....that mp3.com should've done this originally. If mp3.com had gotten agreements from the "big five" before launching mymp3.com, their wouldn't have been a lawsuit filed. It would've saved mp3.com at least a little bit of money.
On the plus side, assuming that the other four record companies follow suit, mymp3.com and BeamIt should be back up and running. I can't wait!
(A repost of a comment I posted on ZDNet's TalkBack...)
This has nothing to do with Microsoft being a successful and large company. This has nothing to do with Microsoft being a monopoly, per se. It is possible to have a legal monopoly.
This case is about Microsoft illegally using their monopoly to stifle competition. In this specific instance, it is about Microsoft using their monopoly on the desktop OS to stifle competition in the internet browser market.
Microsoft basically spent a billion dollars to develop a very good web browser. This, in and of itself, is not bad. Microsoft then gave this browser away, instead of selling it. Again, this is not bad in and of itself.
Microsoft then started packaging the web browser in every copy of its operating system that it sold. This starts getting into a grayer area. Since Microsoft has an effective monopoly on the desktop OS market, this means that almost everyone buying a new pc or the most up-to-date operating system received a free copy of the web browser. This gave Microsoft an advantage over all other browsers on the market. I dont' think that this is illegal, but it is a gray area.
The illegal part came when Microsoft started threatening PC manufacturers who wanted to install Netscape's browser instead of Microsoft's browser. These threats ran the gamut from prohibitive pricing for Microsoft OS licenses to actually not allowing PC manufacturers to sell Microsoft's OS (which would effectively destroy a PC manufacturers chance to sell PCs). Microsoft also limited what icons PC manufacturers could put on the desktop, what software could be installed, etc. Microsoft used their OS monopoly to dictate to PC manufacturers that only the Microsoft web browser would be installed when the PC shipped. And this is very definitely illegal.
If Microsoft had stuck to legal business practices, there would not be a problem. Microsoft could've continued with their monopoly in a completely legal way. They could've introduced Internet Explorer, but then left it up to PC manufacturers what web browser was installed on new computers. But Microsoft wanted to control the browser market, and used their OS monopoly to make this happen. THIS is what caused the breakup (if it ever happens).
They are pretty much forced into a corner here. If they don't sue, then they might lose their trademark (since they aren't trying to protect it from dilution). If they do sue, then they take the risk of looking like hypocrites.
I don't think they had a choice but to sue here.
These type of things always remind me of the giant contract that all of the children had to sign before entering the Chocolate Factory on Willie Wonka.
"Floods, fire, frost, or frippery?"
VIOLET: I can't see what it says in the bottom.
WONKA: Violet? You first. Sign here.
WONKA: Standard form of contract.
MR. BEAUREGARDE: Don't talk to me about contracts, Wonka; I use 'em myself. They're strictly for suckers.
That's an easy one; WMP doesn't work in Linux, so therefore it is out for me.
I use RealPlayer when at all possible for streaming audio/video on the net, both in Windows and Linux.
I consciously refuse to install RealJukebox or any other of Real's other packages, because of their privacy issues. But RealPlayer gets points from me for their Linux support.
I just hope they quickly port over their new, licensed WMP codecs to Linux RealPlayer.
So the obvious question that comes to my mind is: isn't this great news for the Dreamcast? Bleem is coming out with a Dreamcast port of their software. People will now be able to play a vast array of Playstation games on their Dreamcast, with the games looking better on the Dreamcast than they looked originally on the Playstation.
Using Bleem, Dreamcast owners will have access to 400 or so Playstation games, along with a projected 200 Dreamcast games, before Playstation 2 is even released in the US.
This could make things interesting!
All of a sudden, AMD doesn't seem like the also-ran in the processor wars any longer. The Athlon has garnered favorable reviews, new marketshare, and even more loyal customers for AMD. Now the Duron will re-secure AMD's hold on low-end PCs.
No matter what happens, this should be great for consumers. At the very least, Intel will once again have to drop prices on the Celeron.
It seems to me that this is Microsoft's way of throwing a tempter tantrum. It seems that they are saying, "Okay, you want tighter security than Outlook provides? We'll release a patch that makes Outlook so secure that you can't access email attachments at all!"
It seems that they could've just disabled execution of attachments, yet left a way for those attachments to be saved.
It depends on how long you can live without a DVD player. I personally wasn't able to last beyond March 1999, and purchased my Pioneer DVD player at that time. And I am very glad that I did.
:-)
Of course, now I can't stand to watch movies on VHS!
If you have a Playstation, or a bunch of old Playstation games, and you can hold out 'til October to join the DVD revolution, then there should be no problem holding out for the PSX2.
(Let's see... the least expensive DVD player on the market is $159. A Dreamcast is $199. Yeah, you'll still be saving money.)
It is amazing to me that the record industry has been able to fleece consumers for so many years. How long has it been cheaper to produce CDs than cassettes? Five years? Ten years?
When stamping CDs in bulk, the cost is next to nothing. I don't have any references off-hand, but I am positive that it is actually less expensive for the record companies to produce a CD than it is to produce a cassette.
So if the record companies can make a profit when cassettes are sold for $10, doesn't that mean that the extra $5 for a CD is pure profit? Doesn't that mean that the music companies have basically been sticking consumers $5 a pop for the millions of CDs that have been sold?
It's no wonder that the music industry so fears online music. One way or another, it is signalling the end of their consumer fleecing.