Well, you know the old saying about there being "no such thing as bad publicity". It's possible that SCO has had a negative impact on the Linux/open-source image, good luck trying to measure that one. But, I'd consider it more likely that the press coverage has served to make some people interested in it than normally would not have been before. Maybe that's just wishful thinking, but I think there's more than a gem of truth in it. Not all of the fallout from the FUD will be negative.
It's funny how the typos and bad grammar in the email lends credence to it. Looks like something I'd get from an exec at work! Well, minus the shady dealing with Microsoft, anyway.:P
You're entitled to your opinion. Only problem is, your argument assumes that because AAC won't be in everyone's homes by next Tuesday, that it won't happen ever. That DVD player won't last, and neither will that memory stick. How many people do you know that still have a 64meg Diamond Rio? Hardware will need to be replaced eventually. The marginal cost of switching codecs you mentioned will accelerate this process. You'll see expanded support in all of the new gadgets you buy.
A few years from now, MP3 will have waning popularity. How much of your music collection is in.WAV or.mp2? Welcome to the 21st century.
We have AAC/MP4, to name one, which is already superior to mp3 in quality, and ready-made for a DRM candy-coating. The only advantage mp3 really has at this point is penetration, and I'll wager that those days are numbered.
Not only that, but it looks like their justice system has a sense of humor: SCO can't sue any Linux users except their own customers. That's comedy gold, right there.;)
Bioware did alright with the dual PC/XBOX release of KOTOR (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic). Not only did it have the distinction of being one of the best Star Wars games around (not that they had a lot of competition), but they managed to strike a good balance. There was a push-button "do it for me" system with the console gamer in mind, and plenty of tweaking with the d20 system to satisfy to PC gamer.
The fact that it's a memory hog plays a great part in Java's slowness.
Only in regards to initial load times, though. Insofar as processing speed, how much memory it takes doesn't mean much. It's a price you pay for garbage collection and using interpreted code for cross-platform operability (amongst other things), but... the price is getting a lot cheaper, so to speak. The compilers are getting very good.
Maybe some improvements could be made over its speed as well, as Java is really slow compared to other languages.
Calling Java "really slow" in comparison to other languages is almost a troll, at this point. This is not 1995. Java is a memory hog, sure. But as far as speed as concerned, it's more than fast enough, especially with JIT compilers and the like. The gap between Java and more cryptic C-like languages is narrowing as computers continue to get faster and faster.
Other/.ers can defend Java's speed more eloquently than I ever can, but I didn't want to let that little comment slide in a +5 Interesting.:P
From what I read of the article there was no talk of DRM so you could keep the music. Just depends on the format the music is in that you downloaded.
I wasn't worried about DRM so much as I was RIAA stormtroopers knocking down your door and bagging you for copyright infringment. I am concerned that if you stop paying, you lose legal protection. It's almost like a government-mandated Mafia.
The EFF write-up is pretty solid, and seemed to address all of the questions that came to me as I was reading it. However, I have a few problems with it, and this is only on the first pass:
1) In regards to getting artists on board, their solution for people who don't want to participate says to me: don't join, and don't get money while people take your music, and fellow artists get paid for your work. That's harsh. What if the artist has an issue with the collection agency?
2) The payment system: how is this any different than Napster's subscription? It's somehow less expensive (only 5 bucks, estimated), and has access to more songs (everything instead of 500,000 tracks)? How does that work? I understand that most of the costs of distribution will be absorbed by the fact that P2P puts the loads on peers, not a central server, but is this even realistic? I am skeptical.
The concept is simple: the music industry forms a collecting society, which then offers file-sharing music fans the opportunity to "get legit" in exchange for a reasonable regular payment, say $5 per month. So long as they pay, the fans are free to keep doing what they are going to do anyway...
3) Wait a minute...If you stop paying, do you lose the rights to the music you downloaded? I scanned the document twice, and please correct me if I missed something, but it seems you can only legally use your music if you're still paying out to the industry. That's my primary reason for disliking Napster 2.0, and it's enough to sink this idea, in my mind.
I love the EFF more than butterscotch and jellybeans, but this proposal gives me the creeps.
Does your example extend to the RIAA? Are they satisfying their customers better than the competition? It's one thing to say that anti-trust laws are solving a problem that doesn't yet exist, but that doesn't explain away price-fixing of CDs.
So does this mean the Slashdotters who claimed that ESR damaged the open source community via his letter to Sun will now retract their views? It seems we're closer to an open source Java as a result of his opening salvo (little gun-toting humor there) than we were before he wrote his letter.
It would seem so, but it's worth noting that being closer to open Java today doesn't necessarily mean that ESR's letter wasn't damaging to the Open Source community. Tne end doesn't always justify the means, especially when the means can hurt your reputation.
Since Napster has a subscription-based service in addition to selling individual songs for a fixed price, what does "5 million songs sold" mean? TFA is useless for this. Are they counting the songs that people download under the monthly-subscription model as songs? If so, it's not quite as impressive, no?
So if you obtain the source and compile it yourself, are you then required to purchase a license? Or are they saying that you can only legally use the binaries, and that compiling the source is not even supposed to happen?
Well, my first reaction to your "road" analogy is that roads aren't really something that you go out and buy. The same with TV signals, electricity, etc. Infrastructure is a bit different, imo.
If you want to use a road analogy, I say use a travel analogy. You can get from point A to point B in a variety of different ways: plane, train, bus, taxi, your own car, bicycle, walk, etc. Each has advantages and disadvantages, cost considerations and time constraints. The existance of multiple forms of travel makes it better for the consumer, because they compete with each other for passengers, so to speak.
I guess the problem with multiple "standards" is that newly shipped newbie-style Dell computers will have to make a stand on one of them, and that will cause incompatibility problems if the things are structured poorly. It's easy to pin blame, there. But we still have things like FireWire and USB. *shrug*
...but I really wish SOMEONE would do some "duplication and evolution;" maybe THAT would light a fire under some asses at google.
Now that you mention it, you've reminded me of something: I've been told that AlltheWeb has gotten pretty good these days, and my own experiences with it have been mostly positive. They are tied to Overture, but the results seem to be pretty good, and the home page is blissfully plain.
Google email is interesting, but I hope they stop there. If the Google front page starts looking like Yahoo!'s bloat-fest, they'll be losing one of the things that really gives them an edge over the competition. Clever searching algorithms can be duplicated.
But Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, dismisses the idea that Google is disadvantaged. "How long does it take to type your ZIP code, maybe five seconds?" he said in an interview this month, adding that Google would be quick to add personalization features if it felt that they would help users.
why do we need multiple standards that perform the same function?
Why do we need more than one OS? More than one web browser? Why do we need more than one video card manufacturer? They both do the same thing, right? If my rhetorical questions aren't enough answer, here it is: competition makes for good products, as companies are forced to compete for consumer dollars. This is obvious, though.
I don't have any mod points today, somebody make sure this AC gets noticed. Tort litigation is out of control. It should be the last contingency when a company will not be reasonable, not the first line of defense. Say no to greed.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you know the old saying about there being "no such thing as bad publicity". It's possible that SCO has had a negative impact on the Linux/open-source image, good luck trying to measure that one. But, I'd consider it more likely that the press coverage has served to make some people interested in it than normally would not have been before. Maybe that's just wishful thinking, but I think there's more than a gem of truth in it. Not all of the fallout from the FUD will be negative.
It's funny how the typos and bad grammar in the email lends credence to it. Looks like something I'd get from an exec at work! Well, minus the shady dealing with Microsoft, anyway. :P
Hmm... do you mean something like this? There is already a "The Courts" topic, is that not specific enough?
You're entitled to your opinion. Only problem is, your argument assumes that because AAC won't be in everyone's homes by next Tuesday, that it won't happen ever. That DVD player won't last, and neither will that memory stick. How many people do you know that still have a 64meg Diamond Rio? Hardware will need to be replaced eventually. The marginal cost of switching codecs you mentioned will accelerate this process. You'll see expanded support in all of the new gadgets you buy.
.WAV or .mp2? Welcome to the 21st century.
A few years from now, MP3 will have waning popularity. How much of your music collection is in
We have AAC/MP4, to name one, which is already superior to mp3 in quality, and ready-made for a DRM candy-coating. The only advantage mp3 really has at this point is penetration, and I'll wager that those days are numbered.
Not only that, but it looks like their justice system has a sense of humor: SCO can't sue any Linux users except their own customers. That's comedy gold, right there. ;)
Bioware did alright with the dual PC/XBOX release of KOTOR (Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic). Not only did it have the distinction of being one of the best Star Wars games around (not that they had a lot of competition), but they managed to strike a good balance. There was a push-button "do it for me" system with the console gamer in mind, and plenty of tweaking with the d20 system to satisfy to PC gamer.
;)
Cross your fingers?
Other
1) In regards to getting artists on board, their solution for people who don't want to participate says to me: don't join, and don't get money while people take your music, and fellow artists get paid for your work. That's harsh. What if the artist has an issue with the collection agency?
2) The payment system: how is this any different than Napster's subscription? It's somehow less expensive (only 5 bucks, estimated), and has access to more songs (everything instead of 500,000 tracks)? How does that work? I understand that most of the costs of distribution will be absorbed by the fact that P2P puts the loads on peers, not a central server, but is this even realistic? I am skeptical.
3) Wait a minute...If you stop paying, do you lose the rights to the music you downloaded? I scanned the document twice, and please correct me if I missed something, but it seems you can only legally use your music if you're still paying out to the industry. That's my primary reason for disliking Napster 2.0, and it's enough to sink this idea, in my mind.
I love the EFF more than butterscotch and jellybeans, but this proposal gives me the creeps.
I hope the accidental irony (correct usage? I forget) of your blanket statement isn't lost on you.
Does your example extend to the RIAA? Are they satisfying their customers better than the competition? It's one thing to say that anti-trust laws are solving a problem that doesn't yet exist, but that doesn't explain away price-fixing of CDs.
Since Napster has a subscription-based service in addition to selling individual songs for a fixed price, what does "5 million songs sold" mean? TFA is useless for this. Are they counting the songs that people download under the monthly-subscription model as songs? If so, it's not quite as impressive, no?
Well, my first reaction to your "road" analogy is that roads aren't really something that you go out and buy. The same with TV signals, electricity, etc. Infrastructure is a bit different, imo.
If you want to use a road analogy, I say use a travel analogy. You can get from point A to point B in a variety of different ways: plane, train, bus, taxi, your own car, bicycle, walk, etc. Each has advantages and disadvantages, cost considerations and time constraints. The existance of multiple forms of travel makes it better for the consumer, because they compete with each other for passengers, so to speak.
I guess the problem with multiple "standards" is that newly shipped newbie-style Dell computers will have to make a stand on one of them, and that will cause incompatibility problems if the things are structured poorly. It's easy to pin blame, there. But we still have things like FireWire and USB. *shrug*
Good call. I didn't think in terms of open vs. closed standards, it's clearly an important distinction.
I don't have any mod points today, somebody make sure this AC gets noticed. Tort litigation is out of control. It should be the last contingency when a company will not be reasonable, not the first line of defense. Say no to greed.
Good call. Looks like I need to go back to sleep. :D
Isn't Access a part of the Microsoft Office suite? I would think porting Office would involve porting over Access, as well.