First of all "obvious" is a relative term. What is obvious to me might not be obvious to you, and vice versa. It heaviely depends on knowledge and skill, what is obvious to uber-geeks is overy often not so obvious to other people. Therefore now law makers wouldn't ever use the term "obvious" and seek for better ways to handle those cases.
"Plenty of other industries get by being regulated by patents."
I would rather say, they *must* get by... but that's a personal opinion, as well as yours.
One thing we certainly won't disagree is the fact, that every patent grants rights to the patent-owner and is a *restriction* to anyone else.
My point of view is this: "Obviously";) patents restrict much more people/companies, than they are useful to. We both know, that it is very likley that a system collapses in itself, if there are too many restrictions.
In todays technology (and economy) there are that many ties/links between each other, that it is (almost) impossible to do anything, without using other technology (or without working together with other companies.) Software is the worst, regarding involvment of other software. There is no programm that doesn't use thousands of functions/algorithms developed by other people/companies. And worst of it, with further development the number of functions/algorithms involved steadily increases.
I for one wouldn't expect prosperity in the software industry, with that many restrictions...
"I thought the same thing, but several very intelligent posters pointed out that there *are* rights being violated. Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution states:
Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration."
Well, that's probably a tricky article...
Over here in Germany, we have basicaly the same article in our constitution. However, we have exceptions to that right... and they are there for good (and historical) reasons. One exception to the above freedoms is that they can't be used to spread nazi-propaganda. I might lack a proper english skill to express some more restrictions to these freedems accuratly, but I'll try... the above freedoms are not granted for anti-constitutional thoughts/speeches or contempt for human beeings.
Personally I am convinced that the above freedoms shall not be granted to those, that try to abuse these freedoms with the intention to destroy our constitution or to restrict human rights. After all, freedom wants to defend itself and freedom can't grant itself to those those that seek to destroy it!
Here in Germany one or the other site is shut down from time to time due to the mentioned exceptions after some month of lawsuits. (Whenever I made my own opinion about such sites, I would say, yes, they deserve beeing shut down.)
That beeing said, the tricky thing is to have an objective and fair judge over what endangers freedom or human rights.
I am fine with the fact, that there are not unlimited freedoms granted and I think it would be ok, if the Chines don't grant unlimited freedoms either in order to protect their constitution...... however the Chinese government abuses their right to restrict freedoms to protect the constitution and misuses it to protect the government itself!
You missed one point.. but that's likley because the US news about EU-Patents is not that detailed as the ones over here in Europe.
The point is, large software-companies are pro patents, whereas the vast maority of smaller software-companies oppose them.
That's why you are entirly wrong in your conclusion:
"... it's the software business that is calling for software patents to be granted in the EU.. they'd hardly be calling for something they thought was going to screw them..."
Would the conclusion software-patents will screw the smaller software-business more appropriate, now?
"Rather, the United States is simple becoming a follower of technology rather than a leader.... Americans are very happy living with their one or two generations old technology."
You might score your point here... but I think you didn't get it right, on the reason for that shift.
IMHO, the shift from beeing leader to beeing a follower is based on a crappy IP laws (... combined with a strong competition from other countries.)
The point is, a patent favours one single company and puts *every* other comnpany at a disadvantage. In general, one would expect, that protecting IP is in favour of development and prosperity, since noone can take away the R&D investment of a company. However, this protection can be overdone and suddenly eceonnomy will face the negative effects, that almost halts further R&D, when for the nation as a whole, there is more limitation than there is incentive for development from patents.
As long as every fart of an idea can be patented the effect will be a standstill in R&D and comnpanies start to protect themselfs against all sorts of patent-fees to other companies... that is, companies make sure for any of there "new" products that there are no hidden costs associated.
How do they do this?
One way would be, to build their products on old technology, where the according patents run out. That throws the industry back 20 years...
Another way is to patent every fart of an idea yourself and later on see, what products the campany can take on the market... this will throw the comnpany back a couple of years. It will throw you back as long as it takes to get a patent granted.
Another way is to go through a very lengthy process to validate any third party claims on you product. This probably throws industry back the time it takes to validate possible claims... the more complicated IP law is, the longer it takes. Right now, that probably takes a year, maybe some more...
Tell me, why any company should take its "cutting edge brand new product" onto the US market?
And if they don't want to release their product in the US at first, why should they develop in the US, far away from their market?
It is not about money... it is about making sure they can use the name forever.
Any company could release a product (not only software, it could be anything), call it firefox and register "firefox" as their trademark. After that they can sue mozilla-foundation for using their registered trademark.
It is not a good situation, if the name of a program has to change every this and then. For free software a decrese in userbase is almost for sure.
"... ZombieMeterSM tracks the number of new, completely unique zombies per hour, every hour... Throughout the month of May, CipherTrust researchers found an average of 172,009 new zombies identified each day."
hm... 172,029 * 30 = 5,160,870... five million new zombies per month.
or... 172,029 * 365 = 62,790,585... 62 million new Zombie PC's per year.
If I remember the total number of PC's in the world right, the chance for an average PC to become a zombie once in a year is ~1/4 or ~25%...
The big question is, how long is the "lifetime" of such a zombie until the user finaly cleans up his box?
I would guess Joe average won't realize that his box was taken over for quite a long time.
If we guess a zombie lives for about 30 days (thats Joe average realizes it *fast*), there are actually have ~5 million zombies around concurrently... feel free to adjust the "lifetime".
Re:Only going to work if it became standard
on
Advocating Dvorak
·
· Score: 1
" Bottom line is the last thing I need at work is to not be able to use anyone else's computer because I'm use to a non-standard keyboard layout...
I've been working in IT for a good number of years now... "
Can't you do your job remotely? This should work on any OS these days.
I for one, never touched anyone elses keyboard for years now.
In games the AI of non-player-characters (-objects) can profit a lot from threading.
But for common apps... I don't expect a big gain from multiple threads. I guess typical apps like browsers, word-processor and so one have a hard time utilizing more than 3-4 threads for the most common operations a user does.
"Imagine for a moment that you are a patent holder in the US. You put out a product that does well in the US. Now imagine another patent holder from the EU. His product does well in the EU. Assuming both do well in their respective markets, the US patent holder garners revenue for use of the patent long after the EU patent holder does. What are EU innovators to do?"
Well, given that... what will stop governments of different countries to fall in an "arms race" to attract innovators?
Maybe unlimited for a monopoly?
That certainly is not the right answer!
Certainly there are more things that matter to an "innovator" than just the time he can "protect" his inventions.
To give you an idea... I would not leave Europe and move to the US... the US has realy no good reputation, their politics are crap, their militarism is crap, their waste of energy is crap and you are not even save in that country (no, not terrorism is ment, but the insame crime rates un the US!)
What are EU innovators going to do?
They are going to consider some more arguments... and bet what, not everything that shines is gold, that's especially true regarding the USA if you ask me!
These two referendi where rare occasions, to slap our "representatives" right into their face.
The only thing is... there is rarly a referendum... ask your "representatives", they know very well, why they avoid them.
"Most of the "No" voters were depicted as far-right or far-left sympathizers, which is totally absurd."
Hehe, your right thats realy absurd... in France participation in the referendum was about 75% and ~66% voted No (if I recall the numbers halfway right.)... 0,75*0,66 ~ 50%... all in all half of France voters are either far-left or far-right sympathizers... that's so absurd, that it is funny again.
Anyway, I think it's been a long time, since France did see such a huge participation in any election... in almost every election non-voters are in a clear majority.
Yes, that's a serious idea, although I have to admitt, that it is a controversal one.
At least here in my country, that's what the majority of people do. (And I think that's what people do in my neighbour-countries.)... err, no I don't live somewhere close to nowhere, I am from Germany.
I think decreasing participation in every election all ofer in central Europe is a clear sign of what people feel about their "representatives". And there are some more indicators, that "representatives" lost touch with the ones the should represent.
I am not saying, that ignoring them this is a good idea or changes anything. I am just saying, that this is what people do.
What else could we do?... After some decades of activities, I am getting tired... I am getting tired of demonstrations. I am getting tired throwing eggs or tomatos onto them, when the publically speak. Really I am so tired of our "representatives", I can't tell you...
Sometime I think its realy the best to say "Fuck you!" and ignore them. At least this saves me a lot of negative emotions.;)
"we aren't to the point where we have to fear being killed for critizing our leadership or laws"
Realy? It raises some doubts and I remember quite some politcal murder in the US.... what about Martin Luther King, JFK and his brother... just too name what comes to my mind at first.
Besides the publically well known persons... having 30000-40000 deaths in the US due to firearms it shouldn't be too difficult to cloak the reasons for murder. And who knows what are the real resons, why someone got killed on the street or anywhere else?
If I, as an foreigner, think about what are the reasons to get murdered in the US and their chances, I would fear political/racist murder as much as getting murdered by terrorists.
I don't want to play down terrorism, it is a very serious thing... but the US is by far not as affected (directly) by terrorism as Israel or Iraq, and lots of other places in the world.
The point is, that probably no other country was ever hit that hard in a "single" terrorist attack than the US. This causes a lot of fear, of corse
I realy don't like to do such kind of math, but counting the deaths, a US citiizen has to fear many other things more than terrorism... I am sad to say this, but you probably have to fear political murder in your country as much as terrorism.
Anyway what are the reasons, the US is one of the top countries where peaple have fear getting killed. As someone traveling a lot, I can tell you that I do not feel save in the US, besides the fact, that I consider your country as a police state.
Your government (not only the current one, but also previous ones) are fighting the effects and not the reasons. It doesn't help much, you are always a step behind and things happen always at first. The Patriot Act perfectly fits this description. It is the tool to hunt criminals/terrorists, but at first they are there.
And what does the US to prevent terrorism (or crime in general) in the first place?
What is done agains the huge gap between the wealthy and the poor in your country. Doesn't that gap cause a lot of crime?
What is done against the ease to access weapons in the US? Doesn't this provide anyone with the tools to commit crime?
What done to improve foreign affairs? Where are dialogues and are there realy dialogues or is it just that the US are always trying to constrain their way?
And what about the contradiction in itself, that armed forces bring freedom and peace to other countries... they bring death and destruction in the first place, nothing else. And you know how often the reward is what you reap.
I know this will be completly offtopic, but I must tell a large audience this breaking news... (I have never heard of something similar before and I think this one is worth a slashdot storry of its own. Hopefully this news makes its way on top of slashdot.)
You probably aware that in Germany there will be elections for a new government in Speptember.
The political party "Bündnis 90/Die Grünen" now opened part of their election manifesto to the public... surprisingly as a Wiki for everyone to take part in the discussion and rewrite this part of their manifesto. "Bündnis 90/Die Grünen" are one party of the current German government, maybe you know the german foreign minister/Secretary of State
"Joshka Fisher", he's a member of this party.
The topic of the part modifyable is "Digital Society" and is exactly what the parties - better say the *public* position;) - position about what one would expect from the topic... right to access information on the net, privacy, software-patents, open-source, RFID, open source software and so on.
Everyone is invited to contribute to their manifesto (seriously, no joke!) and the *collective* opinion about this topic will be the basis for the members to decide about their final political manifesto.
Everything is in German, but you wouldn't expect a different language, right?
And here's a link to an interview in "Spiegel Online" , a well known german news-magazine. (Sorry, that I can't provide you a translation of the article.)
That's a pretty nice example/test balloon how democracy should/could look like in the 21st century!
I hope you realize the long term effect of blocking advertisements!
I think you missed one thing and did not take a look past the first obvious thing. Blocking ads does not only cut funds for content producers, it furthermore cuts revenue for advertising comnpanies.
That beeing said, the content is what people want and there will be one or the other way to make money with content. But people do not want advertisements. (People wouldn't mind advertisements in general, but there is a point where they are too intrusive and we feel annoyance.)
Realize it or not, paying for the content directly would overall be the cheaper solution, since we wouldn't have to pay the whole advertisment-producing crowd, too... and we pay for that crowed, whenever we buy products they advertise.
Now rethink the longterm-effect... do you realy want to pay for people that are scrupolous enough to use of every possible way even, the most intrusive and annoying ones, to transport their advertisements? Do you realy want to accept a system that works like the more intrusive advertisement is, the more money to make?
It does not realy matter, whom we hit with adblock, wheather they are content-producers that provide "their channel" or the advertising folks themselfs, we hit those people for good reason.
If publisher come to the conclusion, that the reason to produce content is not the content itself, but just means to generate a channel huge enough to transport advertisements (instead of soley transporting their content!) then they realy should realize that the content they produce is worthless crap.
Belive it or not, the simple thing is good content is worth its money And advertisements are an annoyance, wherever I spot them, they deserve nothing else than adblock until this advertising-biz finds its death!
I for one prefere to pay directly for content... not 5 cent for a page-view, but 2 for a larger "dossier"... and a whole lotta more free (to everyone, without registration) good quality content.
... well at least the formulae is not only inapropriate for FOSS...
I would guess that hardware in general "decays" much faster than software (licences).
numberOfComputersSold and numberOfAppsLicensesSold are disjunct and putting them into any correlation is renders all results false.
I for one replaced my computer 3 times in the last five years, but I did not "replace" my MS-Office 2000 licence. Even more I don't expect that I will replace it with Office 2006... (On the other hand I replaced my tax-software every year, but this is the only exception I am aware of, where software decays faster tan hardware.)
"they just build a legacy computer right from the scratch, without hardware support for TC
Sure, but there's no reason to."
There's a big reason... money!
"Absolutely anything you can do with a normal computer you can do with a new Trusted Enhanced computer."
Except sharing music and videos and games and running x-mas.exe gimmics... pretty much anything a typical consumer wants to do, without imediatly paying for each and every breath he takes!
Exactly thats, why any DRM or whatever you wanna call it will fail!. In reality, there are no *closed systems* and whatever theory is based on the asumption, that a closed system exists, is a theory, that is entirely wrong.
If anything happens, it is that companies trying to enforce TC will be trapped and isolated behind their own fences, that they have built.
I'll repeat again, the US is not the whole world! (Looks like that one is hard to understand for the self-centric personality.)
A billion chinese and almost billion indians do not want to and will not transfer zillions of $ right into the pockets of a few US companies, just because they hold their hands open.
This is a big market and major reason, to build legacy computers and not TC enabled computers. Not because they want to use illegal copies of windows and share music, but because espacialy these two countries have a rising software industry, and they *need* a flourishing software industry in their *own countries* !
They will never try to pay for certificates of their software. They build the software and if that software won't run on fscking computers made in USA, then they take a computer made in taiwan/honkong/whatever that just runs their software.
Capice?
Hell man, the chinese just released their own DVD standard, to come around licence-fees, they released their own sandards every this and then, to save licence fees... and more important, their market is big enough, to support their own standrads.
TC is just another billion $ development, that just vaporizes.
Slashdot Mirror
Clearly you are one without an asshole, that's why shit comes out of your mouth.
Take it with a smile
"Of course, I'm also against "obvious" patents."
... but that's a personal opinion, as well as yours.
;) patents restrict much more people/companies, than they are useful to. We both know, that it is very likley that a system collapses in itself, if there are too many restrictions.
...
But what exactly is an "obvious" patent?
First of all "obvious" is a relative term. What is obvious to me might not be obvious to you, and vice versa. It heaviely depends on knowledge and skill, what is obvious to uber-geeks is overy often not so obvious to other people.
Therefore now law makers wouldn't ever use the term "obvious" and seek for better ways to handle those cases.
"Plenty of other industries get by being regulated by patents."
I would rather say, they *must* get by
One thing we certainly won't disagree is the fact, that every patent grants rights to the patent-owner and is a *restriction* to anyone else.
My point of view is this:
"Obviously"
In todays technology (and economy) there are that many ties/links between each other, that it is (almost) impossible to do anything, without using other technology (or without working together with other companies.)
Software is the worst, regarding involvment of other software. There is no programm that doesn't use thousands of functions/algorithms developed by other people/companies. And worst of it, with further development the number of functions/algorithms involved steadily increases.
I for one wouldn't expect prosperity in the software industry, with that many restrictions
"I thought the same thing, but several very intelligent posters pointed out that there *are* rights being violated. Article 35 of the Chinese Constitution states:
...
... and they are there for good (and historical) reasons. One exception to the above freedoms is that they can't be used to spread nazi-propaganda. I might lack a proper english skill to express some more restrictions to these freedems accuratly, but I'll try ... the above freedoms are not granted for anti-constitutional thoughts/speeches or contempt for human beeings.
... ... however the Chinese government abuses their right to restrict freedoms to protect the constitution and misuses it to protect the government itself!
Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration."
Well, that's probably a tricky article
Over here in Germany, we have basicaly the same article in our constitution.
However, we have exceptions to that right
Personally I am convinced that the above freedoms shall not be granted to those, that try to abuse these freedoms with the intention to destroy our constitution or to restrict human rights. After all, freedom wants to defend itself and freedom can't grant itself to those those that seek to destroy it!
Here in Germany one or the other site is shut down from time to time due to the mentioned exceptions after some month of lawsuits. (Whenever I made my own opinion about such sites, I would say, yes, they deserve beeing shut down.)
That beeing said, the tricky thing is to have an objective and fair judge over what endangers freedom or human rights.
I am fine with the fact, that there are not unlimited freedoms granted and I think it would be ok, if the Chines don't grant unlimited freedoms either in order to protect their constitution
You missed one point
The point is, large software-companies are pro patents, whereas the vast maority of smaller software-companies oppose them.
That's why you are entirly wrong in your conclusion:
"... it's the software business that is calling for software patents to be granted in the EU.. they'd hardly be calling for something they thought was going to screw them
Would the conclusion software-patents will screw the smaller software-business more appropriate, now?
"Rather, the United States is simple becoming a follower of technology rather than a leader. ...
... but I think you didn't get it right, on the reason for that shift.
... that is, companies make sure for any of there "new" products that there are no hidden costs associated.
...
... this will throw the comnpany back a couple of years. It will throw you back as long as it takes to get a patent granted.
... the more complicated IP law is, the longer it takes. Right now, that probably takes a year, maybe some more ...
Americans are very happy living with their one or two generations old technology."
You might score your point here
IMHO, the shift from beeing leader to beeing a follower is based on a crappy IP laws (... combined with a strong competition from other countries.)
The point is, a patent favours one single company and puts *every* other comnpany at a disadvantage.
In general, one would expect, that protecting IP is in favour of development and prosperity, since noone can take away the R&D investment of a company. However, this protection can be overdone and suddenly eceonnomy will face the negative effects, that almost halts further R&D, when for the nation as a whole, there is more limitation than there is incentive for development from patents.
As long as every fart of an idea can be patented the effect will be a standstill in R&D and comnpanies start to protect themselfs against all sorts of patent-fees to other companies
How do they do this?
One way would be, to build their products on old technology, where the according patents run out. That throws the industry back 20 years
Another way is to patent every fart of an idea yourself and later on see, what products the campany can take on the market
Another way is to go through a very lengthy process to validate any third party claims on you product. This probably throws industry back the time it takes to validate possible claims
Tell me, why any company should take its "cutting edge brand new product" onto the US market?
And if they don't want to release their product in the US at first, why should they develop in the US, far away from their market?
So if they are now able to shut down C&C , what will the next round of innovation bring to malware?
Will next generation botnets probably use XOR metrics to receive their instructions, similar to serverless p2p nets?
I think that's just a pyrrhic victory
It is not about money
Any company could release a product (not only software, it could be anything), call it firefox and register "firefox" as their trademark. After that they can sue mozilla-foundation for using their registered trademark.
It is not a good situation, if the name of a program has to change every this and then. For free software a decrese in userbase is almost for sure.
So I was not too bad in my guess eith 30 days *gg*
From your fucking link
"... ZombieMeterSM tracks the number of new, completely unique zombies per hour, every hour
Throughout the month of May, CipherTrust researchers found an average of 172,009 new zombies identified each day."
172,009 *new, completely unique* zombies identified
hm
or
If I remember the total number of PC's in the world right, the chance for an average PC to become a zombie once in a year is ~1/4 or ~25%
The big question is, how long is the "lifetime" of such a zombie until the user finaly cleans up his box?
I would guess Joe average won't realize that his box was taken over for quite a long time.
If we guess a zombie lives for about 30 days (thats Joe average realizes it *fast*), there are actually have ~5 million zombies around concurrently
" Bottom line is the last thing I need at work is to not be able to use anyone else's computer because I'm use to a non-standard keyboard layout ...
...
I've been working in IT for a good number of years now
"
Can't you do your job remotely? This should work on any OS these days.
I for one, never touched anyone elses keyboard for years now.
In games the AI of non-player-characters (-objects) can profit a lot from threading.
But for common apps
"Imagine for a moment that you are a patent holder in the US. You put out a product that does well in the US. Now imagine another patent holder from the EU. His product does well in the EU. Assuming both do well in their respective markets, the US patent holder garners revenue for use of the patent long after the EU patent holder does. What are EU innovators to do?"
... what will stop governments of different countries to fall in an "arms race" to attract innovators?
... I would not leave Europe and move to the US ... the US has realy no good reputation, their politics are crap, their militarism is crap, their waste of energy is crap and you are not even save in that country (no, not terrorism is ment, but the insame crime rates un the US!)
... and bet what, not everything that shines is gold, that's especially true regarding the USA if you ask me!
Well, given that
Maybe unlimited for a monopoly?
That certainly is not the right answer!
Certainly there are more things that matter to an "innovator" than just the time he can "protect" his inventions.
To give you an idea
What are EU innovators going to do?
They are going to consider some more arguments
hm
These two referendi where rare occasions, to slap our "representatives" right into their face.
The only thing is
"Most of the "No" voters were depicted as far-right or far-left sympathizers, which is totally absurd."
Hehe, your right thats realy absurd
Anyway, I think it's been a long time, since France did see such a huge participation in any election
Ignore you representatives?
Yes, that's a serious idea, although I have to admitt, that it is a controversal one.
At least here in my country, that's what the majority of people do. (And I think that's what people do in my neighbour-countries.)
I think decreasing participation in every election all ofer in central Europe is a clear sign of what people feel about their "representatives". And there are some more indicators, that "representatives" lost touch with the ones the should represent.
I am not saying, that ignoring them this is a good idea or changes anything. I am just saying, that this is what people do.
What else could we do?
Sometime I think its realy the best to say "Fuck you!" and ignore them. At least this saves me a lot of negative emotions.
"we aren't to the point where we have to fear being killed for critizing our leadership or laws"
... what about Martin Luther King, JFK and his brother ... just too name what comes to my mind at first.
... having 30000-40000 deaths in the US due to firearms it shouldn't be too difficult to cloak the reasons for murder.
... but the US is by far not as affected (directly) by terrorism as Israel or Iraq, and lots of other places in the world.
...
... they bring death and destruction in the first place, nothing else.
Realy?
It raises some doubts and I remember quite some politcal murder in the US.
Besides the publically well known persons
And who knows what are the real resons, why someone got killed on the street or anywhere else?
If I, as an foreigner, think about what are the reasons to get murdered in the US and their chances, I would fear political/racist murder as much as getting murdered by terrorists.
I don't want to play down terrorism, it is a very serious thing
The point is, that probably no other country was ever hit that hard in a "single" terrorist attack than the US.
This causes a lot of fear, of corse
I realy don't like to do such kind of math, but counting the deaths, a US citiizen has to fear many other things more than terrorism
I am sad to say this, but you probably have to fear political murder in your country as much as terrorism.
Anyway what are the reasons, the US is one of the top countries where peaple have fear getting killed.
As someone traveling a lot, I can tell you that I do not feel save in the US, besides the fact, that I consider your country as a police state.
Your government (not only the current one, but also previous ones) are fighting the effects and not the reasons. It doesn't help much, you are always a step behind and things happen always at first.
The Patriot Act perfectly fits this description. It is the tool to hunt criminals/terrorists, but at first they are there.
And what does the US to prevent terrorism (or crime in general) in the first place?
What is done agains the huge gap between the wealthy and the poor in your country. Doesn't that gap cause a lot of crime?
What is done against the ease to access weapons in the US? Doesn't this provide anyone with the tools to commit crime?
What done to improve foreign affairs? Where are dialogues and are there realy dialogues or is it just that the US are always trying to constrain their way?
And what about the contradiction in itself, that armed forces bring freedom and peace to other countries
And you know how often the reward is what you reap.
I know this will be completly offtopic, but I must tell a large audience this breaking news
(I have never heard of something similar before and I think this one is worth a slashdot storry of its own. Hopefully this news makes its way on top of slashdot.)
You probably aware that in Germany there will be elections for a new government in Speptember.
The political party "Bündnis 90/Die Grünen" now opened part of their election manifesto to the public
"Bündnis 90/Die Grünen" are one party of the current German government, maybe you know the german foreign minister/Secretary of State
"Joshka Fisher", he's a member of this party.
The topic of the part modifyable is "Digital Society" and is exactly what the parties - better say the *public* position
Everyone is invited to contribute to their manifesto (seriously, no joke!) and the *collective* opinion about this topic will be the basis for the members to decide about their final political manifesto.
The URL of the page is:
http://www.gruene-service.de/wiki/index.php?title
Everything is in German, but you wouldn't expect a different language, right?
And here's a link to an interview in "Spiegel Online" , a well known german news-magazine. (Sorry, that I can't provide you a translation of the article.)
That's a pretty nice example/test balloon how democracy should/could look like in the 21st century!
I hope you realize the long term effect of blocking advertisements!
I think you missed one thing and did not take a look past the first obvious thing. Blocking ads does not only cut funds for content producers, it furthermore cuts revenue for advertising comnpanies.
That beeing said, the content is what people want and there will be one or the other way to make money with content. But people do not want advertisements. (People wouldn't mind advertisements in general, but there is a point where they are too intrusive and we feel annoyance.)
Realize it or not, paying for the content directly would overall be the cheaper solution, since we wouldn't have to pay the whole advertisment-producing crowd, too
Now rethink the longterm-effect
It does not realy matter, whom we hit with adblock, wheather they are content-producers that provide "their channel" or the advertising folks themselfs, we hit those people for good reason.
If publisher come to the conclusion, that the reason to produce content is not the content itself, but just means to generate a channel huge enough to transport advertisements (instead of soley transporting their content!) then they realy should realize that the content they produce is worthless crap.
Belive it or not, the simple thing is good content is worth its money
And advertisements are an annoyance, wherever I spot them, they deserve nothing else than adblock until this advertising-biz finds its death!
I for one prefere to pay directly for content
mhh
The nice thing about RSS-feeds is
What Excel do you use?
!?
I would guess that hardware in general "decays" much faster than software (licences).
numberOfComputersSold and numberOfAppsLicensesSold are disjunct and putting them into any correlation is renders all results false.
I for one replaced my computer 3 times in the last five years, but I did not "replace" my MS-Office 2000 licence. Even more I don't expect that I will replace it with Office 2006
(On the other hand I replaced my tax-software every year, but this is the only exception I am aware of, where software decays faster tan hardware.)
The BSA realy should revisit their math
mhhh
software piracy will decrease with FOSS expanding
"they just build a legacy computer right from the scratch, without hardware support for TC
... money!
... pretty much anything a typical consumer wants to do, without imediatly paying for each and every breath he takes!
... and more important, their market is big enough, to support their own standrads.
Sure, but there's no reason to."
There's a big reason
"Absolutely anything you can do with a normal computer you can do with a new Trusted Enhanced computer."
Except sharing music and videos and games and running x-mas.exe gimmics
Exactly thats, why any DRM or whatever you wanna call it will fail!. In reality, there are no *closed systems* and whatever theory is based on the asumption, that a closed system exists, is a theory, that is entirely wrong.
If anything happens, it is that companies trying to enforce TC will be trapped and isolated behind their own fences, that they have built.
I'll repeat again, the US is not the whole world! (Looks like that one is hard to understand for the self-centric personality.)
A billion chinese and almost billion indians do not want to and will not transfer zillions of $ right into the pockets of a few US companies, just because they hold their hands open.
This is a big market and major reason, to build legacy computers and not TC enabled computers.
Not because they want to use illegal copies of windows and share music, but because espacialy these two countries have a rising software industry, and they *need* a flourishing software industry in their *own countries* !
They will never try to pay for certificates of their software. They build the software and if that software won't run on fscking computers made in USA, then they take a computer made in taiwan/honkong/whatever that just runs their software.
Capice?
Hell man, the chinese just released their own DVD standard, to come around licence-fees, they released their own sandards every this and then, to save licence fees
TC is just another billion $ development, that just vaporizes.