You may be right to some extent. Microsoft as a company do damage to the industry as a whole in several ways. But that is the result of their monopoly status and business practices rather than their technology and assets. If we are to be efficient about things, then we should not target their assets and technology as a means of getting at these things, but target them directly. A nuclear strike is misguided. Disbandment and fines would be the correct approach. That way the makers of Excel can be correctly rewarded by the market, whilst the project managers for FrontPage will likely be torn limb from limb. Fighting inefficiency with inefficiency is like fighting fire with fire - flaming useless.;)
That's a variant on the broken window fallacy. The idea that breaking somebody's windows is a good thing because it creates work for the glazier, the police, etc. It only works from an internal viewpoint that is based on the relative distribution of wealth. Taking a broad overview of society as a whole, it's pretty plain to see that the total wealth has gone down. It's the same sort of protectionism as farm subsidies. It may keep people in work but its at the cost of having an inefficient, bloated economy. Far better than to create jobs through needless destruction and inefficiency, is to create jobs by aiming higher and achieving more as a society.
This has nothing to do with resources or having sufficient desire to act. RBN possibly hasn't broken the law in Russia, therefore neither the Russian government nor any other country has the right to punish them for what they are doing.
I am not a country, nor do I define my rights in terms of what any country says is legal or not. My life is negatively impacted by the quantity of spam I get, both directly, and because it impedes other people I know or work with as well. I have every right to respond to defend myself. Sadly, I barely know how to strike back at an organisation like this. I can run a few exploits and such, but I don't know what's new, what's patched, more than the rudiments of concealing my activities. But were I able to do these things, I think I would be justified in hitting back and any l33t hacker out there that is able to hit back at this business would be a hero in many circles, whether that's exposing who is behind such things and releasing customer data (particularly anyone based in the West where we can respond) or merely shutting them down for a while.
I get disturbed when I hear people defining right or wrong in terms of what a country says is legal.
Amen! I'm over in the UK and I'm just waiting for Amazon or Yahoo or someone to start selling me quality downloads. I'll spend £40.00 on the service the first night it goes live, I have no doubt. I've bought a few albums from 7digital.com but a good portion of their stuff is still in WMA and they're also more set up as an online music service than a store for streaming your music wherever you are. (Everything you buy sits in an online basket that you can never get rid of and for Linux there's no convenient way of downloading your music except clicking on slow file downloads - takes fifteen minutes of clicking to get your files).
I can't wait until services are actually selling me this stuff properly.
The copyright law in Iraq was something that was pushed through the Iraqi parliament when it was still a bunch of imported dependents on US firepower. Couldn't find a link to that itself, but the law was drafted by the US and handed over for rubber stamping. They even had the RIAA go over it to check they approved. We'll see how long it lasts, though the Iraqi's have more important things to worry about right now.
Yes - that could be done. And I believe that many people in Microsoft would find it within their personal ethics to do such a thing. But it would be a criminal act and a serious one. It would remain as a risk forevermore. If it came out, if someone leaked it or there was sufficient suspicion on the part of others to start investigating, the people responsible would be in very deep trouble. I don't think the people in a position to do this are quite that stupid or reckless or willing to risk consequences at such a very personal level.
Maybe that's why they paid up to Eolus, so that it had a grounding to go after their competitors who might be less able to stand up to it. I believe that Microsoft were originally keen to fight and then they paid up? And as I recall, the Eolas patent was something pretty stupid.
I guess it's like... if you're a wizard with 1-hp and you're surrounded by goblins with 5hp, it makes sense to drop a fireball that does 6 hp damage on all of you. Yes - you get hurt, but your situation has still improved.
Because of this, Debian is the most likely to be hurt, because once Microsoft releases the details, Debian can't just let their non-free software slide until a proper alternative can be found; they'll have to pull the software.
And this comment is exactly what Microsoft wish to achieve by making cryptic threats about their patents. I'm not blaming you (the poster) for posting this. I'm just observing that this is a classic example of FUD in action. "Debian is most likely to be hurt so play safe with someone who's signed the pact with Microsoft."
I don't know that a distribution that hasn't signed a deal with Microsoft isn't more at risk. Very possibly the patents are trivial or unsupportable else Microsoft might well have acted sooner before Linux became such a massive threat to them. Or maybe Microsoft hoped to let Linux become something profitable and then try to take it over through their proxy Novell. So I don't know if being cautious and siding with a non-pact signing distribution will gain you any benefit or not, but I do know that caution is not without price. Accepting the Microsoft FUD has a demonstrable negative effect on the free software community and Linux specifically. When forced to choose between a possible negative (which at worst is changing distributions) and a proven negative, I am inclined to the former. Especially when I perceive the likelihood of Microsoft successfully hamstringing Debian to be low in the first place and even more especially when I feel that an organisation is trying to make me act a certain way through threats.
I also know that Europe has preserved its own, more rational, patent law despite immense pressure from US corporations (who would benefit vastly more than European ones from such a shift). The international nature of Linux would be a headache for Microsoft in a number of ways.
If the patents are trivial (and if they exist), then Microsoft's only real use of them is to spread FUD as you have illustrated. Ultimately that will evaporate and Microsoft will look the worse for having tried it. If (and it's a very big 'if' let's keep in mind) there are some serious patents in there, then I would have thought there is reasonable grounds for counter-suing Microsoft for deliberately concealing such information whilst allowing a business built on infringement to develop for the purpose of cashing in later on.
If (if, if, if) Microsoft try to sue Linux distributions for patent infringement in the US, I expect the legal process to take some time. And I do know that engineers always move faster than lawyers. If there's a way round the patents (if they exist, and if they're non-trivial), then we'll be finished implementing it by the time the injunction comes down.
It's a plausible scenario. There's no reason to think any tactic would be beneath Microsoft as a corporation. Though personally, my real disgust is reserved for Novell who are happy to collect the thirty pieces of silver they believe will take the form of being THE Linux Distro left standing when Microsoft has laid waste to the rest. That Novell would retain any status other than Microsoft's slave is a degree of naivety only beaten by the belief that Microsoft will smash the opposition. An assault on Linux wont be pretty. But it will fail. Genie. Bottle. Out of.
Fascinating. I've not come across that level of (sociological) sophistication in a game before, though the CIV and SIM games do in a way, I suppose. Sounds worth looking out for. Cheers.
The difference is that games have an end, whilst short of global catastrophe, real life does not. If a group is successful to the point of eliminating all other groups, it will soon turn on itself because the values that brought it to that stage demand it. If, for example any particular human group you choose such as Christians, blacks, whites, whatever, successfully elimated all other groups on the planet, you'd soon see it split into new, struggling factions. Because objectively, there aren't any differences between these groups significant to prevent working together. The differences are superficial or self-imposed. So there's no reason to suppose that new differences wont be found to justify another round of global supremacy. Co-operation and peace breaks the cycle. Winning never does.
Here's a simple argument that her punishment was unjust - because it is being used as a stick to scare to the rest of society rather than an as an actual punishment, and is therefore out of proportion. How do we know that it is being used to scare society rather than as a fair punishment? Because millions of people do exactly the same as them and if everyone were prosecuted to such a degree, US civilisation would go bankrupt en masse. The penalty is inherently selective in targeting only example cases, because any consistent application of it would devastate the country. Punishments designed to scare people are not in proportion to the crime, because that is not their purpose. The interest is in creating the very greatest degree of punishment that is achievable.
I believe that not buying DRMed video will have a similar effect
I don't know if it definitely will, but it's a strong chance. At this point, we're still in the haggling phase of the HD market. They're making offers and seeing if we'll accept. If we hold out a little, the price will come down. After all, there's a huge momentum behind the HD formats, display technologies, etc. It's not as if the manufacturers are going to say "people wont meet our prices, lets stop making these TVs, DVDs, etc". In this case, "price" also includes things like DRM infestation.
It's also worth pointing out that we're not simply refusing to participate in the market as suggested, we're buying a competing product which is regular DVDs. Unlike things like iTunes which genuinely were new (excepting renegades like Magnatune.com), HDs are being sold in an established market. Market forces FTW.:)
(And by the way, thanks for agreeing with me - you are clearly an individual of intelligence and foresight;)
The principle is general: a sequence of real, small, repeated rewards starting right now have much more effective impact than a theoretical, large reward that may occur long in the future.
I agree with what you're saying, but purchasing DRM infected media is rewarding something getting worse, not better. As I understand what you're saying it is:
1. You can't expect everything good to happen all at once.
2. Therefore you accept something that is not perfect but is a step toward it.
Fine. Except that we have something good right now (non-DRM media) and any acceptance of DRM media is not a step toward improvement but a step toward us having less freedom. You could only use your two-step logic above to support high definition DVDs if you thought the marginal improvement in quality outweighed the negative of DRM. For me, it certainly doesn't as I can't play the fucking things. (At least without time, effort, 30GB of hard drive space and the possible breaking of admittedly dubious laws).
If you're simply arguing an abstract, that incremental positive changes are more likely to get you to the ideal state than waiting for a single huge leap, then I agree with you that this is often the case. But if, as I think, you are trying to apply that to DRM-infested DVDs then it falls down because the incremental changes in this case are not positive, but negative. And therefore steps toward a less ideal state. I'm fairly free-market in my thinking and HD DVDs have to compete in the same market as regular DVDs. And they lose because they're an inferior product to me. They're only not an inferior product if you're one of the few people round here who would set the perceptible, but small, increase in quality as outweighing the DRM... and even then it would still beg the question of whether the customer resented having to accept the latter just to get the former when there's no necessity for both.
If you post that the quality is more important to you than the DRM and that you are willing to accept the reduction of freedom in return for it, then you're argument is correct for you. But it most definitely is not correct for many others.
I should also mention, as I've focused entirely on the DRM, that the cost of the new discs is through the roof when I picked up League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for £2.99 last month, but the HD version is on sale for over £24.00 in HMV. Player costs are also high. I'm waiting for falls in both costs and more prevalent solutions to the DRM issue before I start moving to HD movies.
Well it's possible that you're right, but I don't think it's a good comparison and I can explain very clearly why. You are putting this in terms of an improvement to what is currently available and thus a step toward our ideal state (with your argument being that the intermediary step is sadly necessary due to business interests or caution). But whilst the quality of HD to regular is verifiably better, on my terms, the movement of the system overall has been away from quality. The acceptance of DRM crippled media is a negative far, far in excess of the improvements. Unlike iTunes, this is not a new service (and the principle behind iTunes is radically different enough to what had previously existed to justify the term "new service" whereas standard to HD is not). And because it is not a new service we already have an existing market with which it must compete. Shifting to the new DRM standards is not showing the vendors I'm taking an incremental step toward what I want, but taking a very large step to what I don't.
It's not folks holding out for perfection who drive market changes. It's the folks who pick the best (or least worst) option out of the existing market.
What you say is true. But as pointed out, unlike new services such as iTunes (which I used frequently until they finally succeeded in breaking the Linux client), the least worst option of the existing market remains the standard, non-HD media. That may not be true for everyone (or yourself), but its certainly true for me. And quite frankly, though HD quality is nice and I like it, I've been very happy with watching things on regular DVD. If they want me to adopt HD, they ditch the DRM. Then it will be progress.
If that's the case and remains the case, then good - all is forgiven. I would like to be out of date in my opinion and ohnoitsroland to become a friendly jibe. If his nefarious practices have stopped then so will my complaining, don't worry.
Well I'm doing the same as the GP because DRM infested discs are not useful to me. Why would I buy them? I want to play my films on my computer and projector. If I can't do what I want with them, I'm not going to pay.
I guess it's just because he keeps summerising articles, adding nothing, introducing errors or misunderstandings, all for the purpose of interposing his ads and site-stat boosting in between us and the original article. ohnoitsroland is my favourite tag ever and I consider it a service to us all if someone can get a link to the original article in quickly near the top of the comments.
What did you verify? That your keyboard's R key needs cleaning? Or is it just language change?:-)
Well, either the OP was suggesting that virtuousness is not a word when it is, in which case (s)he's a numbskull, or else I was being criticised for missing an r out of the word in a simple typo, in which case the OP is a Super Numbskull. I was being generous and assuming the least degree of numb skull.
And yes, my 'R' key is suffering erratic failures you insensitive clod (I'm copying and pasting the character from elsewhere on the screen;) due to excessive usage in last week's Talk Like A Pirate Day. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!;)
Slashdot Mirror
I have tourettes, you fucking insensitive cunt!!!!
You may be right to some extent. Microsoft as a company do damage to the industry as a whole in several ways. But that is the result of their monopoly status and business practices rather than their technology and assets. If we are to be efficient about things, then we should not target their assets and technology as a means of getting at these things, but target them directly. A nuclear strike is misguided. Disbandment and fines would be the correct approach. That way the makers of Excel can be correctly rewarded by the market, whilst the project managers for FrontPage will likely be torn limb from limb. Fighting inefficiency with inefficiency is like fighting fire with fire - flaming useless.
Regards,
-H.
That's a variant on the broken window fallacy. The idea that breaking somebody's windows is a good thing because it creates work for the glazier, the police, etc. It only works from an internal viewpoint that is based on the relative distribution of wealth. Taking a broad overview of society as a whole, it's pretty plain to see that the total wealth has gone down. It's the same sort of protectionism as farm subsidies. It may keep people in work but its at the cost of having an inefficient, bloated economy. Far better than to create jobs through needless destruction and inefficiency, is to create jobs by aiming higher and achieving more as a society.
I am not a country, nor do I define my rights in terms of what any country says is legal or not. My life is negatively impacted by the quantity of spam I get, both directly, and because it impedes other people I know or work with as well. I have every right to respond to defend myself. Sadly, I barely know how to strike back at an organisation like this. I can run a few exploits and such, but I don't know what's new, what's patched, more than the rudiments of concealing my activities. But were I able to do these things, I think I would be justified in hitting back and any l33t hacker out there that is able to hit back at this business would be a hero in many circles, whether that's exposing who is behind such things and releasing customer data (particularly anyone based in the West where we can respond) or merely shutting them down for a while.
I get disturbed when I hear people defining right or wrong in terms of what a country says is legal.
Wont somebody please think of the children.
So who's going to be the first poster this time to say that it's okay, because the Chinese like censorship and are happy about it?
That seems to be the usual slashdot comment.
Amen! I'm over in the UK and I'm just waiting for Amazon or Yahoo or someone to start selling me quality downloads. I'll spend £40.00 on the service the first night it goes live, I have no doubt. I've bought a few albums from 7digital.com but a good portion of their stuff is still in WMA and they're also more set up as an online music service than a store for streaming your music wherever you are. (Everything you buy sits in an online basket that you can never get rid of and for Linux there's no convenient way of downloading your music except clicking on slow file downloads - takes fifteen minutes of clicking to get your files).
I can't wait until services are actually selling me this stuff properly.
The copyright law in Iraq was something that was pushed through the Iraqi parliament when it was still a bunch of imported dependents on US firepower. Couldn't find a link to that itself, but the law was drafted by the US and handed over for rubber stamping. They even had the RIAA go over it to check they approved. We'll see how long it lasts, though the Iraqi's have more important things to worry about right now.
Yes - that could be done. And I believe that many people in Microsoft would find it within their personal ethics to do such a thing. But it would be a criminal act and a serious one. It would remain as a risk forevermore. If it came out, if someone leaked it or there was sufficient suspicion on the part of others to start investigating, the people responsible would be in very deep trouble. I don't think the people in a position to do this are quite that stupid or reckless or willing to risk consequences at such a very personal level.
But yes, it could be done.
Maybe that's why they paid up to Eolus, so that it had a grounding to go after their competitors who might be less able to stand up to it. I believe that Microsoft were originally keen to fight and then they paid up? And as I recall, the Eolas patent was something pretty stupid.
I guess it's like... if you're a wizard with 1-hp and you're surrounded by goblins with 5hp, it makes sense to drop a fireball that does 6 hp damage on all of you. Yes - you get hurt, but your situation has still improved.
And this comment is exactly what Microsoft wish to achieve by making cryptic threats about their patents. I'm not blaming you (the poster) for posting this. I'm just observing that this is a classic example of FUD in action. "Debian is most likely to be hurt so play safe with someone who's signed the pact with Microsoft."
I don't know that a distribution that hasn't signed a deal with Microsoft isn't more at risk. Very possibly the patents are trivial or unsupportable else Microsoft might well have acted sooner before Linux became such a massive threat to them. Or maybe Microsoft hoped to let Linux become something profitable and then try to take it over through their proxy Novell. So I don't know if being cautious and siding with a non-pact signing distribution will gain you any benefit or not, but I do know that caution is not without price. Accepting the Microsoft FUD has a demonstrable negative effect on the free software community and Linux specifically. When forced to choose between a possible negative (which at worst is changing distributions) and a proven negative, I am inclined to the former. Especially when I perceive the likelihood of Microsoft successfully hamstringing Debian to be low in the first place and even more especially when I feel that an organisation is trying to make me act a certain way through threats.
I also know that Europe has preserved its own, more rational, patent law despite immense pressure from US corporations (who would benefit vastly more than European ones from such a shift). The international nature of Linux would be a headache for Microsoft in a number of ways.
If the patents are trivial (and if they exist), then Microsoft's only real use of them is to spread FUD as you have illustrated. Ultimately that will evaporate and Microsoft will look the worse for having tried it. If (and it's a very big 'if' let's keep in mind) there are some serious patents in there, then I would have thought there is reasonable grounds for counter-suing Microsoft for deliberately concealing such information whilst allowing a business built on infringement to develop for the purpose of cashing in later on.
If (if, if, if) Microsoft try to sue Linux distributions for patent infringement in the US, I expect the legal process to take some time. And I do know that engineers always move faster than lawyers. If there's a way round the patents (if they exist, and if they're non-trivial), then we'll be finished implementing it by the time the injunction comes down.
It's a plausible scenario. There's no reason to think any tactic would be beneath Microsoft as a corporation. Though personally, my real disgust is reserved for Novell who are happy to collect the thirty pieces of silver they believe will take the form of being THE Linux Distro left standing when Microsoft has laid waste to the rest. That Novell would retain any status other than Microsoft's slave is a degree of naivety only beaten by the belief that Microsoft will smash the opposition. An assault on Linux wont be pretty. But it will fail. Genie. Bottle. Out of.
Fascinating. I've not come across that level of (sociological) sophistication in a game before, though the CIV and SIM games do in a way, I suppose. Sounds worth looking out for. Cheers.
The difference is that games have an end, whilst short of global catastrophe, real life does not. If a group is successful to the point of eliminating all other groups, it will soon turn on itself because the values that brought it to that stage demand it. If, for example any particular human group you choose such as Christians, blacks, whites, whatever, successfully elimated all other groups on the planet, you'd soon see it split into new, struggling factions. Because objectively, there aren't any differences between these groups significant to prevent working together. The differences are superficial or self-imposed. So there's no reason to suppose that new differences wont be found to justify another round of global supremacy. Co-operation and peace breaks the cycle. Winning never does.
Here's a simple argument that her punishment was unjust - because it is being used as a stick to scare to the rest of society rather than an as an actual punishment, and is therefore out of proportion. How do we know that it is being used to scare society rather than as a fair punishment? Because millions of people do exactly the same as them and if everyone were prosecuted to such a degree, US civilisation would go bankrupt en masse. The penalty is inherently selective in targeting only example cases, because any consistent application of it would devastate the country. Punishments designed to scare people are not in proportion to the crime, because that is not their purpose. The interest is in creating the very greatest degree of punishment that is achievable.
'Cause I'm posting from Japan!
I don't know if it definitely will, but it's a strong chance. At this point, we're still in the haggling phase of the HD market. They're making offers and seeing if we'll accept. If we hold out a little, the price will come down. After all, there's a huge momentum behind the HD formats, display technologies, etc. It's not as if the manufacturers are going to say "people wont meet our prices, lets stop making these TVs, DVDs, etc". In this case, "price" also includes things like DRM infestation.
It's also worth pointing out that we're not simply refusing to participate in the market as suggested, we're buying a competing product which is regular DVDs. Unlike things like iTunes which genuinely were new (excepting renegades like Magnatune.com), HDs are being sold in an established market. Market forces FTW.
(And by the way, thanks for agreeing with me - you are clearly an individual of intelligence and foresight
-H.
I agree with what you're saying, but purchasing DRM infected media is rewarding something getting worse, not better. As I understand what you're saying it is: 1. You can't expect everything good to happen all at once. 2. Therefore you accept something that is not perfect but is a step toward it. Fine. Except that we have something good right now (non-DRM media) and any acceptance of DRM media is not a step toward improvement but a step toward us having less freedom. You could only use your two-step logic above to support high definition DVDs if you thought the marginal improvement in quality outweighed the negative of DRM. For me, it certainly doesn't as I can't play the fucking things. (At least without time, effort, 30GB of hard drive space and the possible breaking of admittedly dubious laws). If you're simply arguing an abstract, that incremental positive changes are more likely to get you to the ideal state than waiting for a single huge leap, then I agree with you that this is often the case. But if, as I think, you are trying to apply that to DRM-infested DVDs then it falls down because the incremental changes in this case are not positive, but negative. And therefore steps toward a less ideal state. I'm fairly free-market in my thinking and HD DVDs have to compete in the same market as regular DVDs. And they lose because they're an inferior product to me. They're only not an inferior product if you're one of the few people round here who would set the perceptible, but small, increase in quality as outweighing the DRM... and even then it would still beg the question of whether the customer resented having to accept the latter just to get the former when there's no necessity for both.
If you post that the quality is more important to you than the DRM and that you are willing to accept the reduction of freedom in return for it, then you're argument is correct for you. But it most definitely is not correct for many others.
I should also mention, as I've focused entirely on the DRM, that the cost of the new discs is through the roof when I picked up League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for £2.99 last month, but the HD version is on sale for over £24.00 in HMV. Player costs are also high. I'm waiting for falls in both costs and more prevalent solutions to the DRM issue before I start moving to HD movies.
Perhaps, but my friend has breasts.
Well it's possible that you're right, but I don't think it's a good comparison and I can explain very clearly why. You are putting this in terms of an improvement to what is currently available and thus a step toward our ideal state (with your argument being that the intermediary step is sadly necessary due to business interests or caution). But whilst the quality of HD to regular is verifiably better, on my terms, the movement of the system overall has been away from quality. The acceptance of DRM crippled media is a negative far, far in excess of the improvements. Unlike iTunes, this is not a new service (and the principle behind iTunes is radically different enough to what had previously existed to justify the term "new service" whereas standard to HD is not). And because it is not a new service we already have an existing market with which it must compete. Shifting to the new DRM standards is not showing the vendors I'm taking an incremental step toward what I want, but taking a very large step to what I don't. What you say is true. But as pointed out, unlike new services such as iTunes (which I used frequently until they finally succeeded in breaking the Linux client), the least worst option of the existing market remains the standard, non-HD media. That may not be true for everyone (or yourself), but its certainly true for me. And quite frankly, though HD quality is nice and I like it, I've been very happy with watching things on regular DVD. If they want me to adopt HD, they ditch the DRM. Then it will be progress.
If that's the case and remains the case, then good - all is forgiven. I would like to be out of date in my opinion and ohnoitsroland to become a friendly jibe. If his nefarious practices have stopped then so will my complaining, don't worry.
My friend had a sex change operation.
Well I'm doing the same as the GP because DRM infested discs are not useful to me. Why would I buy them? I want to play my films on my computer and projector. If I can't do what I want with them, I'm not going to pay.
I guess it's just because he keeps summerising articles, adding nothing, introducing errors or misunderstandings, all for the purpose of interposing his ads and site-stat boosting in between us and the original article. ohnoitsroland is my favourite tag ever and I consider it a service to us all if someone can get a link to the original article in quickly near the top of the comments.
Well, either the OP was suggesting that virtuousness is not a word when it is, in which case (s)he's a numbskull, or else I was being criticised for missing an r out of the word in a simple typo, in which case the OP is a Super Numbskull. I was being generous and assuming the least degree of numb skull.
And yes, my 'R' key is suffering erratic failures you insensitive clod (I'm copying and pasting the character from elsewhere on the screen
(Nice linked post, btw).
-H.