There never was an original intent to "intellectual property" as you think it does because it doesn't exist in the US. Instead, we have patents, copyrights, and trademarks, three different sets of laws with three different purposes.
I agree that the term is misused, but I disagree that the concept "doesn't exist in the US." It's been in the United States Code since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 added 47 USC 230.
The music was actually a recording from so long ago it was expired even in the US - recorded 1914
For this one, they might actually have a case. Copyright in sound recordings first published before 1972 is under state law, not federal law. U.S. copyright law does not supersede state copyright in sound recordings until 2067.
in most of the western world that you can build a gaming PC for less then a console.
A PC capable of PS3-level settings including a Windows license for less than a PS3, and a PC capable of PS4-level settings including a Windows license for less than a PS4? I'd like to see those builds.
Probably 60 or 70 other things I'm forgetting as well.
Are you seriously suggesting that Joe Clueless could install and setup Windows? From a Windows retail disk?
Don't need to; that's done for you when you buy a mass-market PC or when you hire a local shop to repair it. True, this difference is ultimately due to a non-technical advantage of Windows related to its overlapping compatibility with the DOS included with most IBM PC 5150 computers and to Microsoft's marketing muscle, but non-technical advantages are still advantages.
Finding all the drivers he needs to update and installing them?
The difference is that for mass-market PCs, Windows drivers are virtually guaranteed to exist. They can be found with enough effort. Some components and peripherals have no acceptable GNU/Linux driver. Vanilla GNU/Linux on a random PC might be limited to VESA (software) graphics, no networking, no Bluetooth, high power use, and/or no suspend.
If i can use all my Windows programs without having to use some convoluted whatever so i can run them sure i will switch.
I run Xubuntu on my laptop. Installing the package "Wine" in Ubuntu Software Center was enough to let me run the few Windows desktop applications that I do use semi-regularly (FamiTracker, ModPlug, FCEUX debugging version, and NO$SNS debugging version).
Gold?silver?Bronze? lol
What's this supposed to mean? Are these AppDB compatibility labels, with the implication that your particular business-critical applications do not work for you in Wine?
blu ray is a great reason to include a modern optical drive.
Are there any licensed BD video player apps for X11/Linux yet? I say "licensed" because comments to an answer recommending VLC mention the "Host certificate revoked" error message.
Never buy a PC that doesn't have full hardware Linux ever support again.
I'm interested. What brand of 10" laptop is good for running Xfce now that netbooks have been replaced with detachables? Or should people expect to use an Android tablet with GNURoot and XSDL if they want Linux on a 10" laptop?
So buy hardware which is known to be compatible with linux
If you're the kind of person who likes to look at the screen and touch the keyboard of a laptop or detachable tablet before you buy it, good luck getting assurance from the sales associate that the hardware is compatible with Linux. The last time I checked, System76 and other PC makers that specialize in GNU/Linux were mail-order-only and did not carry detachable tablets.
New web-based applications run on Linux just fine.
Not on a laptop whose Wi-Fi radio can reach no access points other than WPA2 protected ones whose administrator is unwilling to disclose the pre-shared key to the laptop's user. And not on a laptop being used by the passenger of a vehicle moving too quickly to complete association and captive portal authentication before the vehicle goes out of range. Or have "cloud" applications overwhelmingly adopted "offline first" design already?
So now instead of just having to worry about bugs in Firefox's HTML rendering engine and, say, Evince (or whatever other PDF viewer you use to open saved PDFs) you now also have to worry about bugs in Firefox's PDF rendering code.
Because Firefox's PDF rendering code is in JavaScript, a memory-safe language, entire classes of bugs that might affect a standalone PDF reader like Evince or Adobe or Foxit or Sumatra are not possible. For example, JavaScript arrays are always bounds checked, meaning there's no such thing as a buffer overflow.
The question was whether Sony acquired exclusive rights to exhibit the original short or just the right to make an adaptation. The action described in the featured article is justified for the former, not the latter.
Why should I care how they do it? Other companies are noticeably cheaper
To which "other companies" do you refer? Do you mean Sprint and its MVNOs (Boost, Virgin, Ting, etc.)? These are reported to have noticeably poorer signal coverage than Verizon in many parts of the United States. Or do you mean cellular carriers in other countries?
Perhaps I was unclear. By "power user", I didn't necessarily mean someone who builds a computer or is otherwise deeply spec-conscious. I meant somebody who puts a computer to substantial use other than just viewing entertainment works and light socialization. Is there a better term for someone who uses a computer as a tool in this manner? "Professional" doesn't cut it because I also want to include amateurs who use a computer to make things.
Is there a pay as you go plan in the US that can be used with smartphones and doesn't have any monthly base cost, just per minute and per megabyte accounting?
Ting's pay-as-you-go plan has a lower monthly fee ($6 plus usage). Talk, text, and data are extra.
it sounds like Verizon wants $20 just for allowing a smartphone on their network, or what does that include besides a number that can be called?
The line fee also includes unmetered incoming and outgoing domestic voice and text. Carriers have realized that with things like Skype, Hangouts, and iMessage/FaceTime, they can no longer get away with charging per minute for calls between smartphones.
The trick they used on me was piling on "regulatory compliance" fees that they assume I'm too dumb to know aren't taxes (it's not a tax if you're pocketing the money).
Some of these fees are in fact taxes payable to the FCC or other government agencies, such as contributions to the Universal Service Fund. Some are the itemized cost of complying with unfunded mandates by the FCC, such as E911 and local number portability.
I'm not sure how they can do that efficiently. The SD specification requires that cards bigger than 32 GB use the exFAT file system, which is patented by Microsoft. It is a violation of the spec for a device to require reformatting such a card to something more sensible like UDF. Even if the phone manufacturer can afford to pay the SD and exFAT royalties, patented file systems must run in user space, which in theory makes them slower. Or has this been not a problem in practice?
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We have a food pyramid instead of four equal food groups.
Turns out they've gone back to the old food group pie chart.
There never was an original intent to "intellectual property" as you think it does because it doesn't exist in the US. Instead, we have patents, copyrights, and trademarks, three different sets of laws with three different purposes.
I agree that the term is misused, but I disagree that the concept "doesn't exist in the US." It's been in the United States Code since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 added 47 USC 230.
The music was actually a recording from so long ago it was expired even in the US - recorded 1914
For this one, they might actually have a case. Copyright in sound recordings first published before 1972 is under state law, not federal law. U.S. copyright law does not supersede state copyright in sound recordings until 2067.
Is changing the region even allowed once you've bought something on your Microsoft account?
For some of my searches, Duck has credited Yandex in the results. Or is Yandex also peeking at Google?
in most of the western world that you can build a gaming PC for less then a console.
A PC capable of PS3-level settings including a Windows license for less than a PS3, and a PC capable of PS4-level settings including a Windows license for less than a PS4? I'd like to see those builds.
Probably 60 or 70 other things I'm forgetting as well.
Consoles, on the other hand, have ease of use, ease of choice, guaranteed compatibility, a living room friendly case, and far less multiplayer cheating.
Anyone can sign a bootloader.
But who can install the signing certificate into a PC? And who can explain to a non-technical home PC owner how to do so?
Programs that save settings/need re-installing it's all in the User\%username%\AppData folder
Provided they're not in HKEY_CURRENT_USER.
Are you seriously suggesting that Joe Clueless could install and setup Windows? From a Windows retail disk?
Don't need to; that's done for you when you buy a mass-market PC or when you hire a local shop to repair it. True, this difference is ultimately due to a non-technical advantage of Windows related to its overlapping compatibility with the DOS included with most IBM PC 5150 computers and to Microsoft's marketing muscle, but non-technical advantages are still advantages.
Finding all the drivers he needs to update and installing them?
The difference is that for mass-market PCs, Windows drivers are virtually guaranteed to exist. They can be found with enough effort. Some components and peripherals have no acceptable GNU/Linux driver. Vanilla GNU/Linux on a random PC might be limited to VESA (software) graphics, no networking, no Bluetooth, high power use, and/or no suspend.
If you want to express "the set of Linux distributions that aren't Android or embedded", what's a better shorthand for that than GNU/Linux?
If i can use all my Windows programs without having to use some convoluted whatever so i can run them sure i will switch.
I run Xubuntu on my laptop. Installing the package "Wine" in Ubuntu Software Center was enough to let me run the few Windows desktop applications that I do use semi-regularly (FamiTracker, ModPlug, FCEUX debugging version, and NO$SNS debugging version).
Gold?silver?Bronze? lol
What's this supposed to mean? Are these AppDB compatibility labels, with the implication that your particular business-critical applications do not work for you in Wine?
Anyone remember LINLOAD?
No, but I do remember Loadlin, which is what they had before LILO (and Stitch), which is what they had before GRUB.
blu ray is a great reason to include a modern optical drive.
Are there any licensed BD video player apps for X11/Linux yet? I say "licensed" because comments to an answer recommending VLC mention the "Host certificate revoked" error message.
For gaming, what advantage does a Windows PC have over a PlayStation 4 console and a Linux PC?
Never buy a PC that doesn't have full hardware Linux ever support again.
I'm interested. What brand of 10" laptop is good for running Xfce now that netbooks have been replaced with detachables? Or should people expect to use an Android tablet with GNURoot and XSDL if they want Linux on a 10" laptop?
So buy hardware which is known to be compatible with linux
If you're the kind of person who likes to look at the screen and touch the keyboard of a laptop or detachable tablet before you buy it, good luck getting assurance from the sales associate that the hardware is compatible with Linux. The last time I checked, System76 and other PC makers that specialize in GNU/Linux were mail-order-only and did not carry detachable tablets.
New web-based applications run on Linux just fine.
Not on a laptop whose Wi-Fi radio can reach no access points other than WPA2 protected ones whose administrator is unwilling to disclose the pre-shared key to the laptop's user. And not on a laptop being used by the passenger of a vehicle moving too quickly to complete association and captive portal authentication before the vehicle goes out of range. Or have "cloud" applications overwhelmingly adopted "offline first" design already?
So now instead of just having to worry about bugs in Firefox's HTML rendering engine and, say, Evince (or whatever other PDF viewer you use to open saved PDFs) you now also have to worry about bugs in Firefox's PDF rendering code.
Because Firefox's PDF rendering code is in JavaScript, a memory-safe language, entire classes of bugs that might affect a standalone PDF reader like Evince or Adobe or Foxit or Sumatra are not possible. For example, JavaScript arrays are always bounds checked, meaning there's no such thing as a buffer overflow.
The question was whether Sony acquired exclusive rights to exhibit the original short or just the right to make an adaptation. The action described in the featured article is justified for the former, not the latter.
Hotels, airlines, car dealers, colleges, banks, hospitals, all masters of the hidden fee. (Source)
Why should I care how they do it? Other companies are noticeably cheaper
To which "other companies" do you refer? Do you mean Sprint and its MVNOs (Boost, Virgin, Ting, etc.)? These are reported to have noticeably poorer signal coverage than Verizon in many parts of the United States. Or do you mean cellular carriers in other countries?
Perhaps I was unclear. By "power user", I didn't necessarily mean someone who builds a computer or is otherwise deeply spec-conscious. I meant somebody who puts a computer to substantial use other than just viewing entertainment works and light socialization. Is there a better term for someone who uses a computer as a tool in this manner? "Professional" doesn't cut it because I also want to include amateurs who use a computer to make things.
Is there a pay as you go plan in the US that can be used with smartphones and doesn't have any monthly base cost, just per minute and per megabyte accounting?
Ting's pay-as-you-go plan has a lower monthly fee ($6 plus usage). Talk, text, and data are extra.
it sounds like Verizon wants $20 just for allowing a smartphone on their network, or what does that include besides a number that can be called?
The line fee also includes unmetered incoming and outgoing domestic voice and text. Carriers have realized that with things like Skype, Hangouts, and iMessage/FaceTime, they can no longer get away with charging per minute for calls between smartphones.
The trick they used on me was piling on "regulatory compliance" fees that they assume I'm too dumb to know aren't taxes (it's not a tax if you're pocketing the money).
Some of these fees are in fact taxes payable to the FCC or other government agencies, such as contributions to the Universal Service Fund. Some are the itemized cost of complying with unfunded mandates by the FCC, such as E911 and local number portability.
I'm not sure how they can do that efficiently. The SD specification requires that cards bigger than 32 GB use the exFAT file system, which is patented by Microsoft. It is a violation of the spec for a device to require reformatting such a card to something more sensible like UDF. Even if the phone manufacturer can afford to pay the SD and exFAT royalties, patented file systems must run in user space, which in theory makes them slower. Or has this been not a problem in practice?