It would be interesting to re-phrase the question and replace "iTunes" with "Windows Media Player" and see what kinds of responses are generated by the Slashdot crowd.
There would be a few knee-jerk responses because Microsoft was involved and a lot of bitching about the level of Microsoft's evilness. Ultimately it wouldn't matter because both iTunes and WMP would have the right to do this based on their EULA and everyone would forget about it as soon as the next Google article posted.
What!?! So there is no qualitative difference between employing the fair use clauses of copyright law, and software that calls home?
There is a huge difference, but it's difficult to say which one is more evil. Google is 'employing the fair use clauses of copyright law' as they interpret them. This hasn't been proven in court and there may actually be illegal activity here. iTunes is distributing a software product that people use voluntarily and added a new 'feature' that sends information about your listening habits to Apple to better serve you. IMHO, iTunes users 'opted-in' when they installed the software. I'm sure there's an EULA with a phrase buried in it that gives Apple perfect right to do what they are doing. If not, I'm sure someone will start a lawsuit.
Why is it so hard to understand that these beliefs are not contradictory or hypocritical.
It's not hard to understand, and I believe that sometimes this is true. People often do create opinions based on facts, and you are absolutely right that some behavior is appropriate on one context and inappropriate in the next.
You must also admit that the opposite is true. Many people trust blindly and then apply arguments to validate their feelings. Why do people 'trust' Apple? Are they a particularly trustworthy company? I can't think of anything they've ever done that would incline me to give them my trust. Actually I think their CEO is probably as rutheless as his counterpart at Microsoft. Jobs is just smart enough not to piss off his customer base, and of course has not had any type of monopoly until now. People trust Apple because they produce designer, feel good products, have a good corporate image and have not had many big PR fiascos. That's not a good enough reason for me to trust them.'
This is because Apple, unlike MS, has not been screwing them over and behaving unethically on a daily basis.
This will be a good test to see if people can trust Apple. I'm guessing this 'feature' will dissappear in the next release of iTunes because Apple, in general, appears to believe that trust and behaving ethically is important to business. It will be interesting to see if this is actually true, or if they are just another shareholder minded business with a hippy paintjob.
I think they article is comparing Linux with Solaris, AIX, HPUX, VMS or whatever other commercial UNIX they use. I can't imagine they think the Windows kernel is more stable than the Linux kernel.
Arguments 1 and 2 are the same ones that are used in the Google and their book digitizing initiative.
1) "But you can turn it off!" - Authors can opt-out, but Google is evil since it should be an opt-in system.
2) "But Amazon does it!" - Amazon shows pages out of books, but their system is different so it's OK.
There are three things to be learned here.
Slashdot(and people in general) turn arguments around to favor the outcome they desire. Apple and Google are popular, so excuses are made for them when they do something questionable. Microsoft is unpopular, so the same arguments are used to condemn their questional behavior.
People aren't really concerned about their privacy, especially when it's about mundane things like grocery shopping or music preferences. What, the government is going to come after me because I downloaded Black Flag or the Sex Pistols? Maybe if I download Tupac and 50 Cent? All of the Coldplay, U2, Mariah Carey drones out there don't care. Nobody's going to come after them for their mainstream boring tastes.
If you don't do business with these big evil companies they can't keep data on you. Apple doesn't have any idea what I like to listen to. Know why? Because I've NEVER purchased a song from them. Big companies are going to do everything they can to sell you more stuff, ethical or not. If you do business with them and give the information they can identify you with, they are going to track it.
One last thing. In response to your final item concerning the government monitoring phonecalls, email, checking bookstore receipts and library checkouts. That's what we should be worried about. Companies like Apple have little interest in persecuting individuals. Our government, OTOH, does like individual persecution and harrassment. Fortunately our constitution was designed to shelter us from such government infringements on our rights. Let's worry less about corporate America spying on us focus on stopping the government from becoming Big Brother.
I think the ironic twist is that this could be a big deal for Spielberg. I'm sure personally he's much more interested in winning an academy award than he is making sure the movie isn't pirated, he has plenty of money.
Really? I always heard they had the regions so they could control release dates in different parts of the world. That way they could limit supply in each region and artifically inflate the prices.
Interesting. When I buy CDs I often buy used CDs and I have some around I bought new in 1990 or earlier. I have never had a music CD that just wouldn't play due to age or some internal defect. I have had some get scratched and I have seen cds shatter after being dropped on the carpet, but I haven't seen one come apart or deteriorate from time.
Since the average American reads maybe one book a year, who's going to spend that kind of money to read that one book?
Where did you come up with that stat? I know many people that read two or three books a week. Most of these are women and they are reading fluff fiction, but they are reading books. Personally I read at least 2 or 3 a month. If these readers are heavy duty enough to take being thrown in my gym bag or taken on a camping trip, waterproof enough for my sister to use in a bathtub and have widespread enough file format support so I'm not locked into Sony's DRM I would consider buying one. You are right though, for $300 it better be an amazing piece of hardware.
people accept far more restriction on their lives due to two plane crashes into two skyscrapers.
Depends on why you consider 'accept'. Many people have limited or stopped their flying due to all the hassle ans stupid rules. As an individual I can't change the ridiculous laws and regulations, but I can avoid flying.
In the U.S. there is supposedly a "freedom to assemble". Until relatively recently that "freedom" was largely symbolic.
There is NOTHING symbolic about the "freedom to assemble". When the constitution was written there were government restrictions on having any kinds of meetings. That's part of the reason why the American Revolution was such a big deal, all of the organization had to be done in secret. Even meeting to talk about it was against the law. Ever since then we have had the right to assmble for any purpose we see fit. Even the 'militia' groups that plot to overthrow the government have a constitutional right to get together and talk about it. There are restrictions on assembly when it can disrupt government services or other citizens rights, but the freedom to assemble is a BIG deal.
OTOH, I believe you are right about the 'powers that be' being nervous about the amount of people communicating over the Internet. When people communicate as quickly as they can now it becomes difficult for a company or the government to do 'damage control' when public opinion sways against a policy or product. It's always a potential PR nightmare waiting to happen.
Why would additional webserver load slow down the whole computer system?
Why would additional reload requests even overload the webserver? Any webserver that's worth a crap should be able to server more traffic than it's bandwidth will allow. I know my servers would saturate the connection long before the machine would slow down.
How difficult is it to just handle this from an admin side, either at the webserver or firewall level? Change your firewall configuration to slow down repeat requests from the same IP addresses. If the system was properly configured there would have to be hundreds or even thousands of users pressing F5 to seen any impact at all.
This is beside all of the ethical/moral/constitutional issues everyone else is bringing up.
BTW, if anyone from the Canton school district is reading this and needs an admin that can keep your webserver up, let me know. I'd be glad to do some remote consulting for you.
Can't you just see the court proceedings, "The defendant is charged with refreshing his browser, many, MANY, times! Many more times, in fact, than a good, honost citizen would think of doing.. The refreshing went on far beyond decency!
Best part is, with every followup story there will be another slashdot story and more expense/bandwith used for the school district and city. I think the city prosecuter should be charged for being irresponsible and reckless.
Problem is, we still got a heck of a lot of crime for a Police State. If we are going to live in a country where the police intimidate and harrass people, could they at least harrass the criminals too?
Something percieved as a privilege is usually treated more carefully (as it can be revoked through misuse) than something you believe you have a right to, irregardless of what you do with it, no?
No, not at all. There are plenty of constitutional rights that are subject to conditions or that can be revoked due to poor behaviour. Felons can't vote, people only have the right to assemble in a public place with a permit, Freedom of Speech doesn't apply to yelling 'FIRE' in a crowded theater, etc...
I'm not advocating that driving should be a right, entitlement or a privilege. I'm just saying it's a necessity for anyone in the US that doesn't live in a few select major cities. The prevailing thought is that it's a privilege, but it's not. It's a requirement for modern living. Most people that I have known over the years that lost their driver's license drove anyway. Why? They had to get to work. No way around it. Our lawmakers face the fact that people need to be able to move around their communities and make changes to guarantee that ability to everyone regardless of their ability to operate a motor vehicle. Revoking a driver's license has little impact on the number of unsafe, incompetent drivers on the road.
If you ask me, it's kind of ridiculous to impose a restriction of that sort on a spammer who probably didn't actually do the spamming, but outsourced that to some kid in Russia.
Not only that, but how ridiculous of an idea is it that he can't 'use a computer'? Are they going to arrest him if he goes to the library and looks up a book? What if he goes through the self-checkout at walmart, that's a computer. Is he not going to be able to vote in the next elections when they have electronic voting machines? Nobody is going to watch this guy 24 hours a day and make sure he's not using a computer. This type of restriction is impossible to enforce and ridiculous to include in a ruling.
I think most of you are failing to recognize that Google is competing against only a tiny sliver of Microsoft.
I would say that Microsoft isn't effectively competing with Google at all. MSN search is pretty much a joke that, as you said Microsoft doesn't even take seriously. Conversly Microsoft is only competing against a tiny sliver of IBM. Microsoft's main market is in two areas, desktop OS and Office Suite. Apple and Linux are the only desktop OS's out there to compete against Microsoft and Open Office is the only serious threat to the Office Suite. Microsoft doesn't have a prayer of competing against IBM in the server or consulting market. Gates is, as ususal, blowing smoke. This is typical Microsoft nonsense. They are running around chasing their tail with no real focus or idea where they are going.
Looks to me like right now their main competitor should be Sony and the Playstation 3. Microsoft has sunk so much money into the Xbox they should be doing everything possible to make sure it's a success, rather than spouting off about how they are going to compete with IBM.
From hearing people in this country talk, you would think driving was a necessity akin to eating, clothing and shelter.
Ah, but it is akin to eating, clothing, etc... We have evolved into a culture that requires transportation to be employed and to socialize. In the VAST majority of the US it's very difficult if not impossible to acquire food, clothing and shelter without a driver's license. Most non-metropolitan areas don't have good public transportation, and many cities don't either. Sure, the problem would be solved if we all moved to a major city where everything was in walking distance, but that's not practical either.
I think the whole attitude that 'driving is a priviledge' is half of our problem. If safe transportation was viewed as a requirement for modern life some of these decisions could be made more intelligently.
I believe the vehicles under discussion are "body-on-frame light trucks". The idea being that the frame is the part that does the damage. As I understand it, these are a relatively recent design, so your statistic probably isn't much help here.
"Body-on-frame" has been the standard design of of the automobile since their inception. The "unibody" construction where the frame is incorporated into the body has been common on many cars since at least 1970. Cars and light trucks have co-existed on the US roads for much longer than 70 years and "Body-on-frame" designed vehicles have coexisted with "unibody" vehicles for the last 35.
people can be sold anything if it's placed properly. GIMP can't be sold, even though it's free.
Now wait a minute. Are you implying that nobody uses GIMP? If GIMP were a commercial product I have no doubt that it would be every bit as sucessful as the other Photoshop competitors out their. I think it's as good as PaintShopPro (at least last time I used it) and probably has as many or more users. Checked google, they have 17,100 links to www.gimp.org on record. I don't really think promotion is their problem. The idea I got from this thread is that we were comparing GIMP to photoshop in it's overall acceptance and use. GIMP is not going to achieve that level until it's comparable in features, but right now it's a great option for those of us that aren't full time graphic/web designers, but need a tool for our side/hobby work.
OK, what about Apache, Perl, Ruby, gcc, PHP? These projects all seem to have done very well without a descriptive name.
I'll agree that some projects could use a little more sanity in their naming, but this isn't GIMP's problem. GIMP's problem is it just doesn't have the features that photoshop has. I use GIMP and I see photoshop tutorials all over the place that I look at, try to reproduce and have difficulty. GIMP is great for what it is, but there's no reason for a user that has already paid for photoshop to convert. If there was, the name wouldn't be the problem.
True enough, but there are plenty of MS and other successful programs that have names that don't correspond to any functionality. Names like Excel and Access. Even Adobe's other products (including their new Macromedia products), besides Photoshop, don't have any impact on their function. Fireworks, Acrobat, Premier, Audition, Extreme, ColdFusion?
It's amazing Dreamweaver has been successful since it doesn't actually Weave Dreams.
Slashdot Mirror
It would be interesting to re-phrase the question and replace "iTunes" with "Windows Media Player" and see what kinds of responses are generated by the Slashdot crowd.
There would be a few knee-jerk responses because Microsoft was involved and a lot of bitching about the level of Microsoft's evilness. Ultimately it wouldn't matter because both iTunes and WMP would have the right to do this based on their EULA and everyone would forget about it as soon as the next Google article posted.
What!?! So there is no qualitative difference between employing the fair use clauses of copyright law, and software that calls home?
There is a huge difference, but it's difficult to say which one is more evil. Google is 'employing the fair use clauses of copyright law' as they interpret them. This hasn't been proven in court and there may actually be illegal activity here. iTunes is distributing a software product that people use voluntarily and added a new 'feature' that sends information about your listening habits to Apple to better serve you. IMHO, iTunes users 'opted-in' when they installed the software. I'm sure there's an EULA with a phrase buried in it that gives Apple perfect right to do what they are doing. If not, I'm sure someone will start a lawsuit.
Why is it so hard to understand that these beliefs are not contradictory or hypocritical.
It's not hard to understand, and I believe that sometimes this is true. People often do create opinions based on facts, and you are absolutely right that some behavior is appropriate on one context and inappropriate in the next.
You must also admit that the opposite is true. Many people trust blindly and then apply arguments to validate their feelings. Why do people 'trust' Apple? Are they a particularly trustworthy company? I can't think of anything they've ever done that would incline me to give them my trust. Actually I think their CEO is probably as rutheless as his counterpart at Microsoft. Jobs is just smart enough not to piss off his customer base, and of course has not had any type of monopoly until now. People trust Apple because they produce designer, feel good products, have a good corporate image and have not had many big PR fiascos. That's not a good enough reason for me to trust them.'
This is because Apple, unlike MS, has not been screwing them over and behaving unethically on a daily basis.
This will be a good test to see if people can trust Apple. I'm guessing this 'feature' will dissappear in the next release of iTunes because Apple, in general, appears to believe that trust and behaving ethically is important to business. It will be interesting to see if this is actually true, or if they are just another shareholder minded business with a hippy paintjob.
a bad UI will causes errors every bit as damaging as bad kernel code.
Yeah, but they probably can't get everyone to stop using Windows.
I think they article is comparing Linux with Solaris, AIX, HPUX, VMS or whatever other commercial UNIX they use. I can't imagine they think the Windows kernel is more stable than the Linux kernel.
1) "But you can turn it off!" - Authors can opt-out, but Google is evil since it should be an opt-in system.
2) "But Amazon does it!" - Amazon shows pages out of books, but their system is different so it's OK.
There are three things to be learned here.
- Slashdot(and people in general) turn arguments around to favor the outcome they desire. Apple and Google are popular, so excuses are made for them when they do something questionable. Microsoft is unpopular, so the same arguments are used to condemn their questional behavior.
- People aren't really concerned about their privacy, especially when it's about mundane things like grocery shopping or music preferences. What, the government is going to come after me because I downloaded Black Flag or the Sex Pistols? Maybe if I download Tupac and 50 Cent? All of the Coldplay, U2, Mariah Carey drones out there don't care. Nobody's going to come after them for their mainstream boring tastes.
- If you don't do business with these big evil companies they can't keep data on you. Apple doesn't have any idea what I like to listen to. Know why? Because I've NEVER purchased a song from them. Big companies are going to do everything they can to sell you more stuff, ethical or not. If you do business with them and give the information they can identify you with, they are going to track it.
One last thing. In response to your final item concerning the government monitoring phonecalls, email, checking bookstore receipts and library checkouts. That's what we should be worried about. Companies like Apple have little interest in persecuting individuals. Our government, OTOH, does like individual persecution and harrassment. Fortunately our constitution was designed to shelter us from such government infringements on our rights. Let's worry less about corporate America spying on us focus on stopping the government from becoming Big Brother.I think the ironic twist is that this could be a big deal for Spielberg. I'm sure personally he's much more interested in winning an academy award than he is making sure the movie isn't pirated, he has plenty of money.
Really? I always heard they had the regions so they could control release dates in different parts of the world. That way they could limit supply in each region and artifically inflate the prices.
Interesting. When I buy CDs I often buy used CDs and I have some around I bought new in 1990 or earlier. I have never had a music CD that just wouldn't play due to age or some internal defect. I have had some get scratched and I have seen cds shatter after being dropped on the carpet, but I haven't seen one come apart or deteriorate from time.
Since the average American reads maybe one book a year, who's going to spend that kind of money to read that one book?
Where did you come up with that stat? I know many people that read two or three books a week. Most of these are women and they are reading fluff fiction, but they are reading books. Personally I read at least 2 or 3 a month. If these readers are heavy duty enough to take being thrown in my gym bag or taken on a camping trip, waterproof enough for my sister to use in a bathtub and have widespread enough file format support so I'm not locked into Sony's DRM I would consider buying one. You are right though, for $300 it better be an amazing piece of hardware.
people accept far more restriction on their lives due to two plane crashes into two skyscrapers.
Depends on why you consider 'accept'. Many people have limited or stopped their flying due to all the hassle ans stupid rules. As an individual I can't change the ridiculous laws and regulations, but I can avoid flying.
In the U.S. there is supposedly a "freedom to assemble". Until relatively recently that "freedom" was largely symbolic.
There is NOTHING symbolic about the "freedom to assemble". When the constitution was written there were government restrictions on having any kinds of meetings. That's part of the reason why the American Revolution was such a big deal, all of the organization had to be done in secret. Even meeting to talk about it was against the law. Ever since then we have had the right to assmble for any purpose we see fit. Even the 'militia' groups that plot to overthrow the government have a constitutional right to get together and talk about it. There are restrictions on assembly when it can disrupt government services or other citizens rights, but the freedom to assemble is a BIG deal.
OTOH, I believe you are right about the 'powers that be' being nervous about the amount of people communicating over the Internet. When people communicate as quickly as they can now it becomes difficult for a company or the government to do 'damage control' when public opinion sways against a policy or product. It's always a potential PR nightmare waiting to happen.
This is beside all of the ethical/moral/constitutional issues everyone else is bringing up.
BTW, if anyone from the Canton school district is reading this and needs an admin that can keep your webserver up, let me know. I'd be glad to do some remote consulting for you.
I think this guy is trying to turn an overloaded school website (like anyone visits that anyway) into a mini-9/11.
Better yet, his actions have actually resulted in the 'Tremendous amount of damage' he wanted to avoid.
Can't you just see the court proceedings, "The defendant is charged with refreshing his browser, many, MANY, times! Many more times, in fact, than a good, honost citizen would think of doing.. The refreshing went on far beyond decency!
Best part is, with every followup story there will be another slashdot story and more expense/bandwith used for the school district and city. I think the city prosecuter should be charged for being irresponsible and reckless.
Problem is, we still got a heck of a lot of crime for a Police State. If we are going to live in a country where the police intimidate and harrass people, could they at least harrass the criminals too?
It would be funner if you just did it madlibs style. Maybe I should write a page to generate slashdot stories.
Something percieved as a privilege is usually treated more carefully (as it can be revoked through misuse) than something you believe you have a right to, irregardless of what you do with it, no?
No, not at all. There are plenty of constitutional rights that are subject to conditions or that can be revoked due to poor behaviour. Felons can't vote, people only have the right to assemble in a public place with a permit, Freedom of Speech doesn't apply to yelling 'FIRE' in a crowded theater, etc...
I'm not advocating that driving should be a right, entitlement or a privilege. I'm just saying it's a necessity for anyone in the US that doesn't live in a few select major cities. The prevailing thought is that it's a privilege, but it's not. It's a requirement for modern living. Most people that I have known over the years that lost their driver's license drove anyway. Why? They had to get to work. No way around it. Our lawmakers face the fact that people need to be able to move around their communities and make changes to guarantee that ability to everyone regardless of their ability to operate a motor vehicle. Revoking a driver's license has little impact on the number of unsafe, incompetent drivers on the road.
If you ask me, it's kind of ridiculous to impose a restriction of that sort on a spammer who probably didn't actually do the spamming, but outsourced that to some kid in Russia.
Not only that, but how ridiculous of an idea is it that he can't 'use a computer'? Are they going to arrest him if he goes to the library and looks up a book? What if he goes through the self-checkout at walmart, that's a computer. Is he not going to be able to vote in the next elections when they have electronic voting machines? Nobody is going to watch this guy 24 hours a day and make sure he's not using a computer. This type of restriction is impossible to enforce and ridiculous to include in a ruling.
I think most of you are failing to recognize that Google is competing against only a tiny sliver of Microsoft.
I would say that Microsoft isn't effectively competing with Google at all. MSN search is pretty much a joke that, as you said Microsoft doesn't even take seriously. Conversly Microsoft is only competing against a tiny sliver of IBM. Microsoft's main market is in two areas, desktop OS and Office Suite. Apple and Linux are the only desktop OS's out there to compete against Microsoft and Open Office is the only serious threat to the Office Suite. Microsoft doesn't have a prayer of competing against IBM in the server or consulting market. Gates is, as ususal, blowing smoke. This is typical Microsoft nonsense. They are running around chasing their tail with no real focus or idea where they are going.
Looks to me like right now their main competitor should be Sony and the Playstation 3. Microsoft has sunk so much money into the Xbox they should be doing everything possible to make sure it's a success, rather than spouting off about how they are going to compete with IBM.
From hearing people in this country talk, you would think driving was a necessity akin to eating, clothing and shelter.
Ah, but it is akin to eating, clothing, etc... We have evolved into a culture that requires transportation to be employed and to socialize. In the VAST majority of the US it's very difficult if not impossible to acquire food, clothing and shelter without a driver's license. Most non-metropolitan areas don't have good public transportation, and many cities don't either. Sure, the problem would be solved if we all moved to a major city where everything was in walking distance, but that's not practical either.
I think the whole attitude that 'driving is a priviledge' is half of our problem. If safe transportation was viewed as a requirement for modern life some of these decisions could be made more intelligently.
I believe the vehicles under discussion are "body-on-frame light trucks". The idea being that the frame is the part that does the damage. As I understand it, these are a relatively recent design, so your statistic probably isn't much help here.
"Body-on-frame" has been the standard design of of the automobile since their inception. The "unibody" construction where the frame is incorporated into the body has been common on many cars since at least 1970. Cars and light trucks have co-existed on the US roads for much longer than 70 years and "Body-on-frame" designed vehicles have coexisted with "unibody" vehicles for the last 35.
people can be sold anything if it's placed properly. GIMP can't be sold, even though it's free.
Now wait a minute. Are you implying that nobody uses GIMP? If GIMP were a commercial product I have no doubt that it would be every bit as sucessful as the other Photoshop competitors out their. I think it's as good as PaintShopPro (at least last time I used it) and probably has as many or more users. Checked google, they have 17,100 links to www.gimp.org on record. I don't really think promotion is their problem. The idea I got from this thread is that we were comparing GIMP to photoshop in it's overall acceptance and use. GIMP is not going to achieve that level until it's comparable in features, but right now it's a great option for those of us that aren't full time graphic/web designers, but need a tool for our side/hobby work.
OK, what about Apache, Perl, Ruby, gcc, PHP? These projects all seem to have done very well without a descriptive name. I'll agree that some projects could use a little more sanity in their naming, but this isn't GIMP's problem. GIMP's problem is it just doesn't have the features that photoshop has. I use GIMP and I see photoshop tutorials all over the place that I look at, try to reproduce and have difficulty. GIMP is great for what it is, but there's no reason for a user that has already paid for photoshop to convert. If there was, the name wouldn't be the problem.
True enough, but there are plenty of MS and other successful programs that have names that don't correspond to any functionality. Names like Excel and Access. Even Adobe's other products (including their new Macromedia products), besides Photoshop, don't have any impact on their function. Fireworks, Acrobat, Premier, Audition, Extreme, ColdFusion?
It's amazing Dreamweaver has been successful since it doesn't actually Weave Dreams.
By law, all government agencies are required to follow OMB guidelines. By law, not following an OMB guideline is illegal.
Hell yeah, let's find the NSA sys admin that set that thing up and give the son of a bitch the chair!!