DRM is IMPOSSIBLE. The sooner DRM as a concept is abandoned alltogether the better off we will all be. Every type of electronic copy protection I can think of in the last 30 years has FAILED. I remember software copy protection in the early 80s on Apple IIe games. We borrowed (stole, found, whatever) a program to break the copy protection and copied the games anyway.
There are chips for playstations, mods for xbox, cracks for every game out there, the shift button for DRM cds. It just DOESN'T work. Skip the DRM, go after people who just broadcast the files to the world via the Internet and let everyone that's going to just give it to their friends give it to their friends.
In the long run I'm guessing you will make as much money and not have wasted all the resources on DRM.
The problem isn't so much the asshat professors as it is the publishing company. Lets remember these asshat professors are some of the same people that have given us so much open source code and other benevolent contributions to society.
Textbook publishing is big business, the publishing companies just have to learn how to move to electronic publishing and make it work. It's just like the RIAA, their business model will NOT last forever. Sooner or later someone will provide electronic books, asshat professors and other authors will figure out that there is no need to pay publishing houses huge amounts of money, proofreaders and editors will become independant contracters that just get emailed copy, and the publishing industry as we know it will come to an end.
It's amazing to me how so many of the issues here on slashdot boil down to the same thing. The recording industry, movie industry, publishing industry and software industry have all sprung up over the last 100 or so years as middle men between the musicians, actors, authors, coders and the consumer. They server very little purpose. Now with the massive influence of the Internet all of these creative people are beginning to have no use for all of the managers and marketing people that are just taking a cut of the profits. Eventually, I expect most creative/IP type of products to be available on the net by the creators for a minimal fee.
So you believe ALL software should be in-house, custom? So no home user should have any applications that do what is desired (because the app can't exist before the home user contracts the designer)?
That's exactly where the OSS model comes in. With OSS a company, say IBM, can hire developers to add feature foobar to the kernel and release it back under the GPL. This works for a couple reasons:
The company has a much larger, much more economical code base to start from. It's much cheaper to hire a developer to add feature foobar to an existing product than it is to hire a developer to write a product from scratch, especially when it's a product as large as a OS kernel.
Releasing it to the world will greatly increase the item's quality and reliability. More bugs will be found, and more people will contribute
Look at web development. For several years it has been a service based industry. Developers are hired to write code that is then placed out on the web where copyrights are very difficult to enforce, but people hire web developers every day, just for their talents.
No, that's not my intention at all. Were the criteria I posted twisted? Do you have criteria that you would prefer to add that would make it more fair.
Learning curve
Scarcity of available employees
Complexity
If it's an open project anyone can contribute, people with any preconcieved notions. I think it would be much more valuable to have a TCO analysis by people 'in the trenches' than by some biased, funded think tank that doesn't operate in the real world.
most companies will not care what colleges and/or college students are running as their preferred OS
True, but today's college student is tomorrow's hot new developer/management trainee/etc...
As students get out of school and join the workforce they will carry their experiences with them and eventually their attitudes will change the workplace.
You must not be much of a sysadmin or you would know that you can "downgrade" any MS license and use the older version after buying a license for the latest version.
Not sure why I'm even justifying this with a response, but just so everyone knows I'm not an idiot:
Microsoft is NOT the only commercial software supplier out there. The company I work for recently sold some of our source code. There are a number of libraries that we use where the licenses are non-transferable and a previous version of those libraries is not for sale.
Be careful when you say "downgrade" any MS license and use the older version. Microsoft has some very specific terms under which a particular product may be "downgraded". It is definitely not accurate to say you can downgrade ANY Microsoft license
understand licensing issues but they just aren't as big a deal in ASP.NET as these posts (and the article) are making it out.
That's all a matter of perspective I suppose. So I only need one license per server for ASP.NET and one license per server for any add-on components I want to use. So in a year I want to add another server, I have to upgrade both to get the same version of ASP.NET. A few months after I want to upgrade a add-on component, I have to upgrade ASP.NET and any other add-on compnents I have licenses for.
Licensing may not seem like a big deal, but it can quickly spiral out of control. Personally I have grown to HATE license agreements and will not purchase a product if an OSS is available.
So...I have to pay for features that I can get from the competitor for free, I have to pay (my employees) to insure that I am paying what I need to (for a product wich offers comparable services as the competitor) and I get to continually be pressed to upgrade and give them more money in licensing fees.
Exactly. This is my biggest complaint against proprietary/commercial software, and the largest benefit of Open Source. As a sys admin I spend more time trying to figure out how many licenses we have, what is a legal use of a license, when we should upgrade, why we should upgrade, etc... Maintenance of the licenses cost us more than the license purchase itself.
On top of that, old versions are usually unavailable for purchase after the new version is released, so we can't just purchase one license of a perfectly useful product for a new employee, we have to upgrade 30 people.
For me, PHP vs ASP would be an obvious decision just because of the licensing. With PHP don't have to maintain the licenses. When I need to add a new server I wouldn't have to pay for an upgrade on the 10 existing servers.
have you checked the prices of 1 GB SD cards lately?
Yeah, but amazingly enough prices have a way of coming down. With the digital cameras changing so fast I think SD card prices will fall accordingly. What good is a 6 megapixel camera when your memory will only store three pictures.
Regarding sharing your media cards in your camera and your MP3 player, why is that a good thing?
If I buy multiple cards I can use them in the camera when I'm on vacation and want to take zillions of pictures, or load music on them when I want to go to the gym. Interchangeable media is ALWAYS a good thing.
If most people were given a choice between an $80 512MB flash-based player and an $80 4GB HDD-based player, they'd choose the latter.
But that's exactly the point, isn't it. Sure, if they had roughly the same size, price, weight, quality and reliability, of course I would buy the 4GB unit, regardless of the technology behind it.
Problem is that iPod Mini is $249. I just purchased a flash based MP3 player for $90. It (allegedly) takes up to a 1GB SD card, which is great because I can buy multiple cards and use them in both my Kodak digital camera, and my MP3 player. I haven't actually recieved my MP3 player yet, so I don't know if my plans for it will actually work out, but they did get my $90 - and Apple didn't.
Look at x-box. They are giving the things away but still haven't been able to erode Sony's market share.
IE bypassed Netscape because Microsoft was able to bundle it into the OS. Over the course of just a few years, most consumers purchased a new computer, with an updated OS that included IE. Netscape couldn't compete with that.
I bet the next IE service pack sets the home page to the Microsoft Search.
Do you have any references for the items you listed? I would be interested in reading some reasearch on what kind of techniques actually help reduce accidents.
First, I was not defending any of the reasons I listed. Good or bad, logical or not, they are the reasons I see for the influx in SUVs in the US.
Second, of course you like your Acura. There are no hard and fast rules, and my post listed reasons why people buy SUVs. You didn't buy an SUV, so we can safely assume that you
Don't like big cars
Don't feel like you need the utility an SUV provides
Aren't brand loyal to what are considered 'American' cars
Now, to respond more specifically to your comments.
Riding in a large car makes me feel like I'm going to slam into every single thing on the road, and any sort of wind makes you feel like the car is ready to tumble over at a moments notice...
OTOH, nobody tailgates and SUV or pickup, and if they do you can't see them over the tailgate anyway. Every time I drive a smaller car somebody crawls right up in the backseat behind me, a fact I find unnerving. Even if I can't see all four corners of my pickup from the drivers seat (although I'm pretty sure I can) my overall visiblity of the road is better than in a smaller car.
My Integra tows a 3,000lb boat+motor+trailer combo hundreds of miles regularly, and gets 28 MPG at 80 MPH while doing it.
Obviously you don't live where I do. There is no way in HELL an Acura Integra would pull a 3,000 lb boat up the Poudre Canyon to Chamber's Lake. The people I know regularly pull trailers, campers, etc... over some serious mountain passes. No Civic, Integra etc... will.
I can seat 4 adults or 2 adults and 3 children, and a civic wagon could fit more.
My sister's Tahoe can COMFORTABLY seat 5 adults, my friend's Suburban can seat 5 adults and 3 children. If you are a large person (and I don't only mean overweight - my brother in law is 6'4" 250) and many americans are, many cars (domestic and foreign) are very uncomfortable.
cars/SUVs made with Amercian labels are total crap.
My point was that 'American' SUVs and light trucks are generally built significanly better than 'American' cars.
Personally I feel that any person that can't manage to park their car shouldn't be allowed to drive it at all.
Of course I also think that at least 80% of the people on the road are scarier than hell and shouldn't be allowed to drive. Don't believe me? Turn on your local news for the first snow storm of the season (if you don't get snow, find the Denver newscast - it's always humorus). I'm always amazed at the way people who live in an area that gets bad weather EVERY YEAR will wreck their car the first time there is three inches of snow. Maybe if we actually taught people how to drive there would be less traffic fatalities in this country - actually, probably not, Everybody knows that traffic accidents are caused by people not wearing their seat belt.
Not sure where you came up with your facts, but based on my experience with many SUV owners, myself included (although mine is a 1974 Scout II and doesn't fit in to ANY of your arguments), here are the top reasons why I think people buy SUVs.
1) Americans like big cars.
This has always been true. In the 50's, 60's and 70's American cars were huge. In the 80's American automakers, due to EPA regulations and some misguided marketing exec's plan to compete with foreign manufacturers, decided to build tiny tin can cars. Americans hated them. In the 90's American automakers figured out how to get around emissions/milage standards by building SUVs, that fall under the light truck category rather than car. The average american LOVES them.
2) They are a Sport Utility Vehicle
An SUV is designed with versatility in mind. A Toyota Prius is fine for the hippie bachelor and his new age girlfriend, but if you live in the real world, have 2.5 kids, coach a soccer team, make weekly trips to home depot, and like to take your bass boat to the lake on weekends, a hybrid just isn't going to cut it.
3) American cars suck
I grew up a Chevy guy, so I can mostly relate this to GM. The GM smaller cars are complete crap. My sister has a 2000 Pontiac Sunfire with 50,000 miles on it. She has taken extremely good care of it, and it's a cute little car, but it's a pile of junk. Random things like the radio, seat belts, weather stripping, etc.. keep falling apart. GM doesn't have anything that will compete with the smaller Hondas and Toyotas in price, quality, performance and durability. If you, like me, prefer to buy a car made in the good ol' USA (I know, Honda's are made in Kentucky or someplace, let's conveniently ignore that for the moment) the light truck platform is currently the only way to get a vehicle that will actually go 100,000 miles.
I think your four reasons are excellent points that apply to purchasing new cars in general. The first two are extremely bad reasons to invest in a new car. The third I would think you would be happy about due to the fact it gets some smoking, rusty, ugly piece of junk off the road, and the fourth is just a stupid tax loophole.
As far as your original rant that people drive by themselves in these vehicles, there could be a variety of reasons. Mom could be going to pick up the soccer team, Dad could be going to Lowes for a new bathroom vanity or it could simply be that once the owner bought a $45,000 truck he/she couldn't afford the electric bicycle that would make YOU happy.
Slashdot Mirror
DRM in inevitable
Did you say DRM is inevitable????
DRM is IMPOSSIBLE. The sooner DRM as a concept is abandoned alltogether the better off we will all be. Every type of electronic copy protection I can think of in the last 30 years has FAILED. I remember software copy protection in the early 80s on Apple IIe games. We borrowed (stole, found, whatever) a program to break the copy protection and copied the games anyway.
There are chips for playstations, mods for xbox, cracks for every game out there, the shift button for DRM cds. It just DOESN'T work. Skip the DRM, go after people who just broadcast the files to the world via the Internet and let everyone that's going to just give it to their friends give it to their friends.
In the long run I'm guessing you will make as much money and not have wasted all the resources on DRM.
The problem isn't so much the asshat professors as it is the publishing company. Lets remember these asshat professors are some of the same people that have given us so much open source code and other benevolent contributions to society.
Textbook publishing is big business, the publishing companies just have to learn how to move to electronic publishing and make it work. It's just like the RIAA, their business model will NOT last forever. Sooner or later someone will provide electronic books, asshat professors and other authors will figure out that there is no need to pay publishing houses huge amounts of money, proofreaders and editors will become independant contracters that just get emailed copy, and the publishing industry as we know it will come to an end.
It's amazing to me how so many of the issues here on slashdot boil down to the same thing. The recording industry, movie industry, publishing industry and software industry have all sprung up over the last 100 or so years as middle men between the musicians, actors, authors, coders and the consumer. They server very little purpose. Now with the massive influence of the Internet all of these creative people are beginning to have no use for all of the managers and marketing people that are just taking a cut of the profits. Eventually, I expect most creative/IP type of products to be available on the net by the creators for a minimal fee.
That's exactly where the OSS model comes in. With OSS a company, say IBM, can hire developers to add feature foobar to the kernel and release it back under the GPL. This works for a couple reasons:
Look at web development. For several years it has been a service based industry. Developers are hired to write code that is then placed out on the web where copyrights are very difficult to enforce, but people hire web developers every day, just for their talents.
No, that's not my intention at all. Were the criteria I posted twisted? Do you have criteria that you would prefer to add that would make it more fair.
Learning curve
Scarcity of available employees
Complexity
If it's an open project anyone can contribute, people with any preconcieved notions. I think it would be much more valuable to have a TCO analysis by people 'in the trenches' than by some biased, funded think tank that doesn't operate in the real world.
most companies will not care what colleges and/or college students are running as their preferred OS
True, but today's college student is tomorrow's hot new developer/management trainee/etc...
As students get out of school and join the workforce they will carry their experiences with them and eventually their attitudes will change the workplace.
Maybe there is a project of this type already out there, but I've never seen it.
We could come up with a list of criteria to compare like:
Anyone have any additional items?
Not sure why I'm even justifying this with a response, but just so everyone knows I'm not an idiot:
understand licensing issues but they just aren't as big a deal in ASP.NET as these posts (and the article) are making it out.
That's all a matter of perspective I suppose. So I only need one license per server for ASP.NET and one license per server for any add-on components I want to use. So in a year I want to add another server, I have to upgrade both to get the same version of ASP.NET. A few months after I want to upgrade a add-on component, I have to upgrade ASP.NET and any other add-on compnents I have licenses for.
Licensing may not seem like a big deal, but it can quickly spiral out of control. Personally I have grown to HATE license agreements and will not purchase a product if an OSS is available.
Shallow labor pool == expensive labor pool
Sure, but I can pay more for a developer when I'm saving money in license fees.
So...I have to pay for features that I can get from the competitor for free, I have to pay (my employees) to insure that I am paying what I need to (for a product wich offers comparable services as the competitor) and I get to continually be pressed to upgrade and give them more money in licensing fees.
Exactly. This is my biggest complaint against proprietary/commercial software, and the largest benefit of Open Source. As a sys admin I spend more time trying to figure out how many licenses we have, what is a legal use of a license, when we should upgrade, why we should upgrade, etc... Maintenance of the licenses cost us more than the license purchase itself.
On top of that, old versions are usually unavailable for purchase after the new version is released, so we can't just purchase one license of a perfectly useful product for a new employee, we have to upgrade 30 people.
For me, PHP vs ASP would be an obvious decision just because of the licensing. With PHP don't have to maintain the licenses. When I need to add a new server I wouldn't have to pay for an upgrade on the 10 existing servers.
have you checked the prices of 1 GB SD cards lately?
Yeah, but amazingly enough prices have a way of coming down. With the digital cameras changing so fast I think SD card prices will fall accordingly. What good is a 6 megapixel camera when your memory will only store three pictures.
Regarding sharing your media cards in your camera and your MP3 player, why is that a good thing?
If I buy multiple cards I can use them in the camera when I'm on vacation and want to take zillions of pictures, or load music on them when I want to go to the gym. Interchangeable media is ALWAYS a good thing.
If most people were given a choice between an $80 512MB flash-based player and an $80 4GB HDD-based player, they'd choose the latter.
But that's exactly the point, isn't it. Sure, if they had roughly the same size, price, weight, quality and reliability, of course I would buy the 4GB unit, regardless of the technology behind it.
Problem is that iPod Mini is $249. I just purchased a flash based MP3 player for $90. It (allegedly) takes up to a 1GB SD card, which is great because I can buy multiple cards and use them in both my Kodak digital camera, and my MP3 player. I haven't actually recieved my MP3 player yet, so I don't know if my plans for it will actually work out, but they did get my $90 - and Apple didn't.
You see, it's been a few years since telnetd was installed in a base Linux install.
Slackware, as of 9.1, still installed telnetd. It isn't ENABLED by default, but it's there. I wouldn't install a Linux distro that didn't have it.
Look at x-box. They are giving the things away but still haven't been able to erode Sony's market share.
IE bypassed Netscape because Microsoft was able to bundle it into the OS. Over the course of just a few years, most consumers purchased a new computer, with an updated OS that included IE. Netscape couldn't compete with that.
I bet the next IE service pack sets the home page to the Microsoft Search.
Yeah, I can tell, it's a GREAT architecture.
I think they have a smoking pile of aspx at the moment.
Search Error
MSN Search is temporarily unable to process your request.
Please try again in a few minutes.
If I had mod points I'd mod you up.
Do you have any references for the items you listed? I would be interested in reading some reasearch on what kind of techniques actually help reduce accidents.
Second, of course you like your Acura. There are no hard and fast rules, and my post listed reasons why people buy SUVs. You didn't buy an SUV, so we can safely assume that you
Now, to respond more specifically to your comments.
Riding in a large car makes me feel like I'm going to slam into every single thing on the road, and any sort of wind makes you feel like the car is ready to tumble over at a moments notice...
OTOH, nobody tailgates and SUV or pickup, and if they do you can't see them over the tailgate anyway. Every time I drive a smaller car somebody crawls right up in the backseat behind me, a fact I find unnerving. Even if I can't see all four corners of my pickup from the drivers seat (although I'm pretty sure I can) my overall visiblity of the road is better than in a smaller car.
My Integra tows a 3,000lb boat+motor+trailer combo hundreds of miles regularly, and gets 28 MPG at 80 MPH while doing it.
Obviously you don't live where I do. There is no way in HELL an Acura Integra would pull a 3,000 lb boat up the Poudre Canyon to Chamber's Lake. The people I know regularly pull trailers, campers, etc... over some serious mountain passes. No Civic, Integra etc... will.
I can seat 4 adults or 2 adults and 3 children, and a civic wagon could fit more.
My sister's Tahoe can COMFORTABLY seat 5 adults, my friend's Suburban can seat 5 adults and 3 children. If you are a large person (and I don't only mean overweight - my brother in law is 6'4" 250) and many americans are, many cars (domestic and foreign) are very uncomfortable.
cars/SUVs made with Amercian labels are total crap.
My point was that 'American' SUVs and light trucks are generally built significanly better than 'American' cars.
I thought Aussies, as a general rule, weren't so picky about their fetishes?
huh, must be another American misconception.
Personally I feel that any person that can't manage to park their car shouldn't be allowed to drive it at all.
Of course I also think that at least 80% of the people on the road are scarier than hell and shouldn't be allowed to drive. Don't believe me? Turn on your local news for the first snow storm of the season (if you don't get snow, find the Denver newscast - it's always humorus). I'm always amazed at the way people who live in an area that gets bad weather EVERY YEAR will wreck their car the first time there is three inches of snow. Maybe if we actually taught people how to drive there would be less traffic fatalities in this country - actually, probably not, Everybody knows that traffic accidents are caused by people not wearing their seat belt.
You totally forgot Bring it On.
Not sure where you came up with your facts, but based on my experience with many SUV owners, myself included (although mine is a 1974 Scout II and doesn't fit in to ANY of your arguments), here are the top reasons why I think people buy SUVs.
1) Americans like big cars.
This has always been true. In the 50's, 60's and 70's American cars were huge. In the 80's American automakers, due to EPA regulations and some misguided marketing exec's plan to compete with foreign manufacturers, decided to build tiny tin can cars. Americans hated them. In the 90's American automakers figured out how to get around emissions/milage standards by building SUVs, that fall under the light truck category rather than car. The average american LOVES them.
2) They are a Sport Utility Vehicle
An SUV is designed with versatility in mind. A Toyota Prius is fine for the hippie bachelor and his new age girlfriend, but if you live in the real world, have 2.5 kids, coach a soccer team, make weekly trips to home depot, and like to take your bass boat to the lake on weekends, a hybrid just isn't going to cut it.
3) American cars suck
I grew up a Chevy guy, so I can mostly relate this to GM. The GM smaller cars are complete crap. My sister has a 2000 Pontiac Sunfire with 50,000 miles on it. She has taken extremely good care of it, and it's a cute little car, but it's a pile of junk. Random things like the radio, seat belts, weather stripping, etc.. keep falling apart. GM doesn't have anything that will compete with the smaller Hondas and Toyotas in price, quality, performance and durability. If you, like me, prefer to buy a car made in the good ol' USA (I know, Honda's are made in Kentucky or someplace, let's conveniently ignore that for the moment) the light truck platform is currently the only way to get a vehicle that will actually go 100,000 miles.
I think your four reasons are excellent points that apply to purchasing new cars in general. The first two are extremely bad reasons to invest in a new car. The third I would think you would be happy about due to the fact it gets some smoking, rusty, ugly piece of junk off the road, and the fourth is just a stupid tax loophole.
As far as your original rant that people drive by themselves in these vehicles, there could be a variety of reasons. Mom could be going to pick up the soccer team, Dad could be going to Lowes for a new bathroom vanity or it could simply be that once the owner bought a $45,000 truck he/she couldn't afford the electric bicycle that would make YOU happy.
Here's a BETTER idea. Run a secure OS - download Slackware
The best stuff comes when you're scratching your own itch.
No, the best stuff comes when someone else scratches my itch...
Ahh... so this isn't actually provided by the state, just with the state (or at least the Lt. Governor's) blessing. That makes more sense.
2 years is a lengthy time period. Hope they have some cash reserves to pay for all that bandwidth they are going to burn.