However, if (A) smugness/arrogance -> Linux, then does that mean (B) Linux -> smugness/arrogance?
As was stated, they didn't use Linux for the smug users, which means they're jumping to B from A. I assume this means they don't want to be associated with Linux because they believe others will see A, assume B, and that means people will judge them as smug as well. Otherwise, what does A have to do with anything given (C) intelligent -> Linux might hold true too (I'm not claiming this; I'm merely making the point that there are many paths to Linux).
If they don't use Linux because they can't get help from smug users, then they're still assuming B, given it doesn't take physical support (ie, all the smug users around them they've met) to use Linux. There are non-smug users online who are more than willing to help.
So, I don't see how you can claim it's not judging someone by the operating system they use.
I think it's more a point that until SCO, there was never a real serious threat to Linux. Linus has always been very pragmatic (ie, an engineer), while RMS has been more a philosopher/lawyer (setting up the GPL and free software idea). It's hardly surprising that when Linus is pushed towards RMS's "field" that he would agree given the possible effects.
I'm not sure honor and shame are the inverses of each other. Like he said, I'm pretty sure it'd be seen as a form of shame.
I don't think Bill Gates is "evil" or thinks of himself as such. The fact is, gaming the system by using exclusionary licensing is hardly the sort of thing only MS has done (look at exclusionary Coke or Pepsi universities/gas stations). At some fundamental level, saying people *want* to use Windows is the basis for Windows being the #1 OS is something that Bill Gates can be proud of (to be more truthful, OEMs are the deciders who until the settlement had the choice of cheap Windows on all machine or retail Windows on some machines; there was enough market want for Windows to warrent going 100% Windows instead of 100% someone else; truthfully, in '95 that was almost quite a gamble (if OS/2 had worked better on more hardware, it would really have been a hard gamble)).
If MS were to go along and use say the vfat patent against Linux, then Bill Gates, et al. couldn't claim they beat Linux because people wanted Windows. At some level, I agree they'd be ashamed to go that route. In fact, taking out Linux now would probably be such bad PR for what is trivial gains to not be worth it. I'm not sure there ever would/will be a point that it's worth it, given that at the point where Linux is a true threat to the desktop, Windows is obsolete, which means there's nothing to really recover.
Because you perfectly knew their software was insecure, it's been commonly known for years.
Granted. It's a shame there weren't more commercials stating that from competitors.
You also waived all your rights to Microsoft when you clicked OK to the EULA.
It's often the case that a judge will rule that sufficient negligence on the part of the contractor can void any "do not sue us" clause. Given the shear number of security flaws found and where Windows advertisements have stated Windows should be used (servers), it seems like gross negligence.
People should take responsibility for their own actions, not sue left and right too..
Right, this guy variant creator should be punished. The question was should MS be sued for making Blaster so possible. A simple analogy, from the start of this thread, is the case of Ford finding a defect in their car. Now, Ford has to go out of its way to fix this defect; they don't just tell the consumer "here's the part, you install it". They do this precisely because until the defect is fixed (or there's been a sufficiently long period of time for which the fix was easily accessible), consumers can go out and sue Ford and win the case.
Now, at this point you might state that Blaster variants didn't start until 2 months after a patch was released. You'd be ignoring, though, that MS didn't mail out letters to its consumers. They didn't mail out CDs either. They didn't have local technicians to install the patch. So, while it's reasonable to say that a competent administrator for a server should never have let Blaster spread--MS did the equivalent of the first two for the technical user while the admin is the third--laying this charge on *all* computer users is like blaming all car defect victims for not being mechanics. This is why MS has pushed for their autoupdate tool as it can optimally fulfill all parts (ignoring it can't reboot).
I can imagine in the future, MS try to claim not using the autoupdate tool to its full extent (ie, d/l *and* install) is paramount for grounds not to sue. But, will MS take responsibility for when one of their patches kill the network connection on a few million users and someone has to reinstall?
Well, there's no real guarantee that a company will make any profit, but that all is based on how you define profit. Most companies take the money they make and apply to the cost of paying workers, R&D, and the actual cost of the raw goods to make the good they sell. Since all sane companies will behave this way (the less sane ones will cut R&D costs for a temporary advantage but will fall behind as technology progresses), then everyone is still paid and companies can still advance. There's no real need for excessive amounts of "profit" to pay to share holders or CEOs in such a stable company in a stable market, since such a company is self-reliant.
My problem is, I can't see how you view your opinion as right. A name can have many values, both positive and negative. It's also true that deceptive and non-deceptive use of a name can change the views people have of a person.
There's only two place where a person has room to legally complain about being spoken of: if someone is saying lies about them or if someone is pretend to be them and is saying things. So long as neither is true, it doesn't matter how negatively a person's name is hurt, one doesn't have a legal basis to sue someone. I'd say, one doesn't have a moral one either, as opinions are just that and there's nothing amoral about the truth. Since there's no dispute over whether there were lies (I assume it was all opinions), the only thing to worry about is deception.
From this, your opinion that the government should protect people from their name being "hurt" with the truth or opinion disgusts me, as it is very much against the idea of free speech. Reasonable people, when given access to all the truthful/non-deceptive information, need not and should not be babied into believing things.
Well, the "what if" is founded on the problem of the current system: while artists are generally well rewarded for their works, the actual "newness" is the main reason why people can rationalize the cost of a good, especially as things like detail, design, etc can improve with each generation of console; the same holds true for newspaper in the news-ness of it which is new daily, even if the detail and design is the same. The same is harder to say of books and to some extent music (well, all that's not fad-ish), which have a much longer lasting value due to the broadness which doesn't rely on a new factor to work. Please realize this is all more a point of the competition between various things on how to judge price.
Now, given all this, most people (including myself), would consider NES games in the same realm as day old newspapers. Ie, they might be fun to collect, but being charged even remotely today's rate for a game is ludicrous. But, the slow turn-out of games (relative to say newspapers) and the sheer monopolistic power of copyright lets Nintendo do as it pleases. To me, this logically seems a rather large break in how the market system should work.
So, if anything, that's my general problem. I'm not sure if copyrights should exist or not. If copyright didn't exist, there could still be attribution rights, and that may provide the branding necessary to fund an artist regardless. At the same time, it could just cause all copyrighted works to be sold dirt cheap (ie, near the cost of the media). I can even imagine that the low cost would cause an initial flood of works, but at some point the glut caused would mean most publishers wouldn't bother trying to distribute every work possible.
But then, I really think you'd see something like a/. effect. By that, I mean the original publish of a hit would get flooded with orders for relatively cheap media containing the game (so cheap, it's less bother to just buy from them than to get a copy from a friend who you have to trust). Eventually, another publisher will "mirror" the hit and start selling their own copies, but the initial flood might set the precedent on the select few to buy from. Would the artist be adequately motivated? I hope so. If near-nothing funding from advertisement can keep various websites alive, I'm not sure why near-nothing public domain sales couldn't do it too.
So, all this means that I don't think that copyright is as necessary as its made out. It might be a useful way to offer protection to artists, like the minimum wage does to workers, but that's more a point of the ways in which the real world has a time delay in the market (and workers don't haggle for their wage every day like other suppilers do). Ie, copyright of someone nature would be useful.
Sorry, I meant lower price. The supply curve represents the cost to produce. The demand curve represents the value to consumers. Equilibrium (ie, where supply and demand intersect) is definitely near the cost to produce because it's on the supply curve. You're right, though, that "we can't even know for sure whether equilibrium would be higher or lower than the current price", as monopolistic pricing can be above or below the supply curve. But an educated guess would say Nintendo isn't selling NES classics out of the kindness of their heart (ie, at a loss). From that, the only price possible at equilibrium is equal or lower to the current cost.
Tagging in the back of someones popularity with an oposing view point is much like forcing the globe to run your comments or forcing the nfl to allow you to make you speach durring half time.
So, if I oppose the Christian church, I shouldn't make mention of them because that's "tagging on the back of someone's popularity"? You mention the opposing side sometimes exactly *because* you want to get the attention of those supporters. There's little point in preaching to the choir. The only real question is, is using fallwell.com deceptive given its content clearly says "This is not affiliated with Jerry Falwell"? I think how prominently it's displayed would be a big factor in that.
The site owner can even place a redirect link saying they aren't alfiliated with falwell ministries and they have moved the site to somenewdomain.com to reflect that. they can even keep the same contect that is already availible there.
Now, that sounds more like forcing one person to host another (truly it's a redirect, but you're talking about forcing one person to do another's bidding). The whole point is whether there's deception involved. They host their own web servers. Each registered their own domain. Each stated their own viewpoint. So long as there wasn't deception, I don't see how there's harm in the balance provided by society. The only real issue is whether it was deceptive enough to warrent governmental reprisal (aka, losing one's domain name).
When copyright was first written into law in the US, it took months to years before a book had any chance of distribution. Since then, distribution time has improved considerably. In fact, for various markets, there's very usually a clear cycle upon which it's reasonable to expect a copyrighted work to sell well. After that point, there's tapered marginal returns.
Given this fact, most writers continue to write more works (there's also the intangible fame rewards). As writers have "given up" on a work by this point, it'd seem logical to either have a fixed limit based on industry that's relatively close to the usual cycle time for said industry or just have increasing licensing fees to retain one's copyright each year to discourage holding onto a relatively worthless copyright. In either case, copyright shouldn't be longer than the original term length; most economic and distribution evidence supports a shorter period.
Nintendo is simply charging the maximum price that the market will bear, for maximum profit. It's what any company would do - it's certainly not immoral in any way. Once they get everyone who is willing to pay the $20, they'll drop the price by a few more dollars and pick up more customers. That's not spoilage, that's simply stimulating demand through price cuts.
No, not really. You're overlooking the whole point. If Metroid or Legend of Zelda was in the public domain, then *anyone* could stuff Metroid + an emulator onto a gba cart and sell it (well, this assumes that gba carts aren't patented in some way to prevent others from making such a cart, nor is there any exclusive licensing to make sure only Nintendo makes gba carts). In such a situation, Nintendo would be just one of several competitors selling such carts.
Now, this means there'd be competition on who makes the best carts and that's about it. The end result would be while Nintendo could still sell $20 NES Classics, other 3rd parties would surely be selling cheaper versions. Unless Nintendo's carts are really "worth it" or there are enough loyal customers, though, Nintendo would eventually be forced to reduce their price below $20 to get sufficient buyers. A lower cost means more buyers and a greater consumer surplus. It also means higher market efficiency (the price will be closer if not directly on where supply and demand curves cross).
So, it's not amoral for Nintendo to charge $20 given the current circumstances, but there's also nothing moral about having copyright in the first place, let alone how long it is currently. Copyright perturbes the free market. Laissez-faire means lack of government influence both anti and *pro* a business. Really, that's it.
Note: All of this is under the assumption that Nintendo is making money. Monopolies are sometimes in circumstances where the best monopolistic pricing means not making the most money but losing the least money. Only in certain services (say, electrical generation) does it make any sense for such a market to exist (in the example, the positive externalities of power generation; this is one place where it's realized the free market might not be most efficient; I don't think such long copyright terms, though, can be said to be a reasonable reward to the positive externality of works created under copyright).
Over time, a good can lose value because of spoilage. Yes, that's a feature of the free market. A free market means all members are allowed to freely produce a good. The rights Nintendo has over the NES games it created are those which society artificially created to compensate for what who otherwise be a less motivating, free market situation. By analogy, filling a balloon clearly is within scope of the laws of physics, but it is not an example of the law of entropy.
Right, and there are various games that are good substitutes. But competition between a few or even a lot of good substitutes is at best an oligarchy. Pepsi may be cheaper on the market because there is Coke for sale, but are either as cheap as the hundreds of generic brands? (comprare this analogy to the various Unixes (an oligarchy), Windows (a monopoly which knew to undercut the competition for more market share even if seen as an inferior good), and Linux (a good with many perfect substitutes, many distributors, and a variety of price ranges with many more optimal solutions) (yea, hand to throw this in because it shows why NES classic games sell even through there are free games, yet they're still less expensive than GBA games)) I can't thank of a better example of a perfect substitute of a good than digital copies of a copyrighted work.
If the classic NES games were actually sold at near their production cost, they'd probably diminish the sale of other GBA titles. However with such long copyright terms, we'll never really know.
I care because I care about economics. In a free market (which capitalism is something like), airplanes aren't supposed to cost millions of dollars more than it could be sold for. For a given good, there's a whole array of prices people are willing to pay for the good. With enough competition, the actual company selling the good is forced (from an economic standpoint) to keep the price low which causes a good deal of consumer surplus (the whole "Dutch Auction" which Google's IPO is supposed to do behaves in the same way).
Given that little actual work is done to create these classics, the perceived value by most is less than the $20 charged. However, given there's no one to compete against Nintendo, Nintendo will set the price at $20 to maximize its own profit. This almost certainly isn't maximizing consumer surplus which is a sign that the market is neither as efficient nor as healthy as it could be. Every time the free market fails for whatever reason, it's a time I want to know about. For airplanes, it's a question of barrier to entry, government subsidies (lucrative contracts, mostly), and the general lack of demand to approach the efficiency possible. For NES classics, it's a question of the artificial monopoly of copyright. It's not feasible to fix the airplane problem (well, the contracts could be removed, which would help), but such long copyrights *are* something that can be completely resolved.
By law, if MS doesn't say you can distribute it, you can't distribute it.
Maybe you've heard of this thing called "Fair Use"? Let's see how well it should hold up for this exception:
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
It's not for a commercial nature. In fact, it actually *helps* MS, as it means less bandwidth costs to them. As for "education purposes", I don't think that's valid. So, I'd guess it'd be viewed as neutral.
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
Well, it's a security update, not Britney's new CD. It's also not an exclusive download, meaning it's not a "reward" for some people (for example, exclusive demo CDs might be monetarily free but only given out to select members; at that point, though, it's hard to argue that the membership is the actual payment which makes it non-free; but MS has the download on a public server, and anyone (Mac, Windows, and Linux users, for example) can download it; before you claim this illegal, note that copyright law was changed (around 1999) to reflect the position that not password-protecting a website is paramount to granting access for an individual to view it; as for distribution, that's obviously another issue)
3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
Okay, it clearly fails this point given it's an exact copy of the whole thing.
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Like I said in point one, this effectively *saves* MS money. There's no real market for MS selling their security updates, thanks to them giving it away for free. So, there's no real effect on the market.
So, the real issue then is at what point is it considered fair use? If this were educational material, it would clearly be allowed, even though it's a full copy (violating point 3), so it's not the case that fair use requires to not violate any point. At the same time, I know of no case (one way or another) on the legality of people making copies of game demo CDs (which seem a relatively accurate analogy).
So, to me the whole case is neither clearly legal or illegal, though personally I'd say it legal given the overall positive good it does compared to the harm done to the copyright holder. In some ways, I really wish this decision would be shown to be true.
Well, it's all well and good that P2P "should" do these things to be an "innovative potential as a 21st century virtual collaboration and project management tool for regional or nationwide academic, business, home, and governmental activities", but why the heck is there even the mention of a bill? All the stuff you mention sounds like RFC material, for which software can be trademarked " P2P" so that people can feel secure while everyone can continue to use Kazaa.
The truth is all P2P demonstrates is a fundamental problem with copyright law since 1976: one has to err on the side of caution by assuming that a work is copyrighted. Most users, however, will copy files anyways, and the warezers are so prevelant that d/lers aren't always aware they're violating a copyright (this isn't an excuse for the people who seem pretty blatantly to be d/ling songs, but can you honestly admit to being 100% sure that you've never d/led something that you later found out was warez because you didn't realize it was illegal to possess for some reason?).
Now, this isn't to excuse the people who would strip copyright from things anyways, as warezers, to get more people to distribute a file and make most of this argument moot. Nor is it easy to *locate* the warezer who did actual strip the copyright. At the same time, copyright law seems written to punish those who distribute files, not those who d/l or possess such works (read US copyright law again some time, this time without bias assuming anyone associated with copyright infringment is guilty of copyright infringment).
Finally, both lacking spyware and including filters (porno or other wises) are features for which the "market" can decide on its own to stop (this based on the assumption that trying to hide spyware is fraud, and I'd count a casual mention in the EULA as hiding as rarely is the extent of what spyware can or will do spelled out in clear terms, nor how to remove it). Being P2P, it's every client that has to instigate their own filtering system (modding is too easily abused by zombies in such a dynamic anonymous group) for a good P2P network, yet at the same time it's clear that any region law won't be the real solution. Suggesting standards is great, but that's in line with RFCs, not legislation.
I can't disagree with a lot of your points, as most of them sound like personal experience, and I've experienced one on the list (slower graphical draw, since at the time I was using an on-board SIS chipset, for which graphic acceleration was crap (is it still?)).
But as to two choice comments:
The applications did not play well with each other, at all.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, exactly. Most the time, Windows apps don't actually play together ever. The exception are the few apps designed to work together (office suits, uh..that's it?). Applications are otherwise rather self-contained and inconsistent. Try getting Excel 2000 to work with Wordperfect or Word Perfect's spreadsheet program working with Word, let alone trying to Excel 2000 with Word XP (okay, sort of a stupid point, as it's seemingly stupid to install Office 2000 and XP, but one might because of file format incompatibilities).
Drag and drop never worked.
In what? Nautilus? Every app you use? The fact is, there's the rare exception that drag&drop works well in Windows (all of MS's software probably excluded, especially their integrated Office suit). This falls back to the earlier point, that drag&drop really isn't that ubiqitous. The only place I really ever used it was in file management (since it's easier to drop&drop than do a lot of keyboard action), dropping some txt file on notepad to load it, and sometimes archivers (though using the context-senstive menu was usually quicker). Maybe things improved since I last used Windows 2000?
Or are you really talking about file management in Linux? Truth is, that's generally more of a pain in Linux than Windows, mostly due to the fact that it's 90% of the time quicker to just cp, or mv, or whatever a file or files. In the rare exception it's not, you have to wait for a file manager to load (though I hear the load time for konq is near instant if you use kde; same for nautilus in gnome), navigate to a folder, then fiddle with one or more folders/tabs/views to do the work. The fact is, file management in this way was *never* good. It just was a lot less sucky in Windows than using DOS tools. I want to try out Nautilus' spatial navigation some time, though, as that sounds sort of interesting.
Games are of royalty, but they're eye-searing after a while. And what about IT isn't nauseating puke? So, Disney just needs to make their PC ink red, for all the parents killed in their cartoons so they'll have ripe human orphans as the hero (the exception being Lion King, where it's a Lion who becomes orphaned; I guess if you've already killed Bambi's mom, it's not much to kill the king of the jungle).
If I let someone I don't trust work on my car, and they screw it up to the point that when I start it next time it blows up, is that GM's fault? Its my fault for letting that idiot work on it.
That's a good, valid argument, however...
If spyware causes the system to crash, its the users fault for not taking proper precautions. Users can whine and moan about it all they want, it doesn't change anything.
Okay, here's the thing: the proper precautions some people should have taken is to NOT use Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer has been a conduit for at least a few worms delivering spyware. So has Windows, in general, though most of those holes were patched before any well-known worms were released giving most "responsible" individuals the time to go and d/l a patch (this ignores that users shouldn't have to bother patching software, though it's currently a sad fact of life for all software).
So, to that extent, MS is responsible for overcoming defects in their software and the side-effects there-of for not providing patches soon enough that "responsible" individuals could take "proper precautions". The only real "proper precaution" available to most users, to leave MS non-cupable, is for them to have used the precaution of not using MS software (ie, not IE, Windows, etc).
To put it another way, if GM vehicles are vulnerable to ice being able to unlock the driver cabin, then someone exploiting this vulnerability and damaging the vehicle shouldn't be laid to blame on the owner, especially when the car ends up blowing up when the lock is fixed. At some level, GM has to be held responsible for not being prompt enough in finding and fixing the problem including a lot of the collateral damage involved.
Yea, it's almost like he was the sysadmin or something. The fact is, her being his wife should have no bearing on him doing his job. It would actually be *worse* that he was unwilling to monitor his wife's computer usage. As has been pointed out several times during this thread, governmental computer use is never supposed to be for personal use. Ie, it really shouldn't matter that it was his wife since any other user would be doing the exact same thing. But yea, lets label him a control freak. Oh, and look at all those police officers busting marijuana users: total control freaks. It's not like it's their job to bust people or our job to make marijuana legal (by not voting for people anti-marijuana)..
I thought the major reason Drive-ins were popular was the privacy (dark, self-contained little boxes). Who cares about the sound or picture quality if you're busy making out?
The thing is that when bios firmware started coming out, there was a lot of people who lost their machine to a flashing mishap when meant the manufacturer had to take it back and fix it. After a while, the manufacturers started include a boot-block bios which is never overwritten but provides enough functionality to auto-flash the bios if the bios is corrupt. Not surprisingly, this not only made consumers (like me) happy.
The truth is, the majority of people adventurous enough to flash their bios are more than capable of following some instructions to make a "recovery disk" in case things go wrong. To me, it seems like common sense that a boot-block bios should exist on all firmware upgradeable parts. I'm sure economics bears out this out as well.
Well, whoever wrote the virus to DoS doubleclick is the one who is unhooking the sign and tossing it into the garbage. People who just don't look at the ad are like people who don't look at ads on sites (and with deceptive ads, that's sort of hard, though thankfully uncommon). But the closest analogy would be to wear a pair of glasses that block out ads with a big "censor" blob. That thought really springs to mind a funny thing: why is it okay for the government to censor one set of offensive material, yet its somehow "stealing" if I try to censor stuff myself? But in some ways, I guess that revolves back to a more core point, that if there's something offensive in the material you should either live with it or not watch the whole thing. It's always funny to me to hear parents who say "I really want my kids to watch because it's a great movie, but I can't because of all the cursing/violence/sex". At the same time, all those shows that do everything *but* show sex seem to get great ratings even though they're mostly devoid of any "artist" value. Go figure why things are shifted like that.
The idea with advertising/marketing might be to get attention. But that attention is to get you to buy their product. The more that advertisers are able to track consumers who see their ads, the more they're going to demand having a provable benefit ratio to advertising with someone. That's just good-old economics. So, viewing the ads is unlikely to help except in the short-term (and things like coupons to go through an "affiliate link" is just one way to provide such better tracking).
That's not to say ads are useful to the consumer. At the same time, the more advertisements are misplaced (getting advice on which Windows product to buy on/. might be an example), the more they're distained and the more such advertisements are rallied against and/or blocked. For free college newspapers, for example, it's not uncommon to sit beside the newspapers stack a full bin of thrown out advertisement fliers. At the same time, it's not uncommon for most other newspapers (paid or otherwise) to include local grocery store ads which people find helpful.
As for your comment about "you only for access to the internet, not the content", the same could be said very clearly of cable too. You're paying for the service (access to content), and you have to pay higher prices on top of that to order custom content. How that trickles down into content providers making money to continue to provide content is the job of the content providers, not the consumer. The only ways to hurt a content provider is to provide their content outside of copyright. Everything else is just a fact-of-life economics.
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However, if (A) smugness/arrogance -> Linux, then does that mean (B) Linux -> smugness/arrogance?
As was stated, they didn't use Linux for the smug users, which means they're jumping to B from A. I assume this means they don't want to be associated with Linux because they believe others will see A, assume B, and that means people will judge them as smug as well. Otherwise, what does A have to do with anything given (C) intelligent -> Linux might hold true too (I'm not claiming this; I'm merely making the point that there are many paths to Linux).
If they don't use Linux because they can't get help from smug users, then they're still assuming B, given it doesn't take physical support (ie, all the smug users around them they've met) to use Linux. There are non-smug users online who are more than willing to help.
So, I don't see how you can claim it's not judging someone by the operating system they use.
I think it's more a point that until SCO, there was never a real serious threat to Linux. Linus has always been very pragmatic (ie, an engineer), while RMS has been more a philosopher/lawyer (setting up the GPL and free software idea). It's hardly surprising that when Linus is pushed towards RMS's "field" that he would agree given the possible effects.
I'm not sure honor and shame are the inverses of each other. Like he said, I'm pretty sure it'd be seen as a form of shame.
I don't think Bill Gates is "evil" or thinks of himself as such. The fact is, gaming the system by using exclusionary licensing is hardly the sort of thing only MS has done (look at exclusionary Coke or Pepsi universities/gas stations). At some fundamental level, saying people *want* to use Windows is the basis for Windows being the #1 OS is something that Bill Gates can be proud of (to be more truthful, OEMs are the deciders who until the settlement had the choice of cheap Windows on all machine or retail Windows on some machines; there was enough market want for Windows to warrent going 100% Windows instead of 100% someone else; truthfully, in '95 that was almost quite a gamble (if OS/2 had worked better on more hardware, it would really have been a hard gamble)).
If MS were to go along and use say the vfat patent against Linux, then Bill Gates, et al. couldn't claim they beat Linux because people wanted Windows. At some level, I agree they'd be ashamed to go that route. In fact, taking out Linux now would probably be such bad PR for what is trivial gains to not be worth it. I'm not sure there ever would/will be a point that it's worth it, given that at the point where Linux is a true threat to the desktop, Windows is obsolete, which means there's nothing to really recover.
Do you type Internet a lot when jacking off?
Because you perfectly knew their software was insecure, it's been commonly known for years.
Granted. It's a shame there weren't more commercials stating that from competitors.
You also waived all your rights to Microsoft when you clicked OK to the EULA.
It's often the case that a judge will rule that sufficient negligence on the part of the contractor can void any "do not sue us" clause. Given the shear number of security flaws found and where Windows advertisements have stated Windows should be used (servers), it seems like gross negligence.
People should take responsibility for their own actions, not sue left and right too..
Right, this guy variant creator should be punished. The question was should MS be sued for making Blaster so possible. A simple analogy, from the start of this thread, is the case of Ford finding a defect in their car. Now, Ford has to go out of its way to fix this defect; they don't just tell the consumer "here's the part, you install it". They do this precisely because until the defect is fixed (or there's been a sufficiently long period of time for which the fix was easily accessible), consumers can go out and sue Ford and win the case.
Now, at this point you might state that Blaster variants didn't start until 2 months after a patch was released. You'd be ignoring, though, that MS didn't mail out letters to its consumers. They didn't mail out CDs either. They didn't have local technicians to install the patch. So, while it's reasonable to say that a competent administrator for a server should never have let Blaster spread--MS did the equivalent of the first two for the technical user while the admin is the third--laying this charge on *all* computer users is like blaming all car defect victims for not being mechanics.
This is why MS has pushed for their autoupdate tool as it can optimally fulfill all parts (ignoring it can't reboot).
I can imagine in the future, MS try to claim not using the autoupdate tool to its full extent (ie, d/l *and* install) is paramount for grounds not to sue. But, will MS take responsibility for when one of their patches kill the network connection on a few million users and someone has to reinstall?
Well, there's no real guarantee that a company will make any profit, but that all is based on how you define profit. Most companies take the money they make and apply to the cost of paying workers, R&D, and the actual cost of the raw goods to make the good they sell. Since all sane companies will behave this way (the less sane ones will cut R&D costs for a temporary advantage but will fall behind as technology progresses), then everyone is still paid and companies can still advance. There's no real need for excessive amounts of "profit" to pay to share holders or CEOs in such a stable company in a stable market, since such a company is self-reliant.
My problem is, I can't see how you view your opinion as right. A name can have many values, both positive and negative. It's also true that deceptive and non-deceptive use of a name can change the views people have of a person.
There's only two place where a person has room to legally complain about being spoken of: if someone is saying lies about them or if someone is pretend to be them and is saying things. So long as neither is true, it doesn't matter how negatively a person's name is hurt, one doesn't have a legal basis to sue someone. I'd say, one doesn't have a moral one either, as opinions are just that and there's nothing amoral about the truth. Since there's no dispute over whether there were lies (I assume it was all opinions), the only thing to worry about is deception.
From this, your opinion that the government should protect people from their name being "hurt" with the truth or opinion disgusts me, as it is very much against the idea of free speech. Reasonable people, when given access to all the truthful/non-deceptive information, need not and should not be babied into believing things.
Well, the "what if" is founded on the problem of the current system: while artists are generally well rewarded for their works, the actual "newness" is the main reason why people can rationalize the cost of a good, especially as things like detail, design, etc can improve with each generation of console; the same holds true for newspaper in the news-ness of it which is new daily, even if the detail and design is the same. The same is harder to say of books and to some extent music (well, all that's not fad-ish), which have a much longer lasting value due to the broadness which doesn't rely on a new factor to work. Please realize this is all more a point of the competition between various things on how to judge price.
/. effect. By that, I mean the original publish of a hit would get flooded with orders for relatively cheap media containing the game (so cheap, it's less bother to just buy from them than to get a copy from a friend who you have to trust). Eventually, another publisher will "mirror" the hit and start selling their own copies, but the initial flood might set the precedent on the select few to buy from. Would the artist be adequately motivated? I hope so. If near-nothing funding from advertisement can keep various websites alive, I'm not sure why near-nothing public domain sales couldn't do it too.
Now, given all this, most people (including myself), would consider NES games in the same realm as day old newspapers. Ie, they might be fun to collect, but being charged even remotely today's rate for a game is ludicrous. But, the slow turn-out of games (relative to say newspapers) and the sheer monopolistic power of copyright lets Nintendo do as it pleases. To me, this logically seems a rather large break in how the market system should work.
So, if anything, that's my general problem. I'm not sure if copyrights should exist or not. If copyright didn't exist, there could still be attribution rights, and that may provide the branding necessary to fund an artist regardless. At the same time, it could just cause all copyrighted works to be sold dirt cheap (ie, near the cost of the media). I can even imagine that the low cost would cause an initial flood of works, but at some point the glut caused would mean most publishers wouldn't bother trying to distribute every work possible.
But then, I really think you'd see something like a
So, all this means that I don't think that copyright is as necessary as its made out. It might be a useful way to offer protection to artists, like the minimum wage does to workers, but that's more a point of the ways in which the real world has a time delay in the market (and workers don't haggle for their wage every day like other suppilers do). Ie, copyright of someone nature would be useful.
Sorry, I meant lower price. The supply curve represents the cost to produce. The demand curve represents the value to consumers. Equilibrium (ie, where supply and demand intersect) is definitely near the cost to produce because it's on the supply curve. You're right, though, that "we can't even know for sure whether equilibrium would be higher or lower than the current price", as monopolistic pricing can be above or below the supply curve. But an educated guess would say Nintendo isn't selling NES classics out of the kindness of their heart (ie, at a loss). From that, the only price possible at equilibrium is equal or lower to the current cost.
Tagging in the back of someones popularity with an oposing view point is much like forcing the globe to run your comments or forcing the nfl to allow you to make you speach durring half time.
So, if I oppose the Christian church, I shouldn't make mention of them because that's "tagging on the back of someone's popularity"? You mention the opposing side sometimes exactly *because* you want to get the attention of those supporters. There's little point in preaching to the choir. The only real question is, is using fallwell.com deceptive given its content clearly says "This is not affiliated with Jerry Falwell"? I think how prominently it's displayed would be a big factor in that.
The site owner can even place a redirect link saying they aren't alfiliated with falwell ministries and they have moved the site to somenewdomain.com to reflect that. they can even keep the same contect that is already availible there.
Now, that sounds more like forcing one person to host another (truly it's a redirect, but you're talking about forcing one person to do another's bidding). The whole point is whether there's deception involved. They host their own web servers. Each registered their own domain. Each stated their own viewpoint. So long as there wasn't deception, I don't see how there's harm in the balance provided by society. The only real issue is whether it was deceptive enough to warrent governmental reprisal (aka, losing one's domain name).
When copyright was first written into law in the US, it took months to years before a book had any chance of distribution. Since then, distribution time has improved considerably. In fact, for various markets, there's very usually a clear cycle upon which it's reasonable to expect a copyrighted work to sell well. After that point, there's tapered marginal returns.
Given this fact, most writers continue to write more works (there's also the intangible fame rewards). As writers have "given up" on a work by this point, it'd seem logical to either have a fixed limit based on industry that's relatively close to the usual cycle time for said industry or just have increasing licensing fees to retain one's copyright each year to discourage holding onto a relatively worthless copyright. In either case, copyright shouldn't be longer than the original term length; most economic and distribution evidence supports a shorter period.
Nintendo is simply charging the maximum price that the market will bear, for maximum profit. It's what any company would do - it's certainly not immoral in any way. Once they get everyone who is willing to pay the $20, they'll drop the price by a few more dollars and pick up more customers. That's not spoilage, that's simply stimulating demand through price cuts.
No, not really. You're overlooking the whole point. If Metroid or Legend of Zelda was in the public domain, then *anyone* could stuff Metroid + an emulator onto a gba cart and sell it (well, this assumes that gba carts aren't patented in some way to prevent others from making such a cart, nor is there any exclusive licensing to make sure only Nintendo makes gba carts). In such a situation, Nintendo would be just one of several competitors selling such carts.
Now, this means there'd be competition on who makes the best carts and that's about it. The end result would be while Nintendo could still sell $20 NES Classics, other 3rd parties would surely be selling cheaper versions. Unless Nintendo's carts are really "worth it" or there are enough loyal customers, though, Nintendo would eventually be forced to reduce their price below $20 to get sufficient buyers. A lower cost means more buyers and a greater consumer surplus. It also means higher market efficiency (the price will be closer if not directly on where supply and demand curves cross).
So, it's not amoral for Nintendo to charge $20 given the current circumstances, but there's also nothing moral about having copyright in the first place, let alone how long it is currently. Copyright perturbes the free market. Laissez-faire means lack of government influence both anti and *pro* a business. Really, that's it.
Note: All of this is under the assumption that Nintendo is making money. Monopolies are sometimes in circumstances where the best monopolistic pricing means not making the most money but losing the least money. Only in certain services (say, electrical generation) does it make any sense for such a market to exist (in the example, the positive externalities of power generation; this is one place where it's realized the free market might not be most efficient; I don't think such long copyright terms, though, can be said to be a reasonable reward to the positive externality of works created under copyright).
Over time, a good can lose value because of spoilage. Yes, that's a feature of the free market. A free market means all members are allowed to freely produce a good. The rights Nintendo has over the NES games it created are those which society artificially created to compensate for what who otherwise be a less motivating, free market situation. By analogy, filling a balloon clearly is within scope of the laws of physics, but it is not an example of the law of entropy.
Right, and there are various games that are good substitutes. But competition between a few or even a lot of good substitutes is at best an oligarchy. Pepsi may be cheaper on the market because there is Coke for sale, but are either as cheap as the hundreds of generic brands? (comprare this analogy to the various Unixes (an oligarchy), Windows (a monopoly which knew to undercut the competition for more market share even if seen as an inferior good), and Linux (a good with many perfect substitutes, many distributors, and a variety of price ranges with many more optimal solutions) (yea, hand to throw this in because it shows why NES classic games sell even through there are free games, yet they're still less expensive than GBA games)) I can't thank of a better example of a perfect substitute of a good than digital copies of a copyrighted work.
If the classic NES games were actually sold at near their production cost, they'd probably diminish the sale of other GBA titles. However with such long copyright terms, we'll never really know.
I care because I care about economics. In a free market (which capitalism is something like), airplanes aren't supposed to cost millions of dollars more than it could be sold for. For a given good, there's a whole array of prices people are willing to pay for the good. With enough competition, the actual company selling the good is forced (from an economic standpoint) to keep the price low which causes a good deal of consumer surplus (the whole "Dutch Auction" which Google's IPO is supposed to do behaves in the same way).
Given that little actual work is done to create these classics, the perceived value by most is less than the $20 charged. However, given there's no one to compete against Nintendo, Nintendo will set the price at $20 to maximize its own profit. This almost certainly isn't maximizing consumer surplus which is a sign that the market is neither as efficient nor as healthy as it could be. Every time the free market fails for whatever reason, it's a time I want to know about. For airplanes, it's a question of barrier to entry, government subsidies (lucrative contracts, mostly), and the general lack of demand to approach the efficiency possible. For NES classics, it's a question of the artificial monopoly of copyright. It's not feasible to fix the airplane problem (well, the contracts could be removed, which would help), but such long copyrights *are* something that can be completely resolved.
By law, if MS doesn't say you can distribute it, you can't distribute it.
Maybe you've heard of this thing called "Fair Use"? Let's see how well it should hold up for this exception:
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
It's not for a commercial nature. In fact, it actually *helps* MS, as it means less bandwidth costs to them. As for "education purposes", I don't think that's valid. So, I'd guess it'd be viewed as neutral.
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
Well, it's a security update, not Britney's new CD. It's also not an exclusive download, meaning it's not a "reward" for some people (for example, exclusive demo CDs might be monetarily free but only given out to select members; at that point, though, it's hard to argue that the membership is the actual payment which makes it non-free; but MS has the download on a public server, and anyone (Mac, Windows, and Linux users, for example) can download it; before you claim this illegal, note that copyright law was changed (around 1999) to reflect the position that not password-protecting a website is paramount to granting access for an individual to view it; as for distribution, that's obviously another issue)
3. amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
Okay, it clearly fails this point given it's an exact copy of the whole thing.
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
Like I said in point one, this effectively *saves* MS money. There's no real market for MS selling their security updates, thanks to them giving it away for free. So, there's no real effect on the market.
So, the real issue then is at what point is it considered fair use? If this were educational material, it would clearly be allowed, even though it's a full copy (violating point 3), so it's not the case that fair use requires to not violate any point. At the same time, I know of no case (one way or another) on the legality of people making copies of game demo CDs (which seem a relatively accurate analogy).
So, to me the whole case is neither clearly legal or illegal, though personally I'd say it legal given the overall positive good it does compared to the harm done to the copyright holder. In some ways, I really wish this decision would be shown to be true.
Well, it's all well and good that P2P "should" do these things to be an "innovative potential as a 21st century virtual collaboration and project management tool for regional or nationwide academic, business, home, and governmental activities", but why the heck is there even the mention of a bill? All the stuff you mention sounds like RFC material, for which software can be trademarked " P2P" so that people can feel secure while everyone can continue to use Kazaa.
The truth is all P2P demonstrates is a fundamental problem with copyright law since 1976: one has to err on the side of caution by assuming that a work is copyrighted. Most users, however, will copy files anyways, and the warezers are so prevelant that d/lers aren't always aware they're violating a copyright (this isn't an excuse for the people who seem pretty blatantly to be d/ling songs, but can you honestly admit to being 100% sure that you've never d/led something that you later found out was warez because you didn't realize it was illegal to possess for some reason?).
Now, this isn't to excuse the people who would strip copyright from things anyways, as warezers, to get more people to distribute a file and make most of this argument moot. Nor is it easy to *locate* the warezer who did actual strip the copyright. At the same time, copyright law seems written to punish those who distribute files, not those who d/l or possess such works (read US copyright law again some time, this time without bias assuming anyone associated with copyright infringment is guilty of copyright infringment).
Finally, both lacking spyware and including filters (porno or other wises) are features for which the "market" can decide on its own to stop (this based on the assumption that trying to hide spyware is fraud, and I'd count a casual mention in the EULA as hiding as rarely is the extent of what spyware can or will do spelled out in clear terms, nor how to remove it). Being P2P, it's every client that has to instigate their own filtering system (modding is too easily abused by zombies in such a dynamic anonymous group) for a good P2P network, yet at the same time it's clear that any region law won't be the real solution. Suggesting standards is great, but that's in line with RFCs, not legislation.
I can't disagree with a lot of your points, as most of them sound like personal experience, and I've experienced one on the list (slower graphical draw, since at the time I was using an on-board SIS chipset, for which graphic acceleration was crap (is it still?)).
But as to two choice comments:
The applications did not play well with each other, at all.
I'm not sure what you mean by this, exactly. Most the time, Windows apps don't actually play together ever. The exception are the few apps designed to work together (office suits, uh..that's it?). Applications are otherwise rather self-contained and inconsistent. Try getting Excel 2000 to work with Wordperfect or Word Perfect's spreadsheet program working with Word, let alone trying to Excel 2000 with Word XP (okay, sort of a stupid point, as it's seemingly stupid to install Office 2000 and XP, but one might because of file format incompatibilities).
Drag and drop never worked.
In what? Nautilus? Every app you use? The fact is, there's the rare exception that drag&drop works well in Windows (all of MS's software probably excluded, especially their integrated Office suit). This falls back to the earlier point, that drag&drop really isn't that ubiqitous. The only place I really ever used it was in file management (since it's easier to drop&drop than do a lot of keyboard action), dropping some txt file on notepad to load it, and sometimes archivers (though using the context-senstive menu was usually quicker). Maybe things improved since I last used Windows 2000?
Or are you really talking about file management in Linux? Truth is, that's generally more of a pain in Linux than Windows, mostly due to the fact that it's 90% of the time quicker to just cp, or mv, or whatever a file or files. In the rare exception it's not, you have to wait for a file manager to load (though I hear the load time for konq is near instant if you use kde; same for nautilus in gnome), navigate to a folder, then fiddle with one or more folders/tabs/views to do the work. The fact is, file management in this way was *never* good. It just was a lot less sucky in Windows than using DOS tools. I want to try out Nautilus' spatial navigation some time, though, as that sounds sort of interesting.
Games are of royalty, but they're eye-searing after a while. And what about IT isn't nauseating puke? So, Disney just needs to make their PC ink red, for all the parents killed in their cartoons so they'll have ripe human orphans as the hero (the exception being Lion King, where it's a Lion who becomes orphaned; I guess if you've already killed Bambi's mom, it's not much to kill the king of the jungle).
So now MS has to make its OS work with spyware?
Not under normal circumstances, however...
If I let someone I don't trust work on my car, and they screw it up to the point that when I start it next time it blows up, is that GM's fault? Its my fault for letting that idiot work on it.
That's a good, valid argument, however...
If spyware causes the system to crash, its the users fault for not taking proper precautions. Users can whine and moan about it all they want, it doesn't change anything.
Okay, here's the thing: the proper precautions some people should have taken is to NOT use Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer has been a conduit for at least a few worms delivering spyware. So has Windows, in general, though most of those holes were patched before any well-known worms were released giving most "responsible" individuals the time to go and d/l a patch (this ignores that users shouldn't have to bother patching software, though it's currently a sad fact of life for all software).
So, to that extent, MS is responsible for overcoming defects in their software and the side-effects there-of for not providing patches soon enough that "responsible" individuals could take "proper precautions". The only real "proper precaution" available to most users, to leave MS non-cupable, is for them to have used the precaution of not using MS software (ie, not IE, Windows, etc).
To put it another way, if GM vehicles are vulnerable to ice being able to unlock the driver cabin, then someone exploiting this vulnerability and damaging the vehicle shouldn't be laid to blame on the owner, especially when the car ends up blowing up when the lock is fixed. At some level, GM has to be held responsible for not being prompt enough in finding and fixing the problem including a lot of the collateral damage involved.
Yea, it's almost like he was the sysadmin or something. The fact is, her being his wife should have no bearing on him doing his job. It would actually be *worse* that he was unwilling to monitor his wife's computer usage. As has been pointed out several times during this thread, governmental computer use is never supposed to be for personal use. Ie, it really shouldn't matter that it was his wife since any other user would be doing the exact same thing. But yea, lets label him a control freak. Oh, and look at all those police officers busting marijuana users: total control freaks. It's not like it's their job to bust people or our job to make marijuana legal (by not voting for people anti-marijuana)..
I thought the major reason Drive-ins were popular was the privacy (dark, self-contained little boxes). Who cares about the sound or picture quality if you're busy making out?
The thing is that when bios firmware started coming out, there was a lot of people who lost their machine to a flashing mishap when meant the manufacturer had to take it back and fix it. After a while, the manufacturers started include a boot-block bios which is never overwritten but provides enough functionality to auto-flash the bios if the bios is corrupt. Not surprisingly, this not only made consumers (like me) happy.
The truth is, the majority of people adventurous enough to flash their bios are more than capable of following some instructions to make a "recovery disk" in case things go wrong. To me, it seems like common sense that a boot-block bios should exist on all firmware upgradeable parts. I'm sure economics bears out this out as well.
Well, whoever wrote the virus to DoS doubleclick is the one who is unhooking the sign and tossing it into the garbage. People who just don't look at the ad are like people who don't look at ads on sites (and with deceptive ads, that's sort of hard, though thankfully uncommon). But the closest analogy would be to wear a pair of glasses that block out ads with a big "censor" blob. That thought really springs to mind a funny thing: why is it okay for the government to censor one set of offensive material, yet its somehow "stealing" if I try to censor stuff myself? But in some ways, I guess that revolves back to a more core point, that if there's something offensive in the material you should either live with it or not watch the whole thing. It's always funny to me to hear parents who say "I really want my kids to watch because it's a great movie, but I can't because of all the cursing/violence/sex". At the same time, all those shows that do everything *but* show sex seem to get great ratings even though they're mostly devoid of any "artist" value. Go figure why things are shifted like that.
The idea with advertising/marketing might be to get attention. But that attention is to get you to buy their product. The more that advertisers are able to track consumers who see their ads, the more they're going to demand having a provable benefit ratio to advertising with someone. That's just good-old economics. So, viewing the ads is unlikely to help except in the short-term (and things like coupons to go through an "affiliate link" is just one way to provide such better tracking).
/. might be an example), the more they're distained and the more such advertisements are rallied against and/or blocked. For free college newspapers, for example, it's not uncommon to sit beside the newspapers stack a full bin of thrown out advertisement fliers. At the same time, it's not uncommon for most other newspapers (paid or otherwise) to include local grocery store ads which people find helpful.
That's not to say ads are useful to the consumer. At the same time, the more advertisements are misplaced (getting advice on which Windows product to buy on
As for your comment about "you only for access to the internet, not the content", the same could be said very clearly of cable too. You're paying for the service (access to content), and you have to pay higher prices on top of that to order custom content. How that trickles down into content providers making money to continue to provide content is the job of the content providers, not the consumer. The only ways to hurt a content provider is to provide their content outside of copyright. Everything else is just a fact-of-life economics.