Firstly, it's not stealing, it's copyright infringement. Unless you refer specifically to "going into a record shop and walking out with a bag full of CDs you didn't pay for".
Secondly, how is copyright infringment "obviously" wrong? What if you buy the CD and go to a few concerts on the strength of what you pirated? Is it wrong then? What if you use it purely as a "try-before-you-buy" mechanism - deleting what you don't like and buying what you do. Technically it's still piracy, but is it wrong?
And the answer is obviously, "Nothing good can come from this."
Again, how is this obvious? Two major groups of people are likely to come out of all this: 1. People get pissed off at the entire record industry and instead support independent artists and labels such as magnatune. 2. People get scared to pirate music, knowing full well that it's legally wrong and ethically dubious, and instead decide to buy their music through legitimate channels.
Slashdot and similar sites tend to be swarming with people who belong to group 1. The record industry is banking on the majority of people belonging to group 2.
However, it's probably not considered a good idea to write a letter to your local congressman saying "The Crack Cocaine Dealers Association of America would like to make a donation of $500,000 to your noble party".
Just an idea here, but what if the "answer" for this is that there is a new, soon-to-be-released Chinese camera called "Niikon" that will be in every Wal-Mart next week.
It's an idea, but TBH it falls flat when you consider the target market for the cameras affected by this are people buying Nikon's top-end pro cameras - not the kind of thing you buy in Wal-mart.
I prefer the idea that the SDK will sooner or later cost money.
Well then why encrypt the information? It almost certainly doesn't contain anything which you could reverse-engineer to build a camera and compete with Nikon.
It doesn't contain anything which you could reverse-engineer to build a Photoshop-clone.
All it contains is information relating to the photo itself. Developing a file format which does this (if one doesn't already exist) doesn't require a doctorate in computer science - it's a first-year Bachelor's degree project, if that.
Demand for CS people goes up : wages go up - but does this make outsourcing to India look more attractive?
OTOH, you might see the situation where the number of total idiots (who originally entered the profession thinking it an easy way to get rich) in IT goes down. Which can only make life easier, and with any luck will lead to greater innovation and higher quality in the field - which with any luck will counter the desire to outsource.
Meanwhile, game consoles seem to be headed towards using the same processor that's in the Mac, not the PC... so maybe porting to OS X will become easier than porting to Windows in the future?
Doubtful. The games houses will (or at least SHOULD...) be coding to an API rather than direct to the metal.
In which case "how easy is it to port" becomes "does the API exist elsewhere?" rather than "What else looks like this, hardware-wise?". Bit like how most Unix-y programs can be made to run on vastly different hardware as long as it's running some flavour of unix.
At least, not until the next computer he buys has only digital output on the soundcard and the speakers have a digital input and a small D>A converter built in.
Yes, the analogue hole still exists then. But the quality loss with using it along with typical consumer-grade equipment will be so great as to render widespread copying over many generations of the recording impossible.
Don't these programs give you 30 days to register them? You could make as many iterations as you like for a limited time.
That's a good idea. Take it one step further by writing a script to install Windows in the vmware partition when vmware is installed, and script the Windows installation to install and configure Virtual Server with a VMWare virtual machine automatically.
You need to keep in mind that Microsoft is a very large company and each department You need to keep in mind that Microsoft is a very large company and each department is so large that it is almost like a company within its self. is so large that it is almost like a company within its self.
Yes, but until recently the entire business was focused on the cash-cow that was Windows and Office and their associated upgrades. This is a somewhat unique case - the one (Windows) is of no use without the other (Office) for many businesses, yet they were always licensed separately.
Since then, a few things have happened:
1. Competition. Linux is finally being taken seriously as a desktop in some areas, companies threatening to switch to Linux on the desktop are discovering that it's actually quite feasible for many of their staff. Similarly OpenOffice has reached the point where it can realistically take on Office for many users.
2. Product maturity. Windows and Office, no matter how much the slashdot crowd dismiss them, finally reached a reasonable level of maturity a few years ago. The bad old days of Windows '95/8 are long gone for most, certainly as far as businesses (which provide far more revenue than the home user) are concerned
Therefore, they're less inclined to go out and spend lots of money on upgrades unless there's a damn good reason. "Because it's available" isn't a damn good reason.
So now, Microsoft have to diversify a bit and start to look at selling a few more software products. And yes, that might mean accepting the existence of Linux.
is actually a link, using Google as a redirect, to http://unspun.mithuro.com/content/view/60/, an article all about a "Motion filed to open FBI whistleblower case"?
Erm... no they can't. That's the whole point of a half-decent rootkit.
Of course, it means that the military have to compromise the boxes from the outside rather than the infinitely-more-convenient option of having the vendor install a backdoor in the shipping product, but that needn't be too much of a problem.
Many schools (especially private ones) get money donated to them explicitly earmarked for technology
What on Earth is a book if not a form of technology? OK, it's not what is generally meant by "technology" but look at it this way:
It solves a problem (how to communicate knowledge).
It's an efficient means of solving the problem.
It's something which is man-made and required development in order to exist in its current form. You don't go out to the woods to look for wild Applied Mathematics books.
Even better, you could argue that since it stores and communicates information, it's information technology!
Of course, the benefactors might not like this view...
james@blackbird mp3_fromflac $/usr/sbin/lsof "/media/mp3_fromflac/Texas/The Greatest Hits CD 1/06_So In Love With You.mp3" COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME lame 31309 james 4u REG 254,0 4325376 260585/media/mp3_fromflac/Texas/The Greatest Hits CD 1/06_So In Love With You.mp3
I can't see any reason why a developer couldn't look at the source and add similar functionality to their own code.
james@blackbird james $/usr/sbin/lsof/dev/cdrom COMMAND PID USER FD TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME grip 11558 james 23r BLK 3,0 2060/dev/hda grip 11559 james 23r BLK 3,0 2060/dev/hda grip 12926 james 23r BLK 3,0 2060/dev/hda
The thing advertisers don't seem to get is that you don't sell products by annoying the hell out of people.
I would take it a step further. The thing advertisers don't get is that if someone is taking steps to ensure they don't see your ad then the chances of them actually buying anything from you had they seen your ad are absolutely miniscule.
You are locked in to one hardware vendor. (This has not really been any more true for Apple motherboards than for Intel or AMD motherboards in a long time....)
The only way I can interpret that to make any sense is "if you're using an Intel processor you're stuck with an Intel-capable-only motherboard, likewise if you're using an AMD processor".
While you're technically correct, there's a huge market in motherboards from many manufacturers in x86 land - you just have to choose an appropriate model to go with the chip. Show me who apart from Apple will sell me a motherboard I can plug a PowerPC chip into and run OS X.
Yeah... who cares about data corruption? I would argue that both OSX and Linux are in the wrong there.
Have either of you actually used Linux? You can't unmount a filesystem which is in use; however flushing any outstanding buffers to the disk is an intrinsic part of unmounting.
Obviously I don't know anything about the deal, but I do know when you or I ask Dell to supply one system running Linux (or indeed without an OS), they laugh in your face.
When you're a university buying hundreds of systems, I daresay things are somewhat more flexible.
Slashdot Mirror
Playing devil's advocate here, but...
Its obvious that stealing music is wrong.
Firstly, it's not stealing, it's copyright infringement. Unless you refer specifically to "going into a record shop and walking out with a bag full of CDs you didn't pay for".
Secondly, how is copyright infringment "obviously" wrong? What if you buy the CD and go to a few concerts on the strength of what you pirated? Is it wrong then? What if you use it purely as a "try-before-you-buy" mechanism - deleting what you don't like and buying what you do. Technically it's still piracy, but is it wrong?
And the answer is obviously, "Nothing good can come from this."
Again, how is this obvious? Two major groups of people are likely to come out of all this:
1. People get pissed off at the entire record industry and instead support independent artists and labels such as magnatune.
2. People get scared to pirate music, knowing full well that it's legally wrong and ethically dubious, and instead decide to buy their music through legitimate channels.
Slashdot and similar sites tend to be swarming with people who belong to group 1. The record industry is banking on the majority of people belonging to group 2.
The major drug barons probably can.
However, it's probably not considered a good idea to write a letter to your local congressman saying "The Crack Cocaine Dealers Association of America would like to make a donation of $500,000 to your noble party".
Personally I think it will take off
I sure hope it does or Airbus will wind up looking pretty silly.
(sorry... couldn't resist).
You're talking about an OS which requires "Next... Next... Next.... Next" to install and you've never managed to get it right once.
Tells me more about you than the OS.
Needs updating. Also needs to account for Windows NT's heritage being entirely 32-bit.
....
Windows is now a:
64-bit hack of a user interface first seen on a
32-bit kludge on top of a
16 bit patch to an
Just an idea here, but what if the "answer" for this is that there is a new, soon-to-be-released Chinese camera called "Niikon" that will be in every Wal-Mart next week.
It's an idea, but TBH it falls flat when you consider the target market for the cameras affected by this are people buying Nikon's top-end pro cameras - not the kind of thing you buy in Wal-mart.
I prefer the idea that the SDK will sooner or later cost money.
Well then why encrypt the information? It almost certainly doesn't contain anything which you could reverse-engineer to build a camera and compete with Nikon.
It doesn't contain anything which you could reverse-engineer to build a Photoshop-clone.
All it contains is information relating to the photo itself. Developing a file format which does this (if one doesn't already exist) doesn't require a doctorate in computer science - it's a first-year Bachelor's degree project, if that.
It could be good or bad.
Demand for CS people goes up : wages go up - but does this make outsourcing to India look more attractive?
OTOH, you might see the situation where the number of total idiots (who originally entered the profession thinking it an easy way to get rich) in IT goes down. Which can only make life easier, and with any luck will lead to greater innovation and higher quality in the field - which with any luck will counter the desire to outsource.
Meanwhile, game consoles seem to be headed towards using the same processor that's in the Mac, not the PC ... so maybe porting to OS X will become easier than porting to Windows in the future?
Doubtful. The games houses will (or at least SHOULD...) be coding to an API rather than direct to the metal.
In which case "how easy is it to port" becomes "does the API exist elsewhere?" rather than "What else looks like this, hardware-wise?". Bit like how most Unix-y programs can be made to run on vastly different hardware as long as it's running some flavour of unix.
At least, not until the next computer he buys has only digital output on the soundcard and the speakers have a digital input and a small D>A converter built in.
Yes, the analogue hole still exists then. But the quality loss with using it along with typical consumer-grade equipment will be so great as to render widespread copying over many generations of the recording impossible.
Hell, you've been able to import non-Microsoft file formats into their applications for years.
That was to encourage you to switch from your previous system. Remember "Help for WordPerfect users" in Word?
Don't these programs give you 30 days to register them? You could make as many iterations as you like for a limited time.
That's a good idea. Take it one step further by writing a script to install Windows in the vmware partition when vmware is installed, and script the Windows installation to install and configure Virtual Server with a VMWare virtual machine automatically.
You need to keep in mind that Microsoft is a very large company and each department You need to keep in mind that Microsoft is a very large company and each department is so large that it is almost like a company within its self. is so large that it is almost like a company within its self.
Yes, but until recently the entire business was focused on the cash-cow that was Windows and Office and their associated upgrades. This is a somewhat unique case - the one (Windows) is of no use without the other (Office) for many businesses, yet they were always licensed separately.
Since then, a few things have happened:
1. Competition. Linux is finally being taken seriously as a desktop in some areas, companies threatening to switch to Linux on the desktop are discovering that it's actually quite feasible for many of their staff. Similarly OpenOffice has reached the point where it can realistically take on Office for many users.
2. Product maturity. Windows and Office, no matter how much the slashdot crowd dismiss them, finally reached a reasonable level of maturity a few years ago. The bad old days of Windows '95/8 are long gone for most, certainly as far as businesses (which provide far more revenue than the home user) are concerned
Therefore, they're less inclined to go out and spend lots of money on upgrades unless there's a damn good reason. "Because it's available" isn't a damn good reason.
So now, Microsoft have to diversify a bit and start to look at selling a few more software products. And yes, that might mean accepting the existence of Linux.
OK, mod me troll but... how come the link:
My Verdict [google.com]
is actually a link, using Google as a redirect, to http://unspun.mithuro.com/content/view/60/, an article all about a "Motion filed to open FBI whistleblower case"?
Yet.
Erm... no they can't. That's the whole point of a half-decent rootkit.
Of course, it means that the military have to compromise the boxes from the outside rather than the infinitely-more-convenient option of having the vendor install a backdoor in the shipping product, but that needn't be too much of a problem.
What on Earth is a book if not a form of technology? OK, it's not what is generally meant by "technology" but look at it this way:
Of course, the benefactors might not like this view...
The thing advertisers don't seem to get is that you don't sell products by annoying the hell out of people.
I would take it a step further. The thing advertisers don't get is that if someone is taking steps to ensure they don't see your ad then the chances of them actually buying anything from you had they seen your ad are absolutely miniscule.
You are locked in to one hardware vendor. (This has not really been any more true for Apple motherboards than for Intel or AMD motherboards in a long time....)
The only way I can interpret that to make any sense is "if you're using an Intel processor you're stuck with an Intel-capable-only motherboard, likewise if you're using an AMD processor".
While you're technically correct, there's a huge market in motherboards from many manufacturers in x86 land - you just have to choose an appropriate model to go with the chip. Show me who apart from Apple will sell me a motherboard I can plug a PowerPC chip into and run OS X.
Yeah... who cares about data corruption? I would argue that both OSX and Linux are in the wrong there.
Have either of you actually used Linux? You can't unmount a filesystem which is in use; however flushing any outstanding buffers to the disk is an intrinsic part of unmounting.
I'd imagine it was Zaphod Beeblebrox. Not many actors have two heads and three arms.
Obviously I don't know anything about the deal, but I do know when you or I ask Dell to supply one system running Linux (or indeed without an OS), they laugh in your face.
When you're a university buying hundreds of systems, I daresay things are somewhat more flexible.
Would you like to assume liability when the first customer loses power part-way through an upgrade?