1. Workers who lost really well-paying jobs to outsourcing: I'm sorry no one informed you, but one of the economic reasons you were paid so well was that your job was coming to an end. It was always a temporary state. Consider the extra wages a "retraining allowance" paid in advance.
2. Shareholder Demands: Clearly outsourcing is a cost-reducing effort. As long as those costs are measured in dollars and cents your job is on the chopping block on a quarterly basis. Unless every business owner/shareholder in every country in the world becomes simultaneously enlightened, this is the benchmark.
The new american worker rules are: There is no such thing as job stability. Get paid for today's work because there is no promise tomorrow. e.g. retirement and vesting options are mostly vaporware. If you are lucky enough to be near the top of your wage curve, live at or about the middle of the wage range for your industry if at all possible. This gives you a nice F.U. fund if there's a sudden change in your employment circumstances.
I thought that the end was near for Linux in the U.S. until a couple of days ago.
Oracle and maybe microsoft/suse in particular gives their high-value customers something to spend their money on with their distro. Microsoft and Oracle can't pull the litigation trigger right now because it threatens an extremely valuable/profitable Service segment. For right now, it's about keeping their customers happy and keeping those service contracts going.
Some UNlikely litigation targets: filesystem patents Mono Identity management/authentication Server anything
Some likely targets: media playback openoffice.org The "killer" Linux desktop application that hasn't taken off yet. There are so many good ones it's only a matter of time.
Beyond that, it seems inevitable to me that someone will create the usual Linux support environment for running oracle software on another distro. How many recompiled redhat support contract versions of their distro are out there now?
How about this one: No right to create modifications or derivatives of this Specification is granted herein.
There is a separate patent license available to parties interested in implementing software programs that can read and write files that conform to the Specification. This patent license is available at this location: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/format/xmlpaten tlicense.asp.
The link with the actual license to READ and WRITE a file to their specifications is dead. This one works though, http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/xpspatentlic.msp x. Is it the same? different license? Bad links happen to everyone.
Some handy excerpts: "Necessary Claims" do not include any claims: (i) that would require a payment of royalties by Microsoft to unaffiliated third parties; (ii) covering any Enabling Technologies that may be necessary to make or use any product incorporating a Licensed Implementation,....
This says to me that they have not indemnified developers from patent time-bombs for the functions one step beyond their proposed standard or other patent time-bombs laid by lesser-known Patent IP firms. Maybe someone with more coding skills can explain if it would be possible to implement a standard without so-called "Enabling Technologies"?
(iii) covering the reading or writing of documents other than XPS Documents, or rendering of XPS Documents in a manner that is different than the rendering allowed by the XML Paper Specification. "Enabling Technologies" means technologies that may be necessary to make or use any product or portion of a product that complies with the XML Paper Specification, but are not expressly set forth"
To me this says Microsoft can come after you if you do something they didn't think of.
I don't see how this benefits any developer outside of a select few.
I have no problems. Plenty of spam and the good stuff comes through for me and my wife.
Believe it or not, they've been very good. The one issue I've had they resolved quickly once I was escalated above first-level tech support.
Maybe it's a location-specific issue?
I can qualify another post that talked about the new email sender verification thing. I get it sending mail from the web email interface. But none of my friends or the emails I send myself from work require sender verification.
I don't know what the motivation behind these complaints may be. It certainly isn't bothering me or my wife. Maybe it will..
You're telling me that I've 'lost control' of the huge collection of Old Radio Program MP3s I have stuck in folder on the D:\ drive???
Uncertain. Hopefully you aren't getting the content from CD's. This is verbatim from the EULA:
"If the file is a song you ripped from a CD with the Copy protect music option turned on, you might be able to restore your usage rights by playing the file. You will be prompted to connect to a Microsoft Web page that explains how to restore your rights a limited number of times."
So, the CD you paid for unlimited rights to play where you want has been revoked. Permanently. And you agreed to it. Can you go back to WMP10?
Please explain the juvenile fascination with the ability to make exact copies of your media. What's the point of bringing this up?
You can do lots of things with it that Apple/Microsoft/... don't want to acknowledge and are very motivated to eliminate.
1. First-sale Doctrine The courts said, "We held that the exclusive statutory right to vend applied only to the first sale of the copyrighted work..." Treats the music like software. You own it despite what the mega-corps would have you believe. http://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html
2. Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 "fair use privilege" In stark contrast, the court held that the Rio is entirely consistent with copyright law's fair use privilege that gives consumers the right to make copies of works for their personal use. Once a music file passes through a computer, it is not legally required to impose restrictions on consumer freedoms... http://www.eff.org/cafe/cafe_case_analysis.html
Actually, it's all about creating an environment of fear for the common consumer.
Like a dog that has been beat for no good reason, less tech savvy computer users will simply follow the entertainment conglomerates bizarre rules out of fear and never consider that the Doctrine of First Sale still applies to their entertainment media regardless if it's in a downloadable package or not.
I've been thinking I should start a simple parent's guide to the Doctrine of First Sale so smart parents aren't teaching their kids stupid RIAA tricks. Yes? No? Is there one already out there?
My source is a friend who is a Marraige and Family Therapist. She has adults and teens coming through her and her colleague's offices attempting to undo their destructive sexual behaviors.
Guess what? Nearly all of them grew up in front of the TV with little parental supervision. Most watching material not age appropriate. (ex. Playboy channel)
Sex is just as much an "object" This is where we disagree. It is a part of a complex human relationship. "Friends with Benefits" can be (not is, can be) a healthy human relationship. There are probably more bad long-term relationships than good ones. But it's impossible to generalize either way.
Lastly, you are missing out on the great psychological/social benefits of food if you treat it as simply an object. Try it. It's great!
A nipple shown for a split-second shouldn't be an issue in the U.S.
It is though and that's a reflection of how poorly sexuality is taught in the U.S. Showing your kids images of naked bodies without defining them or teaching them tools to deal with them results in this kind of crazy response to a nipple.
This one will bite the dust as soon as the other cartel members get wind of it.
This is the same cartel convicted of fixing the price of CD's. This is the same cartel has the ability to maintain an artificially high $10-$18 per new CD. Look at the demise of allofmp3.com. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllOfMP3.com_legality
The money to be made by eliminating your right to first sale is too powerful.
Balkanization of media download services clearly benefits the media cartels.
Consider this story another sad footnote in the history of your rights being taken away.
I've seen burnout first-hand. We've all seen it. Most of the time it's ambitious people whose goals/expectations are not met. ex. expect to be promoted but are not. This is the individual's problem. An employer doesn't and shouldn't really care either way.
An employer is *stupid* to... You may call it stupid, but most employers call it productivity. The more productive their workforce, the more successful the organization tends to be.
I may be wrong, but you sound as if you have very many choices as to your work situations or your economic needs are fully realized. (You, your family is loaded) Understandably, the world is a much prettier place with infinite potential under these conditions.
There's a good reason my original post was modded insightful. The statements ring true for the moderators. Very many others without mod points would agree as well.
This sorry platitude should be dragged out on the street and shot. The head should be put on a stick and tied to the bridge for all who enter the city to see that this just doesn't apply in the modern world.
Work is first and foremost labor/expertise in exchange for some wages and it's done at the pleasure of your boss with your consent.
"Thriving and growing" is something that the worker concentrates on exclusive of work. Should "thriving and growing" intersect with work it should only do so to increase the salary the worker at their current or next job. Period.
"Burnout" is another one. The employee is totally responsible for this as the employer will extract as much productivity as their morals allow with no consideration for "burn out."
In some cases, there are benevolent employers, but this is the rare exception.
Sorry for the rant, but these HR platitudes are a pet peeve of mine.
For example, there was this http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/175500 compromise from last year. I don't know the status, but it just seems to me this isn't such a good idea.
I can think of a few other reasons why taking the Microsoft approach to a firewall distro isn't good. Most of which boil down to Linux's current status as "more secure" is easily discredited.
An analogy would be all of the features/applications are a long rope with which the distro hangs itself.
I'm thinking the firewall needs to be very hardended with logging information to monitoring tools on another box. Am I wrong?
I just found the application that turns the phone into a "universal" remote control too. I thought it was out there because of the IRDA support, I just didn't go looking until now.
There is an oog/mp3 player for it on sourceforge too. But, on my phone it appears something about the symbian OS version breaks the application.
If unlocking the phone wasn't frowned upon a million different ways I'd say that's your best bet. Of course I wouldn't know about those things because I follow my providers rules and regs.
Another case where apple is taking what's already out there and working for the little guys and removing the geek factor.
A phone I can plug a usb cable into and drop pictures/sounds/contract directly from my computer.
I'm pretty sure my nokia 9300 does that. It has a very handy mmc slot too so I back up the system state and transfer it for safe keeping. I don't know if the nokia software is an "easy" interface, but it's okay. Runs the symbian OS and some j2me apps work well.
You can make your own ringtones too. Just transfer them as an mp3 onto the phone and you are good to go.
My understanding is this phone isn't very popular in the States. It's the best phone I've ever had and pretty hackable compared to some other phones.
How are the majority of high school students who have already had sex anyway, supposed to be harmed by pictures of other people having sex?
The answer to that question is pretty well researched, though almost impossible to implement beyond the family unit.
It's pretty clear to researchers who study the effect that sexual images have on children that they don't develop healthy behaviors around sexual issues. They treat sex as an "object" and not really a part of a more complex relationship. Be careful how you interpret that last statement because it's not an endorsement of monogamy or other more conservative social agendas.
One can observe the effects in American society. Showing nipple at the superbowl generates huge controversy. A healthy adult seeing it will probably call it a cheap stunt. The social costs may be in the increased spread of STD's, though a zealot could whip out other factoids.
It comes down to who is raising your children. The parents or the television/internets. Most of the time it is the latter.
Let me add to the very informative post. Contactless cards are a politically expedient answer to smart card banking infrastructure being implemented in the rest of the world.
The costs to the banks in other parts of the world are huge, but essentially the investments are being supported in one way or another by the governments enforcing the adoption.
In the U.S., this isn't happening at all. American regulators will be asking the banks, "What are you doing to protect and secure customer information? Is our banking as secure as these smart card banking infrastructures elsewhere in the world?" American banks get to claim they are because they will claim it is a smart card and they already provide other identity theft services at very reasonable costs.
American banking's solution is 1/100th(?) the cost of an actual smart card infrastructure.
Politicians, the people they represent and PHB's don't know and don't care about the differences. The only one's left are "security zealots" who are easily marginalized as pocket-protector nut jobs in the public discussion of the matter.
I for one welcome the banking overlords and their new "security" systems.
is not that their english comprehension is bad or the phone service quality is miserable. It's how the call centers operate.
Every support issue is scripted. If they don't have a script for your error they pick one and run with it. Pay is directly related to volume. Pay is rock-bottom low, so you can predict what kind of support you get.
If all of the call centers were in the U.S. you would have the same situation.
Very few/.'ers would take the time and effort to pay a little extra, work a little harder to find better service. So, you get what you pay for. Stop complaining about off-shoring and pay extra for better service.
There are some users that -won't- switch away from MS no matter what for whatever reason.
The average marketeer knows it's nearly impossible to convert these users so don't waste too much energy on them. Apple does waste a great deal of energy on them over the years and look how it hasn't really worked.
What does work is finding the consumers ready for a change or urgently needing something that they can't get in windows and building on them.
That's why when I see opinions flying about "as good as Windows" where good can be substituted for pretty much anything, it's just doesn't translate to business success. Yes, things on other platforms need to be similar to the norm, but within that context, transparency and 3D desktops aren't what drives adoption. Killer applications do.
The whole point of the RIAA's abuse of individuals is to strike fear and compliance into their hearts.
Like a dog that has been beat for no reason, the idea is individuals should obey whatever the entertainment mega-corps declare as "permitted usage" rules without question and whenever they feel the need to collect more money.
Arguing that the executive class is being treated differently misses the point entirely and more or less validates that the entertainment mega-corps objectives are being met.
Who's going to determine what you can do with your media? You or the media conglomerates? How will that be determined? That's a conversation worth having. Everyday.
Slashdot Mirror
Is suspect 98% of the time.
1. Workers who lost really well-paying jobs to outsourcing:
I'm sorry no one informed you, but one of the economic reasons you were paid so well was that your job was coming to an end. It was always a temporary state. Consider the extra wages a "retraining allowance" paid in advance.
2. Shareholder Demands:
Clearly outsourcing is a cost-reducing effort. As long as those costs are measured in dollars and cents your job is on the chopping block on a quarterly basis. Unless every business owner/shareholder in every country in the world becomes simultaneously enlightened, this is the benchmark.
The new american worker rules are:
There is no such thing as job stability.
Get paid for today's work because there is no promise tomorrow. e.g. retirement and vesting options are mostly vaporware.
If you are lucky enough to be near the top of your wage curve, live at or about the middle of the wage range for your industry if at all possible. This gives you a nice F.U. fund if there's a sudden change in your employment circumstances.
I thought that the end was near for Linux in the U.S. until a couple of days ago.
Oracle and maybe microsoft/suse in particular gives their high-value customers something to spend their money on with their distro. Microsoft and Oracle can't pull the litigation trigger right now because it threatens an extremely valuable/profitable Service segment. For right now, it's about keeping their customers happy and keeping those service contracts going.
Some UNlikely litigation targets:
filesystem patents
Mono
Identity management/authentication
Server anything
Some likely targets:
media playback
openoffice.org
The "killer" Linux desktop application that hasn't taken off yet. There are so many good ones it's only a matter of time.
Beyond that, it seems inevitable to me that someone will create the usual Linux support environment for running oracle software on another distro. How many recompiled redhat support contract versions of their distro are out there now?
In this case, I wonder if it's to discredit the whole idea, or to inflate the perception of the price so Wintel can compete.
(shrug)
How about this one:
n tlicense.asp.
p x. Is it the same? different license? Bad links happen to everyone.
No right to create modifications or derivatives of this Specification is granted herein.
There is a separate patent license available to parties interested in implementing software programs that can read and write files that conform to the Specification. This patent license is available at this location: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/format/xmlpate
The link with the actual license to READ and WRITE a file to their specifications is dead. This one works though, http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/xpspatentlic.ms
Some handy excerpts: "Necessary Claims" do not include any claims: (i) that would require a payment of royalties by Microsoft to unaffiliated third parties; (ii) covering any Enabling Technologies that may be necessary to make or use any product incorporating a Licensed Implementation,....
This says to me that they have not indemnified developers from patent time-bombs for the functions one step beyond their proposed standard or other patent time-bombs laid by lesser-known Patent IP firms. Maybe someone with more coding skills can explain if it would be possible to implement a standard without so-called "Enabling Technologies"?
(iii) covering the reading or writing of documents other than XPS Documents, or rendering of XPS Documents in a manner that is different than the rendering allowed by the XML Paper Specification. "Enabling Technologies" means technologies that may be necessary to make or use any product or portion of a product that complies with the XML Paper Specification, but are not expressly set forth"
To me this says Microsoft can come after you if you do something they didn't think of.
I don't see how this benefits any developer outside of a select few.
At the end of the day they pay themselves the highest rate for those adwords? I think the accountants/SEC would have something to say about that.
Sure, some admin uses the same interface but the statement ends there for obvious reasons.
It will be interesting to see if there is bottom-line quarter-reporting implications to this practice.
I had the great displeasure of browsing ebay after not visiting for a long time. Ugh!
I think his motivation for saying these things has more to do with keeping his job than reality.
I have no problems. Plenty of spam and the good stuff comes through for me and my wife.
Believe it or not, they've been very good. The one issue I've had they resolved quickly once I was escalated above first-level tech support.
Maybe it's a location-specific issue?
I can qualify another post that talked about the new email sender verification thing. I get it sending mail from the web email interface. But none of my friends or the emails I send myself from work require sender verification.
I don't know what the motivation behind these complaints may be. It certainly isn't bothering me or my wife. Maybe it will..
(shrugs)
You're telling me that I've 'lost control' of the huge collection of Old Radio Program MP3s I have stuck in folder on the D:\ drive???
Uncertain. Hopefully you aren't getting the content from CD's. This is verbatim from the EULA:
"If the file is a song you ripped from a CD with the Copy protect music option turned on, you might be able to restore your usage rights by playing the file. You will be prompted to connect to a Microsoft Web page that explains how to restore your rights a limited number of times."
So, the CD you paid for unlimited rights to play where you want has been revoked. Permanently.
And you agreed to it. Can you go back to WMP10?
It's the one where Microsoft decided they will decide when and where and on what devices to allow you to play your media.
y er/faq/drm.mspx
4 523 is in plain engrish.
Any bright minds out there that willingly use these things lost control of all of their personal media.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/pla
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=3
I certainly hope you aren't running either Vista or WMP11.
Please explain the juvenile fascination with the ability to make exact copies of your media. What's the point of bringing this up?
You can do lots of things with it that Apple/Microsoft/... don't want to acknowledge and are very motivated to eliminate.
1. First-sale Doctrine
The courts said, "We held that the exclusive statutory right to vend applied only to the first sale of the copyrighted work..." Treats the music like software. You own it despite what the mega-corps would have you believe. http://cr.yp.to/softwarelaw.html
2. Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 "fair use privilege"
In stark contrast, the court held that the Rio is entirely consistent with copyright law's fair use privilege that gives consumers the right to make copies of works for their personal use. Once a music file passes through a computer, it is not legally required to impose restrictions on consumer freedoms... http://www.eff.org/cafe/cafe_case_analysis.html
Actually, it's all about creating an environment of fear for the common consumer.
Like a dog that has been beat for no good reason, less tech savvy computer users will simply follow the entertainment conglomerates bizarre rules out of fear and never consider that the Doctrine of First Sale still applies to their entertainment media regardless if it's in a downloadable package or not.
I've been thinking I should start a simple parent's guide to the Doctrine of First Sale so smart parents aren't teaching their kids stupid RIAA tricks. Yes? No? Is there one already out there?
You caught me doing something I particulary despise when I see it in others.
Thanks!
My source is a friend who is a Marraige and Family Therapist. She has adults and teens coming through her and her colleague's offices attempting to undo their destructive sexual behaviors.
Guess what? Nearly all of them grew up in front of the TV with little parental supervision. Most watching material not age appropriate. (ex. Playboy channel)
Sex is just as much an "object"
This is where we disagree. It is a part of a complex human relationship. "Friends with Benefits" can be (not is, can be) a healthy human relationship. There are probably more bad long-term relationships than good ones. But it's impossible to generalize either way.
Lastly, you are missing out on the great psychological/social benefits of food if you treat it as simply an object. Try it. It's great!
A nipple shown for a split-second shouldn't be an issue in the U.S.
It is though and that's a reflection of how poorly sexuality is taught in the U.S. Showing your kids images of naked bodies without defining them or teaching them tools to deal with them results in this kind of crazy response to a nipple.
This one will bite the dust as soon as the other cartel members get wind of it.
y
This is the same cartel convicted of fixing the price of CD's. This is the same cartel has the ability to maintain an artificially high $10-$18 per new CD. Look at the demise of allofmp3.com. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllOfMP3.com_legalit
The money to be made by eliminating your right to first sale is too powerful.
Balkanization of media download services clearly benefits the media cartels.
Consider this story another sad footnote in the history of your rights being taken away.
I've seen burnout first-hand.
We've all seen it. Most of the time it's ambitious people whose goals/expectations are not met. ex. expect to be promoted but are not. This is the individual's problem. An employer doesn't and shouldn't really care either way.
An employer is *stupid* to...
You may call it stupid, but most employers call it productivity. The more productive their workforce, the more successful the organization tends to be.
I may be wrong, but you sound as if you have very many choices as to your work situations or your economic needs are fully realized. (You, your family is loaded) Understandably, the world is a much prettier place with infinite potential under these conditions.
There's a good reason my original post was modded insightful. The statements ring true for the moderators. Very many others without mod points would agree as well.
Consider yourself lucky and privileged.
This sorry platitude should be dragged out on the street and shot. The head should be put on a stick and tied to the bridge for all who enter the city to see that this just doesn't apply in the modern world.
Work is first and foremost labor/expertise in exchange for some wages and it's done at the pleasure of your boss with your consent.
"Thriving and growing" is something that the worker concentrates on exclusive of work. Should "thriving and growing" intersect with work it should only do so to increase the salary the worker at their current or next job. Period.
"Burnout" is another one. The employee is totally responsible for this as the employer will extract as much productivity as their morals allow with no consideration for "burn out."
In some cases, there are benevolent employers, but this is the rare exception.
Sorry for the rant, but these HR platitudes are a pet peeve of mine.
I thought this was a bad thing.
For example, there was this http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/175500 compromise from last year. I don't know the status, but it just seems to me this isn't such a good idea.
I can think of a few other reasons why taking the Microsoft approach to a firewall distro isn't good. Most of which boil down to Linux's current status as "more secure" is easily discredited.
An analogy would be all of the features/applications are a long rope with which the distro hangs itself.
I'm thinking the firewall needs to be very hardended with logging information to monitoring tools on another box. Am I wrong?
I don't think she understood.
I just found the application that turns the phone into a "universal" remote control too. I thought it was out there because of the IRDA support, I just didn't go looking until now.
There is an oog/mp3 player for it on sourceforge too. But, on my phone it appears something about the symbian OS version breaks the application.
If unlocking the phone wasn't frowned upon a million different ways I'd say that's your best bet. Of course I wouldn't know about those things because I follow my providers rules and regs.
Another case where apple is taking what's already out there and working for the little guys and removing the geek factor.
A phone I can plug a usb cable into and drop pictures/sounds/contract directly from my computer.
I'm pretty sure my nokia 9300 does that. It has a very handy mmc slot too so I back up the system state and transfer it for safe keeping. I don't know if the nokia software is an "easy" interface, but it's okay. Runs the symbian OS and some j2me apps work well.
You can make your own ringtones too. Just transfer them as an mp3 onto the phone and you are good to go.
My understanding is this phone isn't very popular in the States. It's the best phone I've ever had and pretty hackable compared to some other phones.
How are the majority of high school students who have already had sex anyway, supposed to be harmed by pictures of other people having sex?
The answer to that question is pretty well researched, though almost impossible to implement beyond the family unit.
It's pretty clear to researchers who study the effect that sexual images have on children that they don't develop healthy behaviors around sexual issues. They treat sex as an "object" and not really a part of a more complex relationship. Be careful how you interpret that last statement because it's not an endorsement of monogamy or other more conservative social agendas.
One can observe the effects in American society. Showing nipple at the superbowl generates huge controversy. A healthy adult seeing it will probably call it a cheap stunt. The social costs may be in the increased spread of STD's, though a zealot could whip out other factoids.
It comes down to who is raising your children. The parents or the television/internets. Most of the time it is the latter.
Flame On!
Let me add to the very informative post. Contactless cards are a politically expedient answer to smart card banking infrastructure being implemented in the rest of the world.
The costs to the banks in other parts of the world are huge, but essentially the investments are being supported in one way or another by the governments enforcing the adoption.
In the U.S., this isn't happening at all. American regulators will be asking the banks, "What are you doing to protect and secure customer information? Is our banking as secure as these smart card banking infrastructures elsewhere in the world?" American banks get to claim they are because they will claim it is a smart card and they already provide other identity theft services at very reasonable costs.
American banking's solution is 1/100th(?) the cost of an actual smart card infrastructure.
Politicians, the people they represent and PHB's don't know and don't care about the differences. The only one's left are "security zealots" who are easily marginalized as pocket-protector nut jobs in the public discussion of the matter.
I for one welcome the banking overlords and their new "security" systems.
is not that their english comprehension is bad or the phone service quality is miserable. It's how the call centers operate.
/.'ers would take the time and effort to pay a little extra, work a little harder to find better service. So, you get what you pay for. Stop complaining about off-shoring and pay extra for better service.
Every support issue is scripted. If they don't have a script for your error they pick one and run with it.
Pay is directly related to volume.
Pay is rock-bottom low, so you can predict what kind of support you get.
If all of the call centers were in the U.S. you would have the same situation.
Very few
There are some users that -won't- switch away from MS no matter what for whatever reason.
The average marketeer knows it's nearly impossible to convert these users so don't waste too much energy on them. Apple does waste a great deal of energy on them over the years and look how it hasn't really worked.
What does work is finding the consumers ready for a change or urgently needing something that they can't get in windows and building on them.
That's why when I see opinions flying about "as good as Windows" where good can be substituted for pretty much anything, it's just doesn't translate to business success. Yes, things on other platforms need to be similar to the norm, but within that context, transparency and 3D desktops aren't what drives adoption. Killer applications do.
The whole point of the RIAA's abuse of individuals is to strike fear and compliance into their hearts.
Like a dog that has been beat for no reason, the idea is individuals should obey whatever the entertainment mega-corps declare as "permitted usage" rules without question and whenever they feel the need to collect more money.
Arguing that the executive class is being treated differently misses the point entirely and more or less validates that the entertainment mega-corps objectives are being met.
Who's going to determine what you can do with your media? You or the media conglomerates? How will that be determined? That's a conversation worth having. Everyday.