I didn't put both on the same machine. (I left out a few details.)
I couldn't get the SELinux firewall to communicate with the Snort. Turned off SELinux and it worked. Again, I'm not that good a sysadmin and ran out of time allocated to the issue to work the problem out. The intention is to use SELinux firewall should our commercial firewall that protects our LAN die unexpectedly.
I'm using Base as a snort GUI. It's much better than the nothing they had before.
There are desktops trying to do their own thing and you know, all of them are quite unpopular because it's not familiar.
Poke around the Internet for Gnustep based applications/environments. There's another guy doing a mozilla-based desktop environment where he's stuffing menus in the corners of the screen.
Things that humans must re-learn mean change, and change is not something most people thrive on.
I can be very critical of KDE on a detailed level. But overall, it's very good. What I grow most tired of is people that lament a lack of innovation while they don't do much to experiment or contribute to innovative things.
I spent a great deal of time trying to get SELinux in FC working, it turns out like most things, the devil is in the details. Here's why:
1. Enabling it during install doesn't magically make every application SELinux aware. It turns out that packages need to have SELinux features. Here's a link to the good fellow doing SELinux packages for Debian. http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/ Now, I don't know if the Fedora package volunteers have done the same kind of work or not, but I'd be interested to hear either way. It reminds me of LDAP, where LDAP is good, but applications need to support it to make it great.
2. My experience turning on SELinux in FC was not good. I attempted to build a firewall with IDS and the IDS just didn't work. I'm not a coder, nor am I a really strong Linux Admin, so bye-bye SELinux and the firewall/IDS worked like it should.
3. Generally speaking, American PHB's (at least) are finally getting the message that IT security is far more important than in the past and I think this is a well-timed Marketing message with the actual SELinux implementation throughout FC being very far from their glossy claims.
a very viable way for Microsoft to keep Linux as weaker competitor.
1. In the corporate world where support is more valuable than the software in some cases, there is *not* a long list of viable Linux-based companies. I don't think Novell's going to dismantle Red Hat either.
2. The approach MS will likely take is to capture as many of the Linux dollars as they can. They know support is Linux's weakness and they can provide that. So, Microsoft bundles OSS application support to it's richest customers. Microsoft wins and OSS competitors are none the richer.
3. Microsoft chooses Red Hat, supports Red Hat, but that's all. It's the Devil they know and they make a new hybrid of vendor lock-in.
Parent is right, but I think it's bigger than just IBM.
I think what this suggests is that Microsoft is positioning itself to be the one that gets all the money that is supposed to be generated from OSS.
I believe Microsoft will be able to say to their wealthiest customers, "buy our product, then use this free product and we'll support both!" Effectively leaving the market "crumbs" to the small guys while capturing the wealthiest dollars.
If this experiment fails, I think they will litigate away their Linux competitors. Not like SCO claims, but more ordinary IP claims that don't really threaten IBM but drain what little resources distros have.
3. There are more companies where it's perfectly okay to treat employees like the developers at EA widely reported on some months ago. So squeeze all potential productivity out of a worker, because the computers and applications and resources we have been so generous in providing are enough to do the job.
1. Entertainment mega-corps still win big because they strike fear into the hearts of consumers. The message is simple, "don't steal our music." The underlying assumptions that many/.'ers dislike are strongly reinforced. What's worse is a dissenting view can easily be positioned as at least disreputable behavior if not outright criminal activity.
2. It looks to me like they lost on procedure, not so much on the theft issue. The woman's got to pay anyway and that works out great for the RIAA.
3. No one cares that they are going after minors. The US has a criminal courts system for them too. Again, the underlying assumptions about the control of the music are not even on the table.
I really don't see how anything positive comes out of this story.
You're right they do, but they are -still- on roughly annual upgrade cycles. They stop maintaining the old kernel and go into some kind of security patches updates only for a short time thereafter.
I think the average Linux server customer is happier on 3-5 year upgrade cycles, but I don't think any Linux organization can maintain their relevance and keep volunteers interested in such long cycles. The Debian Sarge release is a perfect example. Great product, but the sometimes justified complaints of it having "stale packages" already dog the release.
Something about people wanting "new" over "tried and true" would make a distro that tried a 3-5 year cycle a really tiny niche product. I've thought about this alot, too much in fact. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd like to hear some opinions either way.
a commercial entity actually freezing a kernel version and just fixing bugs? They would work on a much longer release cycle, maybe every third year switching to a new kernel version. My gut says there isn't, but I've got nothing telling me otherwise. (ignore the scale/complexity of doing this and just entertain the idea)
Help enlighten me here if I'm not right, but it seems to me that there's an acceptable level of performance vs. bugs in the free Linux kernel because there are so many installations, so there's little demand for a kernel with less bugs.
1. Consumers will still need -some- kind of OS even after their "computer" is roughly equivalent to a Tivo.
2. The doomsday assumption is roughly based on "network provides the computing"/thin client kind of environment where I just don't see that happening everywhere with most devices.
3. It ignores Microsoft's wise practice of marketing a chain of products that work pretty well together and block competitors at the same time.
4. It assumes their monopoly is somehow threatened and it's not. Even if they lose 10-30% of their desktop marketshare, they've still got a monopoly.
If you can step away from the emotional response you had, you might acknowledge the following:
1. I didn't bash a whole desktop. As my original post states, I use it. It's good for me, but as the Print Selection feature example points out, there are some feature gaps. I tend to think they're pretty boring gaps to fill which is why someone hasn't taken the time to do it. But the gaps narrow their potential user base.
2. As OSS matures, people far more detail oriented than me are evaluating it for adoption on a large scale. So, if KDE is looking for commercial acceptance, then the DE need to be ready for this kind of objective and potentially unflatering review.
3. Look at it as growing pains. Maybe KDE wants commercial acceptance. If they do, they may need to pause and fill in the gaps. That's the way I see it anyway.
Scenario 1. Print a portion of a newsgroup digest from Kmail. Let's say the digest contains two U.S. Letter sized pages of text of which I want to print a single insightful portion. -File>Print....... Guess what? I can't print a selection because there's no option in either Kmail's File menu or KDE's print dialog box.
Scenario 2. Print a portion of code from KDE's text editor. The file is open in the text editor and the editor does a beautiful job of rendering the code. Now, I want to print just one section. -File>Print..... Surprise, no print selection option under File menu or Print dialog boxes.
Scenario 3. Print a selection from Mozilla browser. With the browser open on some URL with text, highlight some text on a page. -File>Print>Option Selection is available as an option.
One of many basic features that remains unfulfilled.
One example of the fundamental difference between OSS and commercial offerings.
Now, if you can work just fine without such a simple feature, then KDE is great. I use it and have been for quite a while now. But KDE is low on the WAF. (Wife Acceptance Factor)
I know, more than two words. Don't get your knickers in a bunch.
segment they *might* get into. Will someone please explain to me what special competency they have in entertainment?
They have a very powerful core technology and do a very good job of selling/delivering ads I've seen.
-maybe the way this plays out is they provide the infrastructure to deliver URL's to a broadcast, but I hardly see an urgent need being filled, much less the Studios buying into the idea. I
-maybe they are trying to do an end-around all of the communication oligopolies, courageous move, but I think there would be a mighty reckoning in Washington DC as their competitors out-legislate the young up-start.
Furthermore all of their beta products don't seem to have a way to make the kind of profits Wall Street demands.
The buyer does not need to agree to anything to get permission to install and run that software. The buyer does not require any EULA to do so.
Yes they do. The buy must agree to the EULA in order for the software to install. Right? When was the last time a major software title let you opt out of the EULA and still install the software? It hasn't happened in a very long time, and therefore the EULA will be fully enforced.
However you are perfectly free to decline the EULA and receive nothing the EULA offers. If you decline the EULA then you are not restricted by anything the EULA says. If you decline the EULA then it is entirely null and void.
As stated above, you *must* agree to the EULA before major-label software will install and run. Add to that the absurdity of trying to return open software and actually getting a full refund because you didn't agree to the EULA?
Strictly speaking you are right in many ways. But the pricipals you describe aren't applied in ways anywhere near what you describe.
That they have to connect to the current banking transaction system.
Put aside PayPal's internal problems for a minute and consider this. As many posts have shown, there are micropayment alternatives out there. Here's a summary of the issues binding micropayments.
1. Cost Centers: Where most of micropayment clearers will fail is when they have to interact with a bank. Getting hooked into the payments clearing back-end is not "free" like processing a P2P type payment. Therefore one financial hurdle to get over is getting value INto one of the many micropayments environments.
3. Market Model Front End: Prepaying $20.00 at a time makes sense, but it's viewed as too big a commitment for most consumers. Add to that, the payment transaction costs at $20.00 are high, so the micropayments company sees a good chunk of that $20 go to the payment clearer.
4. Market Model Backend: Now let's say a bank that already clears payments makes a micropayments product. They will go through their usual channels which is to sell the system to a reseller who then goes out and finds all the little companies that might want it. The basic point here is that the current market has intermediaries jacking the transaction costs up and there doesn't appear to be a direct model innovator.
Finally, it would be interesting to know how Apple gets around the problem with iTunes and.99/track sales.
So there's too many inefficiencies in play for a "real" micropayments system to work.
I tried it a while ago and it was very good then. At the time the fit-and-finish was tighter than many desktop distros.
It didn't knock me out graphically, but it is a very good "light user switching to linux from winblows" kind of distro. Ideally, there are some people to call if you have problems with an application. Which is what the normal user prefers.
Like another post said, I wiped it when the wireless drivers weren't included. By now, they must be though.
1. A game is not "property". It's just not that simple anymore.
Let me give you a crazy example: When you "buy" a house. The best case scenario in capitalism is you would likely purchase the right to build/resell and occupy a house on a lot owned by someone else. That is all. You wouldn't be allowed to do anything else to it and there would be consequences if you did something else.
Look how Yahoo is spinning this: Three men illegally bypassed anti-piracy controls when they developed free technology to let computer users play some games against each other online without using the gamemaker's own system, a federal appeals court has ruled. So the individual may buy the game and get some privelidges, they do NOT however get to play the game as they please. For example, they are not allowed to play on bnetd. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050902/ap_on_hi_te/on line_games_ruling
To use your example, the spatula is for flipping burgers, not swatting flies. With DMCA, I CAN sue you for swatting flies because you are re-engineering the burger flipper in a way that the DMCA prohibits. This is why the DMCA is so great/scary.
2. The copyright holder owns the copyright and the copy rights. By law he owns nothing else. That's where I'm trying to show you that in a capitalist culture, that the traditional copyright holder has not captured *all possible value.* Corporations know this and are trying to fix it with computer software. (digital entertainment too)
I know it's not so much about the EULA itself, but you need to understand businesses are building a "legal toolbox" control (monetize) every use of their software.
If you are lucky enough to write software for a living, then you should support this kind of behavior because it will only make you richer.
Also, it's not like I applaud all of this craziness, but it's the way it is and not enough people seem to want it any other way.
I really wish it was different, but you seem to operate in some world where the DMCA didn't get passed, where DVD's aren't encrypted AND carry region codes.
It didn't take long for that to happen and there's nothing suggesting that consumers are too bothered by any of it.
As the article that started it all out clearly points out, the corporation is the clear winner and there's nothing suggesting it's going to be different anytime soon.
By law is is explicitly not copyright infringment to install and run software.
You're right it's not, but you are running the software in a way that Blizzard did not intend or approve. So they sue to make sure they capture that right. Copyright be damned.
I need no such permission. Denial doesn't help your situation.
EULAs are contract offers They may be, but corporations have a funny way of watching each other's back. For example, Microsoft enforces their EULA by preventing certain kinds of sales of their OS on Ebay. Try finding actual MSDN CD's on Ebay where the auction is not closed down by ebay. Guess what? The resale of the CD's is prohibited by Microsoft's EULA. So they are being "enforced" despite whatever LAWS are present.
The precedents are being made up because the alternative of giving away rights and priveledges to consumers flies in the face of capitalism and American culture.
This isn't about copyright. This is about EULA's and how they are very successfully enforced.
Please understand, if draconian EULA's aren't enforceable, then the ability for a company to capture a profit is thrown into uncertainty. This kind of uncertainty is unwelcome in capitalism and American culture. An entertainment conglomerate won't be assured they can limit the use of their products by end-users and thereby maximize profits.
They could, for instance, forbid the sale of the work (thus circumventing first-sale laws). They could stipulate that libraries are not allowed to keep a copy of the work in question
You make my point for me thank you very much. In every example you give you mention a priveledge previously given away for free. Capitalism as currently practiced encourages monetizing everything. Charge the libraries more, attempt to control the market by forbidding resale. (Something that some EULA's attempt to prevent) For example, attempt to sell MSDN CD-ROM's on ebay and see what happens.
I'm a crackpot, so I don't really expect it to play out in such a dark way because I think consumer will at some point not yet reached vote with their dollars, but I tire of people running on about their rights.
Defendant uses the Kazaa search engine, which furnishings the software, which allows the defendant to upload other users' files. Do you see how they put her in the wrong immediately by spinning the definition of Kazza? Now I'm not saying Kazaa is solving world hunger, but this is expert stuff.
The captured materials in Exhibit B shows that the defendant had uploaded at least 1,641 files. This is like asking a witness, "When did you stop beating your wife?"
From there, the RIAA's has a tough road ahead because the judge identifies almost immediately with the defendant and assists her in a few different ways.
MR. MASCHIO: Can I be heard for a moment, your Honor? THE COURT: You can be heard all you want. OUCH!!!
Here's where it gets really ugly for the lawyer. MR. MASCHIO: That's okay. We would just like -- we think it's appropriate for her to say, yes, I did this or, no, I did not do this under oath. The other thing is that -- THE COURT: First of all, you didn't file a verified complaint, and she doesn't have to file a verified answer. So she doesn't have to do anything under oath. MR. MASCHIO: Well, okay. At this point the lawyer is a spineless mass on the court's floor with grey matter seeping out of his ears. RIAA didn't file properly and have a lawyer in there that thinks this will go over his way just because he's the RIAA. Love it or hate it, courts have these procedures and you pay dearly if they aren't followed.
Here's the quotes around questioning the whole IP address/ account name as incontrovertable evidence. MR. MASCHIO: They wouldn't have brought the action, your Honor, if they hadn't verified that very carefully. THE COURT: Well, we'll see, won't we? We'll see. And if what she's telling me is wrong, I won't be very happy with her. Now, if she is lying, she's in BIG trouble. Let's hope she's truthful and the entertainment corps can't prove a lie.
This next part is hilarious and starts by the judge telling the lawyer to give his business card to the defendant. I'll give her my card, but our instructions are for these people to deal with the conference settlement center. They had discussions. THE COURT: I'm sorry. Your instructions from me, the Judge -- MR. MASCHIO: Okay. THE COURT: -- are that, if she appears with a lawyer, her lawyer will deal with you. MR. MASCHIO: Oh, absolutely, your Honor. THE COURT: Otherwise, you take your action and you file it in front of an arbitrator. MR. MASCHIO: No, all I was suggesting, your Honor, is that, if she doesn't come with an attorney, that the more direct way of doing this -- and this is just to facilitate things -- is to deal directly with the conference center. THE COURT: Not once you've filed an action in my court. MR. MASCHIO: Okay. THE COURT: You file an action in my court, your conference center is out of it. They have nothing to do with anything. MR. MASCHIO: Okay. I'll give her my card. THE COURT: If you are here, you are here as an officer of the court. You're taking up my time and cluttering up my calendar, so you will do it in the context of the Court. Maybe it will be with a magistrate judge, but you will be representing your client, not some conference center. And if your people want things to be done through the conference center, tell them not to bring lawsuits. That lawyer was SO unprepared it is hard to believe. I really should have gone to law school because I know I can run rings around jokers like this.
Now, let's hope she's smart enough to get someone willing to invest the time and effort to make her case a test case. Either that or counter sue.
The RIAA might lose one to a determined defendant who attacks what at this point must be a kind of system the entertainment corps set up to sue individuals.
Good for her and everything, but "the tide" is not shifting to the RIAA's disadvantage.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't put both on the same machine. (I left out a few details.)
I couldn't get the SELinux firewall to communicate with the Snort. Turned off SELinux and it worked. Again, I'm not that good a sysadmin and ran out of time allocated to the issue to work the problem out. The intention is to use SELinux firewall should our commercial firewall that protects our LAN die unexpectedly.
I'm using Base as a snort GUI. It's much better than the nothing they had before.
There are desktops trying to do their own thing and you know, all of them are quite unpopular because it's not familiar.
Poke around the Internet for Gnustep based applications/environments. There's another guy doing a mozilla-based desktop environment where he's stuffing menus in the corners of the screen.
Things that humans must re-learn mean change, and change is not something most people thrive on.
I can be very critical of KDE on a detailed level. But overall, it's very good. What I grow most tired of is people that lament a lack of innovation while they don't do much to experiment or contribute to innovative things.
Priority #1 in America is to make it safe for corporations and governmental organizations to profit (corps) or enforce (gov).
Along the way, everything is privatized, and becomes a priveledge for the individual to use at a price the market sees fit to pay.
It's been a really long time since an individual's priveledges mattered in America.
It saddens me that your comment is modded insightful.
I spent a great deal of time trying to get SELinux in FC working, it turns out like most things, the devil is in the details. Here's why:
1. Enabling it during install doesn't magically make every application SELinux aware. It turns out that packages need to have SELinux features. Here's a link to the good fellow doing SELinux packages for Debian. http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/ Now, I don't know if the Fedora package volunteers have done the same kind of work or not, but I'd be interested to hear either way. It reminds me of LDAP, where LDAP is good, but applications need to support it to make it great.
2. My experience turning on SELinux in FC was not good. I attempted to build a firewall with IDS and the IDS just didn't work. I'm not a coder, nor am I a really strong Linux Admin, so bye-bye SELinux and the firewall/IDS worked like it should.
3. Generally speaking, American PHB's (at least) are finally getting the message that IT security is far more important than in the past and I think this is a well-timed Marketing message with the actual SELinux implementation throughout FC being very far from their glossy claims.
a very viable way for Microsoft to keep Linux as weaker competitor.
1. In the corporate world where support is more valuable than the software in some cases, there is *not* a long list of viable Linux-based companies. I don't think Novell's going to dismantle Red Hat either.
2. The approach MS will likely take is to capture as many of the Linux dollars as they can. They know support is Linux's weakness and they can provide that. So, Microsoft bundles OSS application support to it's richest customers. Microsoft wins and OSS competitors are none the richer.
3. Microsoft chooses Red Hat, supports Red Hat, but that's all. It's the Devil they know and they make a new hybrid of vendor lock-in.
YMMV
Parent is right, but I think it's bigger than just IBM.
I think what this suggests is that Microsoft is positioning itself to be the one that gets all the money that is supposed to be generated from OSS.
I believe Microsoft will be able to say to their wealthiest customers, "buy our product, then use this free product and we'll support both!" Effectively leaving the market "crumbs" to the small guys while capturing the wealthiest dollars.
If this experiment fails, I think they will litigate away their Linux competitors. Not like SCO claims, but more ordinary IP claims that don't really threaten IBM but drain what little resources distros have.
I think he's responding more to two very recognizable trends and packaged it as "the death of the workstation":
h tml)
1. The growing laptop unit sales versus the average slow-growth workstation unit sales.
2. The decline in wealth and political influence of the American middle-class. (using mode not mean or median, see asia times for some IMF reporting http://atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/EH16Dj01.
3. There are more companies where it's perfectly okay to treat employees like the developers at EA widely reported on some months ago. So squeeze all potential productivity out of a worker, because the computers and applications and resources we have been so generous in providing are enough to do the job.
the RIAA's strategy.
/.'ers dislike are strongly reinforced. What's worse is a dissenting view can easily be positioned as at least disreputable behavior if not outright criminal activity.
1. Entertainment mega-corps still win big because they strike fear into the hearts of consumers. The message is simple, "don't steal our music." The underlying assumptions that many
2. It looks to me like they lost on procedure, not so much on the theft issue. The woman's got to pay anyway and that works out great for the RIAA.
3. No one cares that they are going after minors. The US has a criminal courts system for them too. Again, the underlying assumptions about the control of the music are not even on the table.
I really don't see how anything positive comes out of this story.
You're right they do, but they are -still- on roughly annual upgrade cycles. They stop maintaining the old kernel and go into some kind of security patches updates only for a short time thereafter.
I think the average Linux server customer is happier on 3-5 year upgrade cycles, but I don't think any Linux organization can maintain their relevance and keep volunteers interested in such long cycles. The Debian Sarge release is a perfect example. Great product, but the sometimes justified complaints of it having "stale packages" already dog the release.
Something about people wanting "new" over "tried and true" would make a distro that tried a 3-5 year cycle a really tiny niche product. I've thought about this alot, too much in fact. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd like to hear some opinions either way.
a commercial entity actually freezing a kernel version and just fixing bugs? They would work on a much longer release cycle, maybe every third year switching to a new kernel version. My gut says there isn't, but I've got nothing telling me otherwise. (ignore the scale/complexity of doing this and just entertain the idea)
Help enlighten me here if I'm not right, but it seems to me that there's an acceptable level of performance vs. bugs in the free Linux kernel because there are so many installations, so there's little demand for a kernel with less bugs.
Any feedback would be great.
because:
1. Consumers will still need -some- kind of OS even after their "computer" is roughly equivalent to a Tivo.
2. The doomsday assumption is roughly based on "network provides the computing"/thin client kind of environment where I just don't see that happening everywhere with most devices.
3. It ignores Microsoft's wise practice of marketing a chain of products that work pretty well together and block competitors at the same time.
4. It assumes their monopoly is somehow threatened and it's not. Even if they lose 10-30% of their desktop marketshare, they've still got a monopoly.
If you can step away from the emotional response you had, you might acknowledge the following:
1. I didn't bash a whole desktop. As my original post states, I use it. It's good for me, but as the Print Selection feature example points out, there are some feature gaps. I tend to think they're pretty boring gaps to fill which is why someone hasn't taken the time to do it. But the gaps narrow their potential user base.
2. As OSS matures, people far more detail oriented than me are evaluating it for adoption on a large scale. So, if KDE is looking for commercial acceptance, then the DE need to be ready for this kind of objective and potentially unflatering review.
3. Look at it as growing pains. Maybe KDE wants commercial acceptance. If they do, they may need to pause and fill in the gaps. That's the way I see it anyway.
I see your point and I strongly prefer no adverts at all and that's why it's lost on me.
Scenario 1. Print a portion of a newsgroup digest from Kmail.
Let's say the digest contains two U.S. Letter sized pages of text of which I want to print a single insightful portion.
-File>Print....... Guess what? I can't print a selection because there's no option in either Kmail's File menu or KDE's print dialog box.
Scenario 2. Print a portion of code from KDE's text editor.
The file is open in the text editor and the editor does a beautiful job of rendering the code. Now, I want to print just one section.
-File>Print..... Surprise, no print selection option under File menu or Print dialog boxes.
Scenario 3. Print a selection from Mozilla browser.
With the browser open on some URL with text, highlight some text on a page.
-File>Print>Option Selection is available as an option.
Details my friend, details.
Print Selection
One of many basic features that remains unfulfilled.
One example of the fundamental difference between OSS and commercial offerings.
Now, if you can work just fine without such a simple feature, then KDE is great. I use it and have been for quite a while now. But KDE is low on the WAF. (Wife Acceptance Factor)
I know, more than two words. Don't get your knickers in a bunch.
segment they *might* get into. Will someone please explain to me what special competency they have in entertainment?
They have a very powerful core technology and do a very good job of selling/delivering ads I've seen.
-maybe the way this plays out is they provide the infrastructure to deliver URL's to a broadcast, but I hardly see an urgent need being filled, much less the Studios buying into the idea. I
-maybe they are trying to do an end-around all of the communication oligopolies, courageous move, but I think there would be a mighty reckoning in Washington DC as their competitors out-legislate the young up-start.
Furthermore all of their beta products don't seem to have a way to make the kind of profits Wall Street demands.
Someone please enlighten me.
The buyer does not need to agree to anything to get permission to install and run that software. The buyer does not require any EULA to do so.
Yes they do. The buy must agree to the EULA in order for the software to install. Right? When was the last time a major software title let you opt out of the EULA and still install the software? It hasn't happened in a very long time, and therefore the EULA will be fully enforced.
However you are perfectly free to decline the EULA and receive nothing the EULA offers. If you decline the EULA then you are not restricted by anything the EULA says. If you decline the EULA then it is entirely null and void.
As stated above, you *must* agree to the EULA before major-label software will install and run. Add to that the absurdity of trying to return open software and actually getting a full refund because you didn't agree to the EULA?
Strictly speaking you are right in many ways. But the pricipals you describe aren't applied in ways anywhere near what you describe.
That they have to connect to the current banking transaction system.
.99/track sales.
Put aside PayPal's internal problems for a minute and consider this.
As many posts have shown, there are micropayment alternatives out there. Here's a summary of the issues binding micropayments.
1. Cost Centers:
Where most of micropayment clearers will fail is when they have to interact with a bank. Getting hooked into the payments clearing back-end is not "free" like processing a P2P type payment.
Therefore one financial hurdle to get over is getting value INto one of the many micropayments environments.
3. Market Model Front End:
Prepaying $20.00 at a time makes sense, but it's viewed as too big a commitment for most consumers. Add to that, the payment transaction costs at $20.00 are high, so the micropayments company sees a good chunk of that $20 go to the payment clearer.
4. Market Model Backend:
Now let's say a bank that already clears payments makes a micropayments product. They will go through their usual channels which is to sell the system to a reseller who then goes out and finds all the little companies that might want it. The basic point here is that the current market has intermediaries jacking the transaction costs up and there doesn't appear to be a direct model innovator.
Finally, it would be interesting to know how Apple gets around the problem with iTunes and
So there's too many inefficiencies in play for a "real" micropayments system to work.
I tried it a while ago and it was very good then. At the time the fit-and-finish was tighter than many desktop distros.
It didn't knock me out graphically, but it is a very good "light user switching to linux from winblows" kind of distro. Ideally, there are some people to call if you have problems with an application. Which is what the normal user prefers.
Like another post said, I wiped it when the wireless drivers weren't included. By now, they must be though.
1. A game is not "property". It's just not that simple anymore.
n line_games_ruling
Let me give you a crazy example:
When you "buy" a house. The best case scenario in capitalism is you would likely purchase the right to build/resell and occupy a house on a lot owned by someone else. That is all. You wouldn't be allowed to do anything else to it and there would be consequences if you did something else.
Look how Yahoo is spinning this:
Three men illegally bypassed anti-piracy controls when they developed free technology to let computer users play some games against each other online without using the gamemaker's own system, a federal appeals court has ruled.
So the individual may buy the game and get some privelidges, they do NOT however get to play the game as they please. For example, they are not allowed to play on bnetd. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050902/ap_on_hi_te/o
To use your example, the spatula is for flipping burgers, not swatting flies. With DMCA, I CAN sue you for swatting flies because you are re-engineering the burger flipper in a way that the DMCA prohibits. This is why the DMCA is so great/scary.
2. The copyright holder owns the copyright and the copy rights. By law he owns nothing else.
That's where I'm trying to show you that in a capitalist culture, that the traditional copyright holder has not captured *all possible value.* Corporations know this and are trying to fix it with computer software. (digital entertainment too)
I know it's not so much about the EULA itself, but you need to understand businesses are building a "legal toolbox" control (monetize) every use of their software.
If you are lucky enough to write software for a living, then you should support this kind of behavior because it will only make you richer.
Also, it's not like I applaud all of this craziness, but it's the way it is and not enough people seem to want it any other way.
Look,
I really wish it was different, but you seem to operate in some world where the DMCA didn't get passed, where DVD's aren't encrypted AND carry region codes.
It didn't take long for that to happen and there's nothing suggesting that consumers are too bothered by any of it.
As the article that started it all out clearly points out, the corporation is the clear winner and there's nothing suggesting it's going to be different anytime soon.
By law is is explicitly not copyright infringment to install and run software.
You're right it's not, but you are running the software in a way that Blizzard did not intend or approve. So they sue to make sure they capture that right. Copyright be damned.
I need no such permission.
Denial doesn't help your situation.
EULAs are contract offers
They may be, but corporations have a funny way of watching each other's back. For example, Microsoft enforces their EULA by preventing certain kinds of sales of their OS on Ebay. Try finding actual MSDN CD's on Ebay where the auction is not closed down by ebay. Guess what? The resale of the CD's is prohibited by Microsoft's EULA. So they are being "enforced" despite whatever LAWS are present.
The precedents are being made up because the alternative of giving away rights and priveledges to consumers flies in the face of capitalism and American culture.
This isn't about copyright. This is about EULA's and how they are very successfully enforced.
Please understand, if draconian EULA's aren't enforceable, then the ability for a company to capture a profit is thrown into uncertainty. This kind of uncertainty is unwelcome in capitalism and American culture. An entertainment conglomerate won't be assured they can limit the use of their products by end-users and thereby maximize profits.
They could, for instance, forbid the sale of the work (thus circumventing first-sale laws). They could stipulate that libraries are not allowed to keep a copy of the work in question
You make my point for me thank you very much. In every example you give you mention a priveledge previously given away for free. Capitalism as currently practiced encourages monetizing everything. Charge the libraries more, attempt to control the market by forbidding resale. (Something that some EULA's attempt to prevent) For example, attempt to sell MSDN CD-ROM's on ebay and see what happens.
I'm a crackpot, so I don't really expect it to play out in such a dark way because I think consumer will at some point not yet reached vote with their dollars, but I tire of people running on about their rights.
This is great arguing by the entertainment corps.
Defendant uses the Kazaa search engine, which furnishings the software, which allows the defendant to upload other users' files.
Do you see how they put her in the wrong immediately by spinning the definition of Kazza? Now I'm not saying Kazaa is solving world hunger, but this is expert stuff.
The captured materials in Exhibit B shows that the defendant had uploaded at least 1,641 files.
This is like asking a witness, "When did you stop beating your wife?"
From there, the RIAA's has a tough road ahead because the judge identifies almost immediately with the defendant and assists her in a few different ways.
MR. MASCHIO: Can I be heard for a moment, your Honor?
THE COURT: You can be heard all you want.
OUCH!!!
Here's where it gets really ugly for the lawyer.
MR. MASCHIO: That's okay. We would just like -- we think it's appropriate for her to say, yes, I did this or, no, I did not do this under oath. The other thing is that --
THE COURT: First of all, you didn't file a verified complaint, and she doesn't have to file a verified answer. So she doesn't have to do anything under oath.
MR. MASCHIO: Well, okay.
At this point the lawyer is a spineless mass on the court's floor with grey matter seeping out of his ears. RIAA didn't file properly and have a lawyer in there that thinks this will go over his way just because he's the RIAA. Love it or hate it, courts have these procedures and you pay dearly if they aren't followed.
Here's the quotes around questioning the whole IP address/ account name as incontrovertable evidence.
MR. MASCHIO: They wouldn't have brought the action, your Honor, if they hadn't verified that very carefully.
THE COURT: Well, we'll see, won't we? We'll see. And if what she's telling me is wrong, I won't be very happy with her.
Now, if she is lying, she's in BIG trouble. Let's hope she's truthful and the entertainment corps can't prove a lie.
This next part is hilarious and starts by the judge telling the lawyer to give his business card to the defendant.
I'll give her my card, but our instructions are for these people to deal with the conference settlement center. They had discussions.
THE COURT: I'm sorry. Your instructions from me, the Judge --
MR. MASCHIO: Okay.
THE COURT: -- are that, if she appears with a lawyer, her lawyer will deal with you.
MR. MASCHIO: Oh, absolutely, your Honor.
THE COURT: Otherwise, you take your action and you file it in front of an arbitrator.
MR. MASCHIO: No, all I was suggesting, your Honor, is that, if she doesn't come with an attorney, that the more direct way of doing this -- and this is just to facilitate things -- is to deal directly with the conference center.
THE COURT: Not once you've filed an action in my court.
MR. MASCHIO: Okay.
THE COURT: You file an action in my court, your conference center is out of it. They have nothing to do with anything.
MR. MASCHIO: Okay. I'll give her my card.
THE COURT: If you are here, you are here as an officer of the court. You're taking up my time and cluttering up my calendar, so you will do it in the context of the Court. Maybe it will be with a magistrate judge, but you will be representing your client, not some conference center. And if your people want things to be done through the conference center, tell them not to bring lawsuits.
That lawyer was SO unprepared it is hard to believe. I really should have gone to law school because I know I can run rings around jokers like this.
Now, let's hope she's smart enough to get someone willing to invest the time and effort to make her case a test case. Either that or counter sue.
The RIAA might lose one to a determined defendant who attacks what at this point must be a kind of system the entertainment corps set up to sue individuals.
Good for her and everything, but "the tide" is not shifting to the RIAA's disadvantage.