There's the risk. It's fine as long as you're selling something that people want to upgrade every few years. If my PC dies after five years, I don't care. If I haven't upgraded by then, I'll certainly be looking for an excuse to. If my TV dies after five years, I'm not buying that brand again.
Without further specifics from the legislature, yes it seems like it could be interpreted in a very broad manner. But in that case, the argument changes from "Evil judge oversteps her authority by redefining the law," to "Judge does her job and enforces the stupidity passed by the legislature and signed into law by the governor."
I think this is a stupid law. But I also think the judge made the right call in this case. Absent a definition from the legislature, I think it's perfectly appropriate for a judge to fall back on a dictionary definition from a reputable source in order to interpret the law.
Think of it this way: Internet Explorer is free. Broadcast radio is free. Broadcast television is free. Demo software is free. Lots of newspapers are free. All of these things have moneyed companies behind them that would be completely screwed if the court rules that copyright protection only applies to things that are sold.
So regardless of whether the court system has integrity or is up for sale to the highest bidder, I think JMRI wins this one.
Really? Because right now I can access a wide range of sites that are extremely critical of the government. Some call for voting the bums out, some call for the President to be tried for treason, others call for violent rebellion. How do they handle people who advocate government overthrow in China?
I can search online for various versions of the events that killed thousands of people on 9/11, including conspiracy theorists who claim that the government is responsible. What happens in China when you accuse the government of slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians?
I can reach Google.cn from here. Can people in China reach Google.com?
The sad part is that any of us feel the need to ask for such permission. For years I was able to buy CDs that didn't come with EULAs, DRM, or other such crap. The content of the CD is protected by copyright law. That's all the labels should need, and that's all that we should allow them.
I was once trying to explain to an exec why his account would never be absolutely secure.
Me: "If somebody wants your account information badly enough, he's going to get it. He doesn't have to hack the system, he can just get it from you."
Exec: "That's crazy, I'd never give anyone my password."
Me: "Imagine you come home and find someone's broken in. He's got a gun to your daughter's head, and he tells you he's going to shoot in ten seconds if you don't give him your password. What would you do?"
Exec: [long pause]... Which daughter?
To this day I still don't know if he was joking. But I no longer use that example.
You don't have to assume that all drugs are harmless in order to support their legalization. All that's required is that the harm done by prohibition is greater than the harm done by legalization. I've lived in neighborhoods that saw lots of drug traffic. If I had to choose between the current state of things and legalizing drugs (cocaine, speed, heroin, all of em) I'd choose legalization.
Do you live in the United States? Cuz round these parts we're still engaged in fierce debate over whether evolution actually happens. Most Americans think it doesn't, so they're not spending much time thinking of the "how".
They don't give a rat's ass what the user thinks. They're putting the brand head of their users.
Most users won't care about this, they'll just leave their systems in their default settings. The people who want to change the startup sounds will be annoyed that they can't. Nobody's going to say "I'm really glad I can't change my startup sound like I could in XP." Thus, MS is introducing a feature that people will either dislike or be unware of.
Building your brand at the expense of your users is bad for both your brand and your users. As I once told our marketing guy: "Having a strong brand is useless if people recognize us and say 'Oh, it's those annoying fucks again.'"
The mob, an organization known for its brutal criminality, sent a guy to politely request the removal of infringing material. No federal marshals, no team of lawyers, no guns drawn, no confiscation of property, not even a little extortion.
All you guys who compared the RIAA and MPAA to organized crime syndicates owe the mob an apology.
I didn't have a functional internet connection at the time. When tried to start HL2, Steam tried to run an update and failed to make a connection. It hadn't updated in a while, and decided that it wasn't going to run the game until it had.
I was locked out of the single-player game because Steam couldn't phone home. I find this to be unacceptable. I won't be purchasing any more games that use Steam until this changes.
I decide that HL2 would be the last Steam game I purchased the first time HL2 refused to run because too much time had passed since the last time Steam had updated. I wasn't permitted to play a single player game on my local machine until I allowed the software to phone home and "update".
The sad part is, the online content delivery system has the potential to be a great business model. But it seems like the entertainment industry looks at every technological advance as an opportunity to screw the customer.
On a side note, Valve offers a pretty compelling refutation to the idea that piracy drives up the cost of games. Steam practically eliminates the cost of piracy as well as physical production and distribution. So why does it seem like the games are even more expensive?
Ubuntu is in beta, and it supports all of the hardware on my laptop now (Dell Inspiron 6000). One CD, and I'm up and running. What's Microsoft's excuse?
Remember back when Windows was supposed to bring us "plug and play"? Whatever happened to that?
It seems that private industry gets taxpayer subsidized research. When a company does its own research, it takes the risk that it won't amount to anything useful, and has to eat the cost of that fruitless research. When the goverment does research, the private sector only pays for work that results in patentable discoveries.
At that point, the company can license this government-funded patent and use that government-granted monopoly to develop a product and charge a price higher than it could if the invention weren't patented. And if the company does business in America, then those very same taxpayers who paid for the research supply the company with profits reaped from the patent.
If this were a private research firm, it would certainly charge enough money to cover its expenses, but since a government agency is largely shielded from market forces I have no confidence that this is the case.
I'm sure there are campaign donations involved in there somewhere as well.
It would be interesting to see them try force the banks to turn off SSL on their sites.
On the plus side, banning indecipherable information should put a stop to a large portion of spam, a significant number of slashdot postings, and a few overly buzzworded web sites.
Any company can rack up impressive volume numbers, but it doesn't mean much if in the end their business model amounts to selling a dollar for eighty cents.
For me it's about control. A while back I started wondering why it was that that media industry thought it was their right to control what I can and can't do with my computer. I buy the hardware, I buy (license) the software, I'm responsible for fixing stuff when it breaks, and I have to clean it up when their crappy software runs amok. When thay want to pay for my machine, they can tell me what to do with it.
Besides, this is Real we're talking about. Did they suddenly become relevant while I was busy playing with iTunes?
From the article: "So if you have 100 GB to back up, their product, Protectier (see name comment above) can turn it into 4GB, something you could burn onto a DVD in a few minutes...The way Diligent achieves it exceptional compression ratio is by comparing all incoming data to the data already arrived. When it finds an incoming stream of bytes similar to an existing series of bytes it compares the two and stores the differences."
The problem is, I can't restore my data using that DVD if that 4GB relies on data that's been previously stored elsewhere. Am I missing something, or is this just a hyped-up way of marketing incremental backups?
By my reading, the interesting bit is that the system can to incremental backups more quickly and more reliably than current solutions, but that's not sexy enough. I think this guy nailed it pretty well.
It's entirely possible he's missing a few dots from his dice. But over the years I've found that a brilliant visionary is sometimes impossible to distinguish from a high-functioning nutjob until until time passes and the world shows us what was long obvious to him.
Slashdot Mirror
forced to purchase a new product from them
There's the risk. It's fine as long as you're selling something that people want to upgrade every few years. If my PC dies after five years, I don't care. If I haven't upgraded by then, I'll certainly be looking for an excuse to. If my TV dies after five years, I'm not buying that brand again.
Without further specifics from the legislature, yes it seems like it could be interpreted in a very broad manner. But in that case, the argument changes from "Evil judge oversteps her authority by redefining the law," to "Judge does her job and enforces the stupidity passed by the legislature and signed into law by the governor."
I think this is a stupid law. But I also think the judge made the right call in this case. Absent a definition from the legislature, I think it's perfectly appropriate for a judge to fall back on a dictionary definition from a reputable source in order to interpret the law.
Think of it this way: Internet Explorer is free. Broadcast radio is free. Broadcast television is free. Demo software is free. Lots of newspapers are free. All of these things have moneyed companies behind them that would be completely screwed if the court rules that copyright protection only applies to things that are sold.
So regardless of whether the court system has integrity or is up for sale to the highest bidder, I think JMRI wins this one.
Really? Because right now I can access a wide range of sites that are extremely critical of the government. Some call for voting the bums out, some call for the President to be tried for treason, others call for violent rebellion. How do they handle people who advocate government overthrow in China?
I can search online for various versions of the events that killed thousands of people on 9/11, including conspiracy theorists who claim that the government is responsible. What happens in China when you accuse the government of slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians?
I can reach Google.cn from here. Can people in China reach Google.com?
The sad part is that any of us feel the need to ask for such permission. For years I was able to buy CDs that didn't come with EULAs, DRM, or other such crap. The content of the CD is protected by copyright law. That's all the labels should need, and that's all that we should allow them.
I was once trying to explain to an exec why his account would never be absolutely secure.
Me: "If somebody wants your account information badly enough, he's going to get it. He doesn't have to hack the system, he can just get it from you." ... Which daughter?
Exec: "That's crazy, I'd never give anyone my password."
Me: "Imagine you come home and find someone's broken in. He's got a gun to your daughter's head, and he tells you he's going to shoot in ten seconds if you don't give him your password. What would you do?"
Exec: [long pause]
To this day I still don't know if he was joking. But I no longer use that example.
Fine, but I want the same rules applied to anybody who's prescribed morphine, vicodin, or fentanyl.
You don't have to assume that all drugs are harmless in order to support their legalization. All that's required is that the harm done by prohibition is greater than the harm done by legalization. I've lived in neighborhoods that saw lots of drug traffic. If I had to choose between the current state of things and legalizing drugs (cocaine, speed, heroin, all of em) I'd choose legalization.
Do you live in the United States? Cuz round these parts we're still engaged in fierce debate over whether evolution actually happens. Most Americans think it doesn't, so they're not spending much time thinking of the "how".
Every time someone claims that CDs are inferior to vinyl because they're "sampled", God kills a kitten.
Translation: Mission Accomplished.
They don't give a rat's ass what the user thinks. They're putting the brand head of their users.
Most users won't care about this, they'll just leave their systems in their default settings. The people who want to change the startup sounds will be annoyed that they can't. Nobody's going to say "I'm really glad I can't change my startup sound like I could in XP." Thus, MS is introducing a feature that people will either dislike or be unware of.
Building your brand at the expense of your users is bad for both your brand and your users. As I once told our marketing guy: "Having a strong brand is useless if people recognize us and say 'Oh, it's those annoying fucks again.'"
OK, this is really really sad.
The mob, an organization known for its brutal criminality, sent a guy to politely request the removal of infringing material. No federal marshals, no team of lawyers, no guns drawn, no confiscation of property, not even a little extortion.
All you guys who compared the RIAA and MPAA to organized crime syndicates owe the mob an apology.
To clarify:
I didn't have a functional internet connection at the time. When tried to start HL2, Steam tried to run an update and failed to make a connection. It hadn't updated in a while, and decided that it wasn't going to run the game until it had.
I was locked out of the single-player game because Steam couldn't phone home. I find this to be unacceptable. I won't be purchasing any more games that use Steam until this changes.
I decide that HL2 would be the last Steam game I purchased the first time HL2 refused to run because too much time had passed since the last time Steam had updated. I wasn't permitted to play a single player game on my local machine until I allowed the software to phone home and "update".
The sad part is, the online content delivery system has the potential to be a great business model. But it seems like the entertainment industry looks at every technological advance as an opportunity to screw the customer.
On a side note, Valve offers a pretty compelling refutation to the idea that piracy drives up the cost of games. Steam practically eliminates the cost of piracy as well as physical production and distribution. So why does it seem like the games are even more expensive?
Ubuntu is in beta, and it supports all of the hardware on my laptop now (Dell Inspiron 6000). One CD, and I'm up and running. What's Microsoft's excuse?
Remember back when Windows was supposed to bring us "plug and play"? Whatever happened to that?
It seems that private industry gets taxpayer subsidized research. When a company does its own research, it takes the risk that it won't amount to anything useful, and has to eat the cost of that fruitless research. When the goverment does research, the private sector only pays for work that results in patentable discoveries.
At that point, the company can license this government-funded patent and use that government-granted monopoly to develop a product and charge a price higher than it could if the invention weren't patented. And if the company does business in America, then those very same taxpayers who paid for the research supply the company with profits reaped from the patent.
If this were a private research firm, it would certainly charge enough money to cover its expenses, but since a government agency is largely shielded from market forces I have no confidence that this is the case.
I'm sure there are campaign donations involved in there somewhere as well.
In the U.S., Congressmen pay people to edit negative Wikipedia entries. Other people can still change them back.
In China, the people running Wikipedia could be imprisoned for allowing such entries in the first place.
It would be interesting to see them try force the banks to turn off SSL on their sites.
On the plus side, banning indecipherable information should put a stop to a large portion of spam, a significant number of slashdot postings, and a few overly buzzworded web sites.
But is it profitable?
Any company can rack up impressive volume numbers, but it doesn't mean much if in the end their business model amounts to selling a dollar for eighty cents.
I did get that memo. I also got a memo that said collisions with windows kill far more birds than wind farms.
So there's our solution: level the houses, put up windmills. Please, think of the birdies!
I'm pretty strongly pro-Google (I own shares), but I read this article and kept thinking "Oh God, please make it stop."
I think you're right. We're witnessing the birth of the next dotcom boom. And this is gonna be one ugly baby.
For me it's about control. A while back I started wondering why it was that that media industry thought it was their right to control what I can and can't do with my computer. I buy the hardware, I buy (license) the software, I'm responsible for fixing stuff when it breaks, and I have to clean it up when their crappy software runs amok. When thay want to pay for my machine, they can tell me what to do with it.
Besides, this is Real we're talking about. Did they suddenly become relevant while I was busy playing with iTunes?
But is this really compression?
From the article: "So if you have 100 GB to back up, their product, Protectier (see name comment above) can turn it into 4GB, something you could burn onto a DVD in a few minutes...The way Diligent achieves it exceptional compression ratio is by comparing all incoming data to the data already arrived. When it finds an incoming stream of bytes similar to an existing series of bytes it compares the two and stores the differences."
The problem is, I can't restore my data using that DVD if that 4GB relies on data that's been previously stored elsewhere. Am I missing something, or is this just a hyped-up way of marketing incremental backups?
By my reading, the interesting bit is that the system can to incremental backups more quickly and more reliably than current solutions, but that's not sexy enough. I think this guy nailed it pretty well.
It's entirely possible he's missing a few dots from his dice. But over the years I've found that a brilliant visionary is sometimes impossible to distinguish from a high-functioning nutjob until until time passes and the world shows us what was long obvious to him.