Wait... it's illegal to distribute MP3s without a license? I thought it was illegal to distribute the encoders/decoders, but not the actual MP3s. That's retarded. Are you sure?
The argument is that Microsoft will leverage any installed base they have (Windows, Xbox, Soapbox) and due to a similarity with the Windows Media Center user interface and Vista will have a strategic advantage. Also their 90% share in operating systems vs 5% for Apple [I think it's even less than that]...
Yeah, so Microsoft will try to leverage their monopoly yet again to try to force consumers to use their products... I don't think people will necessarily buy Zune for that, but of course Apple should be scared of it. We all should be.
My question about this is, at what point is Microsoft's metaphorical center of gravity on the other side of the fulcrum? I mean, think about the word "leverage". Lever. You have Windows, which Microsoft has leveraged into a sort of monopoly of Office, and Microsoft has in turn leveraged both of those monopolies for all sorts of other products, many of which have failed or lost a lot of money. So if Windows and Office are the weight on one side of the lever, pushing everything else up, how much weight can they put on the other side of the lever before Windows and Office aren't enough to keep them afloat?
I don't think we're at that point yet, but sheesh, "leverage" isn't infinite.
What will ZUNE do that the Pocket PC / Windows Mobile platform cannot do?
I don't know, but I'd hope that ZUNE won't be horrifically slow, annoying to use, and crash all the time. Seems to be that that's all PPC does on the phones I've seen lately.
Seriously, though, you have a point. Our computers are wireless and play all this media, so if someone could really come up with a usable handheld computer, an "MP3 player" may not be necessary. However, Microsoft took a run at that task earlier in the year with their UMPC idea, and that wasn't much of a success.
I suspect some of this will change when there is high speed ubiquitous wireless internet that isn't through any cell phone network. I say this because handhelds are generally built into phones these days, and the phone carriers make sure these devices are hobbled in stupid ways because they don't want to become dumb-pipe ISPs.
That's just not true. I know everyone here is trying to sound cool by saying, "Animated GIFs are teh 5uXx0rs!!!11! You probably use MIDIs on all your pages!"
Yes, the technology has limited practical use, but that's not the same as no use whatsoever. Just like many other technologies in the early days, animated GIFs were overused in horrible designs. But does the existence of a "BLINK" tag mean that all HTML was bad?
Sometimes people use animated GIFs as actual content, and not part of some needless flashing decoration. You know, like if you were describing a process, and you needed to include a simple animation on your page to illustrate your point, an animated GIF might be appropriate. Just maybe.
In the whole of the web, good use of animation does exist. There are even cases of animated GIFs being used in very clever web pages as activity indicators. I hate the term, but you know all this "Web 2.0" junk? Yes, some of it is actually pretty good, and sometimes they make use of animations, and every now and then, those animations are animated GIFs.
What I'm saying is, animated GIFs, like a lot of web technologies, are overused and abused, but that doesn't mean they're inherently bad. It just means you shouldn't use them when they aren't appropriate.
The worst thing, in my mind, is the fact that some of these things are ambiguous, and there's a lot of misinformation out there. Take MP3, for example: I've heard from lots of people that you need to buy a license to use MP3, or you'll get sued. A little research, and it seems that there are lots of people who own patents related to MP3, and one of these companies which holds one of these patents has said that they want to get paid. Now, as far as I can tell, (and IANAL), this only applies to people who are selling encoders and decoders, but as an end-user, there's nothing to fear. I'm not clear as to whether anyone is actually being sued over this, but apparently it's the reason why a lot of Linux distros don't ship with MP3 support included (e.g. Fedora).
So the fact that there's a patent bothers me a little, but it might be fair enough. However, either way, it bothers me that there's this tremendous level of ambiguity. I know that nobody is going to sue me for using an MP3 encoder I didn't pay for, but is there some way in which it's technically illegal? Do these distros really need to pay a license or not? And even if you pay the one company who is trying to enforce their patent, what about all the other companies? Could they suddenly decide to enforce their patent, even hypothetically? Would someone then need to send various licensing fees to various companies?
The whole thing just seems too convoluted. If someone can't come out and say very clearly what's legal and fine, and what isn't, then it seems to me that there's something wrong with the law. As it is, it's like they just want everyone to buy a license "just in case" without really specifying who is supposed to buy a license.
Well, it might be partially due to ignorance. I think many people don't know that there are different bit-depths for PNG, which (obviously) result in files of different sizes. I mean, there are other optimizations as well, but my point is that many web developers don't realize that you can make PNGs smaller.
But also there are support issues. PNG wasn't supported [well] in old browsers, and many web developers don't like to drop support for those browsers until it's necessary. Since little is lost by using GIF, they use GIF.
The only thing it's used for these days is cheesy animated banner ads, but that's quickly being replaced with flash and java stuff.
First, that's just not true. Go to major web sites, look at the source, and search for ".gif". They're all over the fricken place. And who in their right mind would use Java for a bannar ad? I haven't noticed this, but the idea is completely retarded. Flash--- well Flash has its own problems. You need an expensive program to make them, and a special plug-in to view them. They can be better for certain purposes, especially if you want your ad to be interactive somehow, but if you just want to make a slideshow of completely different images, you're not going to beat animated GIFs for ease, or even size.
Professional Web developers, if they're any good, will use the proper tools for the job, and try to maximize compatibility as much as possible across different browsers. Use of plain HTML, CSS, JPEGs, and GIFs should be used the their maximum capability before looking to Javascript, and certainly before Java or Flash.
JPEG isn't a replacement for GIF. 8-bit PNG serves pretty well as a replacement under many circumstances, but it's not supported as ubiquitously, nor does it support animation. Java and Javascript have nothing to do with it, and flash is fine for some animations, but it's certainly no less encumbered by IP restrictions than GIF.
Let's say you have a 4 color raster logo. Are you going to make a JPEG? That'd be dumb. Let's say you have that same logo, and you want to animate it for 3 frames. What's a better solution than animated GIF?
Dear Ed,
Amazon probably isn't too upset by this since, if you notice, there are ads on their pages. By browsing their site, you're participating in their business model, which includes ad revenue.
Thanks a bunch,
me
I don't know, but if there's any truth to that, it only makes the whole thing more stupid since those filenames were originally for a filesystem that didn't really have long filename support. Whenever you dropped into DOS, you found that "Program Files" was really named "PROGRA~1". All the more reason they should have used a short name without spaces.
It takes 2 seconds to disable it if you don't like it. Windows R, msconfig, disable UAC, reboot.
So one of the 4 reasons to upgrade to Vista is because it's more secure, and the fact that Microsoft can't seem to get their security systems to work in reasonable ways is fine, because you can turn off the security altogether? What about the people who need security, don't want their system overrun by hackers, spyware, and viruses, but just don't want it to be so annoying as to pop up when you want to delete a shortcut on your desktop? Can't Microsoft satisfy that small section of the population?
"Users" is obvious. It's where you're storing users' files. I think the change is great, because any folder that's accessed so frequently shouldn't have spaces in it. I mean, really, WTF? "Documents and Settings"? Why not just name it "This is the place where all of your files are stored, assuming your applications' developers did things correctly. However, you probably still have some personal files or settings stored in 'Program Files' for some reason."
OSX just did the obvious thing and broke their directory structure into the two folders which (from a user's point of view) are the two groups that everything falls into: your files, and your applications. From there, it should also be obvious that you pick simple, one word, obvious names for these folders. Call it "Programs" and "Users", or "Applications" and "Home", or whatever. But spaces are annoying for CLI, so "Documents and Settings" and "Program Files" are retarded. Really? "Program Files"? Everything on your fricken hard drive is a "file", so why do you need to tack that at the end of your directory? By that logic it should be "Windows Files", and "My Document Files", "My Music Files", etc.
So obviously, yeah, for the love of god, drop "My" from everything, don't put "Files" at the end of any directory name, and make "Documents and Settings" into "Users". This sanity in directory structure might be the only thing that makes me want to use Vista.
The new gui is just a fraction of what Vista offers and i'm amazed at home many people praise it or deteste it based on that single aspect alone.
Yeah, it's a fraction of what Vista has to offer users, but for most users that fraction is something like 9/10. Really, what Vista offers over Windows XP, AFAICT, can be grouped like this:
new UI
a few more bundled applications (eg a calendar app)
newer bundled applications (OE, IE, WMP, etc. have been updated. Games are prettier.)
bug fixes (including improvements to networking)
security has been improved
So the UI changes are noticeable, and many people have complaints about Microsoft bundling applications. The only thing left are bug fixes and better security, which I question whether it's a appropriate for someone to sell you an update to their software on the basis that the old version was too buggy and insecure.
Wait, you're trying to tell me that a software program run on thousands of machines has failed in some cases!? No fscking way. That never happens--WGA should be error free--this is unacceptable.
I think the point is that there are a significant number of apparently legitimate Windows users who are having problems with their computers because of WGA. Since WGA offers no benefit to users, this is an instance of Microsoft taking actions which harm their own legitimate customers because of a policy which doesn't help any customers.
What I'm saying is, we accept software to malfunction now and then, so when the whole complicated piece of software has a couple bugs, that's expected. When a developer tries to integrate a new feature that benefits large numbers of customers but harms a small number due to a bug, that's forgivable. However, when a developer takes action to punish illegitimate users, developers should tread very lightly. It almost feels like vigilante justice, and you should make sure that it's not an issue for legitimate customers. They might have every legal right to do it, but as a customer, I do find it unacceptable. Microsoft purposefully shutting down an otherwise working system, causing a loss of man-hours, because they've falsely identified it as "suspect"-- I find that to be sufficient reason to complain.
To many of us, adding value to the customer means that Microsoft, Apple, and any other desktop OS makers should be able to add features and bundle product as they see fit regardless of monopoly status.
Further, I'd say that it's the retailer's job to bundle products. Perhaps Microsoft should be allowed to bundle software when they're selling retail versions of Windows, and they should also be allowed to offer bundles to OEMs should the OEMs choose to use them. However, Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to strong-arm OEMs into bundling what Microsoft wants bundled rather than what the OEM and customers want.
As to the EU extorting money from Microsoft, I'm afraid you'll have to support that claim. You mean because they're asking Microsoft to spend more on development costs, because they are insisting that Microsoft use their monopoly's leverage to force other Microsoft products on consumers? I'm not sympathetic.
For me, the ethical issue in the past was that it was hard or virtually impossible for 3rd parties to create aftermarket replacements (kind of like a car maker not allowing you to replace the stereo). But I can use Firefox, iTunes, and all sorts of applications in Windows, while I can also enjoy a lot of out of the box functionality should I choose not to download extra applications.
You can find aftermarket replacements, but Microsoft doesn't allow you to use them as replacements. It would be a "replacement" if you could remove IE and WMP and replace them with Firefox and iTunes. All Microsoft lets you do is "add on". So it is like a car maker not allowing you or the car dealer to replace their stereo, but claiming that it's alright because you could strap a boom box to the hood of that car.
Because I don't want the Federal government supporting a company's unethical business practices, even if that company is an American company. Is that unreasonable?
I may be crazy, but I'm the sort that believes the US Federal government should generally keep itself out of private business concerns unless necessary, and act ethically whenever possible. I don't see any reason to believe that the EU's case some unjustified politically-motivated witch hunt, so I don't see a reason for the intervention.
Exclusive? I suppose the old invite a friend to join thing is the barrier to keeping seedier people (like most slashdotters and OSS & Linux evangelists) out.
It's probably just an attempt at reverse psychology. Tell people they can't get in because it's exclusive, and people will want in. It worked for Gmail, but I don't think it'll work here.
What if those companies had the same sort of regulatory problems in their own country? It seems strange to me that the US government would have antitrust issues with Microsoft, and then have the US government intervene other countries have the same complaints.
I can't find the link, but i read a story the other day that this whole thing might connected to Apple trying to patent or trademark things, connected to their iPod, iTV, and upcoming phone, and sending a cease and desist letter might be some legal hoop they have to jump through to show they're defending their intellectual property, and that it won't go past the cease and desist letter.
IANAL, so I don't know if this theory holds water.
I've had trouble even figuring out how to explain it. I tried with my cousin once. He doesn't even remember dial-up connections to the internet, so the idea of something like the internet, except no web pages, and only local people would connect, and sometimes only one person could connect at a time, and..... I lost him back at "except no web pages". He doesn't have a concept of what the internet is except for web pages. Even the Usenet is incomprehensible to him.
Slashdot Mirror
Wait... it's illegal to distribute MP3s without a license? I thought it was illegal to distribute the encoders/decoders, but not the actual MP3s. That's retarded. Are you sure?
I don't know.... 512 seems like too many for me. Can we do 8 1/2 bit color?
The argument is that Microsoft will leverage any installed base they have (Windows, Xbox, Soapbox) and due to a similarity with the Windows Media Center user interface and Vista will have a strategic advantage. Also their 90% share in operating systems vs 5% for Apple [I think it's even less than that]...
Yeah, so Microsoft will try to leverage their monopoly yet again to try to force consumers to use their products... I don't think people will necessarily buy Zune for that, but of course Apple should be scared of it. We all should be.
My question about this is, at what point is Microsoft's metaphorical center of gravity on the other side of the fulcrum? I mean, think about the word "leverage". Lever. You have Windows, which Microsoft has leveraged into a sort of monopoly of Office, and Microsoft has in turn leveraged both of those monopolies for all sorts of other products, many of which have failed or lost a lot of money. So if Windows and Office are the weight on one side of the lever, pushing everything else up, how much weight can they put on the other side of the lever before Windows and Office aren't enough to keep them afloat?
I don't think we're at that point yet, but sheesh, "leverage" isn't infinite.
What will ZUNE do that the Pocket PC / Windows Mobile platform cannot do?
I don't know, but I'd hope that ZUNE won't be horrifically slow, annoying to use, and crash all the time. Seems to be that that's all PPC does on the phones I've seen lately.
Seriously, though, you have a point. Our computers are wireless and play all this media, so if someone could really come up with a usable handheld computer, an "MP3 player" may not be necessary. However, Microsoft took a run at that task earlier in the year with their UMPC idea, and that wasn't much of a success.
I suspect some of this will change when there is high speed ubiquitous wireless internet that isn't through any cell phone network. I say this because handhelds are generally built into phones these days, and the phone carriers make sure these devices are hobbled in stupid ways because they don't want to become dumb-pipe ISPs.
That's just not true. I know everyone here is trying to sound cool by saying, "Animated GIFs are teh 5uXx0rs!!!11! You probably use MIDIs on all your pages!"
Yes, the technology has limited practical use, but that's not the same as no use whatsoever. Just like many other technologies in the early days, animated GIFs were overused in horrible designs. But does the existence of a "BLINK" tag mean that all HTML was bad?
Sometimes people use animated GIFs as actual content, and not part of some needless flashing decoration. You know, like if you were describing a process, and you needed to include a simple animation on your page to illustrate your point, an animated GIF might be appropriate. Just maybe.
In the whole of the web, good use of animation does exist. There are even cases of animated GIFs being used in very clever web pages as activity indicators. I hate the term, but you know all this "Web 2.0" junk? Yes, some of it is actually pretty good, and sometimes they make use of animations, and every now and then, those animations are animated GIFs.
What I'm saying is, animated GIFs, like a lot of web technologies, are overused and abused, but that doesn't mean they're inherently bad. It just means you shouldn't use them when they aren't appropriate.
The worst thing, in my mind, is the fact that some of these things are ambiguous, and there's a lot of misinformation out there. Take MP3, for example: I've heard from lots of people that you need to buy a license to use MP3, or you'll get sued. A little research, and it seems that there are lots of people who own patents related to MP3, and one of these companies which holds one of these patents has said that they want to get paid. Now, as far as I can tell, (and IANAL), this only applies to people who are selling encoders and decoders, but as an end-user, there's nothing to fear. I'm not clear as to whether anyone is actually being sued over this, but apparently it's the reason why a lot of Linux distros don't ship with MP3 support included (e.g. Fedora).
So the fact that there's a patent bothers me a little, but it might be fair enough. However, either way, it bothers me that there's this tremendous level of ambiguity. I know that nobody is going to sue me for using an MP3 encoder I didn't pay for, but is there some way in which it's technically illegal? Do these distros really need to pay a license or not? And even if you pay the one company who is trying to enforce their patent, what about all the other companies? Could they suddenly decide to enforce their patent, even hypothetically? Would someone then need to send various licensing fees to various companies?
The whole thing just seems too convoluted. If someone can't come out and say very clearly what's legal and fine, and what isn't, then it seems to me that there's something wrong with the law. As it is, it's like they just want everyone to buy a license "just in case" without really specifying who is supposed to buy a license.
Well, it might be partially due to ignorance. I think many people don't know that there are different bit-depths for PNG, which (obviously) result in files of different sizes. I mean, there are other optimizations as well, but my point is that many web developers don't realize that you can make PNGs smaller.
But also there are support issues. PNG wasn't supported [well] in old browsers, and many web developers don't like to drop support for those browsers until it's necessary. Since little is lost by using GIF, they use GIF.
Really, is there any way that technology has enhanced your web experience for the better?
Yes, it has allowed me to view small animations with a limited number of frames and colors in my web browser with very little overhead.
The only thing it's used for these days is cheesy animated banner ads, but that's quickly being replaced with flash and java stuff.
First, that's just not true. Go to major web sites, look at the source, and search for ".gif". They're all over the fricken place. And who in their right mind would use Java for a bannar ad? I haven't noticed this, but the idea is completely retarded. Flash--- well Flash has its own problems. You need an expensive program to make them, and a special plug-in to view them. They can be better for certain purposes, especially if you want your ad to be interactive somehow, but if you just want to make a slideshow of completely different images, you're not going to beat animated GIFs for ease, or even size.
Professional Web developers, if they're any good, will use the proper tools for the job, and try to maximize compatibility as much as possible across different browsers. Use of plain HTML, CSS, JPEGs, and GIFs should be used the their maximum capability before looking to Javascript, and certainly before Java or Flash.
JPEG isn't a replacement for GIF. 8-bit PNG serves pretty well as a replacement under many circumstances, but it's not supported as ubiquitously, nor does it support animation. Java and Javascript have nothing to do with it, and flash is fine for some animations, but it's certainly no less encumbered by IP restrictions than GIF.
Let's say you have a 4 color raster logo. Are you going to make a JPEG? That'd be dumb. Let's say you have that same logo, and you want to animate it for 3 frames. What's a better solution than animated GIF?
Or, alternately, if Walmart thinks it can make money by doing so, I'm sure they can exert pressure on studios to go along with Apple.
Dear Ed, Amazon probably isn't too upset by this since, if you notice, there are ads on their pages. By browsing their site, you're participating in their business model, which includes ad revenue. Thanks a bunch, me
I don't know, but if there's any truth to that, it only makes the whole thing more stupid since those filenames were originally for a filesystem that didn't really have long filename support. Whenever you dropped into DOS, you found that "Program Files" was really named "PROGRA~1". All the more reason they should have used a short name without spaces.
It takes 2 seconds to disable it if you don't like it. Windows R, msconfig, disable UAC, reboot.
So one of the 4 reasons to upgrade to Vista is because it's more secure, and the fact that Microsoft can't seem to get their security systems to work in reasonable ways is fine, because you can turn off the security altogether? What about the people who need security, don't want their system overrun by hackers, spyware, and viruses, but just don't want it to be so annoying as to pop up when you want to delete a shortcut on your desktop? Can't Microsoft satisfy that small section of the population?
"Users" is obvious. It's where you're storing users' files. I think the change is great, because any folder that's accessed so frequently shouldn't have spaces in it. I mean, really, WTF? "Documents and Settings"? Why not just name it "This is the place where all of your files are stored, assuming your applications' developers did things correctly. However, you probably still have some personal files or settings stored in 'Program Files' for some reason."
OSX just did the obvious thing and broke their directory structure into the two folders which (from a user's point of view) are the two groups that everything falls into: your files, and your applications. From there, it should also be obvious that you pick simple, one word, obvious names for these folders. Call it "Programs" and "Users", or "Applications" and "Home", or whatever. But spaces are annoying for CLI, so "Documents and Settings" and "Program Files" are retarded. Really? "Program Files"? Everything on your fricken hard drive is a "file", so why do you need to tack that at the end of your directory? By that logic it should be "Windows Files", and "My Document Files", "My Music Files", etc.
So obviously, yeah, for the love of god, drop "My" from everything, don't put "Files" at the end of any directory name, and make "Documents and Settings" into "Users". This sanity in directory structure might be the only thing that makes me want to use Vista.
The new gui is just a fraction of what Vista offers and i'm amazed at home many people praise it or deteste it based on that single aspect alone.
Yeah, it's a fraction of what Vista has to offer users, but for most users that fraction is something like 9/10. Really, what Vista offers over Windows XP, AFAICT, can be grouped like this:
So the UI changes are noticeable, and many people have complaints about Microsoft bundling applications. The only thing left are bug fixes and better security, which I question whether it's a appropriate for someone to sell you an update to their software on the basis that the old version was too buggy and insecure.
Or people with illegitimate copies are bypassing WGA altogether...
Wait, you're trying to tell me that a software program run on thousands of machines has failed in some cases!? No fscking way. That never happens--WGA should be error free--this is unacceptable.
I think the point is that there are a significant number of apparently legitimate Windows users who are having problems with their computers because of WGA. Since WGA offers no benefit to users, this is an instance of Microsoft taking actions which harm their own legitimate customers because of a policy which doesn't help any customers.
What I'm saying is, we accept software to malfunction now and then, so when the whole complicated piece of software has a couple bugs, that's expected. When a developer tries to integrate a new feature that benefits large numbers of customers but harms a small number due to a bug, that's forgivable. However, when a developer takes action to punish illegitimate users, developers should tread very lightly. It almost feels like vigilante justice, and you should make sure that it's not an issue for legitimate customers. They might have every legal right to do it, but as a customer, I do find it unacceptable. Microsoft purposefully shutting down an otherwise working system, causing a loss of man-hours, because they've falsely identified it as "suspect"-- I find that to be sufficient reason to complain.
As if we needed another reason.
To many of us, adding value to the customer means that Microsoft, Apple, and any other desktop OS makers should be able to add features and bundle product as they see fit regardless of monopoly status.
Further, I'd say that it's the retailer's job to bundle products. Perhaps Microsoft should be allowed to bundle software when they're selling retail versions of Windows, and they should also be allowed to offer bundles to OEMs should the OEMs choose to use them. However, Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to strong-arm OEMs into bundling what Microsoft wants bundled rather than what the OEM and customers want.
As to the EU extorting money from Microsoft, I'm afraid you'll have to support that claim. You mean because they're asking Microsoft to spend more on development costs, because they are insisting that Microsoft use their monopoly's leverage to force other Microsoft products on consumers? I'm not sympathetic.
For me, the ethical issue in the past was that it was hard or virtually impossible for 3rd parties to create aftermarket replacements (kind of like a car maker not allowing you to replace the stereo). But I can use Firefox, iTunes, and all sorts of applications in Windows, while I can also enjoy a lot of out of the box functionality should I choose not to download extra applications.
You can find aftermarket replacements, but Microsoft doesn't allow you to use them as replacements. It would be a "replacement" if you could remove IE and WMP and replace them with Firefox and iTunes. All Microsoft lets you do is "add on". So it is like a car maker not allowing you or the car dealer to replace their stereo, but claiming that it's alright because you could strap a boom box to the hood of that car.
Because I don't want the Federal government supporting a company's unethical business practices, even if that company is an American company. Is that unreasonable?
I may be crazy, but I'm the sort that believes the US Federal government should generally keep itself out of private business concerns unless necessary, and act ethically whenever possible. I don't see any reason to believe that the EU's case some unjustified politically-motivated witch hunt, so I don't see a reason for the intervention.
Exclusive? I suppose the old invite a friend to join thing is the barrier to keeping seedier people (like most slashdotters and OSS & Linux evangelists) out.
It's probably just an attempt at reverse psychology. Tell people they can't get in because it's exclusive, and people will want in. It worked for Gmail, but I don't think it'll work here.
What if those companies had the same sort of regulatory problems in their own country? It seems strange to me that the US government would have antitrust issues with Microsoft, and then have the US government intervene other countries have the same complaints.
I can't find the link, but i read a story the other day that this whole thing might connected to Apple trying to patent or trademark things, connected to their iPod, iTV, and upcoming phone, and sending a cease and desist letter might be some legal hoop they have to jump through to show they're defending their intellectual property, and that it won't go past the cease and desist letter.
IANAL, so I don't know if this theory holds water.
I've had trouble even figuring out how to explain it. I tried with my cousin once. He doesn't even remember dial-up connections to the internet, so the idea of something like the internet, except no web pages, and only local people would connect, and sometimes only one person could connect at a time, and..... I lost him back at "except no web pages". He doesn't have a concept of what the internet is except for web pages. Even the Usenet is incomprehensible to him.