Well, it's not necessary most of the time, but for every medium of communication I use, there are times I wish it were encrypted. How much processing power does it take to encrypt "Hello"? What's the harm in encrypting? I've never understood why all communications over the internet don't have some level of encryption by default. Well, maybe web/ftp servers sending what they intend to be public information-- maybe that doesn't require encryption. But e-mail? Why don't we encrypt e-mail?
Instant messages shouldn't need to go through MS or Yahoo. Central servers should be able to resolve names and maybe negotiate the initial connection somehow, but the messages should be able to be sent P2P.
GAIM will still have an audience with Linux users, Mac users (via Adium), and any Windows users who have multiple IM accounts, like OSS, or just IMing without ads. Sounds like the same audience they had two days ago.
Or Google's Jabber client. I have a Jabber server, but I never use it. Does anyone use Jabber?
Lots of people have gmail, and each of them basically have a Jabber account already. Even if you don't use Google's client, they have it built into Gmail via a web interface. This means that there are probably lots of people using Jabber right now who've never heard of "Jabber". My mother is one (and she's no computer geek).
Your very wording however reveals the difference that I am driving at. Consider "the extensibility and architecure of Rails make it adaptable". This implies that one has to work to adapt Rails to new situations. You would not say the same thing about a programming language.
Rails isn't a programming language. It's a framework, and yes, it is aimed at a particular situation. It's aimed at web developers who want to be able to make web applications. If you're a web developer wanting to make powerful, versatile, and maintainable web applications with the best of today's technologies, it's quite a nice tool.
However, I suppose you're correct if you're implying that it's not so good for making ice cream.
No, no, no, how can the LA Times get something so basic so wrong?
Specifically because they're the LA Times? Why should we be surprised when the major newspaper in a city-- full of idiots and run by the entertainment industry-- makes this sort of error?
Correct. When you buy a copyrighted work, you are actually buying a copy of that work, but without any right to make further copies. The reason software developers put EULAs in the work is specifically because, without one, there is no license between the software makers and users. Therefore, some genius made up the idea of the EULA in order to secure additional rights and wave liability for the developer.
For the most part, EULAs suck. They're a horrible blight on IP law, but I guess I'm getting off topic.
Huh? Is it hard to sign up for a free account with Yahoo, MSN, and AOL? I mean, I know it's different, but is that difference a problem?
Look, it's just some morons trying different power-plays. They want you to use AOL, but not MSN. Or they want you to use Yahoo and not AOL. And why? Because they want you to use their client, so you look at their ads.
So everyone, use GAIM. Don't let these companies push you around, plus you'll save yourself from looking at any ads or pop-ups or anything other than your own conversations.
Now we just need voice/video working in GAIM, and we're all set.
And you're right, that this is how many advertiser see this. That's unfortunate, because it entirely misses the point. As long as advertisers insist on forcing ads down our throat, so long as they're annoying ads for things we don't want, there will be those of us who find ways to avoid them. We'll make ourselves harder to reach.
Sites that want users to continue to see their ads should show restraint in the advertising they show. No pop-ups. Nothing annoying. Just plain, simple, clearly marked, tasteful ads.
The only thing I disagree with you on is the idea that people don't buy older movies. It might be that, at any given time, the top sellers are generally new releases, but lots of people buy old favorites and re-releases.
Otherwise, I agree with what you've said. What I was trying to say, though, is that maybe we should come up with some new method of producing games that would allow them to be saved without expensive porting or crappy emulation. I'm no genious when it comes to things like this, to I can't tell you how it should be done, but I wish someone was working toward a way of developing games that wouldn't require that they "expire".
Maybe some open-source platform on which things can be built? A customized linux distro running something like DirectX, but open source, as a standardized gaming platform? Maybe something designed to run under emulation, so that each game you run is actually a liveCD running in a virtual machine? I don't know if that makes any sense as an idea, and even if it did, I have no idea how you sell people on it.
So I'm not trying to sell a plan here, just an idea: we need to start developing games in such a way that they can continue to run on newer systems. We need to make sure classic games don't "expire", just as movies, books, paintings, and other art forms don't "expire".
Why don't we see this more often in all games? Because I think most games today are disposable. They're built for one console or platform with the intent of only running on the current version of Windows or Mac and with no interest in coming out with new releases that support new hardware or software. They do this because games are construed as novelty software that expire as the user tires of them.
It's kind of sad when you think about it-- this idea of games "expiring". Other art forms, including movies and novels, don't "expire". We're still enjoying things made thousands of years ago. We've seen some ability to hold onto games with ROMS and emulation, but shouldn't we look to preserve games a little more comprehensively?
Why should they expire anyway? Maybe you get tired of it, the same why you'd get tired of a movie, but that doesn't mean that the game becomes entirely useless after a year or two. I've gotten bored playing Kings Quest and Duke Nukem 3D, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to recommend them to others, or that I wouldn't like to revisit them sometime. I've gone back and played Super Mario Bros. and had some fun.
So what's the solution? I don't know. I'd just hate to think that all this work that people have done to make games-- and some really great games-- will just evaporate in the next hundred years. No one will remember them, and no one will be able play them without antique hardware.
When will "professionals" realize that Word is not meant for all documents? It's great for short documents, posters, etc. But for real professional looking documents it's hard to beat a typesetter like TeX [or LaTeX].
The problem I see is that most people don't want to have to look at markup. A lot of people flat-out don't get the idea. Text that you write in, but it won't show up when you print it...?
I agree, though, that Word isn't well-suited for all purposes. I'm excited to hear about some of the supposed Pages improvements, including a separation of "Word Processing" and "Layout" modes. I've been suggesting something like this for a long time.
I know Office 2007 is doing something similar to this, but I've just always wanted to do those two things completely separately-- sort of like the separation between html and css. One for making sure your data is right, one for laying it out. But again, I don't really want to deal with actually writing the markup.
I don't think it's funny at all. Look, for lots of everyday uses, Microsoft Word isn't a bad program. Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint-- these all have their valid uses, and they all do a pretty decent job.
Is it good enough that I'd want to spend hundreds of dollars for it when there are free alternatives? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what I'm doing and what I want, but I've spend money on Photoshop and Acrobat, and those also have free alternatives. I could imagine Microsoft Office remaining successfull if Microsoft starts selling it based on its own merits.
However, as someone running an IT department, I'm trying to migrate to OpenOffice where ever I can. It's not so that I can save a couple hundred dollars here and there, but I'm just entirely sick of the abuse Microsoft heaps on its own customers. All the vendor lock-in, piracy checks, and all the rest-- it hurts my company's flexibility. It worries me that my company might find itself in a position where it can't access its own data. I'm annoyed by the idea that Microsoft's default format isn't real XML, which would be easier for our databases to generate/process.
So what I'm saying is, yes, I'd like Microsoft to use/support real open standards. I'd like their systems to play well with others. I'd like to see a better version of Office for the Mac, and a version for Linux-- there have been times when I would have bought Office for Linux, even though Evolution/OpenOffice is working well enough.
I'd like Microsoft to do those things specifically because I kind of like Microsoft Office, and I'd like to keep using it. However, I can't, in good conscience, put my company's future at Microsoft's mercy because some executive in Microsoft is a childish prick who insists on leveraging their monopoly to the point of hurting their own customers. It's unacceptable.
I don't know... I think what's being said is pretty fair. It seems kind of like a crazy thing to say if you think of it as "people who are focused on their own good vs. people who sacrifice their life for the good of the company". On the other hand, it makes a lot of sense if you're trying to contrast "self-serving back-stabbing little pricks who are only interested in moving up" with "people who, even if they might like promotions and such, are a little more interesting indoing a good job where they are".
I know I'd rather do a good job than have a small pay raise or slightly cooler title at a job I suck at. I wouldn't hire anyone who I thought held the opposite opinion.
If your mission in life is best accomplished at the office, then how can spending your time there be a waste? If you are genuinely afraid that, when you are old, you will regret the time you spent at work, then maybe you chose your career poorly.
That's a little oversimplistic for me. Some passions can't easily be turned into a paying career. Some passions can be a paying career, but there may be other problems with that career. It simply isn't always as simple as "doing what you're passionate about."
Besides that, many times you could choose a career in what you're passionate about, and still hate your job. Let's say I love fixing computers. Does it naturally follow that I'd love any job in the IT sector? No-- it's still rather important to find a job that you're good at, where people appreciate you, and you're treated well by your bosses/coworkers.
Forgetting all that, there's also the fact that, if you really only have one passion, and are happy to spend all your days working only on that one thing, then you're probably some sort of a lunatic.
It's really easy to claim people are stupid for failing to get a career that they're passionate about, but I think people here are talking about something that you haven't been able to grasp: regardless of the concept of 'work' as "what you get paid for", there is still 'work' as in 'doing something I don't really want to do because it's my responsibility'. We all need play time-- time when the pressure is off. We all need time with friends and family, time to rest, time to think, time to get our life straightened out. Hell, even if the problem is that we haven't "followed our passions," we need time to choose a new carreer, retrain, look for jobs, etc.
Now, I'm not saying that employees who like their work are generally more productive than those who hate their work. However, if your suggesting that spending all day working, every single day, and then regretting it later could only be caused by failing to have the correct job-- well, I'm not even sure how to talk to someone who is so far off-base.
Really-- I remember when "alpha", "beta", and "release candidate" each meant something specific. Now Betas are apparently intended for general public use, and developers plan to have 3 release candidates. What's the point anymore?
I know, I've found the pervasiveness of advertising very disturbing, too.
But what's really scary is that AOL is talking about a move to being ad-supported. Last time I saw AOL, it was covered with ads, and pop-ups were everywhere already. Exactly how much advertising does Miller have in mind?
I've never counted them up, but I know for a fact that on Windows XP and 2003, there is a limit to the characters in path+filename, and it's small enough that I've hit it a few times. Worse yet, that limit seems to be smaller in some applications (Microsoft Office 2003 comes to mind), meaning they won't read files that the OS will write.
Mime-types fail due to not being actually encoded on-filesystem, and magic strings require users to use a hex editor to try and identify an alien file type.
I agree that extensions are helpful for users to tell, at a glance, what a file is. For example, you might have a filesystem tell me that "index.html" is a UTF-8 text file. I'm not sure that's as helpful as telling me it's and HTML file.
So it's good for users to see, but a poor way for the operating system to identify the file-type. A clueless user might change the filename, or multiple different formats might share the same extention.
That's why the current convention seems backwards to me. A lot of GUIs have the default view hide the extentions, making them useless for users, but then the OS relies on those extentions to know what program to run them in. However, I think it's still probably better than the experiences I've had trying to repair a file's resource fork in Mac OS classic.
You can also format HFS+ volumes to be case sensitive, but that's a new thing. The problem is, switching to a case insensitive file system to a case sensitive one will break a lot of apps. Any developers who weren't paying attention to that sort of thing (and why would we expect them to?) might very well have to troubleshoot their apps and re-release.
It's not exactly forced down your throat. I mean, you could stop watching TV, right?
What you need to keep in mind is, it's not really the advertisers you're quarrelling with, it's the network. People always get this backwards-- they think that the TV networks are providing an entertainment service to the people, which is subsidized by pesky, pushy advertisers. However, the networks are really in the business of providing viewers. You are not ABC's customer, the advertisers are the customers. You, the viewer, are the product. ABC is selling your attention to the advertiser, and the show is just a loss-leader in order to commoditize your attention.
When you understand that this is the business model, it's no wonder that ABC is upset that people are skipping commercials.
You're making the mistake of believing that advertisement is intended to inform you about products that you might want to buy. It's not. Modern advertising is about brainwashing you into wanting to buy products whether you have use of them or not.
In the past couple decades, top advertising agencies have started studying anything that has inspired devout following. It's not so disturbing when you realized that they're studying companies like Apple and Nike for inspiration, but when you find out that they're trying to learn the techniques used by major religions, political leaders (e.g. Hitler), and cult leaders, it gets a little creepy.
But that's the name of the game. You may say you don't care about some new feminine itch product, but somewhere, there's an advertiser looking for a way to convince you that you never be truly happy without it.
If these people had their way, there would be illegal to go to the bathroom during TV commercials. They'd say you're stealing from ABC by watching the show and not the commercials.
Well, I'm not sure what kind of problems ODF is supposed to have with support of "accessibility options", but I don't agree that there shouldn't be any responsibility on the file format to consider these things. Valid strict XHTML, for example, requires an "alt" attribute for "img" tags. Now, they can be blank and therefore completely useless, but if this attribute didn't exist, any text in graphics would simply be unreadable to screen-readers.
File formats should be able to hold the information necessary for those files to be used with "accessibility" software. What are the complaints against ODF in this department? I have no idea, but someone might be able to educate us. Is it just FUD?
Well, it's copyright infringement when you reproduce, distribute, and/or perform/display copyrighted material without permission of the copyright holder. Therefore, unless you're distributing or displaying the material, you could only be accused of infringing by reproducing.
So, the question of whether an act is even copyright infringement often hinges on whether a new digital copy is to be considered an infringing 'copy'. Of course, but there are also things like caching an mp3 during a transmission of some kind, or transferring to an iPod.
IANAL, but I agree, it's not stealing. Further, I question where the line really ought to be drawn before we call it "copyright infringement". I think you'd have a hard time getting any sort of jury to punish someone for "copying" if you couldn't also prove some sort of "distribution".
Well, except they have one thing in common: they don't suck. Of the three major operating systems, if you're on Mac and you want to switch to another operating system that doesn't suck, you only have one option.
Besides, the Gnome designers are clearly fans of the old Mac OS.
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Well, it's not necessary most of the time, but for every medium of communication I use, there are times I wish it were encrypted. How much processing power does it take to encrypt "Hello"? What's the harm in encrypting? I've never understood why all communications over the internet don't have some level of encryption by default. Well, maybe web/ftp servers sending what they intend to be public information-- maybe that doesn't require encryption. But e-mail? Why don't we encrypt e-mail?
Instant messages shouldn't need to go through MS or Yahoo. Central servers should be able to resolve names and maybe negotiate the initial connection somehow, but the messages should be able to be sent P2P.
I wonder what it means for Gaim and Trillian.
GAIM will still have an audience with Linux users, Mac users (via Adium), and any Windows users who have multiple IM accounts, like OSS, or just IMing without ads. Sounds like the same audience they had two days ago.
Or Google's Jabber client. I have a Jabber server, but I never use it. Does anyone use Jabber?
Lots of people have gmail, and each of them basically have a Jabber account already. Even if you don't use Google's client, they have it built into Gmail via a web interface. This means that there are probably lots of people using Jabber right now who've never heard of "Jabber". My mother is one (and she's no computer geek).
Your very wording however reveals the difference that I am driving at. Consider "the extensibility and architecure of Rails make it adaptable". This implies that one has to work to adapt Rails to new situations. You would not say the same thing about a programming language.
Rails isn't a programming language. It's a framework, and yes, it is aimed at a particular situation. It's aimed at web developers who want to be able to make web applications. If you're a web developer wanting to make powerful, versatile, and maintainable web applications with the best of today's technologies, it's quite a nice tool.
However, I suppose you're correct if you're implying that it's not so good for making ice cream.
No, no, no, how can the LA Times get something so basic so wrong?
Specifically because they're the LA Times? Why should we be surprised when the major newspaper in a city-- full of idiots and run by the entertainment industry-- makes this sort of error?
For the most part, EULAs suck. They're a horrible blight on IP law, but I guess I'm getting off topic.
Huh? Is it hard to sign up for a free account with Yahoo, MSN, and AOL? I mean, I know it's different, but is that difference a problem?
Look, it's just some morons trying different power-plays. They want you to use AOL, but not MSN. Or they want you to use Yahoo and not AOL. And why? Because they want you to use their client, so you look at their ads.
So everyone, use GAIM. Don't let these companies push you around, plus you'll save yourself from looking at any ads or pop-ups or anything other than your own conversations.
Now we just need voice/video working in GAIM, and we're all set.
And you're right, that this is how many advertiser see this. That's unfortunate, because it entirely misses the point. As long as advertisers insist on forcing ads down our throat, so long as they're annoying ads for things we don't want, there will be those of us who find ways to avoid them. We'll make ourselves harder to reach.
Sites that want users to continue to see their ads should show restraint in the advertising they show. No pop-ups. Nothing annoying. Just plain, simple, clearly marked, tasteful ads.
The only thing I disagree with you on is the idea that people don't buy older movies. It might be that, at any given time, the top sellers are generally new releases, but lots of people buy old favorites and re-releases.
Otherwise, I agree with what you've said. What I was trying to say, though, is that maybe we should come up with some new method of producing games that would allow them to be saved without expensive porting or crappy emulation. I'm no genious when it comes to things like this, to I can't tell you how it should be done, but I wish someone was working toward a way of developing games that wouldn't require that they "expire".
Maybe some open-source platform on which things can be built? A customized linux distro running something like DirectX, but open source, as a standardized gaming platform? Maybe something designed to run under emulation, so that each game you run is actually a liveCD running in a virtual machine? I don't know if that makes any sense as an idea, and even if it did, I have no idea how you sell people on it.
So I'm not trying to sell a plan here, just an idea: we need to start developing games in such a way that they can continue to run on newer systems. We need to make sure classic games don't "expire", just as movies, books, paintings, and other art forms don't "expire".
It's kind of sad when you think about it-- this idea of games "expiring". Other art forms, including movies and novels, don't "expire". We're still enjoying things made thousands of years ago. We've seen some ability to hold onto games with ROMS and emulation, but shouldn't we look to preserve games a little more comprehensively?
Why should they expire anyway? Maybe you get tired of it, the same why you'd get tired of a movie, but that doesn't mean that the game becomes entirely useless after a year or two. I've gotten bored playing Kings Quest and Duke Nukem 3D, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't like to recommend them to others, or that I wouldn't like to revisit them sometime. I've gone back and played Super Mario Bros. and had some fun.
So what's the solution? I don't know. I'd just hate to think that all this work that people have done to make games-- and some really great games-- will just evaporate in the next hundred years. No one will remember them, and no one will be able play them without antique hardware.
The problem I see is that most people don't want to have to look at markup. A lot of people flat-out don't get the idea. Text that you write in, but it won't show up when you print it...?
I agree, though, that Word isn't well-suited for all purposes. I'm excited to hear about some of the supposed Pages improvements, including a separation of "Word Processing" and "Layout" modes. I've been suggesting something like this for a long time.
I know Office 2007 is doing something similar to this, but I've just always wanted to do those two things completely separately-- sort of like the separation between html and css. One for making sure your data is right, one for laying it out. But again, I don't really want to deal with actually writing the markup.
I don't think it's funny at all. Look, for lots of everyday uses, Microsoft Word isn't a bad program. Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint-- these all have their valid uses, and they all do a pretty decent job.
Is it good enough that I'd want to spend hundreds of dollars for it when there are free alternatives? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what I'm doing and what I want, but I've spend money on Photoshop and Acrobat, and those also have free alternatives. I could imagine Microsoft Office remaining successfull if Microsoft starts selling it based on its own merits.
However, as someone running an IT department, I'm trying to migrate to OpenOffice where ever I can. It's not so that I can save a couple hundred dollars here and there, but I'm just entirely sick of the abuse Microsoft heaps on its own customers. All the vendor lock-in, piracy checks, and all the rest-- it hurts my company's flexibility. It worries me that my company might find itself in a position where it can't access its own data. I'm annoyed by the idea that Microsoft's default format isn't real XML, which would be easier for our databases to generate/process.
So what I'm saying is, yes, I'd like Microsoft to use/support real open standards. I'd like their systems to play well with others. I'd like to see a better version of Office for the Mac, and a version for Linux-- there have been times when I would have bought Office for Linux, even though Evolution/OpenOffice is working well enough.
I'd like Microsoft to do those things specifically because I kind of like Microsoft Office, and I'd like to keep using it. However, I can't, in good conscience, put my company's future at Microsoft's mercy because some executive in Microsoft is a childish prick who insists on leveraging their monopoly to the point of hurting their own customers. It's unacceptable.
I don't know... I think what's being said is pretty fair. It seems kind of like a crazy thing to say if you think of it as "people who are focused on their own good vs. people who sacrifice their life for the good of the company". On the other hand, it makes a lot of sense if you're trying to contrast "self-serving back-stabbing little pricks who are only interested in moving up" with "people who, even if they might like promotions and such, are a little more interesting indoing a good job where they are".
I know I'd rather do a good job than have a small pay raise or slightly cooler title at a job I suck at. I wouldn't hire anyone who I thought held the opposite opinion.
That's a little oversimplistic for me. Some passions can't easily be turned into a paying career. Some passions can be a paying career, but there may be other problems with that career. It simply isn't always as simple as "doing what you're passionate about."
Besides that, many times you could choose a career in what you're passionate about, and still hate your job. Let's say I love fixing computers. Does it naturally follow that I'd love any job in the IT sector? No-- it's still rather important to find a job that you're good at, where people appreciate you, and you're treated well by your bosses/coworkers.
Forgetting all that, there's also the fact that, if you really only have one passion, and are happy to spend all your days working only on that one thing, then you're probably some sort of a lunatic.
It's really easy to claim people are stupid for failing to get a career that they're passionate about, but I think people here are talking about something that you haven't been able to grasp: regardless of the concept of 'work' as "what you get paid for", there is still 'work' as in 'doing something I don't really want to do because it's my responsibility'. We all need play time-- time when the pressure is off. We all need time with friends and family, time to rest, time to think, time to get our life straightened out. Hell, even if the problem is that we haven't "followed our passions," we need time to choose a new carreer, retrain, look for jobs, etc.
Now, I'm not saying that employees who like their work are generally more productive than those who hate their work. However, if your suggesting that spending all day working, every single day, and then regretting it later could only be caused by failing to have the correct job-- well, I'm not even sure how to talk to someone who is so far off-base.
Really-- I remember when "alpha", "beta", and "release candidate" each meant something specific. Now Betas are apparently intended for general public use, and developers plan to have 3 release candidates. What's the point anymore?
I know, I've found the pervasiveness of advertising very disturbing, too.
But what's really scary is that AOL is talking about a move to being ad-supported. Last time I saw AOL, it was covered with ads, and pop-ups were everywhere already. Exactly how much advertising does Miller have in mind?
No thanks. I'll stick with Firefox and AdBlock.
I've never counted them up, but I know for a fact that on Windows XP and 2003, there is a limit to the characters in path+filename, and it's small enough that I've hit it a few times. Worse yet, that limit seems to be smaller in some applications (Microsoft Office 2003 comes to mind), meaning they won't read files that the OS will write.
I agree that extensions are helpful for users to tell, at a glance, what a file is. For example, you might have a filesystem tell me that "index.html" is a UTF-8 text file. I'm not sure that's as helpful as telling me it's and HTML file.
So it's good for users to see, but a poor way for the operating system to identify the file-type. A clueless user might change the filename, or multiple different formats might share the same extention.
That's why the current convention seems backwards to me. A lot of GUIs have the default view hide the extentions, making them useless for users, but then the OS relies on those extentions to know what program to run them in. However, I think it's still probably better than the experiences I've had trying to repair a file's resource fork in Mac OS classic.
You can also format HFS+ volumes to be case sensitive, but that's a new thing. The problem is, switching to a case insensitive file system to a case sensitive one will break a lot of apps. Any developers who weren't paying attention to that sort of thing (and why would we expect them to?) might very well have to troubleshoot their apps and re-release.
It's not exactly forced down your throat. I mean, you could stop watching TV, right?
What you need to keep in mind is, it's not really the advertisers you're quarrelling with, it's the network. People always get this backwards-- they think that the TV networks are providing an entertainment service to the people, which is subsidized by pesky, pushy advertisers. However, the networks are really in the business of providing viewers. You are not ABC's customer, the advertisers are the customers. You, the viewer, are the product. ABC is selling your attention to the advertiser, and the show is just a loss-leader in order to commoditize your attention.
When you understand that this is the business model, it's no wonder that ABC is upset that people are skipping commercials.
You're making the mistake of believing that advertisement is intended to inform you about products that you might want to buy. It's not. Modern advertising is about brainwashing you into wanting to buy products whether you have use of them or not.
In the past couple decades, top advertising agencies have started studying anything that has inspired devout following. It's not so disturbing when you realized that they're studying companies like Apple and Nike for inspiration, but when you find out that they're trying to learn the techniques used by major religions, political leaders (e.g. Hitler), and cult leaders, it gets a little creepy.
But that's the name of the game. You may say you don't care about some new feminine itch product, but somewhere, there's an advertiser looking for a way to convince you that you never be truly happy without it.
If these people had their way, there would be illegal to go to the bathroom during TV commercials. They'd say you're stealing from ABC by watching the show and not the commercials.
What a long, embarrassing fall for the online company whose stock was once so valuable that it could buy a major cable company!
You do know that they're more than a cable company, right?
File formats should be able to hold the information necessary for those files to be used with "accessibility" software. What are the complaints against ODF in this department? I have no idea, but someone might be able to educate us. Is it just FUD?
Well, it's copyright infringement when you reproduce, distribute, and/or perform/display copyrighted material without permission of the copyright holder. Therefore, unless you're distributing or displaying the material, you could only be accused of infringing by reproducing.
So, the question of whether an act is even copyright infringement often hinges on whether a new digital copy is to be considered an infringing 'copy'. Of course, but there are also things like caching an mp3 during a transmission of some kind, or transferring to an iPod.
IANAL, but I agree, it's not stealing. Further, I question where the line really ought to be drawn before we call it "copyright infringement". I think you'd have a hard time getting any sort of jury to punish someone for "copying" if you couldn't also prove some sort of "distribution".
Well, except they have one thing in common: they don't suck. Of the three major operating systems, if you're on Mac and you want to switch to another operating system that doesn't suck, you only have one option.
Besides, the Gnome designers are clearly fans of the old Mac OS.