Pamela Jones deserves a lot of credit. She challenged big corporations with deep pockets, which was personally risky to her. SCO did try to get her involved in the lawsuit.
Interesting also in the article: she mentions she saw what's underneath the corporate media and analysts. Yes, there is a lot of corruption there: you can "buy" favorable reviews with quid pro quo. And no one seems to object, that's just the way business is done. It's not so easy to fight: when you are young, you don't have the power to be different, and if you object, you are out on the street. As you get older (and more senior), you finally can object, except by then you have been doing it for years. So that makes you either an hypocrit, or at a minimum people will be able to come after you for past actions. Any solutions?
I use my AppleTV as a remote for listening to music. The interface is amazing: both simple (as simple as using an iPod), clean and breathtaking in HD. This is the easiest way for me to browse through songs, albums and playlists on my stereo. I had been waiting for such a solution for years. Previously, I had tried:
airTunes (works fine for streaming, but a pain to skip songs or navigate since you have to reach the Mac and iTunes)
3rd party iTunes IR remote (the worst product I bought for Mac in a long time, very unreliable and no features)
Yes, it can also play video content and I agree the quality of the video from iTunes is not great yet. That's the whole point the article makes. But don't underestimate audio. AppleTV is a great audio navigator.
PS: one thing I was surprised about, the original specs said the AppleTV only supported 720p, not 1080i. But the menus allow you to specify 1080i, and my TV claims the source is indeed 1080i. Maybe what they meant is that the processor doesn't have enough power to decompress video at 1080i quality. But they sure are able to display those cut menus and navigation at 1080i. Works for me.
From Cisco's web site yesterday: "SAN JOSE Calif., January 9, 2007 - Given Apple's numerous requests for permission to use Cisco's iPhone trademark over the past several years and our extensive discussions with them recently, it is our belief that with their announcement today, Apple intends to agree to the final document and public statement that were distributed to them last night and that addressed a few remaining items. We expect to receive a signed agreement today."
I guess someone at Apple didn't sign on the dotted line last night. What could Cisco possibly be asking for that Apple would refuse?
Sorry, nice try, but those arguments don't explain the reason for the problem. The proof: other countries have exactly the same characteristics you highlight and they do extremely well compared to the US. So those factors can't be the root cause.
You are right that advertising dollars eventually come from your own pockets (or your neighbor). However, you can also think of Google as a more efficient way to spend those advertising dollars, so that the total cost of the goods you buy actually goes down over time. In other words, instead of companies spending millions on TV ads that nobody watches anyway, the few cents per click of Google ads will help curb the advertising budgets of big companies and achieve the same results for less money. So you do win. And you should care.
Sorry, I got to disagree with this. If you are looking for print quality (as in book), PDF is way ahead of any standard HTML I have ever seen.
Yes, AcroRead takes longer and longer to load, defeating the purpose of being this ubiquitous reader Adobe is pitching. Yes it's not open.
But still, it's the saftest way I have found so far to send someone a document so I could be sure that when they open it, it looks exactly like I intended it to look. That to me is key: I care about the looks of what I do.
All those schemes to keep them on the phone longer and drive their costs higher are great, except... my time is more valuable than theirs, so it's a losing proposition for me. Anyone came up with a good way to discourage them without spending more than 5 seconds per call of my own personal time? Please share.
Amazingly, the article doesn't seem to take offense with the practice. And no one seems really shocked, except Tom Perkins looks like.
In any other developed country, this practice would be guaranteed to be illegal and the chairwoman of the board would be made to resign in a hurry. What a shame that it's not happening here.
And how much does the full setup with these high-end video cards cost? Not to mention the user interface (there is none on my $70 DVD player and that is how it should be), fan noise, etc... And for those who care, power consumption. Did you see the size of the cooling on those video cards?
In terms of pure efficiency, I'll go with a custom chip designed only to play DVDs, versus a general purpose GPU that can play DVDs, 3D games, etc... One will cost $50 and do one task well. The latter one, to stay competitive will have 10X more complexity for the same results at any given task. Which in itself is an achievement, don't get me wrong.
The killer app, of course, would be a plug-in to iTunes that let's you publish songs on it, for some form of micro-payment. If you do that, you can bypass the music store and keep the same front-end that everyone has grown acustomed to.
Alain.
I fail to see why software patents are any different. In software as in most fields, there are different ways to do things, some similar, some innovative and some are just copies.
I would refuse to make a specific exception for software patents. If you want to fix the system, either go back to the letter of the patents ("invention not obvious for those skilled in the art"), or offer something else.
Unfortunately, I'm afraid the answer is simpler: they are an empty legal shell. There may be nothing at all to recover from them, not even a corporation to formally sue. A web site, a phone number... that doesn't get you very far in court. If they are as sloppy as they sound, you won't even be able to put your hands on them.
Isn't this Slashdot? How come no one offered a technical solution yet?
Credit cards are not evil. Just issue all of them with PIN, you will cut fraud by 99%. Other countries have been doing this for 20 years or more.
It still amazes me that credit card companies are willing to let thefts charge thousands of dollars with no security whatsoever. It's called a microchip.
There are people today that watch "live" TV through their ADSL connection. Forget about downloading, or waiting minutes. This is an Mpeg-2 stream, at a few Mbit/s, except it's true video on demand over ADSL.
DVD will survive for all the portable applications mentioned above, but if you look at how many people just want to watch movies from the comfort of their living room, that's the ADSL market.
The funny thing of course is that for whatever obscure reason, the ADSL bandwidth in the US is capped and you can't stream live video, but it doesn't mean other countries can't. That explains why 90% of the posters on that thread laugh about the French comment, when actually the rest of the world is laughing about slow ADSL in the US.
The guy got convicted for using a pirated copy of the software he reverse-engineered, not for the reverse-engineering or posting the exploit. And since the sentence was suspended, you can see that the judges actually saw as a positive the goal of the reverse-engineering.
PS: yes, it does happen that a/. headline is misleading:-)
You're correct! I read the complaint and that's actually one of the legal holes in Apple's lawsuit.
The guy who gave the seed keys is for sure guilty. The one who signed up for a basic ADC membership, which by definition cannot obtain seed keys, shouldn't be sued for using seed keys. It sounds more like Apple has a bug in their ADC software and they let non-authorized ADC users access beta software.
Apple's argument is also very weak regarding damages, plus there are quite a few paragraphs that will be easily striken.
In the end, I'd say a fair punishment would be some kind of community service. Those guys did something wrong.
Let me be more specific: in my example, I was assuming that you are making speeches on how blacks should be killed in front of an audience of white supremacists, all of which have been previously been convicted of killing blacks before. Is that a crime or is it free speech? The US view is that it's protected speech, but not so in some European countries.
The reason: if you think of Hitler making speeches calling for the killing of jews, you get the same situation, and history decided that was a crime. Yes, I know that Hitler also gave orders, but you get the idea.
So I'll reiterate my point: the line is not as absolute as some would like to believe. I wish it was (but then life wouldn't be fun would it?)
Well, free speech is unfortunately a gray area, and different countries chose to set the line at different places. Remember when you yell "Fire!" in a crowed theater? Same thing applies here:
It is illegal in the US to kill a black. It is also illegal to tell someone to kill a black. It becomes a gray area to say that blacks should be killed. It's OK to say that you don't like blacks.
France for instance, partly because of its past, equates the statement "I love Hitler" with the intent to commit a crime. The US doesn't. But you have to see that it's all the same continuum of actions, with each country drawing the line at a slightly different place.
You want to blame the USPTO. Seriously, does it require an engineering degree to figure out that this patent application is bogus?
Blame the Primary Examiner: Wong; Albert K.
That's the guy you want to blame. Dear media, please, make a feature story on that guy. I want to know where he went to school, whether he is now on Microsoft's payroll, etc...
Slashdot Mirror
Pamela Jones deserves a lot of credit. She challenged big corporations with deep pockets, which was personally risky to her. SCO did try to get her involved in the lawsuit.
Interesting also in the article: she mentions she saw what's underneath the corporate media and analysts. Yes, there is a lot of corruption there: you can "buy" favorable reviews with quid pro quo. And no one seems to object, that's just the way business is done. It's not so easy to fight: when you are young, you don't have the power to be different, and if you object, you are out on the street. As you get older (and more senior), you finally can object, except by then you have been doing it for years. So that makes you either an hypocrit, or at a minimum people will be able to come after you for past actions. Any solutions?
So just say thanks to Pamela for what she did.
-
airTunes (works fine for streaming, but a pain to skip songs or navigate since you have to reach the Mac and iTunes)
-
3rd party iTunes IR remote (the worst product I bought for Mac in a long time, very unreliable and no features)
Yes, it can also play video content and I agree the quality of the video from iTunes is not great yet. That's the whole point the article makes. But don't underestimate audio. AppleTV is a great audio navigator.PS: one thing I was surprised about, the original specs said the AppleTV only supported 720p, not 1080i. But the menus allow you to specify 1080i, and my TV claims the source is indeed 1080i. Maybe what they meant is that the processor doesn't have enough power to decompress video at 1080i quality. But they sure are able to display those cut menus and navigation at 1080i. Works for me.
Alain.
"No computer will ever need more than 6.40 Mbit/s of bandwidth". (*)
Alain.
(*) 6 Mbit/s is what it takes to get decent video to your TV (broadcast quality, not HD)
I guess someone at Apple didn't sign on the dotted line last night. What could Cisco possibly be asking for that Apple would refuse?
Alain.
Sorry, nice try, but those arguments don't explain the reason for the problem. The proof: other countries have exactly the same characteristics you highlight and they do extremely well compared to the US. So those factors can't be the root cause.
Alain.
You are right that advertising dollars eventually come from your own pockets (or your neighbor). However, you can also think of Google as a more efficient way to spend those advertising dollars, so that the total cost of the goods you buy actually goes down over time. In other words, instead of companies spending millions on TV ads that nobody watches anyway, the few cents per click of Google ads will help curb the advertising budgets of big companies and achieve the same results for less money. So you do win. And you should care.
Alain.
Sorry, I got to disagree with this. If you are looking for print quality (as in book), PDF is way ahead of any standard HTML I have ever seen.
Yes, AcroRead takes longer and longer to load, defeating the purpose of being this ubiquitous reader Adobe is pitching. Yes it's not open.
But still, it's the saftest way I have found so far to send someone a document so I could be sure that when they open it, it looks exactly like I intended it to look. That to me is key: I care about the looks of what I do.
Alain.
All those schemes to keep them on the phone longer and drive their costs higher are great, except... my time is more valuable than theirs, so it's a losing proposition for me. Anyone came up with a good way to discourage them without spending more than 5 seconds per call of my own personal time? Please share.
Alain.
Amazingly, the article doesn't seem to take offense with the practice. And no one seems really shocked, except Tom Perkins looks like.
In any other developed country, this practice would be guaranteed to be illegal and the chairwoman of the board would be made to resign in a hurry. What a shame that it's not happening here.
Alain.
And how much does the full setup with these high-end video cards cost? Not to mention the user interface (there is none on my $70 DVD player and that is how it should be), fan noise, etc... And for those who care, power consumption. Did you see the size of the cooling on those video cards?
In terms of pure efficiency, I'll go with a custom chip designed only to play DVDs, versus a general purpose GPU that can play DVDs, 3D games, etc... One will cost $50 and do one task well. The latter one, to stay competitive will have 10X more complexity for the same results at any given task. Which in itself is an achievement, don't get me wrong.
Alain.
The killer app, of course, would be a plug-in to iTunes that let's you publish songs on it, for some form of micro-payment. If you do that, you can bypass the music store and keep the same front-end that everyone has grown acustomed to. Alain.
I would refuse to make a specific exception for software patents. If you want to fix the system, either go back to the letter of the patents ("invention not obvious for those skilled in the art"), or offer something else.
Alain.
And that's too bad.
Alain.
Credit cards are not evil. Just issue all of them with PIN, you will cut fraud by 99%. Other countries have been doing this for 20 years or more.
It still amazes me that credit card companies are willing to let thefts charge thousands of dollars with no security whatsoever. It's called a microchip.
Alain.
There are people today that watch "live" TV through their ADSL connection. Forget about downloading, or waiting minutes. This is an Mpeg-2 stream, at a few Mbit/s, except it's true video on demand over ADSL.
DVD will survive for all the portable applications mentioned above, but if you look at how many people just want to watch movies from the comfort of their living room, that's the ADSL market.
The funny thing of course is that for whatever obscure reason, the ADSL bandwidth in the US is capped and you can't stream live video, but it doesn't mean other countries can't. That explains why 90% of the posters on that thread laugh about the French comment, when actually the rest of the world is laughing about slow ADSL in the US.
Alain.
The guy got convicted for using a pirated copy of the software he reverse-engineered, not for the reverse-engineering or posting the exploit. And since the sentence was suspended, you can see that the judges actually saw as a positive the goal of the reverse-engineering.
PS: yes, it does happen that a /. headline is misleading :-)
Alain.
The guy who gave the seed keys is for sure guilty. The one who signed up for a basic ADC membership, which by definition cannot obtain seed keys, shouldn't be sued for using seed keys. It sounds more like Apple has a bug in their ADC software and they let non-authorized ADC users access beta software.
Apple's argument is also very weak regarding damages, plus there are quite a few paragraphs that will be easily striken.
In the end, I'd say a fair punishment would be some kind of community service. Those guys did something wrong.
Alain.
The reason: if you think of Hitler making speeches calling for the killing of jews, you get the same situation, and history decided that was a crime. Yes, I know that Hitler also gave orders, but you get the idea.
So I'll reiterate my point: the line is not as absolute as some would like to believe. I wish it was (but then life wouldn't be fun would it?)
It is illegal in the US to kill a black. It is also illegal to tell someone to kill a black. It becomes a gray area to say that blacks should be killed. It's OK to say that you don't like blacks.
France for instance, partly because of its past, equates the statement "I love Hitler" with the intent to commit a crime. The US doesn't. But you have to see that it's all the same continuum of actions, with each country drawing the line at a slightly different place.
Blame the Primary Examiner: Wong; Albert K.
That's the guy you want to blame. Dear media, please, make a feature story on that guy. I want to know where he went to school, whether he is now on Microsoft's payroll, etc...
Alain.