Are you saying that pirating only happens amongst the middle class? Have you been to any non rich/Western country?
Pirating is exceptionally common amongst the poor as it's a cheap way to get some form of entertainment. You'll see plenty of market stalls selling counterfeit DVDs at very low prices, and that can then be played back on cheap media players. None of it required broadband or a fancy computer to use.
Hmm, what method of searching Google were you using that included your "original query" of "crony democracy" as part of the URL that you linked? Seems like it could be a worrying way of accidentally leaking more information than intended.
The Internet has enabled and emboldened those that would be passive agressive under face-to-face circumstances to be much more animalistic and capable of carrying out their threats.
Why do you feel they're any more capable of carrying out their threats? Surely as soon as they get into the face-to-face circumstance that is required to execute the murder (or heck, even deal with the hitman) the passiveness would win out? Can you think of any internet celebs (like Lennart would be) who have had a lot of death threats from random angry posters actually have one become a murder?
If people are going to be cowards throwing death threats across the Internet, they're unlikely to suddenly discover the "courage" to go kill someone in real life.
Bundling stuff for free isn't anti-competitive. Bundling stuff that's nominally free but acts as leverage is anti-competitive.
Including IE meant that IE became a platform that web developers targetted. A platform that was only available on systems that Microsoft decided it would be, and so they used their existing platform of Windows to make IE the new de facto platform.
Putting in something like Windows Photo Viewer isn't anti-competitive because it's not being used to leverage something else. If on the other hand, it included some spiffy new format like Windows Amazing Photo Format that was only available on Windows devices, and MS started pushing that to become the new standard that they control... that's becoming anti-competitive again. If in 10 years all cameras recorded in only the Windows Amazing Photo Format, you're going to struggle to switch to another operating system if you want to still be able to access your photos.
This is why I don't see Ubuntu including as many other applications as it likes in the package as being anti-competitive. None of them are able to force you to stay on the Ubuntu treadmill forever, whereas choosing IE 10-years back resulted in most of the web being targetted at IE, and if one wanted to switch OSes it became much harder if you still wanted to be able to access all of your sites.
As the original poster mentioned I can't see how they'd be able to use this anti-virus tool to leverage anything else? Could they corner the market on viruses? Maybe, but they already have that.
The fraud is that they claim there's a particular real-estate CEO called X who believes Y about the Galaxy Tab, and in the way it's presented it's not unreasonable for someone to believe that that person actually exists. With movies there's a clear expectation going in that it's fiction.
This is not about teaching people to become obsessed wealth gatherers. This is about teaching them how it works so that they don't screwed over by the people who are obsessed with wealth gathering. The more you understand about economics, the better the position you're in for understanding your own worth in the system. I think it should also be extended further so that people have a greater understanding of the link between their time and the money earned, so they're fully aware that when they piss away their money on rubbish consumer goods, they're paying for it in their own time and reducing their ability to actually achieve their important real life goals.
And while I agree that the scientists, doctors, builders, plumbers etc are important as well, the Soviet Union had very skilled people as well, yet the quality of life of their citizens was poor. That comes down to economics, which is fundamentally the way in which peoples working time is distributed.
You're always going to see this pissing match between who's most important out of the "people who do stuff so we can all actually survive", the "people who push the envelope forward", and the "people who glue the system together". We've got to make sure that all these roles are understood and respected.
It's a damned poor state of affairs that so many people put in that situation of trust betray it.
Ideally it may be a "damned poor state of affairs" but for thousands of years people and governments have been snooping on other people to either gain an advantage or just for some tasty gossip. It's not some sudden failure in collective human kind, it's just what the majority would do in this situation if they got the power.
Technology may have made it easier to do this and given us a sense of outrage over "lowly sysadmins" having access to this sensitive data, but then I see the exact same thing being done by the government in their position of trust. Except they can pass retroactive immunity for it.
Despite how people play the "brain drain" story, how many people in any country even feel that the job they're doing REALLY benefits their country directly? Sure you may feel you're benefiting your company/boss, but your contribution feels so diluted by the time it reaches the country level it doesn't even matter.
One can talk about "some kind of loyalty to the country" but calling that into question based on taking a overseas job because you want better pay to help support yourself and your family is utterly unfair. We all want to see our country do well, but sometimes you can help more by becoming an export that keeps paying the country back. If you want to use nonsense metrics to compare ones sense of civic duty, why don't you compare voter turnout: US voter turnout in 2004 was 56%, compared to South Africa at 77%.
(I am South African, I have worked in the UK, I am now living back in South Africa and did bring money back.)
...on iTunes, there will be at least 2 applications that will intercept or otherwise access the data and convert it to a more permanent format.
Almost certainly it'll be Windows only at first, but very soon thereafter, the Mac OS version will appear.
So what? It's actually FAR easier for me to just load up the movies that I rent from the video store right now and just rip it with Handbrake/Your Preferred DVD Ripper. I just don't care enough to do it. Generally I don't want to watch the same movie again so it's just a waste of hard drive space for me to keep it.
Now you're talking about an encryption that's significantly more of a PITA than CSS ever was. Apple will probably be updating it every two weeks to keep people out, so if I wanted to rip my rental stream I'd have to bugger around trying to find the latest version of whatever would remove that DRM.
It's different with music and movies that I own because I want to see them again at a later point, but rentals are by and large just watch-and-forget.
If you wanted to do that couldn't you just buy something like a Kill-A-Watt, and measure it simply like that. Sounds like a much better option that going to the trouble and expense of embedding a web server and wifi connection into each appliance, without any guarantee that said embedded web-server would even be able to monitor power usage.
I totally agree with you in principle, but the battle in Congress over increasing the strength of copyright has already been perverted into a simple equation:
More Money For Creative People = Greater Progress
People like Lessig are going in with excellent arguments like yours, and are getting rebuffed because it is now entrenched in the minds of the majority of people that "Money = Progress". Even though you are technically correct, the concept that progress can be encouraged by any other means than money has already been lost (at least to the lawmakers). Thanks Disney!
Now they're moving to entrench the idea of "intellectual property", and we need to stop this before it takes hold. Their approach is try and prove "maximum control over information = maximum money for artists". We need to be proving that artists can actually make *more money* if there is a freer flow of information, even if that means sometimes people pirate stuff.
You can already see them winning the hearts and minds of people by looking on internet forums and seeing the reaction when someone says they pirated a CD to try it out. Even if that person then says they liked it and bought it afterwards people will start chiming in that what they did was evil.
We can and need to win this battle on the grounds of "what makes the most money for artists" not "limited time to promote arts and sciences", because Congress/Supreme Court/Joe Sixpack no longer cares about that. If we're not careful "intellectual property" will become the dominant meme that guides future copyright decisions.
That's the biggest reason why even though we do know the true meaning of copyright, we should be focusing on convincing people that artists can do better without "intellectual property".
People seem to forget that the purpose of copyright is not to give the author ultimate control of their work, but rather to provide a way for them to make money and thereby encourage them to keep churning out more things. Copyright is a case of the ends justifying the means. Prohibiting others from duplicating, so as to allow the author to make money, is a "necessary evil" but not the real purpose of it.
The IP brigade have tried to turn this whole thing around so that what was just a necessary evil (i.e the prohibitation of duplication) becomes the real purpose of copyright.
We need to get back to the original spirit of copyright, where if it makes the author more money than they would have otherwise had (even if you've broken copyright law) then you're doing your part to help the cause of the arts and sciences.
Think of it as reducing ones available options. Having easy and cheap energy allows us to achieve things that we never could before. With easy energy the potential is there to create things that do improve your quality of life.
Reducing access to this energy reduces our potential to do things. With less energy available we will find that certain appliances may no longer be economically viable (maybe clothes driers or air conditioners since they both use large amounts of energy). Sure we can live without them, but taking the option away doesn't make our lives better.
You can try and claim that maybe this would be a good thing "I sincerely believe that quality of life can be *better* with less consumption", but its very hard to see how making energy more expensive could make ones life better. Maybe one could believe "television makes families talk less, it would probably be better if we watched less" or "reducing travel promotes building friendships within communities and strengthens local bonds", but the choice should still be left in the hands of the individual responsible and by trying to deny cheap energy (if there are other options available) to promote your lifestyle viewpoint seems to be contrary to the kind of freedom we're used to.
Meanwhile, some of us have been using Bluetooth on OS X since 10.3 and never experienced significant issues.
3 different machines. G5, MacBook Pro (CD), and iMac Core Duo.
I don't doubt that. I'm sure that 95% of Mac users that use Bluetooth never experience any problems with it at all. Maybe the other 5% just suffer from some strange combination of being unlucky, or aren't using Apple designed Bluetooth devices (I was unable to use that mouse properly for a good month before I found that hint), put more traffic over Bluetooth than the average person, or put their MacBooks to sleep instead of shutting them down (the forum linked in the story has that as quite a common theme).
The problem is we're not just making this shit up to be difficult, and without any kind of comment from Apple those with problems get worried that the good people at Apple may take your approach and go "I've never had any problems, so you must be doing something wrong". All I want is them to either say
1) "Yes, we know there's a problem and we're trying to figure out how to fix it. Be patient." or
2) "We can't find this problem but we believe that you're not just lying, here's a logging tool that you use when it fails that will give us an idea of what was happening."
The real problem is the total lack of communication from anyone on Apple's side to these kinds of problems. Bluetooth problems have been an ongoing issue since I started using Tiger (10.4.4), with everything from the aforementioned "Bluetooth unavailable", to problems with using DUN via Bluetooth (dial up too often via DUN and it just mysteriously dies), to issues where Bluetooth PAN simply disables itself. Now after a good 2 years this kind of stuff gets really tiring but no one at Apple says a word which adds an extra layer of frustration to the whole process. Are they even aware of the problems from their aluminium tower?
Now compare that with Microsoft who also had Bluetooth problems with their phones, and you can actually get some kind of interactivity with the developers. Your end users might end up being a bit nasty to you on the forum, but it's far less than the ill-feelings your brand generates if you just clam up.
I think letting Intel carry on thinking there is just a bit of hope for the Itanium while it sells its miserable few Itaniums through SGI is working quite nicely at crippling it. Just keep pumping tons of R&D into that dead end!
Not in order of size. In order of devices more likely to have their cords coming to the front of the laptop or going behind. Basically so you don't have the situation like on some x86 laptops where they put the power connector halfway down the side of the laptop and you have it getting caught under your laptop when you turn the laptop to the side.
Re:Don't mess with something that works
on
Office 12 Exposed
·
· Score: 1
Menu bars are not the best way to encourage people to try out new features that are useful to what they are doing. That's what I think Microsoft is going for here.
One of the biggest problem Microsoft has with Word/Office/Windows is trying to get people to use all the new whizz-bang features, and to make it look practically useful to upgrade. With each new version of Office from 95 they've added new features to an overall consistent UI, by basically just going and dumping these as new pull-down menu items. And thanks to that most users of Office haven't used any truly new features since Office 95.
Problem with pull down menus for encouraging people are:
(1) All tasks on a pull down menu are effectively at the same level no matter how rarely they are used. File -> Print is in no way more prominent than Tools -> Flag for Follow Up.
(2) Tasks are visible whether or not they have any bearing to the task at hand. e.g. I'm writing an email with no relation to a physical letter, what is the likely hood that I'm going to now go Tools -> Labels. Yet there it is, with the same priority as File -> Send.
Now they've tried some pretty silly ideas for "reforming" the pull down menus, like by temporarily hiding infrequently used items in Office XP menus. That was a disaster.
I think they've now reached the point where they've gone:
"Ok, let's take Clippy to the next level. It looks like you're writing a letter, and actually there's only a few things that you actually do during that stage. Lets change the interface so that all the functions that are really useful to writing a letter are visible as giant toolbar items where you can actually see what they do. When you want to start getting it ready to print, you click another tab at the top, and the UI now shows features for doing margins, page size and other things useful for print."
Maybe it will work for new users. I'm hoping it will encourage people to try new features beyond bold and underline that could really make their documents look good. Anything that helps people make the most of their tools is a step in the right direction.
(I've ignored toolbars because they're basically so overcrowded as to be useless in previous versions of Office)
Slashdot Mirror
Are you saying that pirating only happens amongst the middle class? Have you been to any non rich/Western country?
Pirating is exceptionally common amongst the poor as it's a cheap way to get some form of entertainment. You'll see plenty of market stalls selling counterfeit DVDs at very low prices, and that can then be played back on cheap media players. None of it required broadband or a fancy computer to use.
Hmm, what method of searching Google were you using that included your "original query" of "crony democracy" as part of the URL that you linked? Seems like it could be a worrying way of accidentally leaking more information than intended.
The Internet has enabled and emboldened those that would be passive agressive under face-to-face circumstances to be much more animalistic and capable of carrying out their threats.
Why do you feel they're any more capable of carrying out their threats? Surely as soon as they get into the face-to-face circumstance that is required to execute the murder (or heck, even deal with the hitman) the passiveness would win out? Can you think of any internet celebs (like Lennart would be) who have had a lot of death threats from random angry posters actually have one become a murder?
If people are going to be cowards throwing death threats across the Internet, they're unlikely to suddenly discover the "courage" to go kill someone in real life.
Bundling stuff for free isn't anti-competitive. Bundling stuff that's nominally free but acts as leverage is anti-competitive.
Including IE meant that IE became a platform that web developers targetted. A platform that was only available on systems that Microsoft decided it would be, and so they used their existing platform of Windows to make IE the new de facto platform.
Putting in something like Windows Photo Viewer isn't anti-competitive because it's not being used to leverage something else. If on the other hand, it included some spiffy new format like Windows Amazing Photo Format that was only available on Windows devices, and MS started pushing that to become the new standard that they control... that's becoming anti-competitive again. If in 10 years all cameras recorded in only the Windows Amazing Photo Format, you're going to struggle to switch to another operating system if you want to still be able to access your photos.
This is why I don't see Ubuntu including as many other applications as it likes in the package as being anti-competitive. None of them are able to force you to stay on the Ubuntu treadmill forever, whereas choosing IE 10-years back resulted in most of the web being targetted at IE, and if one wanted to switch OSes it became much harder if you still wanted to be able to access all of your sites.
As the original poster mentioned I can't see how they'd be able to use this anti-virus tool to leverage anything else? Could they corner the market on viruses? Maybe, but they already have that.
The fraud is that they claim there's a particular real-estate CEO called X who believes Y about the Galaxy Tab, and in the way it's presented it's not unreasonable for someone to believe that that person actually exists. With movies there's a clear expectation going in that it's fiction.
However, if you go and make up fake reviews about your own movies such as calling them "another winner" and attributing them to non-existant movie critics, then that's also fraud.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4741259.stm
Go to http://geohot.com/ the link is on the front page.
.. and matched.
Perhaps then we shouldn't take a ton of mulberry leaves with us into space, and instead take something we can digest?
This is not about teaching people to become obsessed wealth gatherers. This is about teaching them how it works so that they don't screwed over by the people who are obsessed with wealth gathering. The more you understand about economics, the better the position you're in for understanding your own worth in the system. I think it should also be extended further so that people have a greater understanding of the link between their time and the money earned, so they're fully aware that when they piss away their money on rubbish consumer goods, they're paying for it in their own time and reducing their ability to actually achieve their important real life goals.
And while I agree that the scientists, doctors, builders, plumbers etc are important as well, the Soviet Union had very skilled people as well, yet the quality of life of their citizens was poor. That comes down to economics, which is fundamentally the way in which peoples working time is distributed.
You're always going to see this pissing match between who's most important out of the "people who do stuff so we can all actually survive", the "people who push the envelope forward", and the "people who glue the system together". We've got to make sure that all these roles are understood and respected.
Ideally it may be a "damned poor state of affairs" but for thousands of years people and governments have been snooping on other people to either gain an advantage or just for some tasty gossip. It's not some sudden failure in collective human kind, it's just what the majority would do in this situation if they got the power.
Technology may have made it easier to do this and given us a sense of outrage over "lowly sysadmins" having access to this sensitive data, but then I see the exact same thing being done by the government in their position of trust. Except they can pass retroactive immunity for it.
Despite how people play the "brain drain" story, how many people in any country even feel that the job they're doing REALLY benefits their country directly? Sure you may feel you're benefiting your company/boss, but your contribution feels so diluted by the time it reaches the country level it doesn't even matter.
One can talk about "some kind of loyalty to the country" but calling that into question based on taking a overseas job because you want better pay to help support yourself and your family is utterly unfair. We all want to see our country do well, but sometimes you can help more by becoming an export that keeps paying the country back. If you want to use nonsense metrics to compare ones sense of civic duty, why don't you compare voter turnout: US voter turnout in 2004 was 56%, compared to South Africa at 77%.
(I am South African, I have worked in the UK, I am now living back in South Africa and did bring money back.)
...on iTunes, there will be at least 2 applications that will intercept or otherwise access the data and convert it to a more permanent format.
Almost certainly it'll be Windows only at first, but very soon thereafter, the Mac OS version will appear.
So what? It's actually FAR easier for me to just load up the movies that I rent from the video store right now and just rip it with Handbrake/Your Preferred DVD Ripper. I just don't care enough to do it. Generally I don't want to watch the same movie again so it's just a waste of hard drive space for me to keep it.
Now you're talking about an encryption that's significantly more of a PITA than CSS ever was. Apple will probably be updating it every two weeks to keep people out, so if I wanted to rip my rental stream I'd have to bugger around trying to find the latest version of whatever would remove that DRM.
It's different with music and movies that I own because I want to see them again at a later point, but rentals are by and large just watch-and-forget.
If you wanted to do that couldn't you just buy something like a Kill-A-Watt, and measure it simply like that. Sounds like a much better option that going to the trouble and expense of embedding a web server and wifi connection into each appliance, without any guarantee that said embedded web-server would even be able to monitor power usage.
I totally agree with you in principle, but the battle in Congress over increasing the strength of copyright has already been perverted into a simple equation:
More Money For Creative People = Greater Progress
People like Lessig are going in with excellent arguments like yours, and are getting rebuffed because it is now entrenched in the minds of the majority of people that "Money = Progress". Even though you are technically correct, the concept that progress can be encouraged by any other means than money has already been lost (at least to the lawmakers). Thanks Disney!
Now they're moving to entrench the idea of "intellectual property", and we need to stop this before it takes hold. Their approach is try and prove "maximum control over information = maximum money for artists". We need to be proving that artists can actually make *more money* if there is a freer flow of information, even if that means sometimes people pirate stuff.
You can already see them winning the hearts and minds of people by looking on internet forums and seeing the reaction when someone says they pirated a CD to try it out. Even if that person then says they liked it and bought it afterwards people will start chiming in that what they did was evil.
We can and need to win this battle on the grounds of "what makes the most money for artists" not "limited time to promote arts and sciences", because Congress/Supreme Court/Joe Sixpack no longer cares about that. If we're not careful "intellectual property" will become the dominant meme that guides future copyright decisions.
That's the biggest reason why even though we do know the true meaning of copyright, we should be focusing on convincing people that artists can do better without "intellectual property".
People seem to forget that the purpose of copyright is not to give the author ultimate control of their work, but rather to provide a way for them to make money and thereby encourage them to keep churning out more things. Copyright is a case of the ends justifying the means. Prohibiting others from duplicating, so as to allow the author to make money, is a "necessary evil" but not the real purpose of it.
The IP brigade have tried to turn this whole thing around so that what was just a necessary evil (i.e the prohibitation of duplication) becomes the real purpose of copyright.
We need to get back to the original spirit of copyright, where if it makes the author more money than they would have otherwise had (even if you've broken copyright law) then you're doing your part to help the cause of the arts and sciences.
Think of it as reducing ones available options. Having easy and cheap energy allows us to achieve things that we never could before. With easy energy the potential is there to create things that do improve your quality of life.
Reducing access to this energy reduces our potential to do things. With less energy available we will find that certain appliances may no longer be economically viable (maybe clothes driers or air conditioners since they both use large amounts of energy). Sure we can live without them, but taking the option away doesn't make our lives better.
You can try and claim that maybe this would be a good thing "I sincerely believe that quality of life can be *better* with less consumption", but its very hard to see how making energy more expensive could make ones life better. Maybe one could believe "television makes families talk less, it would probably be better if we watched less" or "reducing travel promotes building friendships within communities and strengthens local bonds", but the choice should still be left in the hands of the individual responsible and by trying to deny cheap energy (if there are other options available) to promote your lifestyle viewpoint seems to be contrary to the kind of freedom we're used to.
I don't doubt that. I'm sure that 95% of Mac users that use Bluetooth never experience any problems with it at all. Maybe the other 5% just suffer from some strange combination of being unlucky, or aren't using Apple designed Bluetooth devices (I was unable to use that mouse properly for a good month before I found that hint), put more traffic over Bluetooth than the average person, or put their MacBooks to sleep instead of shutting them down (the forum linked in the story has that as quite a common theme).
The problem is we're not just making this shit up to be difficult, and without any kind of comment from Apple those with problems get worried that the good people at Apple may take your approach and go "I've never had any problems, so you must be doing something wrong". All I want is them to either say
1) "Yes, we know there's a problem and we're trying to figure out how to fix it. Be patient." or
2) "We can't find this problem but we believe that you're not just lying, here's a logging tool that you use when it fails that will give us an idea of what was happening."
The real problem is the total lack of communication from anyone on Apple's side to these kinds of problems. Bluetooth problems have been an ongoing issue since I started using Tiger (10.4.4), with everything from the aforementioned "Bluetooth unavailable", to problems with using DUN via Bluetooth (dial up too often via DUN and it just mysteriously dies), to issues where Bluetooth PAN simply disables itself. Now after a good 2 years this kind of stuff gets really tiring but no one at Apple says a word which adds an extra layer of frustration to the whole process. Are they even aware of the problems from their aluminium tower?
Now compare that with Microsoft who also had Bluetooth problems with their phones, and you can actually get some kind of interactivity with the developers. Your end users might end up being a bit nasty to you on the forum, but it's far less than the ill-feelings your brand generates if you just clam up.
I think letting Intel carry on thinking there is just a bit of hope for the Itanium while it sells its miserable few Itaniums through SGI is working quite nicely at crippling it. Just keep pumping tons of R&D into that dead end!
Suppose he could always join Ballmer's troupe...
Nothing like getting pedantic over a 15 year old OS :)
They didn't use SHELL=, they used COMSPEC=!
There, technically right, ahhhh I feel better already....
At least they're not armed with frickin' lasers!
Sounds a lot like Quartz Composer on the Mac... ah, bless you Mac for showing the way.
Not in order of size. In order of devices more likely to have their cords coming to the front of the laptop or going behind. Basically so you don't have the situation like on some x86 laptops where they put the power connector halfway down the side of the laptop and you have it getting caught under your laptop when you turn the laptop to the side.
Menu bars are not the best way to encourage people to try out new features that are useful to what they are doing. That's what I think Microsoft is going for here.
One of the biggest problem Microsoft has with Word/Office/Windows is trying to get people to use all the new whizz-bang features, and to make it look practically useful to upgrade. With each new version of Office from 95 they've added new features to an overall consistent UI, by basically just going and dumping these as new pull-down menu items. And thanks to that most users of Office haven't used any truly new features since Office 95.
Problem with pull down menus for encouraging people are:
(1) All tasks on a pull down menu are effectively at the same level no matter how rarely they are used. File -> Print is in no way more prominent than Tools -> Flag for Follow Up.
(2) Tasks are visible whether or not they have any bearing to the task at hand. e.g. I'm writing an email with no relation to a physical letter, what is the likely hood that I'm going to now go Tools -> Labels. Yet there it is, with the same priority as File -> Send.
Now they've tried some pretty silly ideas for "reforming" the pull down menus, like by temporarily hiding infrequently used items in Office XP menus. That was a disaster.
I think they've now reached the point where they've gone:
"Ok, let's take Clippy to the next level. It looks like you're writing a letter, and actually there's only a few things that you actually do during that stage. Lets change the interface so that all the functions that are really useful to writing a letter are visible as giant toolbar items where you can actually see what they do. When you want to start getting it ready to print, you click another tab at the top, and the UI now shows features for doing margins, page size and other things useful for print."
Maybe it will work for new users. I'm hoping it will encourage people to try new features beyond bold and underline that could really make their documents look good. Anything that helps people make the most of their tools is a step in the right direction.
(I've ignored toolbars because they're basically so overcrowded as to be useless in previous versions of Office)