I was reminded of this comment by Ballmer in 2004, when he made his infamous statement about the music on iPods being "stolen" (as opposed to the music played in the virtuous Windows Media Player):
"My 12-year-old at home doesn't want to hear that he can't put all the music that he wants in all of the places that he would like it."
Mr. Ballmer, your 12-year-old (now 13 or 14, I suppose) understands digital music better than you do. There *is* no reason he can't put it all the places he'd like it, except that you're being a crappy parent and teaching him rotten principles about corporate subservience.
I remember a lot of computer books for newbies from the 80s and early 90s that had diagrams of computer systems in the first chapter. For some reason, perhaps simplicity as well as the lack of computer sophistication, those books almost always labelled the case as the "CPU (central processing unit)". I think the practice may even go back to books from the Commodore and 64 generation.
Nowadays, with cases that can be opened by users, and with everything from your video card to your processor swappable, it makes little sense to call the whole thing a CPU. Back then, it made more sense, and the label has stuck to some extent.
Unlike Windows, OS X is composited on the video hardware, and the effort to produce most of those visual effects is done by the GPU, hardware that would otherwise be idle. Turning them off wouldn't give you any speed gains on the CPU, from what I understand.
In spite of his "expertise", I see a fairly clear flaw in his premise, which is quoted in the Slashdot blurb:
"The growing attention to copyright merely reflects its critical importance to the Internet and to creativity and culture more generally."
The reality of things, I think, is that attention paid to copyright reflects its importance to media *corporations* who are afraid of changing times, as well as to the corrupt politicians (e.g. Orrin Hatch) who have staked out careers based on selling out their constituents to said corporations.
The issue is also important to Mr. Geist, since he gets to validate his prestigious degree in "e-commerce" and write about it for money.
On the other hand, the "Internet" couldn't care less. Creativity and culture don't need copyright, and the hundreds of millions of people who actually engage in cultural exchange (of both copyrighted and non-copyrighted culture) on the Internet were probably blissfully aware of any copyright issues when they started swapping mix tapes, taping television, ripping CDs, writing fan fiction, singing "Happy Birthday", photographing tourist attractions, playing DVDs under Linux, and so on. Many of them are still totally in the dark; it's not a natural impulse to ask yourself when you want to listen to a song, "oh, I wonder if the author's life-plus-300 year copyright term has expired yet; I might be stealing from the pockets of his impoverished great-grandchildren".
The difference is that Lyons's readership (us) can actually benefit by Lyons's advice of avoiding Microsoft and trying Apple products. Fox's viewership doesn't benefit at all from getting a candy-coated version of war and Congressional politics.
I fully agree with everything you've written, except for the last sentence: "That's the way US capitalism works."
Whether one supports patents or not (I don't), it must be recognized that patents are not capitalist, because they are not a product of the free market*. Patents are a government monopoly that uses force (fines, jail, etc) to keep competitors from producing similar products -- leading to artificially high prices, lower supply, less innovation, and so on. "Fascism" would be a more accurate term for the government's doling of patent protection to corporations, and the protection racket that forcibly prevents people in poorer countries from developing their own versions.
* I do think, though, that manufacturing associations would, in the absence of government interference, might arrange some kind of contractual patent system. Such a system would be without many of the problems outlined by the parent poster.
"Maybe by being responsible consumers and not "sharing" all digital media with the planet without permission."
You'll never pull this off, because it's totally against human nature not to share and enjoy songs and stories, the prime elements of culture.
I suggest getting people to stop buying DRM might be better. Then the RIAA will do what they should have done all along -- find a new business model that works in the digital age, while we keep enjoying and sharing music.
Sure, the article's a dupe, we expect nothing less here at Slashdot. And it's hardly clear that the legislation would force Apple to do anything. However, this bit from the summary stands out:
"the French parliament is considering legislation which would require that the iPod also be able to use music from services other than the iTunes Store."
Guess what, folks? The iPod will already work with two non-DRM'ed formats that any music store is free to sell! One of them is even the de-facto standard for digital music, MP3.
Excellent insight. And 50 years from now, when some new technology has replaced mere broadband, every citizen will still be paying some broadband tax without knowing why.
The thing about regulation of all kinds is that although it makes business difficult and slows growth, the established corporations love it; it makes breaking into the market almost impossible for new competitors. What's more, the combination of regulation, taxes, and subsidies freezes business models for established companies and keeps the market from being able to adapt.
The irony is that the DRM and control-your-customers mindset that Sony's media divisions have insisted on is proving to hurt Sony in the marketplace, rather than helping it.
"... there is no difference taking content this way and going to a store and stealing a CD or DVD."
There is an obvious difference: stealing a CD deprives the store of a physical object they bought and owned. Copying data deprives no one of anything. Feel free to preach the evils of copying, but saying there's no difference merely displays ignorance.
"If people stop paying to make [$200 million] movies then that type of movie will not get made in the future."
The imaginary "right" for Hollywood to make $200 million movies at a guaranteed profit does not trump my right to copy and share speech, data, and information with my fellow humans. I reject the arguments of copyright, and only by using threats and violence against people like me can you, the RIAA/MPAA, and their bribed politicians attempt to stop it.
"After editing an existing PNG file 1) Choose File|Save Done."
Actually, if you're editing and re-saving a PNG while keeping the layers un-flattened, the process is:
1) Click save in the menu. 2) Re-select the PNG format option, which Photoshop forgets. 3) Re-type or re-select the correct file name. 4) Click the save button again, this time in the file dialog. 5) Click "yes" to confirm that I do really want to save it. 6) Tell it once again that I want it non-interlaced instead of interlaced.
6 clicks to save a bloody PNG I already had open. It's a small thing, but Photoshop has dozens of rough edges like this that make everything a little too frustrating, and Adobe has no intention of fixing it as far as I can tell.
"And you really think that Microsoft is going to be the one to bring UI improvments to Photoshop? It's not exactly their strong suit."
Sorry, I should have been more specific that I neither expect nor want a Photoshop competitor from Microsoft on my platform (OS X). However, I do want someone to make a better graphic design application, and I suspect many designers on the Windows side of things would agree.
"Not to mention the fact that the world isn't even ASKING for a Photoshop replacement."
The world might not be, but I am. Photoshop, for all its snazzy tools, is in need of a refresh, one it's not going to get from Adobe. Many bugs have persisted in every version I've used, from 4 to 8 (CS), and the basic interface has never changed. There are lot of usability improvements that could be made.*
I'd personally like Apple or a Mac software outfit like Panic to create a Photoshop competitor. With APIs like Core Image and Core Data available now, much of the groundwork is already laid for a great OS X application. And if I were running Adobe, I'd get a small team of engineers like the ones responsible for Lightbox to start building a Photoshop replacement from the ground up.
* Here's an example of what I mean. To save a.png file after editing it, I should just be able to hit "save". Instead, it takes no fewer than 6 clicks to get the darn file saved. Adobe does little or no usability testing, I'm convinced.
"...that makes it illegal to make bills like this illegal one because they are trying to legalize the concealment of illegal activities."
I'm sure your Constitution already bans such bills on numerous grounds. However, any bill that protects freedom, right down to the Constitution, is impotent when those charged with keeping it enjoy a monopoly on violence and coercion. The government will damn well obey what laws it wants and ignore the rest, thank you.
Heh, I heard of some guy standing up in the middle of the theatre the first time one of those ads played in my city, and yelled excitedly "holy crap, you can download movies now?"
So for you, with your leet hacking skills, a modded Xbox is best.
For the rest of the world, a Mac Mini that just works when you plug it into your TV is best. That "rest of the world" demographic is what the C-net article is targeting.:)
If I'm not mistaken, there's also a big company in Thailand with its own Thai-script domain server, so Thai speakers can use familiar words and letters in website domain names. I assume it uses Unicode, but I'm not certain.
"King Kong had an estimated budget of $207 million, but had already brought in $520 million worldwide by the 26th of January."
Well, for starters, only half of the box office take will go to the studio, the rest being kept by theatres and distributors. Less than half, maybe, when you consider the overseas portion. And then there's at least $50 million or so spent on marketing and advertising that's not included in the production budget.
In the end, with DVD sales and what-not, they might scrape over the line into the black; and a percentage of that might belong to Jackson and some of the actors. But when you spend more money than the gross national product of Portugal, managing to get your money back is hardly a resounding success. They could have made more buying bonds or something. The only reason you risk $200 million is because you expect to make a huge percentage of that in profit. That risk isn't paying off so often lately.
My wife's Japanese Vodafone phone is sort of lame
on
Vodafone Quitting Japan
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
My wife got a Vodafone keitai here in Japan. While it's one of the cool folding phones, Vodafone Japan seems to have the Canadian/American disease of locking down all the cool hardware features. They've made it so it's impossible to transfer files with Bluetooth, for example -- even though the phone is a full Bluetooth device with all the file transfer protocols. Also, battery life is pretty bad.
"Download services should have the right to sell any digital recording now, and compensate artists afterwards."
Interestingly, that's the law in Russia. As a result, Russian paid-download sites do a booming business, and the customer sometimes even gets to pick the encoding format.
Since more government regulations won't fix the antibiotic problem, how about less regulation? Without patents, i.e. artificial monopolies, pharmaceutical companies:
1. Won't be able to milk those $1,000-per-dose drug patents once competitors catch up, so they'll have to keep new and innovative products coming.
2. Won't be able to stop competitors from perfecting or improving on their drugs.
3. Won't have such a preference for maintenance drugs versus cures.
4. Won't be able to keep charitable foundations from helping people and doing research.
Perhaps researchers should also look towards remedies that bacteria cannot build immunity to, like elemental silver, which has been used for its antibacterial properties since antiquity.
Slashdot Mirror
I was reminded of this comment by Ballmer in 2004, when he made his infamous statement about the music on iPods being "stolen" (as opposed to the music played in the virtuous Windows Media Player):
"My 12-year-old at home doesn't want to hear that he can't put all the music that he wants in all of the places that he would like it."
Mr. Ballmer, your 12-year-old (now 13 or 14, I suppose) understands digital music better than you do. There *is* no reason he can't put it all the places he'd like it, except that you're being a crappy parent and teaching him rotten principles about corporate subservience.
I remember a lot of computer books for newbies from the 80s and early 90s that had diagrams of computer systems in the first chapter. For some reason, perhaps simplicity as well as the lack of computer sophistication, those books almost always labelled the case as the "CPU (central processing unit)". I think the practice may even go back to books from the Commodore and 64 generation.
Nowadays, with cases that can be opened by users, and with everything from your video card to your processor swappable, it makes little sense to call the whole thing a CPU. Back then, it made more sense, and the label has stuck to some extent.
Unlike Windows, OS X is composited on the video hardware, and the effort to produce most of those visual effects is done by the GPU, hardware that would otherwise be idle. Turning them off wouldn't give you any speed gains on the CPU, from what I understand.
In spite of his "expertise", I see a fairly clear flaw in his premise, which is quoted in the Slashdot blurb:
"The growing attention to copyright merely reflects its critical importance to the Internet and to creativity and culture more generally."
The reality of things, I think, is that attention paid to copyright reflects its importance to media *corporations* who are afraid of changing times, as well as to the corrupt politicians (e.g. Orrin Hatch) who have staked out careers based on selling out their constituents to said corporations.
The issue is also important to Mr. Geist, since he gets to validate his prestigious degree in "e-commerce" and write about it for money.
On the other hand, the "Internet" couldn't care less. Creativity and culture don't need copyright, and the hundreds of millions of people who actually engage in cultural exchange (of both copyrighted and non-copyrighted culture) on the Internet were probably blissfully aware of any copyright issues when they started swapping mix tapes, taping television, ripping CDs, writing fan fiction, singing "Happy Birthday", photographing tourist attractions, playing DVDs under Linux, and so on. Many of them are still totally in the dark; it's not a natural impulse to ask yourself when you want to listen to a song, "oh, I wonder if the author's life-plus-300 year copyright term has expired yet; I might be stealing from the pockets of his impoverished great-grandchildren".
The difference is that Lyons's readership (us) can actually benefit by Lyons's advice of avoiding Microsoft and trying Apple products. Fox's viewership doesn't benefit at all from getting a candy-coated version of war and Congressional politics.
I fully agree with everything you've written, except for the last sentence: "That's the way US capitalism works."
Whether one supports patents or not (I don't), it must be recognized that patents are not capitalist, because they are not a product of the free market*. Patents are a government monopoly that uses force (fines, jail, etc) to keep competitors from producing similar products -- leading to artificially high prices, lower supply, less innovation, and so on. "Fascism" would be a more accurate term for the government's doling of patent protection to corporations, and the protection racket that forcibly prevents people in poorer countries from developing their own versions.
* I do think, though, that manufacturing associations would, in the absence of government interference, might arrange some kind of contractual patent system. Such a system would be without many of the problems outlined by the parent poster.
"Maybe by being responsible consumers and not "sharing" all digital media with the planet without permission."
You'll never pull this off, because it's totally against human nature not to share and enjoy songs and stories, the prime elements of culture.
I suggest getting people to stop buying DRM might be better. Then the RIAA will do what they should have done all along -- find a new business model that works in the digital age, while we keep enjoying and sharing music.
Sure, the article's a dupe, we expect nothing less here at Slashdot. And it's hardly clear that the legislation would force Apple to do anything. However, this bit from the summary stands out:
"the French parliament is considering legislation which would require that the iPod also be able to use music from services other than the iTunes Store."
Guess what, folks? The iPod will already work with two non-DRM'ed formats that any music store is free to sell! One of them is even the de-facto standard for digital music, MP3.
Excellent insight. And 50 years from now, when some new technology has replaced mere broadband, every citizen will still be paying some broadband tax without knowing why.
The thing about regulation of all kinds is that although it makes business difficult and slows growth, the established corporations love it; it makes breaking into the market almost impossible for new competitors. What's more, the combination of regulation, taxes, and subsidies freezes business models for established companies and keeps the market from being able to adapt.
Even better, if your pal's getting a suped-up gaming rig from Alienware, you can annoy him by telling him he's getting a Dell!
The irony is that the DRM and control-your-customers mindset that Sony's media divisions have insisted on is proving to hurt Sony in the marketplace, rather than helping it.
"... there is no difference taking content this way and going to a store and stealing a CD or DVD."
There is an obvious difference: stealing a CD deprives the store of a physical object they bought and owned. Copying data deprives no one of anything. Feel free to preach the evils of copying, but saying there's no difference merely displays ignorance.
"If people stop paying to make [$200 million] movies then that type of movie will not get made in the future."
The imaginary "right" for Hollywood to make $200 million movies at a guaranteed profit does not trump my right to copy and share speech, data, and information with my fellow humans. I reject the arguments of copyright, and only by using threats and violence against people like me can you, the RIAA/MPAA, and their bribed politicians attempt to stop it.
"After editing an existing PNG file
1) Choose File|Save
Done."
Actually, if you're editing and re-saving a PNG while keeping the layers un-flattened, the process is:
1) Click save in the menu.
2) Re-select the PNG format option, which Photoshop forgets.
3) Re-type or re-select the correct file name.
4) Click the save button again, this time in the file dialog.
5) Click "yes" to confirm that I do really want to save it.
6) Tell it once again that I want it non-interlaced instead of interlaced.
6 clicks to save a bloody PNG I already had open. It's a small thing, but Photoshop has dozens of rough edges like this that make everything a little too frustrating, and Adobe has no intention of fixing it as far as I can tell.
"And you really think that Microsoft is going to be the one to bring UI improvments to Photoshop? It's not exactly their strong suit."
Sorry, I should have been more specific that I neither expect nor want a Photoshop competitor from Microsoft on my platform (OS X). However, I do want someone to make a better graphic design application, and I suspect many designers on the Windows side of things would agree.
"Not to mention the fact that the world isn't even ASKING for a Photoshop replacement."
.png file after editing it, I should just be able to hit "save". Instead, it takes no fewer than 6 clicks to get the darn file saved. Adobe does little or no usability testing, I'm convinced.
The world might not be, but I am. Photoshop, for all its snazzy tools, is in need of a refresh, one it's not going to get from Adobe. Many bugs have persisted in every version I've used, from 4 to 8 (CS), and the basic interface has never changed. There are lot of usability improvements that could be made.*
I'd personally like Apple or a Mac software outfit like Panic to create a Photoshop competitor. With APIs like Core Image and Core Data available now, much of the groundwork is already laid for a great OS X application. And if I were running Adobe, I'd get a small team of engineers like the ones responsible for Lightbox to start building a Photoshop replacement from the ground up.
* Here's an example of what I mean. To save a
"...that makes it illegal to make bills like this illegal one because they are trying to legalize the concealment of illegal activities."
I'm sure your Constitution already bans such bills on numerous grounds. However, any bill that protects freedom, right down to the Constitution, is impotent when those charged with keeping it enjoy a monopoly on violence and coercion. The government will damn well obey what laws it wants and ignore the rest, thank you.
Heh, I heard of some guy standing up in the middle of the theatre the first time one of those ads played in my city, and yelled excitedly "holy crap, you can download movies now?"
So for you, with your leet hacking skills, a modded Xbox is best.
:)
For the rest of the world, a Mac Mini that just works when you plug it into your TV is best. That "rest of the world" demographic is what the C-net article is targeting.
If I'm not mistaken, there's also a big company in Thailand with its own Thai-script domain server, so Thai speakers can use familiar words and letters in website domain names. I assume it uses Unicode, but I'm not certain.
"King Kong had an estimated budget of $207 million, but had already brought in $520 million worldwide by the 26th of January."
Well, for starters, only half of the box office take will go to the studio, the rest being kept by theatres and distributors. Less than half, maybe, when you consider the overseas portion. And then there's at least $50 million or so spent on marketing and advertising that's not included in the production budget.
In the end, with DVD sales and what-not, they might scrape over the line into the black; and a percentage of that might belong to Jackson and some of the actors. But when you spend more money than the gross national product of Portugal, managing to get your money back is hardly a resounding success. They could have made more buying bonds or something. The only reason you risk $200 million is because you expect to make a huge percentage of that in profit. That risk isn't paying off so often lately.
My wife got a Vodafone keitai here in Japan. While it's one of the cool folding phones, Vodafone Japan seems to have the Canadian/American disease of locking down all the cool hardware features. They've made it so it's impossible to transfer files with Bluetooth, for example -- even though the phone is a full Bluetooth device with all the file transfer protocols. Also, battery life is pretty bad.
"Download services should have the right to sell any digital recording now, and compensate artists afterwards."
Interestingly, that's the law in Russia. As a result, Russian paid-download sites do a booming business, and the customer sometimes even gets to pick the encoding format.
"AltaVista is much harder to type and Yahoo and Google only need 3 letters to type vs 6."
Heh, Altavista used to be my search engine of choice all the way back when you had to type "altavista.digital.com" to use it.
Boy, when that search engine started going downhill, it went fast.
Since more government regulations won't fix the antibiotic problem, how about less regulation? Without patents, i.e. artificial monopolies, pharmaceutical companies:
1. Won't be able to milk those $1,000-per-dose drug patents once competitors catch up, so they'll have to keep new and innovative products coming.
2. Won't be able to stop competitors from perfecting or improving on their drugs.
3. Won't have such a preference for maintenance drugs versus cures.
4. Won't be able to keep charitable foundations from helping people and doing research.
Perhaps researchers should also look towards remedies that bacteria cannot build immunity to, like elemental silver, which has been used for its antibacterial properties since antiquity.
n d_health_effects
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver#Precautions_a