Personally, I'm unconvinced. IMHO, the Gamecube failed due to two points.
Ummm, so selling slightly fewer units than the Xbox and making money is a failure, while shipping slightly more and losing money is a success? I find your inherent statement that the Gamecube was a failure a little unreal... and I've never owned one.
So I don't see why the Wii should suffer from the same problems as the N64 and the Gamecube.
I certainly hope it suffers from the same widespread adoption and profit problems. I'm a very casual gamer and my perspective on these discussions is a bit different from the norm. I have an old PS2 that I occasionally play a game on. In the next few years I might pick up a newer console or I might not. Of the three new generation consoles, my decision will of course be made based upon which games run on which console and the price. Aside from that factor, the Wii is the only one that sounds interesting. I suspect I'm a lot closer to the average consumer than most people here.
First of all, that's a really horrible design considering how stiff coaxial cables are -- I can easily imagine that thing either pulling out or snapping off it's USB port, especially if you use it with a laptop (as pictured).
Does that happen? I've never, ever broken any of my USB ports, even though I routinely plug and unplug peripherals, especially for my laptop.
Second, what I'm surprised nobody has made is a TV tuner designed to stack under the Mini (like all those external hard drives, etc.).
If you go back to the Elgato Web site, you'll see they offer a half a dozen different PVRs, including several designed to stack under a mac mini. I bought one of these years ago and it has happily been storing my TV shows since, including easy archiving to DVD. It isn't perfect, but it is pretty darn good.
You don't think Google is going to do everything in its power to become a monopoly? Sure they've seen software lock-ins draw critisism (ala Microsoft) but there are other ways of establishing monopolies and strong arming customers into submission is a good start.
Google doesn't have any leverage to strong arm customers until they have an effective monopoly influence. As such, they can do all sorts of things that a monopoly cannot, without having negative effects upon the market. They may well develop a monopoly, simply by providing a superior product. There is nothing wrong with that. What potentially is a problem is if they develop a monopoly and they abuse that monopoly to take over other markets (news aggregation). Until they have a monopoly, however, they have no ability to abuse one, and it is pointless to guess whether or not they will both establish one and abuse it.
You say anyone can switch but if the product works and nobody knows any better why are they going to switch?
To get the best product.
Obviously Google are going to try to minimise awareness of monopolistic practices so I just don't think towing the line is something we should be doing with Google right now.
Towing the line?!? What the hell does that even mean? Google is not a monopoly. Even if they were a monopoly, they had to remove this particular paper from both their news aggregation and search, because that is what the court demanded. So we have a company that is not a monopoly taking action that would not be monopolistic even if they were a monopoly. Where is the problem?
n the other hand, one could easily make the criticism that Google has lost focus and are all over the map, doing a lot of things and most them not anywhere near as well as they do web-searching. Perhaps this is a downside of having too much cash - they just don't have enough good ideas and talented people to make efficient use of all that money.
Actually, I find Google's diversity to be a brilliant move, worthy of some of the smartest minds on the planet. People are not machines. Forcing them to constantly focus on one task, without letting them change that task easily, does not result in optimal performance. How much time at work do people spend slacking? How much time is spent working slowly because people are tired or unmotivated or just not in the zone? At most places, a whole lot.
So Google encourages people to spend time on pet projects. Workers have something else to do at work and they get to choose what it is. Some of it is is really cool. Some of it is useless. A lot of it ends up as another, minor Google product, or a tool they use internally. All of it, however, is just bonus. The point is to keep their workers happy and attract the best workers. If they have $70K to fill a headcount slot they can get a lot more for their money than other places. Maybe they can get someone who can do the job twice as fast and is willing to work for that much money only because they get to work on pet projects among people who like to be there.
My company gets this concept. We don't compete only on salary, but also on working environment. Wear slashed up jeans and read Slashdot occasionally, so long as your job gets done. Have a Nerf gun fight to blow off steam and grab a beer or soda from the fridge, paid for by the company. Smart people know a $2 beer now and again is worth more to their happiness than another $10K in salary. Google has poached several very smart people from us now, because they get it too.
All these weird projects in random areas are not a lack of focus, they are a bonus that results from really smart management of employees. They don't have to be successful in the market because they have already worked, simply by being created and letting Google snag the cream of development field.
But Apple will have to change its product's name: ITV...
Apple announced the iTV device as a preview of things to come. iTV is a product code name, not what it will be shipped/marketed as. This was practically the first thing they said about it.
A little bit of forward looking perhaps? Nearly half of the search market is very substantial.
Sure, but with no lock-in there is little likelihood of a monopoly, especially while competing against a monopoly in a different market that is tying their search.
Ok they may not 'officially' be classed as a monopoly but they're well on the way.
"Well on their way?" what does that mean? They don't show any monopoly influence on the market.
You're also right theres nothing to stop anyone from moving to a different search engine, oh wait except the fact that hits would flatline overnight...
So there are two customers here, advertisers and searchers. Nothing stops searchers from switching. Nothing stops advertisers from using multiple services. No barrier exists except product quality.
Neither does Microsoft on operating system. Yet their market share is significant enough that they have to obey monopoly rules.
Antitrust law is built around whether or not a company wields monopoly influence on a market. Many of the laws use 70% as the point at which such an influence should be investigated. Windows has something like 90% of the desktop market, and there are significant barriers to entry. Their monopoly influence is easily demonstrated by pricing that does not follow the curve of a free market.
Google has 45% or so and has gone out of their way to make sure they have not created any market lock-in or barriers to switching. You just point your browser to yahoo.com or msn.com. Their pricing is extremely competitive, and rigidly follows the free market influences. Lots of other companies make money in the same space.
Basically, antitrust laws should be applied to Microsoft to fix the broken market, but there is no evidence that they should applied to Google.
This is not entirely clear, but it seems Google is abusing their near monopoly on search to strong arm their position in a new market of News.
The last numbers I saw placed Google as having about 45% of the search market. That isn't even in the running for being a monopoly.
Their have been ordered to remove other peoples news from their news service, and have decided to additional punish the source by also removing them from the search index.
As far as I can tell, there is no way in which this ruling applies to news.google.com that does not apply equally to google.com search. If one is ruled illegal by the courts, the other is probably just as illegal, so it makes sense to remove them from both.
I really thing Google should be allowed to link any news together in a news service, but escalating the issue to searching is really abusive and something I am quite sure they will be punished for in Europe. (Besides the obvious fact that it IS EVIL).
If Google had a monopoly, this could be an antitrust issue, but I've seen no evidence of that. There are a lot of players in the search market and Google has instituted absolutely no lock-in of any kind. Nothing stops Belgians from moving to something else, aside from the fact that the others tend to be lower quality. I don't foresee any antitrust action against them for this, nor any grounds for it. Since they don't wield monopoly influence in the market, I don't see how this is "evil."
ice country and all but not exactly news central. In effect this is like Des Moines doing the same, and not even people in Des Moines would mind if they just had OTHER peoples news.
Hmm, you have a very different perspective than I. I've always viewed Belgium as one of those countries with disproportionate influence. As the location for the NATO headquarters, they've always been sort of representative of Europe, and now with the headquarters of the EU there as well, it is semi-official. I've always viewed it as sort of a hub, where influential Europeans meet to make decisions. But, I've never been there, so maybe my perspective is skewed.
Please - don't be stupid. What I just said above is no different than you are suggesting.
According to the law, it is very different. You see blank CDs were not created specifically as a way to make money from the infringement. They work equally well for infringing and non-infringing uses and the makers don't know which they are being used for or have any way to stop infringing uses. They do not advertise them for infringing uses. With this new MS feature, they do track what music is being shared, they do advertise it for infringing uses, and they do have a mechanism to stop infringing uses. It is the same as Grokster. People share both legal and illegal music, but Grokster was tracking what was shared and advertising for the infringing use and had a way to block it, thus they were found guilty.
Personally, I disagree with this law, but seeing as it is law and the RIAA has used it to shut down free services I hope the courts enforce the same laws equally against MS and their RIAA partners.
You almost had me. I was right with you, enjoying ing your troll critique until I got to the very end, then BAM! "And I need a Sprite." No human drinks sprite. You must be here marketing it in an astroturf campaign, in collusion with the trolls. Well, I'd best go get an RC cola to help me forget all this.
Sometimes I fiddle with my balls too, does that mean I have the same sort of creative energy?
No. no. no. You and the owner of the company are the useless people who play with the balls. Mr. Ives and whoever created your balls are the ones with creative energy.
All this is academic, since it does not look like the Zune will let you share CC works at all but...
The Zune is a tool, it's the person sharing the song that actually breaks the CC license. You may be able to go after MSFT for contributing to the Zune owner's breach, but you can't ignore the Zune owner. And I'm willing to bet that MSFT has deeper pockets than you, or the Zune owner.
Zune owners who shared would almost impossible to discover and are unlikely to have much money if you do. Microsoft is easy to find and has lots of money to sue them for. If they easily facilitated this copyright violation for profit, they'd probably lose a contributory copyright violation suit.
Damages (punative/trebel) are based on some multiple of the actual damages. When you give away a song for free, what are the actual damages?
The courts take more than actual transferred cash into account for damages. Creative commons works are not free, they are provided in exchange for certain potential services. In the case of the creative commons license, they're providing a song. Songs have market value. If you provide that song in exchange for cash or donuts or certain services (attribution which is advertising and license to future derivative works) that does not mean it has no value. The average market value for the rights to a song would probably be considered reasonable and there is plenty of precedent for such damages.
Microsoft would have been guilty of enabling illegal file sharing/IP theft without this DRM wrapper.
Technically so long as they let users share any music they uploaded without restriction or monitoring, MS could probably have walked on this without ever losing a case. They would, however, have pissed off their RIAA partners and it would have made the Zune less profitable for advertising research. Also, it would have de-motivated purchases from their online store, since users could just share music including music from CDs, or downloads.
I guess we just need a load of CC-licensed artists to form some kind of Association and pool their resources. I look forward to the first case being filed!
Don't hold your breath. My interpretation of MS's press release is that Creative Commons music will not be shared at all unless they are selling them through MS's online store and authorize it by opting in. Songs you rip yourself will not be sharable. This seems to be purely a marketing feature to advertise songs you bought to others and get them to buy them when they stop playing after 3 days. It will only work for songs bought from MS's store and whose publishers specified it to be sharable/advertising enabled.
Assuming the Zune allows violation of the Creative Commons license in this way, who is liable?
Technically both are. The user is guilty of classic copyright infringement, and MS is guilty of contributory copyright infringement by profiting from selling tools it knows will be used to violate copyright.
In reality, however, my reading suggests only songs whose publishers opt-in and sell through the MS online store and give them a cut will be available for sharing, so it will have been authorized by the copyright holder and no infringement will be occurring.
...it would be nice to know exactly where he got the information that Zune would also wrap non-WMA, non-DRMed files in a DRM layer. Does it really do that? Anyone have a source?
The original source quoted is Forbes Magazine's article with direct quotes from Microsoft spokespersons, however, in reading that article it seems to me to imply that only a subset of songs bought from MS's version of the ITunes store will be available for sharing and it implies that any other music simply won't be able to be shared at all, including Creative Commons works, although the wording lends itself to ambiguity.
You know 'wrong' and 'illegal' are not synonyms, right?
The person who distributes the CC-licensed work would be breaking the terms of the license...
The contributory copyright violation in the grokster case was that they knew or expected that people would be using their technology to violate copyright and made a profit off of it. MS is in exactly the same boat. making three copies of a song for random people in a wireless net is almost certainly illegal copyright violation and MS is making money facilitating it. Take em to court RIAA!
I'm just pointing out that not all countries start out equally, so judging based on the results (e.g. happiness of the populace) may be reflecting the starting positions of the countries, and NOT anything inherent to the nations themselves.
True enough. Also, it fails to take into account the effects of other governments upon a nation, like foreign aid or invasion. The difficulty of normalizing for those factors is considerable. Perhaps an evaluation within a given country of the happiness of the people is somewhat better, but still not even close to perfect.
There are balances to be stuck everywhere, and the US does as well as anyone else, better in most cases.
What is the criteria for success here? Happiness of the people is about as close as I can come to providing a real criteria, and the US is mediocre in that regard. There are certainly countries where the people are happier, maybe we should look at the balances they chose?
There have been free patches released for Office 95. And in case you haven't noticed, even Office 95 is lightyears a head of anything you can find online, so your arguments about features only exist in a hypothetical space.
But we're not talking about what you can find online, we're talking about online word processors in general. Since the only offerings right now are fledglings at best, you can't predict the reason people might switch to online word processors based upon solvable, normal issues with new software.
And if you really don't want to pay anything, run OpenOffice.
OpenOffice is fine for some people, but it still does not solve keeping it up to date on numerous different computers.
Well, not everywhere, but anywhere that is important, such as a business trip.
But the thing is, you're considering where some people bring laptops, not where all people would like to have the specific functionality or if people want that functionality without a laptop.
If it means the different between having a computer in a hotel room and not having a computer in a hotel room, no, I don't think they want dedicateed machines. The greatest online application in the world isn't any good if you don't have a computer and internet access.
You're only considering one group, business travelers. Businesses are the last people who want this, not the first. Not all people who work at home and in the office, also work from hotels, in fact very few do. Computers and internet access are both becoming more and more commonly found everywhere.
I have a friend who is currently several hundred miles away from home looking for a job and he is having a hell of a time because he has to rely on internet cafes for 'net access. He is currently shopping for a laptop because it is way more convenient.
Yeah, and 5 years ago he would have had a harder time yet. 15 years ago he would have been completely screwed. The trend is towards both computers and access becoming more common, making this type of application more feasible.
Putting aside for a second the fact that the functionality of a dedicated computer is NOT available online and probably won't be for the forseeable future, I would say very few.
An online application plus a terminal provides (and is theoretically capable of providing) a different set of functionality from a local application on a specific computer. Neither will ever offer all the functionality of the other unless they become hybrids. The question is not which is better, but what functionality does the former bring that the latter does not. Those were the items requested and what I listed.
The "average" grade school child writes his/her book reports the night before it is due. And if you think he/she is going to want to access it at school, buy him/her a USB thumb drive.
A thumb-drive does not solve all the problems and it is something they have to carry with them and which can break, and probably will. What if they have free time at school or after school at the library they are reading? And then they want to work at home. Having an online application makes a lot of sense for them and because the school can provide it, it means it is easier for the teachers.
My grandmother isn't alive anymore, but when she was, she wrote her recipes on 3x5 note cards.
Should you have a daughter, where will she store her recipes? How about your granddaughter? Times change. I know a lot of grandmothers who use computers for recipes and e-mail and things like that, and they are no more technologically savvy than the norm.
Wait a minute, suddenly you have narrowed the applicaiton field to "collaboration software." I thought we were talking about replacing traditional desktop applications. I don't know what kind of "programmers" use online tools for "pair programming", but all the ones I know use version control systems such as subversion or CVS. See, that way they are n
So if you get an e-mail message telling you you're being sued in Nigeria, because some of the comments you made on you blog as aprt of your work with a non-profit can be construed as Libel and you're being sued for millions you don't have, you're going to go buy a plane ticket and head to Nigeria?
...and shame on us for putting judges in place that can not see through some technical jargon to realize when something is total crap and dismiss it on lack of merits.
Us? I didn't appoint that judge, so stop blaming me. I really wish you had not appointed him, since that court is listed as one of the most unjust in the country according to the "judicial hellhole" report that monitors notably abusive courts where less than ethical lawyers tend to venue shop for cases with little merit. Stop it.
So let me get this straight: If someone produces some sort of product and puts a bunch of limitations on how I can or cannot use said product that instead of disregarding those limitations and doing what I want that I should actually either respect those limitations or do without the product altogether?
Not at all. This is not a case of a product. This is simply copyright. Some guy spent a lot of time and work writing a program that solves a problem. Cool. They say anyone that wants to can use that program. Cool. If anyone wants to take all the source code and use it to make another program, however, they need to negotiate a license to do that with the author, as per copyright. Via the GPL, this author has made up a standard set of payments (non-monetary) by which you can obtain such a license.
And are you also saying that if I do decide to disregard those limitations placed on the product that a reasonable avenue of recourse for the producer of that product is to bring suit against me?
If you're making modified copies of the source code and copying them and you have not negotiated a license to let you do so and you're not making the payments for the standard license he offers to everyone then, yeah. You're breaking the law by copying and republishing his work, the same as if you changed a few words of the new Stephen King novel and started selling it as your own original work without negotiating a license. You should expect to lose a lawsuit in either case.
Macs aren't safe from injecting code into an existing process. Trojans can do the exact same thing on Mac OS X as on Windows. See the vm_write() Mach API call.
Yeah, but this is software availability we're talking about. Via metasploit you can do such a thing from a drop-down menu without writing a line of code. I've seen no such, easily available, malware development tools for the Mac. That isn't to say someone could not create one, just that right now that is not the situation.
Yeah, because everyone knows that Office 95 stopped working when the next version came out.
But it does not have bug fixes or improvements that many of us want to keep up with the times. I want vector graphics in my resulting PDFs. If a free word processor will give them to me, but I have to pay to upgrade from Office 95, well one is superior... for those that need or want that option. Staying with old, outdated software is not a good option for a significant number of users.
The thing is, people who need to do that kind of thing (work on the same files everywhere) already bring a laptop around with them. And they are not going to give up the convenience of having a computer wherever they need it for some shitty browser based immitation of the applicaitons they use.
I don't know anyone who brings a laptop with them everywhere, and I know some pretty dedicated computer people. More to the point, do they want to carry a laptop everywhere and use it everywhere, instead of having dedicated machines at work and in their home office? Also to the point, of those people who currently don't bring a laptop with them everywhere, how many would like to have that functionality without the hassle. The penniless hippy wandering the country, sleeping in parks and logging on from libraries and cyber cafes might be writing the great American novel and would like to get to it from anywhere. The average grade school child may not have a laptop, but they might be writing a book report at home and at school and want access both places. Your grandmother might want to get to one of her recipes while she is visiting aunt Maude. There are many, very real, use cases for those who don't currently carry a laptop everywhere.
But if you don't, for some reason, have internet access, you can't do any work. Yeah, I'm sure people will be jumping all over THAT.
That is a serious drawback for many, although it may be solved if internet access becomes more reliable. But, we were discussing the advantages of such a system, not the disadvantages. There are plenty of both. And no, we were not comparing the two and trying to make some sort of judgement as to which is better for all people everywhere, since that would be absurd without knowing the use cases of everyone.
It is a novelty with limited application.
Yeah, they said the same thing about automobiles and they were right at the time. Easy to use collaboration software will be of great use to a lot of people, when it gets there. I know a lot of programmers who use it for a sort of pair programming now. When it is easy enough for the masses, it will be used by them.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I'm unconvinced. IMHO, the Gamecube failed due to two points.
Ummm, so selling slightly fewer units than the Xbox and making money is a failure, while shipping slightly more and losing money is a success? I find your inherent statement that the Gamecube was a failure a little unreal... and I've never owned one.
So I don't see why the Wii should suffer from the same problems as the N64 and the Gamecube.
I certainly hope it suffers from the same widespread adoption and profit problems. I'm a very casual gamer and my perspective on these discussions is a bit different from the norm. I have an old PS2 that I occasionally play a game on. In the next few years I might pick up a newer console or I might not. Of the three new generation consoles, my decision will of course be made based upon which games run on which console and the price. Aside from that factor, the Wii is the only one that sounds interesting. I suspect I'm a lot closer to the average consumer than most people here.
First of all, that's a really horrible design considering how stiff coaxial cables are -- I can easily imagine that thing either pulling out or snapping off it's USB port, especially if you use it with a laptop (as pictured).
Does that happen? I've never, ever broken any of my USB ports, even though I routinely plug and unplug peripherals, especially for my laptop.
Second, what I'm surprised nobody has made is a TV tuner designed to stack under the Mini (like all those external hard drives, etc.).
If you go back to the Elgato Web site, you'll see they offer a half a dozen different PVRs, including several designed to stack under a mac mini. I bought one of these years ago and it has happily been storing my TV shows since, including easy archiving to DVD. It isn't perfect, but it is pretty darn good.
You don't think Google is going to do everything in its power to become a monopoly? Sure they've seen software lock-ins draw critisism (ala Microsoft) but there are other ways of establishing monopolies and strong arming customers into submission is a good start.
Google doesn't have any leverage to strong arm customers until they have an effective monopoly influence. As such, they can do all sorts of things that a monopoly cannot, without having negative effects upon the market. They may well develop a monopoly, simply by providing a superior product. There is nothing wrong with that. What potentially is a problem is if they develop a monopoly and they abuse that monopoly to take over other markets (news aggregation). Until they have a monopoly, however, they have no ability to abuse one, and it is pointless to guess whether or not they will both establish one and abuse it.
You say anyone can switch but if the product works and nobody knows any better why are they going to switch?
To get the best product.
Obviously Google are going to try to minimise awareness of monopolistic practices so I just don't think towing the line is something we should be doing with Google right now.
Towing the line?!? What the hell does that even mean? Google is not a monopoly. Even if they were a monopoly, they had to remove this particular paper from both their news aggregation and search, because that is what the court demanded. So we have a company that is not a monopoly taking action that would not be monopolistic even if they were a monopoly. Where is the problem?
n the other hand, one could easily make the criticism that Google has lost focus and are all over the map, doing a lot of things and most them not anywhere near as well as they do web-searching. Perhaps this is a downside of having too much cash - they just don't have enough good ideas and talented people to make efficient use of all that money.
Actually, I find Google's diversity to be a brilliant move, worthy of some of the smartest minds on the planet. People are not machines. Forcing them to constantly focus on one task, without letting them change that task easily, does not result in optimal performance. How much time at work do people spend slacking? How much time is spent working slowly because people are tired or unmotivated or just not in the zone? At most places, a whole lot.
So Google encourages people to spend time on pet projects. Workers have something else to do at work and they get to choose what it is. Some of it is is really cool. Some of it is useless. A lot of it ends up as another, minor Google product, or a tool they use internally. All of it, however, is just bonus. The point is to keep their workers happy and attract the best workers. If they have $70K to fill a headcount slot they can get a lot more for their money than other places. Maybe they can get someone who can do the job twice as fast and is willing to work for that much money only because they get to work on pet projects among people who like to be there.
My company gets this concept. We don't compete only on salary, but also on working environment. Wear slashed up jeans and read Slashdot occasionally, so long as your job gets done. Have a Nerf gun fight to blow off steam and grab a beer or soda from the fridge, paid for by the company. Smart people know a $2 beer now and again is worth more to their happiness than another $10K in salary. Google has poached several very smart people from us now, because they get it too.
All these weird projects in random areas are not a lack of focus, they are a bonus that results from really smart management of employees. They don't have to be successful in the market because they have already worked, simply by being created and letting Google snag the cream of development field.
But Apple will have to change its product's name: ITV...
Apple announced the iTV device as a preview of things to come. iTV is a product code name, not what it will be shipped/marketed as. This was practically the first thing they said about it.
A little bit of forward looking perhaps? Nearly half of the search market is very substantial.
Sure, but with no lock-in there is little likelihood of a monopoly, especially while competing against a monopoly in a different market that is tying their search.
Ok they may not 'officially' be classed as a monopoly but they're well on the way.
"Well on their way?" what does that mean? They don't show any monopoly influence on the market.
You're also right theres nothing to stop anyone from moving to a different search engine, oh wait except the fact that hits would flatline overnight...
So there are two customers here, advertisers and searchers. Nothing stops searchers from switching. Nothing stops advertisers from using multiple services. No barrier exists except product quality.
Neither does Microsoft on operating system. Yet their market share is significant enough that they have to obey monopoly rules.
Antitrust law is built around whether or not a company wields monopoly influence on a market. Many of the laws use 70% as the point at which such an influence should be investigated. Windows has something like 90% of the desktop market, and there are significant barriers to entry. Their monopoly influence is easily demonstrated by pricing that does not follow the curve of a free market.
Google has 45% or so and has gone out of their way to make sure they have not created any market lock-in or barriers to switching. You just point your browser to yahoo.com or msn.com. Their pricing is extremely competitive, and rigidly follows the free market influences. Lots of other companies make money in the same space.
Basically, antitrust laws should be applied to Microsoft to fix the broken market, but there is no evidence that they should applied to Google.
This is not entirely clear, but it seems Google is abusing their near monopoly on search to strong arm their position in a new market of News.
The last numbers I saw placed Google as having about 45% of the search market. That isn't even in the running for being a monopoly.
Their have been ordered to remove other peoples news from their news service, and have decided to additional punish the source by also removing them from the search index.
As far as I can tell, there is no way in which this ruling applies to news.google.com that does not apply equally to google.com search. If one is ruled illegal by the courts, the other is probably just as illegal, so it makes sense to remove them from both.
I really thing Google should be allowed to link any news together in a news service, but escalating the issue to searching is really abusive and something I am quite sure they will be punished for in Europe. (Besides the obvious fact that it IS EVIL).
If Google had a monopoly, this could be an antitrust issue, but I've seen no evidence of that. There are a lot of players in the search market and Google has instituted absolutely no lock-in of any kind. Nothing stops Belgians from moving to something else, aside from the fact that the others tend to be lower quality. I don't foresee any antitrust action against them for this, nor any grounds for it. Since they don't wield monopoly influence in the market, I don't see how this is "evil."
ice country and all but not exactly news central. In effect this is like Des Moines doing the same, and not even people in Des Moines would mind if they just had OTHER peoples news.
Hmm, you have a very different perspective than I. I've always viewed Belgium as one of those countries with disproportionate influence. As the location for the NATO headquarters, they've always been sort of representative of Europe, and now with the headquarters of the EU there as well, it is semi-official. I've always viewed it as sort of a hub, where influential Europeans meet to make decisions. But, I've never been there, so maybe my perspective is skewed.
Please - don't be stupid. What I just said above is no different than you are suggesting.
According to the law, it is very different. You see blank CDs were not created specifically as a way to make money from the infringement. They work equally well for infringing and non-infringing uses and the makers don't know which they are being used for or have any way to stop infringing uses. They do not advertise them for infringing uses. With this new MS feature, they do track what music is being shared, they do advertise it for infringing uses, and they do have a mechanism to stop infringing uses. It is the same as Grokster. People share both legal and illegal music, but Grokster was tracking what was shared and advertising for the infringing use and had a way to block it, thus they were found guilty.
Personally, I disagree with this law, but seeing as it is law and the RIAA has used it to shut down free services I hope the courts enforce the same laws equally against MS and their RIAA partners.
You almost had me. I was right with you, enjoying ing your troll critique until I got to the very end, then BAM! "And I need a Sprite." No human drinks sprite. You must be here marketing it in an astroturf campaign, in collusion with the trolls. Well, I'd best go get an RC cola to help me forget all this.
Sometimes I fiddle with my balls too, does that mean I have the same sort of creative energy?
No. no. no. You and the owner of the company are the useless people who play with the balls. Mr. Ives and whoever created your balls are the ones with creative energy.
All this is academic, since it does not look like the Zune will let you share CC works at all but...
The Zune is a tool, it's the person sharing the song that actually breaks the CC license. You may be able to go after MSFT for contributing to the Zune owner's breach, but you can't ignore the Zune owner. And I'm willing to bet that MSFT has deeper pockets than you, or the Zune owner.
Zune owners who shared would almost impossible to discover and are unlikely to have much money if you do. Microsoft is easy to find and has lots of money to sue them for. If they easily facilitated this copyright violation for profit, they'd probably lose a contributory copyright violation suit.
Damages (punative/trebel) are based on some multiple of the actual damages. When you give away a song for free, what are the actual damages?
The courts take more than actual transferred cash into account for damages. Creative commons works are not free, they are provided in exchange for certain potential services. In the case of the creative commons license, they're providing a song. Songs have market value. If you provide that song in exchange for cash or donuts or certain services (attribution which is advertising and license to future derivative works) that does not mean it has no value. The average market value for the rights to a song would probably be considered reasonable and there is plenty of precedent for such damages.
Microsoft would have been guilty of enabling illegal file sharing/IP theft without this DRM wrapper.
Technically so long as they let users share any music they uploaded without restriction or monitoring, MS could probably have walked on this without ever losing a case. They would, however, have pissed off their RIAA partners and it would have made the Zune less profitable for advertising research. Also, it would have de-motivated purchases from their online store, since users could just share music including music from CDs, or downloads.
I guess we just need a load of CC-licensed artists to form some kind of Association and pool their resources. I look forward to the first case being filed!
Don't hold your breath. My interpretation of MS's press release is that Creative Commons music will not be shared at all unless they are selling them through MS's online store and authorize it by opting in. Songs you rip yourself will not be sharable. This seems to be purely a marketing feature to advertise songs you bought to others and get them to buy them when they stop playing after 3 days. It will only work for songs bought from MS's store and whose publishers specified it to be sharable/advertising enabled.
Assuming the Zune allows violation of the Creative Commons license in this way, who is liable?
Technically both are. The user is guilty of classic copyright infringement, and MS is guilty of contributory copyright infringement by profiting from selling tools it knows will be used to violate copyright.
In reality, however, my reading suggests only songs whose publishers opt-in and sell through the MS online store and give them a cut will be available for sharing, so it will have been authorized by the copyright holder and no infringement will be occurring.
The original source quoted is Forbes Magazine's article with direct quotes from Microsoft spokespersons, however, in reading that article it seems to me to imply that only a subset of songs bought from MS's version of the ITunes store will be available for sharing and it implies that any other music simply won't be able to be shared at all, including Creative Commons works, although the wording lends itself to ambiguity.
Microsoft would not be doing anything wrong.
You know 'wrong' and 'illegal' are not synonyms, right?
The person who distributes the CC-licensed work would be breaking the terms of the license...
The contributory copyright violation in the grokster case was that they knew or expected that people would be using their technology to violate copyright and made a profit off of it. MS is in exactly the same boat. making three copies of a song for random people in a wireless net is almost certainly illegal copyright violation and MS is making money facilitating it. Take em to court RIAA!
I'm just pointing out that not all countries start out equally, so judging based on the results (e.g. happiness of the populace) may be reflecting the starting positions of the countries, and NOT anything inherent to the nations themselves.
True enough. Also, it fails to take into account the effects of other governments upon a nation, like foreign aid or invasion. The difficulty of normalizing for those factors is considerable. Perhaps an evaluation within a given country of the happiness of the people is somewhat better, but still not even close to perfect.
There are balances to be stuck everywhere, and the US does as well as anyone else, better in most cases.
What is the criteria for success here? Happiness of the people is about as close as I can come to providing a real criteria, and the US is mediocre in that regard. There are certainly countries where the people are happier, maybe we should look at the balances they chose?
There have been free patches released for Office 95. And in case you haven't noticed, even Office 95 is lightyears a head of anything you can find online, so your arguments about features only exist in a hypothetical space.
But we're not talking about what you can find online, we're talking about online word processors in general. Since the only offerings right now are fledglings at best, you can't predict the reason people might switch to online word processors based upon solvable, normal issues with new software.
And if you really don't want to pay anything, run OpenOffice.
OpenOffice is fine for some people, but it still does not solve keeping it up to date on numerous different computers.
Well, not everywhere, but anywhere that is important, such as a business trip.
But the thing is, you're considering where some people bring laptops, not where all people would like to have the specific functionality or if people want that functionality without a laptop.
If it means the different between having a computer in a hotel room and not having a computer in a hotel room, no, I don't think they want dedicateed machines. The greatest online application in the world isn't any good if you don't have a computer and internet access.
You're only considering one group, business travelers. Businesses are the last people who want this, not the first. Not all people who work at home and in the office, also work from hotels, in fact very few do. Computers and internet access are both becoming more and more commonly found everywhere.
I have a friend who is currently several hundred miles away from home looking for a job and he is having a hell of a time because he has to rely on internet cafes for 'net access. He is currently shopping for a laptop because it is way more convenient.
Yeah, and 5 years ago he would have had a harder time yet. 15 years ago he would have been completely screwed. The trend is towards both computers and access becoming more common, making this type of application more feasible.
Putting aside for a second the fact that the functionality of a dedicated computer is NOT available online and probably won't be for the forseeable future, I would say very few.
An online application plus a terminal provides (and is theoretically capable of providing) a different set of functionality from a local application on a specific computer. Neither will ever offer all the functionality of the other unless they become hybrids. The question is not which is better, but what functionality does the former bring that the latter does not. Those were the items requested and what I listed.
The "average" grade school child writes his/her book reports the night before it is due. And if you think he/she is going to want to access it at school, buy him/her a USB thumb drive.
A thumb-drive does not solve all the problems and it is something they have to carry with them and which can break, and probably will. What if they have free time at school or after school at the library they are reading? And then they want to work at home. Having an online application makes a lot of sense for them and because the school can provide it, it means it is easier for the teachers.
My grandmother isn't alive anymore, but when she was, she wrote her recipes on 3x5 note cards.
Should you have a daughter, where will she store her recipes? How about your granddaughter? Times change. I know a lot of grandmothers who use computers for recipes and e-mail and things like that, and they are no more technologically savvy than the norm.
Wait a minute, suddenly you have narrowed the applicaiton field to "collaboration software." I thought we were talking about replacing traditional desktop applications. I don't know what kind of "programmers" use online tools for "pair programming", but all the ones I know use version control systems such as subversion or CVS. See, that way they are n
Shame on them from not coming to fight it,
So if you get an e-mail message telling you you're being sued in Nigeria, because some of the comments you made on you blog as aprt of your work with a non-profit can be construed as Libel and you're being sued for millions you don't have, you're going to go buy a plane ticket and head to Nigeria?
Us? I didn't appoint that judge, so stop blaming me. I really wish you had not appointed him, since that court is listed as one of the most unjust in the country according to the "judicial hellhole" report that monitors notably abusive courts where less than ethical lawyers tend to venue shop for cases with little merit. Stop it.
So let me get this straight: If someone produces some sort of product and puts a bunch of limitations on how I can or cannot use said product that instead of disregarding those limitations and doing what I want that I should actually either respect those limitations or do without the product altogether?
Not at all. This is not a case of a product. This is simply copyright. Some guy spent a lot of time and work writing a program that solves a problem. Cool. They say anyone that wants to can use that program. Cool. If anyone wants to take all the source code and use it to make another program, however, they need to negotiate a license to do that with the author, as per copyright. Via the GPL, this author has made up a standard set of payments (non-monetary) by which you can obtain such a license.
And are you also saying that if I do decide to disregard those limitations placed on the product that a reasonable avenue of recourse for the producer of that product is to bring suit against me?
If you're making modified copies of the source code and copying them and you have not negotiated a license to let you do so and you're not making the payments for the standard license he offers to everyone then, yeah. You're breaking the law by copying and republishing his work, the same as if you changed a few words of the new Stephen King novel and started selling it as your own original work without negotiating a license. You should expect to lose a lawsuit in either case.
Macs aren't safe from injecting code into an existing process. Trojans can do the exact same thing on Mac OS X as on Windows. See the vm_write() Mach API call.
Yeah, but this is software availability we're talking about. Via metasploit you can do such a thing from a drop-down menu without writing a line of code. I've seen no such, easily available, malware development tools for the Mac. That isn't to say someone could not create one, just that right now that is not the situation.
Yeah, because everyone knows that Office 95 stopped working when the next version came out.
But it does not have bug fixes or improvements that many of us want to keep up with the times. I want vector graphics in my resulting PDFs. If a free word processor will give them to me, but I have to pay to upgrade from Office 95, well one is superior... for those that need or want that option. Staying with old, outdated software is not a good option for a significant number of users.
The thing is, people who need to do that kind of thing (work on the same files everywhere) already bring a laptop around with them. And they are not going to give up the convenience of having a computer wherever they need it for some shitty browser based immitation of the applicaitons they use.
I don't know anyone who brings a laptop with them everywhere, and I know some pretty dedicated computer people. More to the point, do they want to carry a laptop everywhere and use it everywhere, instead of having dedicated machines at work and in their home office? Also to the point, of those people who currently don't bring a laptop with them everywhere, how many would like to have that functionality without the hassle. The penniless hippy wandering the country, sleeping in parks and logging on from libraries and cyber cafes might be writing the great American novel and would like to get to it from anywhere. The average grade school child may not have a laptop, but they might be writing a book report at home and at school and want access both places. Your grandmother might want to get to one of her recipes while she is visiting aunt Maude. There are many, very real, use cases for those who don't currently carry a laptop everywhere.
But if you don't, for some reason, have internet access, you can't do any work. Yeah, I'm sure people will be jumping all over THAT.
That is a serious drawback for many, although it may be solved if internet access becomes more reliable. But, we were discussing the advantages of such a system, not the disadvantages. There are plenty of both. And no, we were not comparing the two and trying to make some sort of judgement as to which is better for all people everywhere, since that would be absurd without knowing the use cases of everyone.
It is a novelty with limited application.
Yeah, they said the same thing about automobiles and they were right at the time. Easy to use collaboration software will be of great use to a lot of people, when it gets there. I know a lot of programmers who use it for a sort of pair programming now. When it is easy enough for the masses, it will be used by them.