The ambiguity is in the imagination of those who want to use the term without opening their source.
People were using the term to describe making the source available, but not necessarily freely licensing it for twenty years before a particular group decided to try to hijack it. Free software has the code available for modification. Open software, just has readable code.
but when exactly was Apple ever 'in touch' with the OS Community?
When they collaborated on dozens of standards implemented by both Apple and the OS community. When they hired a large number of OS proponents and other "old school" UNIX heads to work for them.
At one point it was cool to have a PowerBook to do unix dev on...
Cool?!? I think you're a little confused. OS X is useful to do UNIX dev on, not "cool." I haven't exactly seen fewer macs at UNIX development conventions lately, have you?
...but the quality of Mac hardware has plummeted now that they have been forced to turn to Intel for chips...
The quality is about the same as any other first generation release by Apple. Almost all companies have bugs in the first generation of anything that requires significant engineering, including computers. Arguing that somehow the chip set used has altered the quality of Apple machines, with no evidence provided, is just empty rhetoric.
...I don't see many people rushing to trade in their existing non-Mac hardware.
When have you ever? It is always a constant trickle, although some analysts are claiming it is indeed gaining switchers much faster now that they have switched to Intel.
With how fast Ubuntu with the new accelerated desktop is coming up to speed, I don't think I even care about OS X anymore outside of the more ascetically pleasing UI elements.
You just let me know as soon as I can run mainstream software like MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, and World of Warcraft without rebooting on Ubuntu. Also, let me know when they let me easily IM programs to co-workers, implement an expose clone, and get a system services framework functional and implemented by all major applications. Oh, and when all applications can natively create PDFs and when I can migrate to a new machine including all settings, programs, configurations, and files, simply by plugging a firewire cable between the new and old machine.
Ubuntu is not bad, but for most of us it is nowhere near as functional of a workstation. It may be fine for what you do, but not for a whole lot of us who need to get work done. The UI elements are the last thing I want Ubuntu to add, after they get all the real functional improvements.
The BSD camp keeps boasting that the BSD license is more free than GPL because it allows modified distribution without the source code, and now they're complaining Apple is no longer opening Darwin ?
To be clear, I've never heard anyone I'd categorize as in "the BSD camp" complain about what Apple has done. Mostly it is just uninformed geek wannabees (what a sad thing to be) that don't understand the difference between the BSD license and the GPL.
Apple has to spend the time and resource to keep distribute the kernel portion of Darwin and make sure no private code gets out, yet what's their ROI?
The same as it always is with Open Source, more audited, fixed, and interoperable code.
And the OSS community keeps forgetting the first rule of business - it's ran for the benefit of the shareholders first.
Mostly, it is a lot of people who want everything right now. They argue Apple should open the entire source tree and make OS X run on generic x86, not because it is good for Apple, but because they want it. Well, it will happen when and if Apple sees it as benefiting them. If you want that to happen, give them the incentive.
Aside from that they've really got nothing geeky in their linup.
How many heavy duty geek conventions have you been to lately? Were you at Nanog? I consider geneticists to be geeks. I consider mathematicians to be geeks. I consider network security experts to be geeks. What is the ratio of macs to PCs at these conventions?
Apple and Jobs don't care that they're losing touch with 'the OS community'. I doubt they ever cared much in the first place.
Maybe so, but a lot of Apple employees certainly do. There are a lot of old school UNIX guys at Apple these days. There are a lot of Open Source developers working on Macs these days. I think perhaps, you've not been paying attention.
Nope. "Shared source" is a particular licensing initiative.
From wikipedia:
...the term "open source" fosters an ambiguity of a different kind such that it confuses the mere availability of the source with the freedom to use, modify, and redistribute it. Developers have used the term Free/Open-Source Software (FOSS), or Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS), consequently, to describe open-source software that is freely available and free of charge.
"Open" means the source is available to view under some license. "Free" (libre) means it is licensed in such a way that it can be freely reused. The OSI was formed in 98, decades after the term "open source" entered the programming lexicon. Don't confuse the advocacy of one group for a formal definition.
Really, am I the only one to perceive Apple as just a facade?
Probably not, there are lots of people without a clue.
I feel it's just a brand name for a target market, absolutely nothing more.
And all of the innovative technology they have created and or popularized was an illusion of some sort?
I still remember the KHTML fiasco (and the lengthy posts about it in Slashdot) when the white knight turned black.
Why don't you bother to go read some informed post about said, issue, you know like what the KHTML people had to say about it? Apple followed their license, used the code, made it better and gave it back. They diverged in purpose quite a bit from what Konquerer wanted, so many of the changes were hard to pull back in or were not wanted. Further, some of the developers did not like the way the code was posted (as a lump) and asked for more granularity and documentation, which the Safari team worked hard to give them. If you had any sort of a clue, you would not pick this example to complain about Apple's behavior.
In every action, every decision I see Jobs as a Gates-wanna-be. It's the same kind of company. I'm not trolling, I'm just trying to understand why Apple is loved so much. Can anyone give reasons, real reasons, for this...
I can give a lot of reasons. They listen to their customers and make products many of us geeks want and make a profit at the same time. They save a lot of us from having to use the abysmal Windows or functionality lacking Linux. They make our lives easier. The most devout Apple fanatic is usually someone who bought their first Apple machine a month ago and is still amazed by how much easier everything is. They can't understand why everyone isn't using it and just want to let everyone know. I've seen it many times.
The enthusiasm of a newbie aside, Apple consistently delivers innovations. I would be very sad to use a primary workstation without system services after Apple supplied them to me. I use them every day and when I use a Linux or Windows machine I feel like I took a step back to a more primitive era. They supply a top notch GUI with real innovations, like expose. They supply a fully functional command line environment that integrates with the graphical UI. They integrate application with one another and they run mainstream software. I can actually invoke photoshop from a usable command line. I can use one program's functionality in another. For example, I can highlight a URL in Safari and use a third party program's ability to automatically generate a bibliography citation from that HTML page and insert it into a book I'm laying out in InDesign. No other OS lets me do that without a bunch of copying and pasting. I have one dictionary. When I teach it that "SNMP" is not misspelled, all my applications know from then on. I could continue, but there is no real point.
If you use OS X for a few months as your primary workstation you will understand why so few people switch back. Naturally, a lot of people like Apple, because Apple gives them this. Now they don't do everything better than others. They are behind MS and Linux in certain areas. They do a lot of things I'm not to fond of and they do a lot of things to try to get a little more money out of people. What they don't do except in one or two very necessary areas is lock customers in and they do a good job of interoperating using standards. For this, a lot of us are appreciative.
This is not different than how Apple has always approached things. They have always been about form and function. Developing the next killer app or killer hardware. And making everything as proprietary or closed as possible.
Really. What killer apps have they created that rely unnecessarily upon closed formats or protocols? What hardware have they developed that unnecessarily relied upon nonstandard hardware or interfaces? Heck this is the company that built their entire display layer on the PDF standard and for years stuck with the open standard PCC platform, rather than the reverse engineered, x86 non-standard. Give me some examples here so I have a clue what you're talking about (if you have a clue what you're talking about).
IMHO, OS-X is pretty much a closed operating system at this point. All of the innovation is dictated by Apple. BTW, I am not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, but I do believe that Apple can not claim that OS-X has the benefits (and downsides) of open source development.
Greetings and welcome to terminology 101. Our phrase of the day is "open source." The term means the source code is open to the public to view. It does not imply that the code is freely licensed, able to be legally copied, or under any specific license at all.
OS X is partially open source and partially free (as in freedom). They benefit because people look at the source code and find bugs. People make modifications and submit them as patches (which may or may not make it into OS X). Because people can see much of the code, they can more easily interoperate with it. Because some of the code is licensed in such a way that it can be freely reused, other people copy it into their projects, improve it, find and bugs. These can be pulled back into OS X and make those projects more easily interoperate with OS X.
Because OS X is not completely free (as in freedom) user do not gain some benefits, like the ability to completely customize it, fork it for special purposes, or port it to other platforms. OS X does not gain all the benefits of being freely licensed code, but it does gain most of the benefits of being open source. Do you see the difference?
...the second in line just has to forward the packets on around, without charging for that traffic.
This is not so at all. Each network has a peering agreement with the other networks. The second in line and the first total up the amount of traffic they send and receive from one another and then one pays the other the difference or they call it even based upon the contract they've signed.
AT&T's complaint is that they have to carry this traffic for free across their network, and get nothing from this particular transaction.
No. Absolutely wrong. AT&T's complaint is that they have to carry all traffic of the same kind the same way. They can slow down all VoIP traffic, or all traffic from Comcast's network, or all Web traffic, but what the FCC mandated (until recently) was that they couldn't go to Mr. Smith on Comcast's network and say, "Dear Mr. Smith. We know you've recently lost a loved one and need the support and comfort your family provides via VoIP and e-mail. As a result we've decided that if you don't pay us (with whom you have no business relationship) $10 a month we're going to make sure all your VoIP calls drop sporadically and your e-mails take a week to get through. Have a nice day."
Until recently, they were prevented from gouging third parties by intentionally slowing or degrading the progress of just their traffic over AT&T's network unless they paid the extortion. They are not, of course, applying this to individuals, but only to businesses. For example, by degrading all Google queries, but not all MSN search queries unless Google pays up.
Now you might think the market will act on this. After all, Won't Google's upstream provider charge AT&T extra for more poorly carrying some of the traffic they send? The answer is sadly, not likely. You see, these network operators are businesses. Thus they want to charge different people different prices for the same service. Suppose it costs them $5 to carry some type of traffic. What they'd like to do is charge every customer absolutely as much as they can afford, but it is hard to win customers that way. This way, they can all gouge the richest customers, while still keeping enough companies between them and the company being gouged that they cannot effectively bypass it by switching providers.
Ah, but these 200 engineers will buy housing, buy groceries, and all the day-to-day consumer thingies you do that don't require a trip to The City.
No they won't... these are Google engineers. Half of them are hippies that will grow all their own food and the other half will order it from an online auction in bulk, irradiated to last 100 years.
If they earn well, they're also bringing tax dollars to help finance community resources.
Well, maybe. But what happens when Google is declared a religion and these priests/engineers are all living tax free? I bet you didn't think of that.
Little things like that keep a community alive, my friend.
I'm sure you figured out by now I'm mostly being facetious, but honestly it is people that keep communities alive. I think it will probably be nice for most people to have some affluent and intelligent Google engineers added to the mix and to have them helping to build better schools, and a nicer community. There is a small Google office here, but since this community is already made up of affluent geeks, PhD's, and hippies they haven't really changed the community culture. I'm sure there are communities that would not want such an influence, but they are surely in the minority.
You said when you had an internal IRC channel set up, your users would avoid logging into it and were turned off by its complexity. Regardless of what Instant Messaging solution you eventually decide on, will the situation be any different?
For many users, yes. A lot of casual computer users know and use AIM, or MSN. They have friends online and want to be able to chat with them during the day. They don't know how to do voice chats or group chats and don't want to. If you IM them a file, they ask for help. The learning curve is zero to just send them messages. Now look at IRC. It has channels, and broadcasts by default. Most of the messages on a channel will not be for them and are just noise. The only people on it sending them messages are work people.
They want to be on IM. They don't like being in an IRC room. The answer, provide both. Then, those that don't want to listen in a chat room and deal with the distraction can just use IM and are only bothered when it directly concerns them. Those that want to be "in the loop" for general conversations on a topic or group or for the whole company can do that too. I've introduced a number of remedial users to IM and only one of them (without an always on internet connection) has ever not taken the initiative to log in and use it from then on. At the same time, many don't make use of IRC even when it is available via the same client and they have been trained in how to use it.
Jabber or IRC would both work. I would reccommend against AIM, MSN, & Yahoo simply for the fact of viruses.
I concur, but there is a social aspect to consider in many environments. Users may want/need to be able to communicate with people outside the company via one of the above networks. They may want to do so. You can set up Jabber or IRC to be a bridge to them, but a little education is needed in any case. Here we just use multi-protocol clients and IRC. Users are educated (well they're mostly security people so they already know) that anything over unencrypted AIM, MSN, Yahoo is suspect and no confidential communications should be carried out via it. We've adopted Off The Record for simple encryption on these, which helps in identifying spam and worms. Of course the fact that most of the company is not running Windows helps too:) In any case, even if you have a Jabber server or IRC, don't neglect the education so people know how to use other protocols safely if it is allowed and why they shouldn't use them if they are forbidden. Otherwise, people may move to using these anyway since they add functionality Jabber or IRC does not (even if that functionality is that their girlfriend is on Yahoo).
Once all those issues are solved, you would have missed the boat. The game will already be over. The real money would have already been made.
Real money is being made now, by the entrenched companies in the video space. The problem is, if you have a half-assed business plan that makes no sense and hope to solve fundamental problems with it later, you know problems like going against a monopoly who has already sold your customers their product, then you will not be profitable at any point. It's not that I'm risk averse, but the likelihood is these companies will never solve these problems. Other companies have already tried. Barring something new, why do they think they can succeed? I'm happy to gamble on a long shot that is innovative, but this brings nothing new to the table.
Multicast isn't implemented currently in the IPv4 internet..
Well, that is one interpretation. You can do multicast with IPv4 many ways. Anyway, IPv6 is being rolled out by companies that will be doing that sort of thing, not because IPv4 can't do multicast, but because big companies like Comcast are running out of IPv4 addresses to assign to cable modems. In fact, I think they are just finishing their rollout.
Currently, all we can guarantee is unicast, and the numbers are dismal for that.
Most video is not live and has no need to be, thus P2P solves the problem. The rest can be multicast, or managed other ways.
Now look up the prices on how much a T3 will cost you. And realize that with that you're serving about 1300 customers. Scale it and you'll see why video isn't a winning game yet, money-wise.
Video is a great game, if you're one of the existing companies with last mile connections. Otherwise, it isn't a winning game because more than half your potential customers are forced to buy bundled cable TV or satellite TV, just to get their internet connection. Its hard to compete with a monopoly on the last mile connections. They can run lines in the public right of ways and you can't. Unless you can bypass this with wireless or something, you're screwed.
Before I invested in such a scheme the business plan would need to solve the following problems:
Tiered internet - how will you deal with the cable companies quadruple charging you to reach their customers since you're competing directly with them?
Last Mile - The last mile connection to 90% of the US is either the phone company or a cable company. The cable companies are owned by the content producers. The phone companies are half owned by content producers. Both can bundle their video service with the connection. For example, my cable modem connection + my cable TV service is $10 cheaper than just the cable modem connection alone. If I'm already getting TV for -$10, why should I consider a second supplier I have to pay on top of that?
sufficient content - assuming I don't want multiple services, how can you get enough unique content without partnering with the existing providers, who have no motivation to do business with you.
DRM - if you use DRM, your video is less useful than a pirated version or an existing analogue connection. If you don't providers will hesitate to do business with you and if it is a pay service casual piracy will eat into your profits.
Bandwidth/QOS - Most people do not have sufficient bandwidth/latency to watch real time video as high of quality as low-def TV.
local programming - how can you get all the locals signed up?
Sun and Apple both ship a proprietary OS based around an "open source" core. Sun's core is OpenSolaris, and Apple's is Darwin. Sun has done a far better job open sourcing their operating system.
Agreed.
I do a 3rd party hardware device driver for both MacOSX and OpenSolaris. To compare Apple's to Solaris' "open source" OS
is quite interesting...
This merely reflects the interests of the individual companies. Sun wants to sell more servers to both Solaris and Linux users. They are competing in the server space, which is actually competitive right now, despite MS's illegal behaviors. Apple wants to sell desktops based upon the main differentiator they have, the OS. They are "competing" against MS in a space MS has completely dominated. Only by maintaining a complete vertical chain can they have any hope.
In short, OpenSolaris is a real open source project. Darwin is a sham, and would not survive without Apple.
Your point is taken, but I believe you overstate it. Both are "real" open source projects, regardless how long they would last without their champion companies. The fact that Apple releases different parts of the OS, under a different time schedule just reflects the markets the companies are in. Sun gains a lot from letting people mess with things before they come out. Server people want to know what is up beforehand and care about the details. The server market is who their customers are (regardless of who uses OpenSolaris). They will buy based upon reliability even more than speed. Apple, however, is in a market where dramatic surprises and gaining as much time as possible before MS copies them can make or break their numbers.
I think we should look to what both projects offer to see what is best from each and recognize the limitations of both projects. There is no point saying only one is "really open." It helps nothing and angers those who are working hard to interoperate with the community. You do better to praise what they offer, than to complain about what they don't.
In short, I believe there should be some very stiff penalties to pay if it is proven that someone has written and deployed malware of this sort. There should be prison time and forfeiture of any money and assets acquired as a result of gains from this activity.
Why prison time? Is it that you believe this will work as a deterrent (even though in your post you write "They perform the act believing they will not be caught...") or is it that you believe that prison will reform them, or is it that you believe in hurting those you feel have hurt you even more than they hurt you? In the first case, most don't think they will be caught and most are willing to take the risk since in Yugoslavia it is akin to years worth of living expenses.
If you think prison is likely to reform a person and make them less likely to commit a crime or even become involved in violent crime later on, well you just haven't bothered to do any research. Prison is like an abusive higher education. A person might go in as a spammer, but they might come out a rapist, murderer, and career criminal having suffered severe emotional and physical abuse and no longer caring about who they hurt.
If it is the final possibility, I think you are being an unethical fool.
Many aspects of the more heinous crimes where punishment is often less than these "white collar" crimes are not planned or premeditated.
So what? Many are and many aren't. You feel someone who wastes a few minutes of your time by sending a self propagating message to yahoo mail accounts should be punished by anal rape and physical abuse and being locked in a small cage? Make no mistake, that is what we're taking about here. You objectively think that punishment fits that crime?
There is something more cold, more dark and indeed more arrogant when it comes to crimes such as the act of creating and deploying an internet worm. There is no question that what they are doing is immoral and illegal.
There is indeed a lot of question about the ethics (morality is wholly subjective and should be no part of a discussion about law) of what they are doing. Also, I don't consider writing a worm to be particularly dark. It is along distance fraud that annoys people. There is no suffering or pain or risk that another will die. There is no cruelty and no delight in the suffering of others. I'd say a poor person in the third world writing a worm is about as "dark" as when a person in the US invests in Union Carbide and says "it is just business." Except in the former case no one gets really hurt while in the latter a lot of people may suffer and die.
...seemingly that it is somehow their right to take advantages of weaknesses in security simply because they are 'superior' in some way.
Or they just want money and feel a sense of entitlement from the wealthy in other nations that have used that wealth to oppress them? I think most Americans can understand the concept of entitlement, since it so permeates our culture.
I see a noticable decline in the amount of spam in my inboxes of late. People claimed that the current federal legislation regarding spam wasn't enough and yet I see stories of people being prosecuted under these law successfully and when these people are put out of business, most all see a difference -- an improvement. It's working.
What?!? Have you seen the numbers? Your anecdote is not an objective study, it is an anecdote. It is not working, what is working is better filtering technologies, more widely deployed. Jeez, at least do a little research.
We don't need more legislation, but we do need to up the level of aggression in persuing these people and up the amount of punishment they are given when they are caught.
Yeah, because locking up more of the population will really help matters. Increased punishment is not a significant deterrent and is provably not helping. Draconian punishments don't work and cause more pain and suffering than
E-mail brought us basically free international communication with text and images and attachments. Having to filter spam is a very small price to pay, especially since my off the shelf bayesian filtering (combined with temporary accounts for commercial transactions) lets through one or two "maybes" a year. If I can have basically free voice/video communication around the world, I'll gladly put up with having to secure that as well. Anything off my white-list can go to the "maybe" pile and be routed to voicemail unless I feel like taking random calls. ISPs are already implementing security to prevent spoofing. And I already use voice and video communication without any problems. Really, this is a minor inconvenience that comes with a major advance.
How much responsibility falls on Apple to encourage its contractors and subcontractors to significantly exceed statutory labor guidelines or governmental requirements in host countries?
The Apple corporation is responsible for everything they pay people to do. If they pay companies, which in turn force people to work as slaves, Apple is responsible for that. They are a large company with a lot of intelligence, so ignorance is not really an excuse. It may be true that they can't stay in business without doing this and they are certainly not the only guilty party. It is wrong to go after only them and ignore Sony and other companies who do the same thing. Still, Apple has to stand by its actions and consumers need to be informed enough to make choices based upon those actions.
Reports about someone earning "X" per month are meaningless out of context.
Agreed. Writing this sort of sensationalism, without backing it up with real comparisons to the cost of living and average pay is nonsense and reduces the credibility of the report.
No one has to work at a Foxconn plant making iPods. No one. And if it's viewed as the best alternative by individual workers who choose to work there, then it's probably, well, the best alternative.
I don't buy this argument. Sometimes the best alternative is still unacceptable. How many people worked every day in dangerous mines to try to feed their families, even though they were paid so little they had to go deeper in debt every day. When the choice you have is work as a slave for nothing forever and suffer, or let your family starve to death immediately, you can't be blamed for working as a slave.
Who cares if there are more female than male workers? What possible bearing does this have on the situation?
I agree/also don't get this. It seems like more empty sensationalism and further deteriorates the credibility of this report.
How, precisely and specifically, has Apple "staked its image" on "progressive politics"?
Hmmm. Apple does market to a socially progressive consumer base (among others). I'm not sure "trendy" equates with "progressive politics" though.
I guess it always pays to go after the market leaders... I will say that it's rather unfair that, in campaigns like these, it's often that one target, however, that bears a hugely disproportionate burden of vilification, blame, and bad press.
The sad thing, however, is that there are a lot of bigger, higher profile companies that sell more and use more borderline labor in China than Apple. I think Apple is targeted by this because they think it will have more effect upon their market demographic. The problem is, consumer choice. Consumers need shoes and many need computers. They really want music players. So which laptop will they buy? Will they get the one from the vilified Apple or will they buy one from one of the other companies who is doing exactly the same thing, or worse? How does shifting the market to other companies help in this situation?
I'm fairly certain that this will be read by a number of people who think that corporations and corporate behavior are inherently "evil", and that the larger a company or business interest is, the more "evil" it is and indeed must be by definition, which is an awfully one-sided and half-blind way to look at corporations.
Anything a corporation does should be looked at with skepticism. American corporations have the stated goal of making money, and that is it. Anyone or anything motivated solely by greed should be regarded as a potentially dangerous sociopath. Not that corporations necessarily behave that way consistently. They are run by people, and in Apple's case, people that seem motivated by a desire to "make cool things" as much as money. Still, in general, corporate America rewards the ruthless and unethical and the people who run these big companies are generally not interested in anything but making money and gaining power for them
Do you really think the sharing would be in anything other than one direction?
Yes.
What incentive would Sun have to see all their crown jewels taken and added to Linux?
Some people understand the open source model and some don't. What incentive does any company have to contribute code to open source projects? The answer, free labor from the community and wider adoption of the technologies for interoperability and mind share.
For example, as a result of Solaris being open sourced, Ubuntu now has reasonable support for some UltraSparc processors. The Linux community wins because they can use their chosen OS on more hardware. Sun wins, because they can sell more hardware and because they get a lot of bug reports, fixes, and improvements to sift through and see what would benefit Solaris as well as Linux. The same goes for purely software innovations. Linux pulls in features from Solaris and suddenly Linux and Solaris are more compatible. They play better together. Applications relying on that feature are more likely to be ported to both platforms. Bug fixes and improvements to the Linux version can be pulled back to Solaris, basically resulting in free labor for Sun. That is what the open source model is all about. It works and if Sun gets it they will certainly continue to open up as much of Solaris as they can without incurring legal costs.
IBM does the same thing with Linux and Apple does the same thing (to some degree) with the code underlying OS X. Everyone wins.
The article only mentions the systems affected (only Windows systems apparently) but not the browsers.
The list was copied from McAffee's standard bug report. It works on any browser that runs javascripts (properly) by default and opens the message within yahoo mail.
So, are they sure that a Linux-based system with Mozilla (such as mine) would not be affected by the worm ?
I believe it will execute under Linux+Mozilla by default. Enable the "NoScript" plugin to stop it from executing without your permission, or just don't open suspicious messages in Yahoo mail for a few days.
The article is lacking many details, like specifically which browsers seem to be vulnerable to this problem, or even if this is a browser bug that it is exploiting.... It could be a server side problem they are exploiting, or a client side browser bug.
It is a server side bug. They allow javascript to run in mail messages.
It says the vulnerable systems are every Windows OS, so it appears to be a client side problem with Internet Exploder
I saw it work under OS X 10.4 and Safari in my GF's account. For slightly more info check out this link.
I hope HP doesn't become a big name in computers, because it is my experience that their computers are of poor quality.
The two biggest sellers of PCs are Dell and HP. Dell is the only one (slightly) bigger than HP and coincidentally are about the only one with worse reliability most years according to consumer reports. The moral of this story, sell cheap junk and people will buy it. Price is much more important than quality to most people. Hey, it works for Walmart too.
Now that it's out, offering paid movie streams is not going to convince people to just stop going to piratebay.
I disagree. iTunes was not rolled out until after half the internet was already downloading music for free. It makes a ton of money, even with a product that is artificially restricted to be less useful than regular media and at the same price. The same thing would work for movies and TV. Put them online for free, with DRM and 10 minutes of ads. You'll make a pile of cash. Put them online, without DRM and sell them for 75% of what you do in the store. You'll make a pile of cash.
The problem is not just that the media companies are afraid of a new medium, it is that they are focused on how to make the new medium a way to suck even more money out of consumers, not the same amount and not even slightly more that would be saved by eliminating the cost of burning discs. They are too greedy and incompetent and as a result they are being bypassed.
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The ambiguity is in the imagination of those who want to use the term without opening their source.
People were using the term to describe making the source available, but not necessarily freely licensing it for twenty years before a particular group decided to try to hijack it. Free software has the code available for modification. Open software, just has readable code.
but when exactly was Apple ever 'in touch' with the OS Community?
When they collaborated on dozens of standards implemented by both Apple and the OS community. When they hired a large number of OS proponents and other "old school" UNIX heads to work for them.
At one point it was cool to have a PowerBook to do unix dev on...
Cool?!? I think you're a little confused. OS X is useful to do UNIX dev on, not "cool." I haven't exactly seen fewer macs at UNIX development conventions lately, have you?
The quality is about the same as any other first generation release by Apple. Almost all companies have bugs in the first generation of anything that requires significant engineering, including computers. Arguing that somehow the chip set used has altered the quality of Apple machines, with no evidence provided, is just empty rhetoric.
When have you ever? It is always a constant trickle, although some analysts are claiming it is indeed gaining switchers much faster now that they have switched to Intel.
With how fast Ubuntu with the new accelerated desktop is coming up to speed, I don't think I even care about OS X anymore outside of the more ascetically pleasing UI elements.
You just let me know as soon as I can run mainstream software like MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, and World of Warcraft without rebooting on Ubuntu. Also, let me know when they let me easily IM programs to co-workers, implement an expose clone, and get a system services framework functional and implemented by all major applications. Oh, and when all applications can natively create PDFs and when I can migrate to a new machine including all settings, programs, configurations, and files, simply by plugging a firewire cable between the new and old machine.
Ubuntu is not bad, but for most of us it is nowhere near as functional of a workstation. It may be fine for what you do, but not for a whole lot of us who need to get work done. The UI elements are the last thing I want Ubuntu to add, after they get all the real functional improvements.
The BSD camp keeps boasting that the BSD license is more free than GPL because it allows modified distribution without the source code, and now they're complaining Apple is no longer opening Darwin ?
To be clear, I've never heard anyone I'd categorize as in "the BSD camp" complain about what Apple has done. Mostly it is just uninformed geek wannabees (what a sad thing to be) that don't understand the difference between the BSD license and the GPL.
Apple has to spend the time and resource to keep distribute the kernel portion of Darwin and make sure no private code gets out, yet what's their ROI?
The same as it always is with Open Source, more audited, fixed, and interoperable code.
And the OSS community keeps forgetting the first rule of business - it's ran for the benefit of the shareholders first.
Mostly, it is a lot of people who want everything right now. They argue Apple should open the entire source tree and make OS X run on generic x86, not because it is good for Apple, but because they want it. Well, it will happen when and if Apple sees it as benefiting them. If you want that to happen, give them the incentive.
Aside from that they've really got nothing geeky in their linup.
How many heavy duty geek conventions have you been to lately? Were you at Nanog? I consider geneticists to be geeks. I consider mathematicians to be geeks. I consider network security experts to be geeks. What is the ratio of macs to PCs at these conventions?
Apple and Jobs don't care that they're losing touch with 'the OS community'. I doubt they ever cared much in the first place.
Maybe so, but a lot of Apple employees certainly do. There are a lot of old school UNIX guys at Apple these days. There are a lot of Open Source developers working on Macs these days. I think perhaps, you've not been paying attention.
The correct term for that is "shared source".
Nope. "Shared source" is a particular licensing initiative.
From wikipedia:
"Open" means the source is available to view under some license. "Free" (libre) means it is licensed in such a way that it can be freely reused. The OSI was formed in 98, decades after the term "open source" entered the programming lexicon. Don't confuse the advocacy of one group for a formal definition.
Really, am I the only one to perceive Apple as just a facade?
Probably not, there are lots of people without a clue.
I feel it's just a brand name for a target market, absolutely nothing more.
And all of the innovative technology they have created and or popularized was an illusion of some sort?
I still remember the KHTML fiasco (and the lengthy posts about it in Slashdot) when the white knight turned black.
Why don't you bother to go read some informed post about said, issue, you know like what the KHTML people had to say about it? Apple followed their license, used the code, made it better and gave it back. They diverged in purpose quite a bit from what Konquerer wanted, so many of the changes were hard to pull back in or were not wanted. Further, some of the developers did not like the way the code was posted (as a lump) and asked for more granularity and documentation, which the Safari team worked hard to give them. If you had any sort of a clue, you would not pick this example to complain about Apple's behavior.
In every action, every decision I see Jobs as a Gates-wanna-be. It's the same kind of company. I'm not trolling, I'm just trying to understand why Apple is loved so much. Can anyone give reasons, real reasons, for this...
I can give a lot of reasons. They listen to their customers and make products many of us geeks want and make a profit at the same time. They save a lot of us from having to use the abysmal Windows or functionality lacking Linux. They make our lives easier. The most devout Apple fanatic is usually someone who bought their first Apple machine a month ago and is still amazed by how much easier everything is. They can't understand why everyone isn't using it and just want to let everyone know. I've seen it many times.
The enthusiasm of a newbie aside, Apple consistently delivers innovations. I would be very sad to use a primary workstation without system services after Apple supplied them to me. I use them every day and when I use a Linux or Windows machine I feel like I took a step back to a more primitive era. They supply a top notch GUI with real innovations, like expose. They supply a fully functional command line environment that integrates with the graphical UI. They integrate application with one another and they run mainstream software. I can actually invoke photoshop from a usable command line. I can use one program's functionality in another. For example, I can highlight a URL in Safari and use a third party program's ability to automatically generate a bibliography citation from that HTML page and insert it into a book I'm laying out in InDesign. No other OS lets me do that without a bunch of copying and pasting. I have one dictionary. When I teach it that "SNMP" is not misspelled, all my applications know from then on. I could continue, but there is no real point.
If you use OS X for a few months as your primary workstation you will understand why so few people switch back. Naturally, a lot of people like Apple, because Apple gives them this. Now they don't do everything better than others. They are behind MS and Linux in certain areas. They do a lot of things I'm not to fond of and they do a lot of things to try to get a little more money out of people. What they don't do except in one or two very necessary areas is lock customers in and they do a good job of interoperating using standards. For this, a lot of us are appreciative.
This is not different than how Apple has always approached things. They have always been about form and function. Developing the next killer app or killer hardware. And making everything as proprietary or closed as possible.
Really. What killer apps have they created that rely unnecessarily upon closed formats or protocols? What hardware have they developed that unnecessarily relied upon nonstandard hardware or interfaces? Heck this is the company that built their entire display layer on the PDF standard and for years stuck with the open standard PCC platform, rather than the reverse engineered, x86 non-standard. Give me some examples here so I have a clue what you're talking about (if you have a clue what you're talking about).
IMHO, OS-X is pretty much a closed operating system at this point. All of the innovation is dictated by Apple. BTW, I am not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, but I do believe that Apple can not claim that OS-X has the benefits (and downsides) of open source development.
Greetings and welcome to terminology 101. Our phrase of the day is "open source." The term means the source code is open to the public to view. It does not imply that the code is freely licensed, able to be legally copied, or under any specific license at all.
OS X is partially open source and partially free (as in freedom). They benefit because people look at the source code and find bugs. People make modifications and submit them as patches (which may or may not make it into OS X). Because people can see much of the code, they can more easily interoperate with it. Because some of the code is licensed in such a way that it can be freely reused, other people copy it into their projects, improve it, find and bugs. These can be pulled back into OS X and make those projects more easily interoperate with OS X.
Because OS X is not completely free (as in freedom) user do not gain some benefits, like the ability to completely customize it, fork it for special purposes, or port it to other platforms. OS X does not gain all the benefits of being freely licensed code, but it does gain most of the benefits of being open source. Do you see the difference?
You've obviously never worked for Google, but I've already figured that out.
True, and I only know two people there (and one about to start). It's a joke, although it does not do a bad job of describing those Google employees :)
This is not so at all. Each network has a peering agreement with the other networks. The second in line and the first total up the amount of traffic they send and receive from one another and then one pays the other the difference or they call it even based upon the contract they've signed.
AT&T's complaint is that they have to carry this traffic for free across their network, and get nothing from this particular transaction.
No. Absolutely wrong. AT&T's complaint is that they have to carry all traffic of the same kind the same way. They can slow down all VoIP traffic, or all traffic from Comcast's network, or all Web traffic, but what the FCC mandated (until recently) was that they couldn't go to Mr. Smith on Comcast's network and say, "Dear Mr. Smith. We know you've recently lost a loved one and need the support and comfort your family provides via VoIP and e-mail. As a result we've decided that if you don't pay us (with whom you have no business relationship) $10 a month we're going to make sure all your VoIP calls drop sporadically and your e-mails take a week to get through. Have a nice day."
Until recently, they were prevented from gouging third parties by intentionally slowing or degrading the progress of just their traffic over AT&T's network unless they paid the extortion. They are not, of course, applying this to individuals, but only to businesses. For example, by degrading all Google queries, but not all MSN search queries unless Google pays up.
Now you might think the market will act on this. After all, Won't Google's upstream provider charge AT&T extra for more poorly carrying some of the traffic they send? The answer is sadly, not likely. You see, these network operators are businesses. Thus they want to charge different people different prices for the same service. Suppose it costs them $5 to carry some type of traffic. What they'd like to do is charge every customer absolutely as much as they can afford, but it is hard to win customers that way. This way, they can all gouge the richest customers, while still keeping enough companies between them and the company being gouged that they cannot effectively bypass it by switching providers.
Ah, but these 200 engineers will buy housing, buy groceries, and all the day-to-day consumer thingies you do that don't require a trip to The City.
No they won't... these are Google engineers. Half of them are hippies that will grow all their own food and the other half will order it from an online auction in bulk, irradiated to last 100 years.
If they earn well, they're also bringing tax dollars to help finance community resources.
Well, maybe. But what happens when Google is declared a religion and these priests/engineers are all living tax free? I bet you didn't think of that.
Little things like that keep a community alive, my friend.
I'm sure you figured out by now I'm mostly being facetious, but honestly it is people that keep communities alive. I think it will probably be nice for most people to have some affluent and intelligent Google engineers added to the mix and to have them helping to build better schools, and a nicer community. There is a small Google office here, but since this community is already made up of affluent geeks, PhD's, and hippies they haven't really changed the community culture. I'm sure there are communities that would not want such an influence, but they are surely in the minority.
You said when you had an internal IRC channel set up, your users would avoid logging into it and were turned off by its complexity. Regardless of what Instant Messaging solution you eventually decide on, will the situation be any different?
For many users, yes. A lot of casual computer users know and use AIM, or MSN. They have friends online and want to be able to chat with them during the day. They don't know how to do voice chats or group chats and don't want to. If you IM them a file, they ask for help. The learning curve is zero to just send them messages. Now look at IRC. It has channels, and broadcasts by default. Most of the messages on a channel will not be for them and are just noise. The only people on it sending them messages are work people.
They want to be on IM. They don't like being in an IRC room. The answer, provide both. Then, those that don't want to listen in a chat room and deal with the distraction can just use IM and are only bothered when it directly concerns them. Those that want to be "in the loop" for general conversations on a topic or group or for the whole company can do that too. I've introduced a number of remedial users to IM and only one of them (without an always on internet connection) has ever not taken the initiative to log in and use it from then on. At the same time, many don't make use of IRC even when it is available via the same client and they have been trained in how to use it.
Jabber or IRC would both work. I would reccommend against AIM, MSN, & Yahoo simply for the fact of viruses.
I concur, but there is a social aspect to consider in many environments. Users may want/need to be able to communicate with people outside the company via one of the above networks. They may want to do so. You can set up Jabber or IRC to be a bridge to them, but a little education is needed in any case. Here we just use multi-protocol clients and IRC. Users are educated (well they're mostly security people so they already know) that anything over unencrypted AIM, MSN, Yahoo is suspect and no confidential communications should be carried out via it. We've adopted Off The Record for simple encryption on these, which helps in identifying spam and worms. Of course the fact that most of the company is not running Windows helps too :) In any case, even if you have a Jabber server or IRC, don't neglect the education so people know how to use other protocols safely if it is allowed and why they shouldn't use them if they are forbidden. Otherwise, people may move to using these anyway since they add functionality Jabber or IRC does not (even if that functionality is that their girlfriend is on Yahoo).
Once all those issues are solved, you would have missed the boat. The game will already be over. The real money would have already been made.
Real money is being made now, by the entrenched companies in the video space. The problem is, if you have a half-assed business plan that makes no sense and hope to solve fundamental problems with it later, you know problems like going against a monopoly who has already sold your customers their product, then you will not be profitable at any point. It's not that I'm risk averse, but the likelihood is these companies will never solve these problems. Other companies have already tried. Barring something new, why do they think they can succeed? I'm happy to gamble on a long shot that is innovative, but this brings nothing new to the table.
Multicast isn't implemented currently in the IPv4 internet..
Well, that is one interpretation. You can do multicast with IPv4 many ways. Anyway, IPv6 is being rolled out by companies that will be doing that sort of thing, not because IPv4 can't do multicast, but because big companies like Comcast are running out of IPv4 addresses to assign to cable modems. In fact, I think they are just finishing their rollout.
Currently, all we can guarantee is unicast, and the numbers are dismal for that.
Most video is not live and has no need to be, thus P2P solves the problem. The rest can be multicast, or managed other ways.
Now look up the prices on how much a T3 will cost you. And realize that with that you're serving about 1300 customers. Scale it and you'll see why video isn't a winning game yet, money-wise.
Video is a great game, if you're one of the existing companies with last mile connections. Otherwise, it isn't a winning game because more than half your potential customers are forced to buy bundled cable TV or satellite TV, just to get their internet connection. Its hard to compete with a monopoly on the last mile connections. They can run lines in the public right of ways and you can't. Unless you can bypass this with wireless or something, you're screwed.
Before I invested in such a scheme the business plan would need to solve the following problems:
Sun and Apple both ship a proprietary OS based around an "open source" core. Sun's core is OpenSolaris, and Apple's is Darwin. Sun has done a far better job open sourcing their operating system.
Agreed.
I do a 3rd party hardware device driver for both MacOSX and OpenSolaris. To compare Apple's to Solaris' "open source" OS is quite interesting...
This merely reflects the interests of the individual companies. Sun wants to sell more servers to both Solaris and Linux users. They are competing in the server space, which is actually competitive right now, despite MS's illegal behaviors. Apple wants to sell desktops based upon the main differentiator they have, the OS. They are "competing" against MS in a space MS has completely dominated. Only by maintaining a complete vertical chain can they have any hope.
In short, OpenSolaris is a real open source project. Darwin is a sham, and would not survive without Apple.
Your point is taken, but I believe you overstate it. Both are "real" open source projects, regardless how long they would last without their champion companies. The fact that Apple releases different parts of the OS, under a different time schedule just reflects the markets the companies are in. Sun gains a lot from letting people mess with things before they come out. Server people want to know what is up beforehand and care about the details. The server market is who their customers are (regardless of who uses OpenSolaris). They will buy based upon reliability even more than speed. Apple, however, is in a market where dramatic surprises and gaining as much time as possible before MS copies them can make or break their numbers.
I think we should look to what both projects offer to see what is best from each and recognize the limitations of both projects. There is no point saying only one is "really open." It helps nothing and angers those who are working hard to interoperate with the community. You do better to praise what they offer, than to complain about what they don't.
In short, I believe there should be some very stiff penalties to pay if it is proven that someone has written and deployed malware of this sort. There should be prison time and forfeiture of any money and assets acquired as a result of gains from this activity.
Why prison time? Is it that you believe this will work as a deterrent (even though in your post you write "They perform the act believing they will not be caught...") or is it that you believe that prison will reform them, or is it that you believe in hurting those you feel have hurt you even more than they hurt you? In the first case, most don't think they will be caught and most are willing to take the risk since in Yugoslavia it is akin to years worth of living expenses.
If you think prison is likely to reform a person and make them less likely to commit a crime or even become involved in violent crime later on, well you just haven't bothered to do any research. Prison is like an abusive higher education. A person might go in as a spammer, but they might come out a rapist, murderer, and career criminal having suffered severe emotional and physical abuse and no longer caring about who they hurt.
If it is the final possibility, I think you are being an unethical fool.
Many aspects of the more heinous crimes where punishment is often less than these "white collar" crimes are not planned or premeditated.
So what? Many are and many aren't. You feel someone who wastes a few minutes of your time by sending a self propagating message to yahoo mail accounts should be punished by anal rape and physical abuse and being locked in a small cage? Make no mistake, that is what we're taking about here. You objectively think that punishment fits that crime?
There is something more cold, more dark and indeed more arrogant when it comes to crimes such as the act of creating and deploying an internet worm. There is no question that what they are doing is immoral and illegal.
There is indeed a lot of question about the ethics (morality is wholly subjective and should be no part of a discussion about law) of what they are doing. Also, I don't consider writing a worm to be particularly dark. It is along distance fraud that annoys people. There is no suffering or pain or risk that another will die. There is no cruelty and no delight in the suffering of others. I'd say a poor person in the third world writing a worm is about as "dark" as when a person in the US invests in Union Carbide and says "it is just business." Except in the former case no one gets really hurt while in the latter a lot of people may suffer and die.
Or they just want money and feel a sense of entitlement from the wealthy in other nations that have used that wealth to oppress them? I think most Americans can understand the concept of entitlement, since it so permeates our culture.
I see a noticable decline in the amount of spam in my inboxes of late. People claimed that the current federal legislation regarding spam wasn't enough and yet I see stories of people being prosecuted under these law successfully and when these people are put out of business, most all see a difference -- an improvement. It's working.
What?!? Have you seen the numbers? Your anecdote is not an objective study, it is an anecdote. It is not working, what is working is better filtering technologies, more widely deployed. Jeez, at least do a little research.
We don't need more legislation, but we do need to up the level of aggression in persuing these people and up the amount of punishment they are given when they are caught.
Yeah, because locking up more of the population will really help matters. Increased punishment is not a significant deterrent and is provably not helping. Draconian punishments don't work and cause more pain and suffering than
E-mail brought us basically free international communication with text and images and attachments. Having to filter spam is a very small price to pay, especially since my off the shelf bayesian filtering (combined with temporary accounts for commercial transactions) lets through one or two "maybes" a year. If I can have basically free voice/video communication around the world, I'll gladly put up with having to secure that as well. Anything off my white-list can go to the "maybe" pile and be routed to voicemail unless I feel like taking random calls. ISPs are already implementing security to prevent spoofing. And I already use voice and video communication without any problems. Really, this is a minor inconvenience that comes with a major advance.
How much responsibility falls on Apple to encourage its contractors and subcontractors to significantly exceed statutory labor guidelines or governmental requirements in host countries?
The Apple corporation is responsible for everything they pay people to do. If they pay companies, which in turn force people to work as slaves, Apple is responsible for that. They are a large company with a lot of intelligence, so ignorance is not really an excuse. It may be true that they can't stay in business without doing this and they are certainly not the only guilty party. It is wrong to go after only them and ignore Sony and other companies who do the same thing. Still, Apple has to stand by its actions and consumers need to be informed enough to make choices based upon those actions.
Reports about someone earning "X" per month are meaningless out of context.
Agreed. Writing this sort of sensationalism, without backing it up with real comparisons to the cost of living and average pay is nonsense and reduces the credibility of the report.
No one has to work at a Foxconn plant making iPods. No one. And if it's viewed as the best alternative by individual workers who choose to work there, then it's probably, well, the best alternative.
I don't buy this argument. Sometimes the best alternative is still unacceptable. How many people worked every day in dangerous mines to try to feed their families, even though they were paid so little they had to go deeper in debt every day. When the choice you have is work as a slave for nothing forever and suffer, or let your family starve to death immediately, you can't be blamed for working as a slave.
Who cares if there are more female than male workers? What possible bearing does this have on the situation?
I agree/also don't get this. It seems like more empty sensationalism and further deteriorates the credibility of this report.
How, precisely and specifically, has Apple "staked its image" on "progressive politics"?
Hmmm. Apple does market to a socially progressive consumer base (among others). I'm not sure "trendy" equates with "progressive politics" though.
I guess it always pays to go after the market leaders... I will say that it's rather unfair that, in campaigns like these, it's often that one target, however, that bears a hugely disproportionate burden of vilification, blame, and bad press.
The sad thing, however, is that there are a lot of bigger, higher profile companies that sell more and use more borderline labor in China than Apple. I think Apple is targeted by this because they think it will have more effect upon their market demographic. The problem is, consumer choice. Consumers need shoes and many need computers. They really want music players. So which laptop will they buy? Will they get the one from the vilified Apple or will they buy one from one of the other companies who is doing exactly the same thing, or worse? How does shifting the market to other companies help in this situation?
I'm fairly certain that this will be read by a number of people who think that corporations and corporate behavior are inherently "evil", and that the larger a company or business interest is, the more "evil" it is and indeed must be by definition, which is an awfully one-sided and half-blind way to look at corporations.
Anything a corporation does should be looked at with skepticism. American corporations have the stated goal of making money, and that is it. Anyone or anything motivated solely by greed should be regarded as a potentially dangerous sociopath. Not that corporations necessarily behave that way consistently. They are run by people, and in Apple's case, people that seem motivated by a desire to "make cool things" as much as money. Still, in general, corporate America rewards the ruthless and unethical and the people who run these big companies are generally not interested in anything but making money and gaining power for them
Do you really think the sharing would be in anything other than one direction?
Yes.
What incentive would Sun have to see all their crown jewels taken and added to Linux?
Some people understand the open source model and some don't. What incentive does any company have to contribute code to open source projects? The answer, free labor from the community and wider adoption of the technologies for interoperability and mind share.
For example, as a result of Solaris being open sourced, Ubuntu now has reasonable support for some UltraSparc processors. The Linux community wins because they can use their chosen OS on more hardware. Sun wins, because they can sell more hardware and because they get a lot of bug reports, fixes, and improvements to sift through and see what would benefit Solaris as well as Linux. The same goes for purely software innovations. Linux pulls in features from Solaris and suddenly Linux and Solaris are more compatible. They play better together. Applications relying on that feature are more likely to be ported to both platforms. Bug fixes and improvements to the Linux version can be pulled back to Solaris, basically resulting in free labor for Sun. That is what the open source model is all about. It works and if Sun gets it they will certainly continue to open up as much of Solaris as they can without incurring legal costs.
IBM does the same thing with Linux and Apple does the same thing (to some degree) with the code underlying OS X. Everyone wins.
The article only mentions the systems affected (only Windows systems apparently) but not the browsers.
The list was copied from McAffee's standard bug report. It works on any browser that runs javascripts (properly) by default and opens the message within yahoo mail.
So, are they sure that a Linux-based system with Mozilla (such as mine) would not be affected by the worm ?
I believe it will execute under Linux+Mozilla by default. Enable the "NoScript" plugin to stop it from executing without your permission, or just don't open suspicious messages in Yahoo mail for a few days.
The article is lacking many details, like specifically which browsers seem to be vulnerable to this problem, or even if this is a browser bug that it is exploiting.... It could be a server side problem they are exploiting, or a client side browser bug.
It is a server side bug. They allow javascript to run in mail messages.
It says the vulnerable systems are every Windows OS, so it appears to be a client side problem with Internet Exploder
I saw it work under OS X 10.4 and Safari in my GF's account. For slightly more info check out this link.
I hope HP doesn't become a big name in computers, because it is my experience that their computers are of poor quality.
The two biggest sellers of PCs are Dell and HP. Dell is the only one (slightly) bigger than HP and coincidentally are about the only one with worse reliability most years according to consumer reports. The moral of this story, sell cheap junk and people will buy it. Price is much more important than quality to most people. Hey, it works for Walmart too.
Now that it's out, offering paid movie streams is not going to convince people to just stop going to piratebay.
I disagree. iTunes was not rolled out until after half the internet was already downloading music for free. It makes a ton of money, even with a product that is artificially restricted to be less useful than regular media and at the same price. The same thing would work for movies and TV. Put them online for free, with DRM and 10 minutes of ads. You'll make a pile of cash. Put them online, without DRM and sell them for 75% of what you do in the store. You'll make a pile of cash.
The problem is not just that the media companies are afraid of a new medium, it is that they are focused on how to make the new medium a way to suck even more money out of consumers, not the same amount and not even slightly more that would be saved by eliminating the cost of burning discs. They are too greedy and incompetent and as a result they are being bypassed.