Maybe the current US copyright law went too far, but opt-out copyright as a system ain't all bad.
It isn't all good either. There are thousands of works, probably millions or billions that are copyrighted because no one opted-out. The owners of these copyrights don't know they are owners, or there is no legal owner. All these works are lost, unpublishable, erased from the view of society. Some are fun old video games, some are poems, some are novels, and some are home movies. At least one is probably one of the greatest works of art ever made. And no one will ever see it.
Opt in is stealing our rightful heritage. We'd stand on the shoulders of these giants except most of them have been buried, and the rest have a toll bridge put up. It would be better to have no copyright at all then to have our current system in the U.S.
You are missing the point. My point was that this proposal does not solve one of the major problems with the state of copyright. The problem is that there is no public access to copyrighted works. Major publishers own the rights to books, music, and movies and there is no way for me to buy a copy or get a copy. This is basically erasing a huge chunk of our heritage, exactly the opposite of the intentions of the original authors of copyrights.
Some of those works would enter the public domain with this proposal, but not enough. Major media companies would just renew the copyright on everything, still refuse to sell them, and the only difference is that they have to pay a minor fee. A $1 fee is not enough to keep major companies from just renewing everything, even if they never plan to sell it again.
A better solution is to require that all copyrighted works be available for sale at a reasonable market rate. Any work that a company does not offer for sale becomes public domain. This would not remove any incentive to create new works as it will remain copyrighted until you stop selling it (making money on it) but will prevent hoarding, prevent works from disappearing into the vaults, and prevent companies from suppressing works. If there is a vested public interest that is sufficient to warrant a government sponsored monopoly, then it should also be sufficient to warrant the requirement that these works be available to the people.
I think many people mistake the intent of the big media companies here. You are right that they do not want the public domain to exist. You are wrong to think that this suit is about whether or not the public domain will exist. This is largely about whether or not they will have to pay a piddling fee to keep it from existing, or whether it will be free for them. A fee would help for companies that disappear, but none of the major media corps. will fail to pay, if for no other reason than to stop their old works from competing with their new works.
You need to register your copyright to begin with which gets you five or ten years, and then renew your copyright once every five years for a fee of, say, a dollar. You can renew for as long as you like (which would keep Mickey safe and sound) but if your copyright on a work isn't worth a few minutes (we could just have a web based renewal system) and a dollar once every five years, then let the public have at it.
I disagree strongly with this proposal. The worst effect of extended copyrights in my opinion is that publishing houses sit on large collections of works that they refuse to publish, yet prevent anyone else from doing so. There are two reasons why your above proposal will not solve this.
First, it is cheaper to renew all copyrights in their possession for $5 a year then it is to have someone review their catalogue and see what is worth renewing. Second, It is worth $5 a year to keep all the old works from competing with their new releases. This applies to books, music, and movies.
If the medical community REALLY thought stem cells would cure lots of things, labs would be writing their own checks to research it. How many Fed dollars do you think went into erectile dynfunction? Probably zero, but it is a profitable venture so it got funding.
You are incorrect on all accounts. First, drug companies are funding stem cell research, but mostly overseas and in Cuba. Plenty of Fed dollars when to researching erectile dysfunction. The way things work is Federal money goes to research labs doing basic research and groundwork. Then drug companies take that research and develop a drug from it. Drug companies fund the second part, and often give money to help direct the first part.
This is not about whether or not stem cell research will be conducted. It is about where it will be conducted, and who will have the expertise. China is making impressive enough progress that there is a waiting list to go to China for certain treatments. No this is just politicians trying to make an issue to get votes. This is Bush and his cronies sucking up to the anti-abortion crowd, without actually doing anything about stopping abortions. The only reason this is happening is because drug companies are moving their operations overseas. I'm somewhat surprised they did not lobby hard to get this reversed, but maybe they just don't care if it happens in the U.S. or overseas right now. Welcome to the U.S.A, technological backwater of the future.
I was under the impression that you could not use a windows iPod with a MAC...Is that true?
Of course you can't, iPods don't have ethernet jacks. They don't get assigned a MAC. You can use the USB or Firewire connection and plug them into a Windows PC, Linux PC, or Macintosh, however. Those should all have a MAC if their ethernet is plugged in.
kind of like saying...Water is made of nitrogen. To be precise, water is made of hydrogen and oxygen.
But it is a lot more like saying, "The DMCA bans cracking DRM mechanism protected with encryption. To be precise, it bans possessing or sharing the tools used to crack DRM encryption.
It is not a literal ban, as that would apolitical. It is a wishy washy effective ban from wishy washy washington, where people don't say what they mean, only what can be spun. The vast majority of labs are dependent upon federal funding, since federal taxes are so high compared to state taxes. If a lab does stem cell research on new lines, the whole lab loses federal funding, not just that project. This means completely private labs will have to be run, just for this research, at added expense, and without federal funding which is about 70% of most labs' income. It is a ban in reality, just not in lawyer speak.
OK, I'm stumped. How does a ban on federal funding for new stem cell lines amount to government intruding into these areas?
Federalism.
The federal government levies far too much in taxes. As a result, states cannot tax enough to cover their needs. The federal government then doles out cash according to which states will do what they are told. This effectively castrates state power, leaving them completely beholden to the federal government for funding. Likewise with local government, and research institutes, universities, and charities. All are dependent upon federal funds because federal taxes are collected at such high levels, then handed back in the form of grants.
Right after Bush was re-elected in 04, the research facility down the street cancelled tons of programs, as their federal funding (which accounts for more than half their budget) was cut by 50%. Why should the president allocate this funding? Why is it not collected by the state here? Why is it not collected directly in the form of donations? The reason is consolidation of power. Those with power want more power. They get this by taking over more functions and controlling all the money. This is easy for the feds since all they have to do is raise taxes and increase their payouts. At this rate, in 100 years the government will be collecting 50% income tax and subsidizing the price of all our foods.
No child molester (or child pornograpy-viewer) became one BECAUSE of the internet.
You should be more careful with your declarative statements. It is entirely possible that there is a person or a number of people lived in an environment where they had never viewed child pornography. They saw it for the first time on the internet and became interested.
I'm not saying that this has happened, as I have no actual knowledge of such an event, but I would guess that it is more likely than not. That does not mean that the internet is to blame, nor does it mean that there is something wrong with the internet. People are responsible for their own actions, and the tools they use to facilitate their actions are not good, nor evil. A homicidal man may never have killed anyone until they found a butcher knife, at which point they felt empowered enough to murder. If there were no knives perhaps they would never have committed murder, or perhaps they would have found a pipe wrench. My point is, the internet may have facilitated a crime, and denying that makes you seem very close-minded.
If it could be made significantly better on the Mac with a few hours of work, somebody would do it. Hell, I would if nobody else did.
Pretty much anyone serious about OpenOffice on OS X has realized that the NeoOffice version that does not use X-windows (it implements the GUI with Java using the Cocoa APIs) is the way to go. It is fairly functional right now, and a year ahead of the X11 version, at least. It has it's own dock icon, and works with most of the rest of the OS X features. I usually think of X11 on OS X as a nice feature for running legacy UNIX software remotely and controlling remote servers, and an acceptable display set for quick ports. I don't think it is very good option for a large or serious project on OS X.
Translation of your post: "I don't enjoy football video games, so there must be something wrong with people who do enjoy them."
Whoa! No need to get so defensive their sparky. I never said their was anything wrong with liking them, I just asked what people saw in them. You say you like the strategy, and I can see that. I never really played football on a strategy sort of level. It is always more of a "hit people hard and fast, and be sneaky" sort of a game for me. Fancy plays are less my forte.
BTW; I guess anyone who plays them just has no friends and fantasizes about being a real killer/marine/whatever!:P
I do enjoy FPS games, although admittedly not as much as a good paintball game. Maybe I'll give one of the newest football games another try some day, but my expectations are low. As you said, to each their own.
Almost every college and professional football player plays Madden religiously.
Occasionally when someone makes an assertion I wonder, "how would they collect the data on that?" It makes a good baseline for judging the likelihood of their being, as you so eloquently put it, "full of shit." I'm guessing that you are certainly full of it. In any case, I just said I don't enjoy the video games, although I do enjoy the sport. Assuming for some reason not related to your credibility that every professional and college football player does play Madden, does that mean that I have to for some reason? (Assuming I am not a profession or college football player.)
DRM can be easily broken. It can't stop 14 year old kids from pirating anything they want. It can't stop a mentally challenged luddite from using a video camera to make a copy. Why don't they abandon it?
Maybe it is because, they are not trying to stop piracy with DRM. They are trying to make it illegal for anyone to sell a device that will convert your DVDs to whatever DRM format they come up with in six years. That way they get to sell you all the same things over again. They are also trying to stop you from legally fast forwarding through the commercials. Sure you can break the DRM and do both of these things, but it is not legal. Since it is not legal, no one can easily do it in our psuedo-police state and they can charge advertisers more money for ads. Piracy is a red herring. DRM is about selling media more than once, and ad revenue. Once you have lost control, and VCRs are a thing of the past, expect tons more ads that cannot be skipped. Expect programers to make software DVD players that skip them, but that are illegal to sell in the U.S. Expect the media companies to make money on it, just as they do putting ads in theaters now. Expect an all new format, with better something, that will be a new DRM'd standard. Expect even more restrictions, some of which will not appear until it is entrenched and DVDs are not sold. DRM is not hard to break, but that is not the point. It is illegal to break, which is better from the perspective of those pushing it.
Users should be able to activate any DRM enabled device they own and play any DRMed content they have bought. This seems to be a good step in that direction.
Big companies like this do not collaborate to make things easier on consumers. They collaborate to make money. DRM makes money not by preventing piracy (the official line). It makes money by making you buy more than one copy of each movie, song, book, picture, or whatever. If you want something to work across all your devices, don't expect that to happen with DRM. If the media companies wanted that to happen, they would not put DRM on in the first place. If you think your DVDs will play in your HD-3D-DVD-extreme2 player, or that there will be any legal way to copy them to a format that does work in that player a few years down the road, then you are just wrong.
Note, they can also make a small amount of money via advertising through DRM. If your DVD player cannot skip commercials, media companies can make more money putting them on your DVDs.
If you think DRM standards will benefit you, you are probably very mistaken.
Re:Linux Desktop Thoughts...
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I actually can see a business model coming from this, and I actually think I know what it would take to impliment it. But first the OS has to exist, doesn't it?
The first step towards building this new OS is to present a viable business plan for building it and making money from it to someone with the cash to fund the development. If you think you know how, I suggest you write up a proposal, and look for funding. Personally, I don't see a good and likely way to get this to pay off the expense of development and make a profit in the long run. It could be done I'm sure. But it is a very risky way to invest 50 million.
Re:Linux Desktop Thoughts...
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Linux, Inc.
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What's stopping someone from writing an entire environment like OS X from the ground up, around and on top of Linux, and creating an OS X like environment that is as complete and modern as either OS X or Windows?
It can be done. IBM or someone could throw a ton of money into redeveloping Linux and either replacing X windows, or enhancing it. Enhancing it would be best as it would provide more readily for legacy applications. The problem is, what do they do then? Apple ships it with their hardware and profits on the hardware sales. Whose hardware would the new Linux ship with? Maybe Dell could make a fortune by shipping Dell-Linux on all their machines by default, but it would be a huge gamble. They have won so far by getting the best deal on Windows in bulk, along with all other components. Their assembly and distribution network got them there and their volume keeps them there. Why would they risk it all?
Once this new system is developed, what would happen? Whatever company it was could tie it to specific hardware and try to sell it, but without Windows apps it is a long uphill battle to gain market. Apple has legacy apps, and major development houses on board. Can you imagine what it would take to get Adobe to make photoshop for another platform? How about all the other developers?
Their really is a chicken and egg problem here. Even with IBM or Dell's resources, you need some really killer software or hardware to have any chance here. Apple has the OS, security, ease of use, some hardware advantages, cool factor, a slew of really good proprietary applications, and existing momentum from developers. They are hovering at around 4% of desktop sales. How would a new Linux compete? What do they bring to the table? Don't say cost either, this company needs to recoup it's investment in this new linux derivative. I just don't see a great business plan coming from this.
it is in Microsoft's best interest to have Linux in the world. Why? Simple, competition.
Heh, it may be in the best interests of their user's, but not in the best interests of MS. MS would love to make Linux go away. If they wanted a token other player they would choose someone they can put out of business easily, not a nebulous, indestructible, opponent. They are already a convicted monopoly, so having competitors is not much help, legally.
It's the same reason they like having Apple around and have helped bail them out a few times.
FUD. Please research you assertions.
Linux is a huge threat to MS. It already owns more of the server space and as much of the embedded devices market. MS would not hand over either willingly, especially when they are desperate for growth areas to maintain their stock evaluation. Linux is a threat because it is not a company (Linux Inc.). MS can buy out, muscle out, or lawyer out almost any competition. But Linux can be handed back and forth between companies, shared by companies, and is not owned by anyone. Think of a pack of wolves and a wooly mammoth. The wolves are faster, but can't kill a mammoth one on one. The mammoth cannot catch the wolves. It runs after them one by one, tiring itself out. Get your mammoth stew here! Get it while it's hot!
get ready for Madden 2005 to be the stanard game you'll be playing until, oh say, 2010
What? I have to play some crappy football game for five years? Oh wait, you meant standard, and if I were to play football on a computer, which I don't.
I never understood sports re-creation games. I don't even watch football on TV. I like football, but watching it, or playing a computer version of it just seems really boring. I guess if you don't have any friends who are willing to play for real the computer version might make for a really, really lame substitute.
I guess this is just part of the "hoop-dreams" fantasy. I wish I were a famous athlete, but I am too lazy to get off the couch. I guess I'll just play video games and fantasize or something.
Maybe there is some wonderful aspect to the gameplay that I just don't get. I tried an then gave up on these games in short order. Am I missing something?
The "great dying" was caused by the meltdown of the core reactors of the ships that brought the ancient astronauts to the Earth.
You are close, but it was no accident. God sabotaged the reactor with a bobby pin because she was mad at the astronauts for eating pork rinds (and Bill Gates paid her a bonus to do it).
his is that it presumes that ThinkSecret and Nick DePlume (love that alias) know the identity of "John Doe".
You are correct. Of course even if he does know he could pull a Reagan and be unable to recall who told him. Not being the president, however, he better be much more convincing or he may find himself in contempt of court and sitting in a cell until he remembers. I suspect he does know, or he would not be fighting the subpoena, he would just reply that he does not know. But, it is a possibility.
You are very likely incorrect. First, many states have laws against revealing information that you know is a trade secret without permission from the owner of the secret. Next Apple has a pretty iron-clad case that "John Doe" broke the contractual NDA. They have every legal right to subpoena ThinkSecret for his name given that ThinkSecret cannot plead the 5th since this case is not criminal and since whistleblower laws to don't apply since their was no public health or criminal activity on Apple's part. You are correct that this is pretty open and shut, but incorrect about who will win. This is a simple contract violation with basically no mitigating factors. Any news source is legally bound to answer a subpoena unless they are accused of a criminal violation and would be incriminating themselves, or unless whisteblower statutes apply.
ThinkSecret is run by a guy who lives in Boston, and ThinkSecret the website is registered to the dePlume Organization LLC, a company headquartered in New York.
The locality of the case is indeed an issue. Apple is in California and most likely the informant was as well. New York has trade secret laws at least as strict as California. I'm not sure about Boston, although I do know some lawyers out there who might know. The applicability of all of these laws is certainly questionable but at least one jurisdiction, if not more, will apply.
I'm not sure that I like your other idea about using misinformation to discover the leak. Apple has a lot of people in the loop and a witch hunt would not only misinform people internally, but be bad for morale. I think a subpoena is the way to go.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe the current US copyright law went too far, but opt-out copyright as a system ain't all bad.
It isn't all good either. There are thousands of works, probably millions or billions that are copyrighted because no one opted-out. The owners of these copyrights don't know they are owners, or there is no legal owner. All these works are lost, unpublishable, erased from the view of society. Some are fun old video games, some are poems, some are novels, and some are home movies. At least one is probably one of the greatest works of art ever made. And no one will ever see it.
Opt in is stealing our rightful heritage. We'd stand on the shoulders of these giants except most of them have been buried, and the rest have a toll bridge put up. It would be better to have no copyright at all then to have our current system in the U.S.
You are missing the point. My point was that this proposal does not solve one of the major problems with the state of copyright. The problem is that there is no public access to copyrighted works. Major publishers own the rights to books, music, and movies and there is no way for me to buy a copy or get a copy. This is basically erasing a huge chunk of our heritage, exactly the opposite of the intentions of the original authors of copyrights.
Some of those works would enter the public domain with this proposal, but not enough. Major media companies would just renew the copyright on everything, still refuse to sell them, and the only difference is that they have to pay a minor fee. A $1 fee is not enough to keep major companies from just renewing everything, even if they never plan to sell it again.
A better solution is to require that all copyrighted works be available for sale at a reasonable market rate. Any work that a company does not offer for sale becomes public domain. This would not remove any incentive to create new works as it will remain copyrighted until you stop selling it (making money on it) but will prevent hoarding, prevent works from disappearing into the vaults, and prevent companies from suppressing works. If there is a vested public interest that is sufficient to warrant a government sponsored monopoly, then it should also be sufficient to warrant the requirement that these works be available to the people.
Nah, the Chinese didn't grease the right people.
You're cynical, I like that. You're also probably correct. American companies have the same problem in China. Who are supposed to bribe again?
I think many people mistake the intent of the big media companies here. You are right that they do not want the public domain to exist. You are wrong to think that this suit is about whether or not the public domain will exist. This is largely about whether or not they will have to pay a piddling fee to keep it from existing, or whether it will be free for them. A fee would help for companies that disappear, but none of the major media corps. will fail to pay, if for no other reason than to stop their old works from competing with their new works.
You need to register your copyright to begin with which gets you five or ten years, and then renew your copyright once every five years for a fee of, say, a dollar. You can renew for as long as you like (which would keep Mickey safe and sound) but if your copyright on a work isn't worth a few minutes (we could just have a web based renewal system) and a dollar once every five years, then let the public have at it.
I disagree strongly with this proposal. The worst effect of extended copyrights in my opinion is that publishing houses sit on large collections of works that they refuse to publish, yet prevent anyone else from doing so. There are two reasons why your above proposal will not solve this.
First, it is cheaper to renew all copyrights in their possession for $5 a year then it is to have someone review their catalogue and see what is worth renewing. Second, It is worth $5 a year to keep all the old works from competing with their new releases. This applies to books, music, and movies.
If the medical community REALLY thought stem cells would cure lots of things, labs would be writing their own checks to research it. How many Fed dollars do you think went into erectile dynfunction? Probably zero, but it is a profitable venture so it got funding.
You are incorrect on all accounts. First, drug companies are funding stem cell research, but mostly overseas and in Cuba. Plenty of Fed dollars when to researching erectile dysfunction. The way things work is Federal money goes to research labs doing basic research and groundwork. Then drug companies take that research and develop a drug from it. Drug companies fund the second part, and often give money to help direct the first part.
This is not about whether or not stem cell research will be conducted. It is about where it will be conducted, and who will have the expertise. China is making impressive enough progress that there is a waiting list to go to China for certain treatments. No this is just politicians trying to make an issue to get votes. This is Bush and his cronies sucking up to the anti-abortion crowd, without actually doing anything about stopping abortions. The only reason this is happening is because drug companies are moving their operations overseas. I'm somewhat surprised they did not lobby hard to get this reversed, but maybe they just don't care if it happens in the U.S. or overseas right now. Welcome to the U.S.A, technological backwater of the future.
I was under the impression that you could not use a windows iPod with a MAC ...Is that true?
Of course you can't, iPods don't have ethernet jacks. They don't get assigned a MAC. You can use the USB or Firewire connection and plug them into a Windows PC, Linux PC, or Macintosh, however. Those should all have a MAC if their ethernet is plugged in.
kind of like saying...Water is made of nitrogen. To be precise, water is made of hydrogen and oxygen.
But it is a lot more like saying, "The DMCA bans cracking DRM mechanism protected with encryption. To be precise, it bans possessing or sharing the tools used to crack DRM encryption.
It is not a literal ban, as that would apolitical. It is a wishy washy effective ban from wishy washy washington, where people don't say what they mean, only what can be spun. The vast majority of labs are dependent upon federal funding, since federal taxes are so high compared to state taxes. If a lab does stem cell research on new lines, the whole lab loses federal funding, not just that project. This means completely private labs will have to be run, just for this research, at added expense, and without federal funding which is about 70% of most labs' income. It is a ban in reality, just not in lawyer speak.
OK, I'm stumped. How does a ban on federal funding for new stem cell lines amount to government intruding into these areas?
Federalism.
The federal government levies far too much in taxes. As a result, states cannot tax enough to cover their needs. The federal government then doles out cash according to which states will do what they are told. This effectively castrates state power, leaving them completely beholden to the federal government for funding. Likewise with local government, and research institutes, universities, and charities. All are dependent upon federal funds because federal taxes are collected at such high levels, then handed back in the form of grants.
Right after Bush was re-elected in 04, the research facility down the street cancelled tons of programs, as their federal funding (which accounts for more than half their budget) was cut by 50%. Why should the president allocate this funding? Why is it not collected by the state here? Why is it not collected directly in the form of donations? The reason is consolidation of power. Those with power want more power. They get this by taking over more functions and controlling all the money. This is easy for the feds since all they have to do is raise taxes and increase their payouts. At this rate, in 100 years the government will be collecting 50% income tax and subsidizing the price of all our foods.
No child molester (or child pornograpy-viewer) became one BECAUSE of the internet.
You should be more careful with your declarative statements. It is entirely possible that there is a person or a number of people lived in an environment where they had never viewed child pornography. They saw it for the first time on the internet and became interested.
I'm not saying that this has happened, as I have no actual knowledge of such an event, but I would guess that it is more likely than not. That does not mean that the internet is to blame, nor does it mean that there is something wrong with the internet. People are responsible for their own actions, and the tools they use to facilitate their actions are not good, nor evil. A homicidal man may never have killed anyone until they found a butcher knife, at which point they felt empowered enough to murder. If there were no knives perhaps they would never have committed murder, or perhaps they would have found a pipe wrench. My point is, the internet may have facilitated a crime, and denying that makes you seem very close-minded.
If it could be made significantly better on the Mac with a few hours of work, somebody would do it. Hell, I would if nobody else did.
Pretty much anyone serious about OpenOffice on OS X has realized that the NeoOffice version that does not use X-windows (it implements the GUI with Java using the Cocoa APIs) is the way to go. It is fairly functional right now, and a year ahead of the X11 version, at least. It has it's own dock icon, and works with most of the rest of the OS X features. I usually think of X11 on OS X as a nice feature for running legacy UNIX software remotely and controlling remote servers, and an acceptable display set for quick ports. I don't think it is very good option for a large or serious project on OS X.
Translation of your post: "I don't enjoy football video games, so there must be something wrong with people who do enjoy them."
Whoa! No need to get so defensive their sparky. I never said their was anything wrong with liking them, I just asked what people saw in them. You say you like the strategy, and I can see that. I never really played football on a strategy sort of level. It is always more of a "hit people hard and fast, and be sneaky" sort of a game for me. Fancy plays are less my forte.
BTW; I guess anyone who plays them just has no friends and fantasizes about being a real killer/marine/whatever! :P
I do enjoy FPS games, although admittedly not as much as a good paintball game. Maybe I'll give one of the newest football games another try some day, but my expectations are low. As you said, to each their own.
Almost every college and professional football player plays Madden religiously.
Occasionally when someone makes an assertion I wonder, "how would they collect the data on that?" It makes a good baseline for judging the likelihood of their being, as you so eloquently put it, "full of shit." I'm guessing that you are certainly full of it. In any case, I just said I don't enjoy the video games, although I do enjoy the sport. Assuming for some reason not related to your credibility that every professional and college football player does play Madden, does that mean that I have to for some reason? (Assuming I am not a profession or college football player.)
OO.o would quickly move to implement this
They announced they are not adding any new features to the Mac version. I doubt they would rush to implement this one.
Why don't they just give it up?
DRM can be easily broken. It can't stop 14 year old kids from pirating anything they want. It can't stop a mentally challenged luddite from using a video camera to make a copy. Why don't they abandon it?
Maybe it is because, they are not trying to stop piracy with DRM. They are trying to make it illegal for anyone to sell a device that will convert your DVDs to whatever DRM format they come up with in six years. That way they get to sell you all the same things over again. They are also trying to stop you from legally fast forwarding through the commercials. Sure you can break the DRM and do both of these things, but it is not legal. Since it is not legal, no one can easily do it in our psuedo-police state and they can charge advertisers more money for ads. Piracy is a red herring. DRM is about selling media more than once, and ad revenue. Once you have lost control, and VCRs are a thing of the past, expect tons more ads that cannot be skipped. Expect programers to make software DVD players that skip them, but that are illegal to sell in the U.S. Expect the media companies to make money on it, just as they do putting ads in theaters now. Expect an all new format, with better something, that will be a new DRM'd standard. Expect even more restrictions, some of which will not appear until it is entrenched and DVDs are not sold. DRM is not hard to break, but that is not the point. It is illegal to break, which is better from the perspective of those pushing it.
Users should be able to activate any DRM enabled device they own and play any DRMed content they have bought. This seems to be a good step in that direction.
Big companies like this do not collaborate to make things easier on consumers. They collaborate to make money. DRM makes money not by preventing piracy (the official line). It makes money by making you buy more than one copy of each movie, song, book, picture, or whatever. If you want something to work across all your devices, don't expect that to happen with DRM. If the media companies wanted that to happen, they would not put DRM on in the first place. If you think your DVDs will play in your HD-3D-DVD-extreme2 player, or that there will be any legal way to copy them to a format that does work in that player a few years down the road, then you are just wrong.
Note, they can also make a small amount of money via advertising through DRM. If your DVD player cannot skip commercials, media companies can make more money putting them on your DVDs.
If you think DRM standards will benefit you, you are probably very mistaken.
I actually can see a business model coming from this, and I actually think I know what it would take to impliment it. But first the OS has to exist, doesn't it?
The first step towards building this new OS is to present a viable business plan for building it and making money from it to someone with the cash to fund the development. If you think you know how, I suggest you write up a proposal, and look for funding. Personally, I don't see a good and likely way to get this to pay off the expense of development and make a profit in the long run. It could be done I'm sure. But it is a very risky way to invest 50 million.
What's stopping someone from writing an entire environment like OS X from the ground up, around and on top of Linux, and creating an OS X like environment that is as complete and modern as either OS X or Windows?
It can be done. IBM or someone could throw a ton of money into redeveloping Linux and either replacing X windows, or enhancing it. Enhancing it would be best as it would provide more readily for legacy applications. The problem is, what do they do then? Apple ships it with their hardware and profits on the hardware sales. Whose hardware would the new Linux ship with? Maybe Dell could make a fortune by shipping Dell-Linux on all their machines by default, but it would be a huge gamble. They have won so far by getting the best deal on Windows in bulk, along with all other components. Their assembly and distribution network got them there and their volume keeps them there. Why would they risk it all?
Once this new system is developed, what would happen? Whatever company it was could tie it to specific hardware and try to sell it, but without Windows apps it is a long uphill battle to gain market. Apple has legacy apps, and major development houses on board. Can you imagine what it would take to get Adobe to make photoshop for another platform? How about all the other developers?
Their really is a chicken and egg problem here. Even with IBM or Dell's resources, you need some really killer software or hardware to have any chance here. Apple has the OS, security, ease of use, some hardware advantages, cool factor, a slew of really good proprietary applications, and existing momentum from developers. They are hovering at around 4% of desktop sales. How would a new Linux compete? What do they bring to the table? Don't say cost either, this company needs to recoup it's investment in this new linux derivative. I just don't see a great business plan coming from this.
it is in Microsoft's best interest to have Linux in the world. Why? Simple, competition.
Heh, it may be in the best interests of their user's, but not in the best interests of MS. MS would love to make Linux go away. If they wanted a token other player they would choose someone they can put out of business easily, not a nebulous, indestructible, opponent. They are already a convicted monopoly, so having competitors is not much help, legally.
It's the same reason they like having Apple around and have helped bail them out a few times.
FUD. Please research you assertions.
Linux is a huge threat to MS. It already owns more of the server space and as much of the embedded devices market. MS would not hand over either willingly, especially when they are desperate for growth areas to maintain their stock evaluation. Linux is a threat because it is not a company (Linux Inc.). MS can buy out, muscle out, or lawyer out almost any competition. But Linux can be handed back and forth between companies, shared by companies, and is not owned by anyone. Think of a pack of wolves and a wooly mammoth. The wolves are faster, but can't kill a mammoth one on one. The mammoth cannot catch the wolves. It runs after them one by one, tiring itself out. Get your mammoth stew here! Get it while it's hot!
get ready for Madden 2005 to be the stanard game you'll be playing until, oh say, 2010
What? I have to play some crappy football game for five years? Oh wait, you meant standard, and if I were to play football on a computer, which I don't.
I never understood sports re-creation games. I don't even watch football on TV. I like football, but watching it, or playing a computer version of it just seems really boring. I guess if you don't have any friends who are willing to play for real the computer version might make for a really, really lame substitute.
I guess this is just part of the "hoop-dreams" fantasy. I wish I were a famous athlete, but I am too lazy to get off the couch. I guess I'll just play video games and fantasize or something.
Maybe there is some wonderful aspect to the gameplay that I just don't get. I tried an then gave up on these games in short order. Am I missing something?
The "great dying" was caused by the meltdown of the core reactors of the ships that brought the ancient astronauts to the Earth.
You are close, but it was no accident. God sabotaged the reactor with a bobby pin because she was mad at the astronauts for eating pork rinds (and Bill Gates paid her a bonus to do it).
Nick dePlume is not a Californian, California courts have no jurisdiction over his conduct.
Heh, interesting assertion. Know much about the law?
his is that it presumes that ThinkSecret and Nick DePlume (love that alias) know the identity of "John Doe".
You are correct. Of course even if he does know he could pull a Reagan and be unable to recall who told him. Not being the president, however, he better be much more convincing or he may find himself in contempt of court and sitting in a cell until he remembers. I suspect he does know, or he would not be fighting the subpoena, he would just reply that he does not know. But, it is a possibility.
they don't have a case against him
You are very likely incorrect. First, many states have laws against revealing information that you know is a trade secret without permission from the owner of the secret. Next Apple has a pretty iron-clad case that "John Doe" broke the contractual NDA. They have every legal right to subpoena ThinkSecret for his name given that ThinkSecret cannot plead the 5th since this case is not criminal and since whistleblower laws to don't apply since their was no public health or criminal activity on Apple's part. You are correct that this is pretty open and shut, but incorrect about who will win. This is a simple contract violation with basically no mitigating factors. Any news source is legally bound to answer a subpoena unless they are accused of a criminal violation and would be incriminating themselves, or unless whisteblower statutes apply.
ThinkSecret is run by a guy who lives in Boston, and ThinkSecret the website is registered to the dePlume Organization LLC, a company headquartered in New York.
The locality of the case is indeed an issue. Apple is in California and most likely the informant was as well. New York has trade secret laws at least as strict as California. I'm not sure about Boston, although I do know some lawyers out there who might know. The applicability of all of these laws is certainly questionable but at least one jurisdiction, if not more, will apply.
I'm not sure that I like your other idea about using misinformation to discover the leak. Apple has a lot of people in the loop and a witch hunt would not only misinform people internally, but be bad for morale. I think a subpoena is the way to go.