"In the 60s, the majority of the population got music from the radio and from juke boxes."
This simply isn't true. I was born in England in 1960, and did not come from a wealthy family: both my parents worked, we lived in a rented flat, and I remember them saving for well over a year to buy a small refrigerator, yet we had a record player and a fair number of records, and so did just about everyone else I knew (all of whom lived in council houses with two working parents and low incomes). Such devices were invariably mono with auto-changer turntables of dubious quality, and many were doubtless bought second-hand (as was ours), but they were pretty common, and their owners must have had at least some records, because the devices were useless without them.
NB: second-hand singles were available very cheaply because of the high turnover from juke-boxes, which tended to be supplied with new material on a regular basis, so the older stuff got turfed out to make space for it, and the companies that owned them tended to end up with large numbers of records they had no use for, and thus virtually gave away. You could tell they'd come from juke boxes because their middles had been punched out (although being four or five years old meant that I didn't know this at the time), but new "clip-on" middles could be bought very cheaply, so this wasn't a problem (most players in any case had adapters, but the replacement middles meant that records could be stacked on the auto-changer, which was good for parties). LPs (later called "albums") weren't used in juke-boxes though, so they were much more costly, and therefore a lot rarer among the low-income groups that I knew and mixed with.
"since MiGs go for millions each, even older ones"
No they don't. It took me about two minutes of Googling to find a MiG 21 MF for $60,000, and a two-seat trainer (more in demand) for $88,00, and these prices were for one-offs: if you are willing to buy in lots of ten or more, you can get them from various ex-Eastern bloc countries for a _lot_ less (around $11,000 each, although you'll need to add transport costs).
So your WWII planes (which cost a _lot_ more than $11,000 in flying condition) would actually be facing off against several MiG-21 MFs each, which given the MiG's climb rate of 58,000 ft/min, max. speed of Mach 1.8, on-board RADAR, and twin Vympel K-13 air-to-air missiles, would find your WWII fighters and blow the lot of them away before their pilots knew that there was even a threat.
"The issue is not, what Apple's current business strategy is. We all know what it is. The issue is, what it should be."
And you, with your record of running so many multi-billion dollar multinationals, are obviously well placed to give Apple advice.
"And the issue is not, what is good for Apple."
No, it is what's good for their shareholders, as is the case with all publicly traded companies.
"The issue is, what is good for us."
If you are a shareholder, the issue is what's good for your investment in terms of maximising its value, but that's all they are obliged to do.
"amazingly enough, we and not Cupertino are the best judges"
Is this a royal "we", or a group "we", and if the latter, which group do you have the hubris to assume the role of spokesperson for? It can't be Slashdotters, because Slashdotters have a vast range of opinions on any topic, so who precisely is this "we" that warrants Apple scrapping what is currently a very profitable strategy to serve?
The poor hardware sales are due to the following factors:
1) Hi-def content is only of interest to the small minority of consumers who have a TV capable of displaying it, a screen big enough to notice any difference from up-scaled DVDs, and the requisite inputs, i.e. HDMI if they don't want to risk having future content down-scaled to a level that's worse than DVD.
2) Even those who fall into (1) above are wary of the fact that there are two competing formats, so many will inevitably wait and see which of them finally wins (or alternatively, wait for a player that's compatible with both).
3) Prices are extremely high at the moment -- for less money, one can buy a decent stand-alone DVD recorder with an integral DVR and editing system, which appeals to far more consumers due to being usable with a much wider range of TVs. The fact that DVD players are now available for less than the cost of newly released media for them does nothing to help this situation.
4) A shortage of blue lasers means that even those early adopters who want HD-DVD or Blu-Ray players have difficulty finding one.
5) There isn't a vast range of compelling titles in Hi-def formats, and some of those that are available don't actually look any better than the DVD version (in some cases they're worse). Furthermore, the fact that certain studios are aligned with HD-DVD while others favour Blu-Ray means that it's rare to see a movie released on both, meaning that those who opt for one format cannot view movies that only get released on the other one, thereby bringing us back to (2) above. By contrast, a $25 DVD player gives people access to a gigantic library of content, much of which is available for around $5, or can be rented, pirated, or made by individuals using cheap and readily available equipment.
6) Early adopters with money to burn tend to read lots of reviews, and will therefore know about the problems each of the small number of available players have with some disks. These issues might be acceptable with a $25 no-name DVD player, but those who spent between $500 and $1000 on a new hi-def system will be feeling very pissed off indeed if one of the only five movies they want to watch on it doesn't play properly.
Problems (3) and (4) will disappear fairly quickly because the lack of blue lasers is a short-term phenomenon, and once production ramps up, competition between manufacturers will progressively lower prices and ensure that dual-standard players come on to the market, possibly (i.e. not definitely) some time during the next year, and this competition will also mean problem (6) won't be (much of) an issue in a year's time. Even so, realistically speaking, the requirement for a large high-definition TV set will mean that adoption rates will remain low for a few years yet, so the range of titles will be significantly more limited than those for DVD, and sales / rental outlets will therefore devote less shelf space to them than their DVD equivalents, as indeed was the case with DVDs when VHS was the dominant format. However, unlike the VHS / DVD situation, it's easy and cheap for manufacturers to equip blue laser players with the ability to read standard DVDs, so those with existing collections aren't forced to re-buy everything in the new format, and this will probably help adoption rates once the price drops to an acceptable "impulse buy" level (i.e. below $150/Euros) and equipment is supplied with "dongles" (internal or external) that ensure output doesn't become degraded when connected to non-HDCP compatible displays (the fact that no media have HDCP yet is a short-lived phenomenon, because the media companies wouldn't have insisted it be there unless they intended to use it).
So the probability of this crack having been unofficially sanctioned by the industry (hardware or media) is very remote indeed, because the slow hardware sales aren't in any way linked to DRM, and even if they were, hardware companies in particular could easily circumv
Bad drivers can also provoke the dreaded "system halt", where Windows stops dead and must be re-booted. It tells you that something nasty happened after re-booting, and will often link you to a web page with plenty of info if you click the "Send Error Report" button on the rather alarming (to normal users) dialog, but I wonder how many people actually (a) send said report, and (b) understand the extra information that's provided.
I've also found XP to be pretty solid. My two primary machines are an iMac (rev. 1 G5) running OS X 10.4 and a (now rather old) Athlon-based HP laptop with Windows XP Pro SP2, and while I've come to prefer OS X overall for various reasons I won't go into here, XP Pro has been a stable and dependable OS on this particular piece of hardware.
"So, the money does encourage creative production."
Up to a certain point, i.e. earning enough money to live on from creative works encourages more of them, but creativity does not increase beyond that point in line with the amount of income. It could reasonably be argued that income beyond a certain level actually decreases creativity because those with more money than they need and a significant income from royalties on existing works frequently only produce new stuff because they are contractually obliged to do so, hence the fact that so many authors/musicians/hollywood types end up bashing out formulaic crap when they become successful and wealthy.
"paedophilia used to be a normal part of many ancient cultures-- go read Homer's Illiad and the Odysseus again, carefully"
It's usually ephebophilia (an attraction to post-pubescent adolescents) rather than paedophilia. Ephebophilia occurs everywhere even in the Bible -- the much-venerated Mary for example was between 12 and 15 years of age when she conceived, and shortly after married a considerably older man, things the Gospel writers relate in a matter-of-fact tone that indicates this sort of thing was commonplace (as indeed does the fact that nobody around the couple even bothers to comment about a man of 40 years being accompanied by a pregnant wife who may have been 12 years old).
"An analog TV channel takes up much more space in the spectrum than multiple channels of digital TV - the whole idea is to compress the TV band so that the spectrum can be used (sold) for other purposes;"
There is absolutely no reason why analogue signals could not also be compressed, as is evidenced by the fact that TV signals have been compressed virtually since the beginning (a 525 or 625 line system is capable of displaying far more information than it receives over the air, hence the fact that SVHS, DVD, and professional video formats look rather better than broadcast TV on the same analogue set if fed to it via a direct input system that bypasses the tuner). Digital TV is transmitted using the same analogue radio signals that all other transmissions use, so there's nothing magical about it that makes it more amenable to compression than anything else carried by the same means -- in the end, it all still boils down to some electronics that decodes information which arrives on modulated electromagnetic waves.
"and no, you can't really transmit analog TV over a channel that has something else transmitted through it."
Actually, you can -- it's called multiplexing. That this cannot be done with current analogue TV signals is entirely due to the way the transmission system was specified, and the fact that receivers were designed in accordance with it, not because of any limitations in the medium itself. An entirely analogue system could have been specified that compressed TV signals a lot more than is currently the case, and coded a whole bunch of other information in the same carrier, but it would be incompatible with current analogue TV receivers, and therefore required a set-top box to decode, just as is the case with digital terrestrial television.
"So how do I prevent myself from creating something that's "largely similar" to an existing copyrighted musical work?"
You don't even bother trying. There's a huge body of copyrighted music, and I'd lay money on the fact that the vast majority of works are incredibly similar to more than one of the others (some to hundreds of the others!), yet plagiarism cases remain very rare even in the sue-happy US. They're expensive for potential plaintiffs because of the requirement for expert witnesses whose credentials the court will accept, are difficult to win, and run the risk of giving somebody else the idea of suing the suer, because just about every mildly prolific composer has knowingly written and published more than one piece that resembles somebody else's copyrighted work.
NB: I fail top see why you are so concerned about this. Far more composers die from accidents and diseases in any given year than get sued for plagiarism despite the fact that so many songs on the radio and TV are indistinguishable from each-other, so you'd be better off worrying over something with a higher statistical probability such as being struck by lightning or killed by bee stings.
"If a song has been on the Billboard pop chart, the jury will infer access, right?"
Anything that has been widely played on the radio / TV / whatever in the area where a defendant lives will be deemed as probably having been heard at least once. These are civil cases, so a plaintiff does not have to _prove_ that a defendant heard his or her work, only that it's likely they did (preponderance of evidence). Note though that the likelihood of having heard a work isn't enough in itself to show that plagiarism occurred -- it merely lowers the melodic similarity bar from "almost identical" to "largely similar".
The Bolton case was not about a musical phrase. As the first link in your search (http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/law/library/c ases/case_threeboysbolton.html) states, it was a combination of otherwise un-protectable elements that the jury regarded as being an indication of infringement:
"Eskelin testified that the two songs shared a combination of five unprotectible elements: (1) the title hook phrase (including the lyric, rhythm, and pitch); (2) the shifted cadence; (3) the instrumental figures; (4) the verse/chorus relationship; and (5) the fade ending."
So it was "substantial similarity" on a song level, not any particular phrase, which as the the plaintiff's own musicologist (Eskelin) stated, cannot be protected.
"there are several other cases on Columbia Law Library Music Plagiarism Project that deal with single phrases"
Which ones? I went through the first dozen or so, and the only one I found that dealt with a single phrase ended up with the plaintiffs losing precisely because a single phrase isn't sufficient to show substantial similarity.
"Can someone affiliated with a microlabel afford to hire a musicologist to do such tracing?"
Why would anyone bother? The legal standard in most of the world is one of "substantial similarity", with what is regarded as "substantial" being modified to some degree if access to the original work (or a reasonable probability thereof) can be shown. It still pertains to the whole work rather than a mere portion however, unless the work is a very long one with several portions that in themselves constitute entire sub-works (e.g. the movements in a concerto). Note also that such substantial similarities are usually only applied to a melodies and / or lyrics -- harmonic and rhythmic elements (i.e. chord sequences, drum patterns, etc.) are not usually copyrightable unless they're extremely distinctive.
"But when accused, how does one pay for an attorney and an expert witness in the first place?"
In which of your cases was a poor person without the resources to hire lawyers and musicologists taken to court in the first place? The two cases you cite are George Harrison and Michael Bolton, neither of whom seem(ed) to be particularly poor or unknown, and most others on the Columbia Law Library list appear to be against defendants who have not inconsiderable resources of their own, and were also assisted by publishers or record companies with corporate legal departments.
Some facts:
1) The chances of being sued for musical plagiarism are proportionate to the probability that a potential plaintiff will (a) hear one's work, and (b) reckon that there's enough money at stake to be worth the bother and expense of a lawsuit, so those who aren't famous don't need to worry.
2) Although somebody may attempt to sue for a single musical phrase, they would (a) be doing so against the advice of any lawyer with enough experience of such cases to be worth hiring, and (b) almost certainly lose, if not initially, then on appeal.
3) As I said previously, music plagiarism cases are extremely rare. Your Columbia Law Library link lists only 200 cases from 1887 to 2005 (by no means all of which went the plaintiff's way), and while it's probably not an exhaustive list, I doubt there are vastly more than that (unless of course one takes the entire world into account).
"if you have a mission with rules of engagement to protect civilians at all costs, you AREN'T going to go throw a HEAT round from a tank into that window."
Tanks are all but useless in urban settings anyway, as the Russians discovered to their cost in Chechnya. All you need is a couple of guys on rooftops with RPGs to lob a missile through the roofs of the first and last tanks in a column (top armour on tanks is thin (by tank terms!) and not made of chobham or equivalent advanced composites), and the whole lot become immobile, and thus vulnerable to infantry attacks. Modern tanks are designed to fight other tanks in places where they can manoeuvre, so they have big direct-fire guns with large breeches that prevent them from pointing upwards by more than 20 degrees or so, massive frontal armour but relatively little anywhere else to keep weight down (and they still weigh upwards of 60 tons, with some exceeding 70 tons), lack the bow machine guns that were present in many WWII examples, and their top-mounted MGs can't usually point downwards far enough to engage infantry at close range. Wise generals thus tend to keep them away from urban settings and forests (because trees can prevent them from turning their turrets towards targets, and provide lots of cover for people who are just waiting to put an RPG round into your thinly-armoured rear) unless they have extensive infantry support that can clear an area before the tanks move into it, while the tanks sit back and provide heavy fire support to the infantry when required.
NB: the Israelis are one of the few whose tanks are actually designed for urban engagements, but they've still proved vulnerable to cheap, primitive weapons such as improvised explosive devices, as well as more modern ones like the Russian SPIGOT anti-tank missile that Hezbullah used to disable or destroy around 70 of them in the recent Lebanon conflict.
The article linked to says nothing about musical phrases, but refers to entire pieces of music. A musical phrase cannot be copyrighted, because any phrase that isn't entirely esoteric can be traced back to earlier pieces that in many cases pre-date copyright by hundreds (and possibly thousands) of years. Add in the fact that a lot of music is based on progressions that lend a certain level of similarity to everything else that uses them (e.g. 8 and 12 bar blues, turn-around, etc., etc.), and you have a situation where nearly every piece of music technically plagiarises several earlier works, including some (usually many) that are in the public domain. Plagiarism is thus very difficult to prove in law courts, because musicologists will usually find several pieces of earlier music which can be used to demonstrate why common influences explain the similarities between the plaintiff's and defendant's work rather than one having copied the other, and advise lawyers accordingly, hence the fact that actual cases have always been very rare, and will remain so irrespective of how big certain companies' portfolios become.
That's been tried in various countries during certain historic periods. It seems to have inevitably resulted in lots of extra fires that the fighters luckily knew were going to start, and were there in record time offering distraught property owners "this month's special offer" of 10% off the usual fee plus a year's free insurance. Said insurance was extremely effective, because insured properties rarely caught fire, while the uninsured ones seemed to go up in flames so regularly that anybody who could afford it paid to have their premises covered.
"Perhaps you could write music for film, TV, or videogames"
Do you not see the flaw in this statement? If the concept of IP disappears, and everybody can simply download any content whenever they feel like it sans advertising, then film, TV, and video-games will also be affected, and there won't be any money for them to pay composers and musicians (or for that matter actors, animators, camera and lighting people, etc.) with. I'm not sympathetic towards the media / distribution companies because many of them are (to be kind) parasitic, but by the same token, if there are no mechanisms to ensure that content creators get adequately compensated for their work, then certain types of high-cost visual media will not be produced. Expensive series will disappear from TV, which will be entirely dominated by game shows, "reality TV", and other forms of live "entertainment"; movies will have sharply reduced budgets because they can only count on cinema attendance for their income, which will be drastically reduced by a steady proliferation of home cinema systems that can download a high resolution version of the product in some cases before it goes on general release; and readily available torrents of video games (again before they're released) will eliminate professional products with the exception of MMOGs.
"Microsoft got the idea for Word (and a lot of assistance on how to write for GUI apps) from MacWrite and Apple. Not particularly innovative."
If this is the case, then explain the fact that Word came out a year before the Macintosh. The inspiration for Word was actually Xerox Bravo, the original GUI word processor -- Microsoft hired the program's creator (Charles Simonyi) in 1981, and he recruited a co-author Richard Brodie in 1982, after which work immediately began on what would become Word. Having worked on Bravo meant that neither of these programmers required any assistance whatsoever with writing GUI apps from Apple, whose own WP application would not be released until two years after they began working on Word, and a year after Word first appeared on Xenix.
"I could go on about Wordperfect, Quatro Pro, and Lotus Suite which weren't crap products. Microsoft didn't really improve on those when they came out with their competing office suite."
Microsoft's office automation products weren't a rip-off of, or response to any of the other products you cite. Excel's roots are in Microsoft Multiplan, which was launched in 1982, a year before Lotus 1-2-3, which Quatro was essentially a Borland clone of, and both (i.e. MultiPlan and 1-2-3) owe rather more to VisiCalc than each-other. Word is also almost as old as WordPerfect (WP was launched in 1982, Word in 1983), and has even older roots, being based on Xerox' Bravo, the first WP for a GUI (MS hired the original Bravo developers in 1981, and work began on Word in '82).
Note also that MS were just a little bit innovative in those days. Excel for example was the first spreadsheet for a GUI, and (like VisiCalc had for the Apple-2 before it) was responsible for selling a _lot_ of Macs. Likewise, Word could use bit-mapped displays to do then unheard of things such as (albeit limited) WYSIWYG, and supported a mouse for many operations -- unlike WordPerfect, it was also profoundly multi-platform (MS started out being platform-agnostic!).
Don't forget Automator, which is absolutely amazing for building work-flows without programming. Another thing that had a big effect on me was the inclusion of drivers for a large selection of non-PostScript printers, which previously required downloading and installing GimpPrint. Both of these ended up being much more useful in my case than Dashboard, although I must admit that Spotlight has seen a lot of use.
"PC = a computer standard started by IBM around 1982."
As somebody who was involved in computing before and during that time, I can assure you that this is utter balderdash. The term "personal computer" was commonly used during the 1970s and early 1980s to describe a business computer designed for use by a single person, hence the fact that IBM used it as a name for their offering to distinguish it from their larger systems.
"You might want to check the magazines and catalogs of the time, such as Mac Mall and PC Mall, Mac World, PC World, etc. They knew the difference, even if you do not."
I have a large collection of computer publications from that period (including a several that review the original IBM PC, first Mac, etc.) and can therefore categorically state that you are utterly wrong. But don't take my word for it -- have a look at these links:
Or perhaps you might simply like to consider the fact that "Personal Computer World", a British publication, was founded in 1978, when the IBM PC wasn't even being thought about, let alone sold.
"the first NTP patent was filed in 1991 -- was a portable device for email "bloody fucking obvious" in 1991?"
Yes, because it was a component of the DynaBook portable tablet concept computer being developed at Xerox PARC during the 1960s and 1970s. They even had working prototypes that used wireless networks, so this was not only obvious, but something that had already been done, written about, and published in various journals.
Slashdot Mirror
Fails on my iMac G5 rev. 1, OS X 10.4.8 too. Looks like this particular "bug" has more FUD than substance.
"In the 60s, the majority of the population got music from the radio and from juke boxes."
This simply isn't true. I was born in England in 1960, and did not come from a wealthy family: both my parents worked, we lived in a rented flat, and I remember them saving for well over a year to buy a small refrigerator, yet we had a record player and a fair number of records, and so did just about everyone else I knew (all of whom lived in council houses with two working parents and low incomes). Such devices were invariably mono with auto-changer turntables of dubious quality, and many were doubtless bought second-hand (as was ours), but they were pretty common, and their owners must have had at least some records, because the devices were useless without them.
NB: second-hand singles were available very cheaply because of the high turnover from juke-boxes, which tended to be supplied with new material on a regular basis, so the older stuff got turfed out to make space for it, and the companies that owned them tended to end up with large numbers of records they had no use for, and thus virtually gave away. You could tell they'd come from juke boxes because their middles had been punched out (although being four or five years old meant that I didn't know this at the time), but new "clip-on" middles could be bought very cheaply, so this wasn't a problem (most players in any case had adapters, but the replacement middles meant that records could be stacked on the auto-changer, which was good for parties). LPs (later called "albums") weren't used in juke-boxes though, so they were much more costly, and therefore a lot rarer among the low-income groups that I knew and mixed with.
"since MiGs go for millions each, even older ones"
No they don't. It took me about two minutes of Googling to find a MiG 21 MF for $60,000, and a two-seat trainer (more in demand) for $88,00, and these prices were for one-offs: if you are willing to buy in lots of ten or more, you can get them from various ex-Eastern bloc countries for a _lot_ less (around $11,000 each, although you'll need to add transport costs).
So your WWII planes (which cost a _lot_ more than $11,000 in flying condition) would actually be facing off against several MiG-21 MFs each, which given the MiG's climb rate of 58,000 ft/min, max. speed of Mach 1.8, on-board RADAR, and twin Vympel K-13 air-to-air missiles, would find your WWII fighters and blow the lot of them away before their pilots knew that there was even a threat.
"The issue is not, what Apple's current business strategy is. We all know what it is. The issue is, what it should be."
And you, with your record of running so many multi-billion dollar multinationals, are obviously well placed to give Apple advice.
"And the issue is not, what is good for Apple."
No, it is what's good for their shareholders, as is the case with all publicly traded companies.
"The issue is, what is good for us."
If you are a shareholder, the issue is what's good for your investment in terms of maximising its value, but that's all they are obliged to do.
"amazingly enough, we and not Cupertino are the best judges"
Is this a royal "we", or a group "we", and if the latter, which group do you have the hubris to assume the role of spokesperson for? It can't be Slashdotters, because Slashdotters have a vast range of opinions on any topic, so who precisely is this "we" that warrants Apple scrapping what is currently a very profitable strategy to serve?
"given lackluster sales of hardware"
The poor hardware sales are due to the following factors:
1) Hi-def content is only of interest to the small minority of consumers who have a TV capable of displaying it, a screen big enough to notice any difference from up-scaled DVDs, and the requisite inputs, i.e. HDMI if they don't want to risk having future content down-scaled to a level that's worse than DVD.
2) Even those who fall into (1) above are wary of the fact that there are two competing formats, so many will inevitably wait and see which of them finally wins (or alternatively, wait for a player that's compatible with both).
3) Prices are extremely high at the moment -- for less money, one can buy a decent stand-alone DVD recorder with an integral DVR and editing system, which appeals to far more consumers due to being usable with a much wider range of TVs. The fact that DVD players are now available for less than the cost of newly released media for them does nothing to help this situation.
4) A shortage of blue lasers means that even those early adopters who want HD-DVD or Blu-Ray players have difficulty finding one.
5) There isn't a vast range of compelling titles in Hi-def formats, and some of those that are available don't actually look any better than the DVD version (in some cases they're worse). Furthermore, the fact that certain studios are aligned with HD-DVD while others favour Blu-Ray means that it's rare to see a movie released on both, meaning that those who opt for one format cannot view movies that only get released on the other one, thereby bringing us back to (2) above. By contrast, a $25 DVD player gives people access to a gigantic library of content, much of which is available for around $5, or can be rented, pirated, or made by individuals using cheap and readily available equipment.
6) Early adopters with money to burn tend to read lots of reviews, and will therefore know about the problems each of the small number of available players have with some disks. These issues might be acceptable with a $25 no-name DVD player, but those who spent between $500 and $1000 on a new hi-def system will be feeling very pissed off indeed if one of the only five movies they want to watch on it doesn't play properly.
Problems (3) and (4) will disappear fairly quickly because the lack of blue lasers is a short-term phenomenon, and once production ramps up, competition between manufacturers will progressively lower prices and ensure that dual-standard players come on to the market, possibly (i.e. not definitely) some time during the next year, and this competition will also mean problem (6) won't be (much of) an issue in a year's time. Even so, realistically speaking, the requirement for a large high-definition TV set will mean that adoption rates will remain low for a few years yet, so the range of titles will be significantly more limited than those for DVD, and sales / rental outlets will therefore devote less shelf space to them than their DVD equivalents, as indeed was the case with DVDs when VHS was the dominant format. However, unlike the VHS / DVD situation, it's easy and cheap for manufacturers to equip blue laser players with the ability to read standard DVDs, so those with existing collections aren't forced to re-buy everything in the new format, and this will probably help adoption rates once the price drops to an acceptable "impulse buy" level (i.e. below $150/Euros) and equipment is supplied with "dongles" (internal or external) that ensure output doesn't become degraded when connected to non-HDCP compatible displays (the fact that no media have HDCP yet is a short-lived phenomenon, because the media companies wouldn't have insisted it be there unless they intended to use it).
So the probability of this crack having been unofficially sanctioned by the industry (hardware or media) is very remote indeed, because the slow hardware sales aren't in any way linked to DRM, and even if they were, hardware companies in particular could easily circumv
Bad drivers can also provoke the dreaded "system halt", where Windows stops dead and must be re-booted. It tells you that something nasty happened after re-booting, and will often link you to a web page with plenty of info if you click the "Send Error Report" button on the rather alarming (to normal users) dialog, but I wonder how many people actually (a) send said report, and (b) understand the extra information that's provided.
I've also found XP to be pretty solid. My two primary machines are an iMac (rev. 1 G5) running OS X 10.4 and a (now rather old) Athlon-based HP laptop with Windows XP Pro SP2, and while I've come to prefer OS X overall for various reasons I won't go into here, XP Pro has been a stable and dependable OS on this particular piece of hardware.
"So, the money does encourage creative production."
Up to a certain point, i.e. earning enough money to live on from creative works encourages more of them, but creativity does not increase beyond that point in line with the amount of income. It could reasonably be argued that income beyond a certain level actually decreases creativity because those with more money than they need and a significant income from royalties on existing works frequently only produce new stuff because they are contractually obliged to do so, hence the fact that so many authors/musicians/hollywood types end up bashing out formulaic crap when they become successful and wealthy.
"paedophilia used to be a normal part of many ancient cultures-- go read Homer's Illiad and the Odysseus again, carefully"
It's usually ephebophilia (an attraction to post-pubescent adolescents) rather than paedophilia. Ephebophilia occurs everywhere even in the Bible -- the much-venerated Mary for example was between 12 and 15 years of age when she conceived, and shortly after married a considerably older man, things the Gospel writers relate in a matter-of-fact tone that indicates this sort of thing was commonplace (as indeed does the fact that nobody around the couple even bothers to comment about a man of 40 years being accompanied by a pregnant wife who may have been 12 years old).
"An analog TV channel takes up much more space in the spectrum than multiple channels of digital TV - the whole idea is to compress the TV band so that the spectrum can be used (sold) for other purposes;"
There is absolutely no reason why analogue signals could not also be compressed, as is evidenced by the fact that TV signals have been compressed virtually since the beginning (a 525 or 625 line system is capable of displaying far more information than it receives over the air, hence the fact that SVHS, DVD, and professional video formats look rather better than broadcast TV on the same analogue set if fed to it via a direct input system that bypasses the tuner). Digital TV is transmitted using the same analogue radio signals that all other transmissions use, so there's nothing magical about it that makes it more amenable to compression than anything else carried by the same means -- in the end, it all still boils down to some electronics that decodes information which arrives on modulated electromagnetic waves.
"and no, you can't really transmit analog TV over a channel that has something else transmitted through it."
Actually, you can -- it's called multiplexing. That this cannot be done with current analogue TV signals is entirely due to the way the transmission system was specified, and the fact that receivers were designed in accordance with it, not because of any limitations in the medium itself. An entirely analogue system could have been specified that compressed TV signals a lot more than is currently the case, and coded a whole bunch of other information in the same carrier, but it would be incompatible with current analogue TV receivers, and therefore required a set-top box to decode, just as is the case with digital terrestrial television.
"So how do I prevent myself from creating something that's "largely similar" to an existing copyrighted musical work?"
You don't even bother trying. There's a huge body of copyrighted music, and I'd lay money on the fact that the vast majority of works are incredibly similar to more than one of the others (some to hundreds of the others!), yet plagiarism cases remain very rare even in the sue-happy US. They're expensive for potential plaintiffs because of the requirement for expert witnesses whose credentials the court will accept, are difficult to win, and run the risk of giving somebody else the idea of suing the suer, because just about every mildly prolific composer has knowingly written and published more than one piece that resembles somebody else's copyrighted work.
NB: I fail top see why you are so concerned about this. Far more composers die from accidents and diseases in any given year than get sued for plagiarism despite the fact that so many songs on the radio and TV are indistinguishable from each-other, so you'd be better off worrying over something with a higher statistical probability such as being struck by lightning or killed by bee stings.
"If a song has been on the Billboard pop chart, the jury will infer access, right?"
Anything that has been widely played on the radio / TV / whatever in the area where a defendant lives will be deemed as probably having been heard at least once. These are civil cases, so a plaintiff does not have to _prove_ that a defendant heard his or her work, only that it's likely they did (preponderance of evidence). Note though that the likelihood of having heard a work isn't enough in itself to show that plagiarism occurred -- it merely lowers the melodic similarity bar from "almost identical" to "largely similar".
The Bolton case was not about a musical phrase. As the first link in your search (http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/law/library/c ases/case_threeboysbolton.html) states, it was a combination of otherwise un-protectable elements that the jury regarded as being an indication of infringement:
"Eskelin testified that the two songs shared a combination of five unprotectible elements: (1) the title hook phrase (including the lyric, rhythm, and pitch); (2) the shifted cadence; (3) the instrumental figures; (4) the verse/chorus relationship; and (5) the fade ending."
So it was "substantial similarity" on a song level, not any particular phrase, which as the the plaintiff's own musicologist (Eskelin) stated, cannot be protected.
"there are several other cases on Columbia Law Library Music Plagiarism Project that deal with single phrases"
Which ones? I went through the first dozen or so, and the only one I found that dealt with a single phrase ended up with the plaintiffs losing precisely because a single phrase isn't sufficient to show substantial similarity.
"Can someone affiliated with a microlabel afford to hire a musicologist to do such tracing?"
Why would anyone bother? The legal standard in most of the world is one of "substantial similarity", with what is regarded as "substantial" being modified to some degree if access to the original work (or a reasonable probability thereof) can be shown. It still pertains to the whole work rather than a mere portion however, unless the work is a very long one with several portions that in themselves constitute entire sub-works (e.g. the movements in a concerto). Note also that such substantial similarities are usually only applied to a melodies and / or lyrics -- harmonic and rhythmic elements (i.e. chord sequences, drum patterns, etc.) are not usually copyrightable unless they're extremely distinctive.
"But when accused, how does one pay for an attorney and an expert witness in the first place?"
In which of your cases was a poor person without the resources to hire lawyers and musicologists taken to court in the first place? The two cases you cite are George Harrison and Michael Bolton, neither of whom seem(ed) to be particularly poor or unknown, and most others on the Columbia Law Library list appear to be against defendants who have not inconsiderable resources of their own, and were also assisted by publishers or record companies with corporate legal departments.
Some facts:
1) The chances of being sued for musical plagiarism are proportionate to the probability that a potential plaintiff will (a) hear one's work, and (b) reckon that there's enough money at stake to be worth the bother and expense of a lawsuit, so those who aren't famous don't need to worry.
2) Although somebody may attempt to sue for a single musical phrase, they would (a) be doing so against the advice of any lawyer with enough experience of such cases to be worth hiring, and (b) almost certainly lose, if not initially, then on appeal.
3) As I said previously, music plagiarism cases are extremely rare. Your Columbia Law Library link lists only 200 cases from 1887 to 2005 (by no means all of which went the plaintiff's way), and while it's probably not an exhaustive list, I doubt there are vastly more than that (unless of course one takes the entire world into account).
"if you have a mission with rules of engagement to protect civilians at all costs, you AREN'T going to go throw a HEAT round from a tank into that window."
Tanks are all but useless in urban settings anyway, as the Russians discovered to their cost in Chechnya. All you need is a couple of guys on rooftops with RPGs to lob a missile through the roofs of the first and last tanks in a column (top armour on tanks is thin (by tank terms!) and not made of chobham or equivalent advanced composites), and the whole lot become immobile, and thus vulnerable to infantry attacks. Modern tanks are designed to fight other tanks in places where they can manoeuvre, so they have big direct-fire guns with large breeches that prevent them from pointing upwards by more than 20 degrees or so, massive frontal armour but relatively little anywhere else to keep weight down (and they still weigh upwards of 60 tons, with some exceeding 70 tons), lack the bow machine guns that were present in many WWII examples, and their top-mounted MGs can't usually point downwards far enough to engage infantry at close range. Wise generals thus tend to keep them away from urban settings and forests (because trees can prevent them from turning their turrets towards targets, and provide lots of cover for people who are just waiting to put an RPG round into your thinly-armoured rear) unless they have extensive infantry support that can clear an area before the tanks move into it, while the tanks sit back and provide heavy fire support to the infantry when required.
NB: the Israelis are one of the few whose tanks are actually designed for urban engagements, but they've still proved vulnerable to cheap, primitive weapons such as improvised explosive devices, as well as more modern ones like the Russian SPIGOT anti-tank missile that Hezbullah used to disable or destroy around 70 of them in the recent Lebanon conflict.
The article linked to says nothing about musical phrases, but refers to entire pieces of music. A musical phrase cannot be copyrighted, because any phrase that isn't entirely esoteric can be traced back to earlier pieces that in many cases pre-date copyright by hundreds (and possibly thousands) of years. Add in the fact that a lot of music is based on progressions that lend a certain level of similarity to everything else that uses them (e.g. 8 and 12 bar blues, turn-around, etc., etc.), and you have a situation where nearly every piece of music technically plagiarises several earlier works, including some (usually many) that are in the public domain. Plagiarism is thus very difficult to prove in law courts, because musicologists will usually find several pieces of earlier music which can be used to demonstrate why common influences explain the similarities between the plaintiff's and defendant's work rather than one having copied the other, and advise lawyers accordingly, hence the fact that actual cases have always been very rare, and will remain so irrespective of how big certain companies' portfolios become.
"Fire fighting can be done privately"
That's been tried in various countries during certain historic periods. It seems to have inevitably resulted in lots of extra fires that the fighters luckily knew were going to start, and were there in record time offering distraught property owners "this month's special offer" of 10% off the usual fee plus a year's free insurance. Said insurance was extremely effective, because insured properties rarely caught fire, while the uninsured ones seemed to go up in flames so regularly that anybody who could afford it paid to have their premises covered.
"Perhaps you could write music for film, TV, or videogames"
Do you not see the flaw in this statement? If the concept of IP disappears, and everybody can simply download any content whenever they feel like it sans advertising, then film, TV, and video-games will also be affected, and there won't be any money for them to pay composers and musicians (or for that matter actors, animators, camera and lighting people, etc.) with. I'm not sympathetic towards the media / distribution companies because many of them are (to be kind) parasitic, but by the same token, if there are no mechanisms to ensure that content creators get adequately compensated for their work, then certain types of high-cost visual media will not be produced. Expensive series will disappear from TV, which will be entirely dominated by game shows, "reality TV", and other forms of live "entertainment"; movies will have sharply reduced budgets because they can only count on cinema attendance for their income, which will be drastically reduced by a steady proliferation of home cinema systems that can download a high resolution version of the product in some cases before it goes on general release; and readily available torrents of video games (again before they're released) will eliminate professional products with the exception of MMOGs.
"As demon said in a previous reply, 4.4BSD is not the same thing as FreeBSD."
Demon was correct, and I was wrong.
"Therefore, the quote does not deny my claim."
Indeed it does not. Please accept my apologies.
"Microsoft got the idea for Word (and a lot of assistance on how to write for GUI apps) from MacWrite and Apple. Not particularly innovative."
If this is the case, then explain the fact that Word came out a year before the Macintosh. The inspiration for Word was actually Xerox Bravo, the original GUI word processor -- Microsoft hired the program's creator (Charles Simonyi) in 1981, and he recruited a co-author Richard Brodie in 1982, after which work immediately began on what would become Word. Having worked on Bravo meant that neither of these programmers required any assistance whatsoever with writing GUI apps from Apple, whose own WP application would not be released until two years after they began working on Word, and a year after Word first appeared on Xenix.
" Cleartype is Microsoft's widely imitated font rendering technology"
Which uses sub-pixel rendering, a technique that was well known in the 1970s, and which Microsoft therefore ripped off.
"I could go on about Wordperfect, Quatro Pro, and Lotus Suite which weren't crap products. Microsoft didn't really improve on those when they came out with their competing office suite."
Microsoft's office automation products weren't a rip-off of, or response to any of the other products you cite. Excel's roots are in Microsoft Multiplan, which was launched in 1982, a year before Lotus 1-2-3, which Quatro was essentially a Borland clone of, and both (i.e. MultiPlan and 1-2-3) owe rather more to VisiCalc than each-other. Word is also almost as old as WordPerfect (WP was launched in 1982, Word in 1983), and has even older roots, being based on Xerox' Bravo, the first WP for a GUI (MS hired the original Bravo developers in 1981, and work began on Word in '82).
Note also that MS were just a little bit innovative in those days. Excel for example was the first spreadsheet for a GUI, and (like VisiCalc had for the Apple-2 before it) was responsible for selling a _lot_ of Macs. Likewise, Word could use bit-mapped displays to do then unheard of things such as (albeit limited) WYSIWYG, and supported a mouse for many operations -- unlike WordPerfect, it was also profoundly multi-platform (MS started out being platform-agnostic!).
"10.4 Spotlight, Dashboard"
Don't forget Automator, which is absolutely amazing for building work-flows without programming. Another thing that had a big effect on me was the inclusion of drivers for a large selection of non-PostScript printers, which previously required downloading and installing GimpPrint. Both of these ended up being much more useful in my case than Dashboard, although I must admit that Spotlight has seen a lot of use.
"If Thurott is clueless, we need a new word for Dvorak"
The Aussies already have one: fuckwit.
"PC = a computer standard started by IBM around 1982."
. htmlr e.ars
As somebody who was involved in computing before and during that time, I can assure you that this is utter balderdash. The term "personal computer" was commonly used during the 1970s and early 1980s to describe a business computer designed for use by a single person, hence the fact that IBM used it as a name for their offering to distinguish it from their larger systems.
"You might want to check the magazines and catalogs of the time, such as Mac Mall and PC Mall, Mac World, PC World, etc. They knew the difference, even if you do not."
I have a large collection of computer publications from that period (including a several that review the original IBM PC, first Mac, etc.) and can therefore categorically state that you are utterly wrong. But don't take my word for it -- have a look at these links:
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/personal_computer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/total-sha
Or perhaps you might simply like to consider the fact that "Personal Computer World", a British publication, was founded in 1978, when the IBM PC wasn't even being thought about, let alone sold.
"the first NTP patent was filed in 1991 -- was a portable device for email "bloody fucking obvious" in 1991?"
Yes, because it was a component of the DynaBook portable tablet concept computer being developed at Xerox PARC during the 1960s and 1970s. They even had working prototypes that used wireless networks, so this was not only obvious, but something that had already been done, written about, and published in various journals.