>Here Microsoft is using their Desktop monopoly to boost their online search business and (this is the illegal part) restricting their monopoly product from using someone else's online search business.
No... here Microsoft is using their Desktop monopoly to boost their... desktop search... business.. hrmmmmm
>I never wanted to be rich- I just want to be left the hell alone. The way I see it, we don't need the "International" corporations of the world. And that includes IBM.
How many components of the PC you wrote this drivel on, do you think were designed and created by "International" corporations? Last I checked, Slashdot wasn't a non-profit charity either. It looks to me like you're the one who won't leave corporations alone. After all you went through all the effort of buying the hardware, the software, the internet access and then typing in the domain name to get here.
>Someone who is both anti-Copyright and pro-Free Software would advocate the elimination of copyright in exchange for enshrining the 4 essential freedoms of software users in law
Which is why I said the "copyright abolitionists" are trying to have it both ways. On one end they're arguing that the act of "sharing" or "copying" doesn't hurt anyone (a dubious statement to begin with considering the cost of certain arrangements of bits, like Lord of the Rings movies, can run into hundreds of millions of dollars), and essentially argue for the lifting of all restrictions governing intellectual property.
On the other hand, it isn't enough for them to simply lift the restriction and in the case of software, have it be governed by an MIT style license as they want to imbue IP with provisions and restrictions that enforce sharing (like the GPL-type licenses currently do). One of the big reasons for the existence of GPL is that by forcing changes to be released, you're not taking advantage of the community that might have done most of the work - in FSF-speak, GPL ensures you're not taking the "freedom" to study and improve the program away from anyone. So in the end it seems like this group does in fact acknowledges that completely unrestricted sharing does hurt someone.
The author is playing with words. At the end of the day a viral license like the GPL cannot exist without laws that acknowledge the "specialness" of intellectual property. You can't GPL a hammer.
>Imagine if we had laws that did away with most prohibitions against sharing, but that enforced crediting and permitted authors to enforce GPL-like provisions requiring sharing.
Considering that copyright law has no prohibition against sharing (after all, releasing your work as creative commons is as simple as cut-pasting a line of text) and thanks to GPL and similar licenses, copyright can have provisions to enforce sharing - I think I can imagine a world such as this - we live in it. What the author is arguing is that every work should be released with a mandatory GPL-like or maybe Creative Commons-type license.
>Thus, to say that the GPL depends on copyright is like saying that reading depends on scribes.
No.. the GPL is a license tested in court and found wholly within the realm of current copyright law.
>The basic argument of copyright abolitionists is that people should be free to share when sharing does not result in any diminution of supply.
I understand that argument even though I don't agree with it, but there's another point here. Is "free to share" the same as "forced to share"? After all, people are free to share MIT licensed code, but are forced to share GPL licensed code (provided that they made changes to it and distributed the binary.. yadda yadda..). The former doesn't need any copyright law, the latter certainly does. I think "copyright abolitionists" are trying to have it both ways here. The author certainly looks like a guy who is trying to reconcile something like the GPL (which I'm sure is perceived as a very good thing in the circles he hangs out) with his ideological beliefs about copyright. At the end of it all, it comes off as a clumsy argument.
You lost credibility by including Mario Sunshine as A+ title. Tales of Symphonia and Skies of Arcadia were average RPGs when measured against the competition on the PS2.
>The GameCube's library might be small, but it's pound for pound, probably the best console library in existance.
Ha!
Why the heck do you need a separate clause for "online-worlds". The current tax-code seems to handle online property pretty well. If I find a l337 battle axe in Diablo 2 and sell it on ebay thats income that by-law I have to declare (so that it can be taxed). Same with Second Life and WoW. All real-monteray transaction already need to be declared.
>Even at that, I will not spend $200. I might spend $140. And that's for the full version (4gb+, multi-core, 64bit, etc). Otherwise they can just eat it. The only reason I ever need to jump off my solaris, debian or OSX boxes is to play games. Period.
Then get ready to get on your knees and pucker-up because in a few years, games will no longer support XP. And no - you won't get a discount for Vista. Full-price for you bitch. =)
>You know that the many US lawmakers who are in bed with special interests are ready to jump all over this study. One more chance to "discredit" global warming.
Well.. If its not true than it deserves to be discredited.
Or are you saying this particular study does not actually discredit man-made global warming?
>What about the fact that we are facing extinction of staggering number of species, due to our mismanagement of the earth? What about the fact that 20% of the world population doesn't have access to clean water?
What does that have to do with (human or non-human) global warming?
>Vista security is..A Dialog box asking if you wish to run the exploit or not
Thats pretty much Linux and Mac security as well. At the end of the day if a user is committed to running screensaver.exe (or screensaver.bin) locally.. there is very little you can do to stop him.
>Uh. What good is Napster with DRM if you can get it elsewhere without DRM?
Napster's "to Go" service allows you to download unlimited songs which will play for as long as you pay the monthly fee. Its good for people who want to listen to lots of music without incurring the cost of actually buying all that music (and who want to be be legal). Why would people want to rent a movie when they could just buy one? They just do.
Why do we have to live in a world that has either no DRM or is all DRM?
Why not restrict DRM to rented content such as the Napster service that allows you to download and listen to unlimited amount of music provided you keep paying your monthly fee. I like that service and I don't want to see it go. On the other front, I also want to buy some music and movies to keep forever - so in this case, why not sell it to me DRM-free?
This sounds to me like a win-win situation and certainly a good compromise.
Why do they assume people will throw perfectly good computer hardware out? Some might but enough to make a difference?
Vista will work perfectly well on non-DRM capable hardware, only DRMed media will play with *reduced* quality - and frankly with pirate media so readily available, why would anyone worry about that? And even if that were not true, why assume that people will not simply sell or give away their XP machines to other who just need Internet and Word. Then there are people who will simply load Linux on that hardware or even continue using Windows XP as backup machine.
I think the label "environmental-wackos" applies to these guys. Totally baseless accusations. Maybe they can find a link between Vista and Global Warming.
Vista is getting (rightfully) a lot of bad press because of DRM, but where is OSX in this debate? As far as I can tell, Apple will be/and probably already is, going down the same route as Microsoft. OSX will support HDCP and the protected path from OS to video source, just like Vista. I think we should be a little fair here and burn them both?
DRM is what sours the deal for me. If I bought a track, I want to be able (for instance) to put that track on (for instance) my PSP. I want to be able to back it up, I want to be able to move it to the house media server, I want to be able to play it in my car and frankly anywhere else that I am. Looking in iTunes and seeing "protected track" annoys the heck out of me and totally turned me off to the iTunes store. It was never a price problem.
Exactly. What really irks me is that DRM punishes the honest people. iTunes is (unofficially) competing with file sharing sites. Obviously they will never beat them on price, but what's unacceptable is that they are losing in the quality department. From Limewire and others I can pull music that will work on every device I own (occasionally with higher bitrates too), while iTunes tracks work only on the iPod, and Napster tracks work only wmv enabled devices. This is absolutely asinine.
I might be wrong on this but I have a feeling that DRMed music will not handle the computer upgrade cycle well. That is, because there is usually a restriction on the number of devices you can transfer your music too, sooner or later you will hit that just through upgrading to new systems. I don't think I heard too many complaints about this, so it might not be true.
I also don't understand why the music industry doesn't launch a service that sells normal mp3 music (with iTunes prices) and run it for a year or two to see if can be successful.
Slashdot Mirror
>Here Microsoft is using their Desktop monopoly to boost their online search business and (this is the illegal part) restricting their monopoly product from using someone else's online search business.
... desktop search... business.. hrmmmmm
No... here Microsoft is using their Desktop monopoly to boost their
>I never wanted to be rich- I just want to be left the hell alone. The way I see it, we don't need the "International" corporations of the world. And that includes IBM.
How many components of the PC you wrote this drivel on, do you think were designed and created by "International" corporations? Last I checked, Slashdot wasn't a non-profit charity either. It looks to me like you're the one who won't leave corporations alone. After all you went through all the effort of buying the hardware, the software, the internet access and then typing in the domain name to get here.
You don't think this is fun for them?
>So what culture am I a part of if I want to strangle someone every time they use any kind of emoticon at all?
=)
>Someone who is both anti-Copyright and pro-Free Software would advocate the elimination of copyright in exchange for enshrining the 4 essential freedoms of software users in law
Which is why I said the "copyright abolitionists" are trying to have it both ways.
On one end they're arguing that the act of "sharing" or "copying" doesn't hurt anyone (a dubious statement to begin with considering the cost of certain arrangements of bits, like Lord of the Rings movies, can run into hundreds of millions of dollars), and essentially argue for the lifting of all restrictions governing intellectual property.
On the other hand, it isn't enough for them to simply lift the restriction and in the case of software, have it be governed by an MIT style license as they want to imbue IP with provisions and restrictions that enforce sharing (like the GPL-type licenses currently do). One of the big reasons for the existence of GPL is that by forcing changes to be released, you're not taking advantage of the community that might have done most of the work - in FSF-speak, GPL ensures you're not taking the "freedom" to study and improve the program away from anyone. So in the end it seems like this group does in fact acknowledges that completely unrestricted sharing does hurt someone.
The author is playing with words. At the end of the day a viral license like the GPL cannot exist without laws that acknowledge the "specialness" of intellectual property. You can't GPL a hammer.
.. yadda yadda..). The former doesn't need any copyright law, the latter certainly does. I think "copyright abolitionists" are trying to have it both ways here. The author certainly looks like a guy who is trying to reconcile something like the GPL (which I'm sure is perceived as a very good thing in the circles he hangs out) with his ideological beliefs about copyright. At the end of it all, it comes off as a clumsy argument.
>Imagine if we had laws that did away with most prohibitions against sharing, but that enforced crediting and permitted authors to enforce GPL-like provisions requiring sharing.
Considering that copyright law has no prohibition against sharing (after all, releasing your work as creative commons is as simple as cut-pasting a line of text) and thanks to GPL and similar licenses, copyright can have provisions to enforce sharing - I think I can imagine a world such as this - we live in it. What the author is arguing is that every work should be released with a mandatory GPL-like or maybe Creative Commons-type license.
>Thus, to say that the GPL depends on copyright is like saying that reading depends on scribes.
No.. the GPL is a license tested in court and found wholly within the realm of current copyright law.
>The basic argument of copyright abolitionists is that people should be free to share when sharing does not result in any diminution of supply.
I understand that argument even though I don't agree with it, but there's another point here. Is "free to share" the same as "forced to share"? After all, people are free to share MIT licensed code, but are forced to share GPL licensed code (provided that they made changes to it and distributed the binary
You lost credibility by including Mario Sunshine as A+ title. Tales of Symphonia and Skies of Arcadia were average RPGs when measured against the competition on the PS2. >The GameCube's library might be small, but it's pound for pound, probably the best console library in existance. Ha!
Why the heck do you need a separate clause for "online-worlds". The current tax-code seems to handle online property pretty well. If I find a l337 battle axe in Diablo 2 and sell it on ebay thats income that by-law I have to declare (so that it can be taxed). Same with Second Life and WoW. All real-monteray transaction already need to be declared.
Where is the problem?
>That is just not possible and proves that our way of life is NOT sustainable in the long run without drastic reductions in energy use or population.
All it proves is that biofuels are not the sole answer. Nuclear power can make-up any deficiencies.
>Even at that, I will not spend $200. I might spend $140. And that's for the full version (4gb+, multi-core, 64bit, etc). Otherwise they can just eat it. The only reason I ever need to jump off my solaris, debian or OSX boxes is to play games. Period.
Then get ready to get on your knees and pucker-up because in a few years, games will no longer support XP. And no - you won't get a discount for Vista. Full-price for you bitch. =)
your hatred of Dvorak is greater than your hatred of cell phone companies + your love of municipal wifi.
>You know that the many US lawmakers who are in bed with special interests are ready to jump all over this study. One more chance to "discredit" global warming.
Well.. If its not true than it deserves to be discredited.
Or are you saying this particular study does not actually discredit man-made global warming?
>What about the fact that we are facing extinction of staggering number of species, due to our mismanagement of the earth? What about the fact that 20% of the world population doesn't have access to clean water?
What does that have to do with (human or non-human) global warming?
>Vista security is..A Dialog box asking if you wish to run the exploit or not
Thats pretty much Linux and Mac security as well. At the end of the day if a user is committed to running screensaver.exe (or screensaver.bin) locally.. there is very little you can do to stop him.
>Uh. What good is Napster with DRM if you can get it elsewhere without DRM?
Napster's "to Go" service allows you to download unlimited songs which will play for as long as you pay the monthly fee. Its good for people who want to listen to lots of music without incurring the cost of actually buying all that music (and who want to be be legal). Why would people want to rent a movie when they could just buy one? They just do.
Why do we have to live in a world that has either no DRM or is all DRM?
Why not restrict DRM to rented content such as the Napster service that allows you to download and listen to unlimited amount of music provided you keep paying your monthly fee. I like that service and I don't want to see it go. On the other front, I also want to buy some music and movies to keep forever - so in this case, why not sell it to me DRM-free?
This sounds to me like a win-win situation and certainly a good compromise.
How about DRM for 'rented content' (movies or music subscriptions for example) and no DRM for bought content?
Why do they assume people will throw perfectly good computer hardware out? Some might but enough to make a difference?
Vista will work perfectly well on non-DRM capable hardware, only DRMed media will play with *reduced* quality - and frankly with pirate media so readily available, why would anyone worry about that? And even if that were not true, why assume that people will not simply sell or give away their XP machines to other who just need Internet and Word. Then there are people who will simply load Linux on that hardware or even continue using Windows XP as backup machine.
I think the label "environmental-wackos" applies to these guys. Totally baseless accusations. Maybe they can find a link between Vista and Global Warming.
Vista is getting (rightfully) a lot of bad press because of DRM, but where is OSX in this debate? As far as I can tell, Apple will be/and probably already is, going down the same route as Microsoft. OSX will support HDCP and the protected path from OS to video source, just like Vista. I think we should be a little fair here and burn them both?
"Last time I checked I couldn't see any evidence for more than 3 dimensions (+time as a 4th) anywhere"
Didn't Einstein show the universe curves into the 4th dimension?
I'd rather have variable pricing on digital music than Apple's FairPlay DRM.
.. nuts to Apple.
If going with vanilla mp3 disrupts iTunes' business model
Maybe if you hadn't re-defined the word "free", you wouldn't need to explain it so much.
Its the "Alanis Morissette" definition of irony.
suffix -pedia
DRM is what sours the deal for me. If I bought a track, I want to be able (for instance) to put that track on (for instance) my PSP. I want to be able to back it up, I want to be able to move it to the house media server, I want to be able to play it in my car and frankly anywhere else that I am. Looking in iTunes and seeing "protected track" annoys the heck out of me and totally turned me off to the iTunes store. It was never a price problem. Exactly. What really irks me is that DRM punishes the honest people. iTunes is (unofficially) competing with file sharing sites. Obviously they will never beat them on price, but what's unacceptable is that they are losing in the quality department. From Limewire and others I can pull music that will work on every device I own (occasionally with higher bitrates too), while iTunes tracks work only on the iPod, and Napster tracks work only wmv enabled devices. This is absolutely asinine. I might be wrong on this but I have a feeling that DRMed music will not handle the computer upgrade cycle well. That is, because there is usually a restriction on the number of devices you can transfer your music too, sooner or later you will hit that just through upgrading to new systems. I don't think I heard too many complaints about this, so it might not be true. I also don't understand why the music industry doesn't launch a service that sells normal mp3 music (with iTunes prices) and run it for a year or two to see if can be successful.
You're right. I was a bit off.
The low cost of GPLd software is a consequence of unfettered competion, not the GPL. Something to warm the heart of every capitalist.
Not really. It's a consequence of having the right to re-distribute the source code.