DVDs are way more sensitive to damage than CDs, which were not that robust in the first place. It seems to me that every new optical format will be progressively more sensitive to scratches and other kinds of surface damage/warping.
While my need for high-capacity data storage is ever-growing, just like everybody else's, I don't put much hope into optical media anymore.
I just buy a new hard drive, swap it out and put stuff on it.
It's faster, more reliable and takes up less space. It's just a bit less portable, is all.
The only way I'm getting a Blu-Ray or any other contender format, current or future, is if my new laptop comes with a compatible drive. Otherwise... I don't really care, and I doubt it that I ever will.
I am not trying to advocate piracy, but piracy does not equal lost sales or even lost revenue. Piracy is potential sales lost at best. That does not mean I think piracy should be ignored or that there should not consequences, but call it for what it really is.
I agree completely. However, when you deliberately avoid purchasing something from certain companies and seek out to pirate it for "political" reasons, that is a lost sale. And through the rape of logic so common in these situations, I see the danger of it becoming true by law.
Somewhere along the way we as a society have forgotten and lost track of the fact that copyrights and patents are not a right, they are a privilege granted by the other members of society for very specific reasons.
Privileges are more readily defended than rights. Do note that companies more readily and more ferociously defend these privileges than consumers do their rights.
When consumers finally wake up, though, a revolution may occur.
If they fail to do the right thing, well, they're done. Stick a fork in them. The nations of the world would prefer to return to the bad old days of setting their own standards and negotiating equivalence by treaty. They will not stand for having their standards dictated to them by a US corporation, even through a puppet ISO.
Actually, the nations of the world in general will bend over and spread'em for both the US and their corporations with little or no questions asked, and a Thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another-sir afterwards.
Were it not like that, OOXML would not have passed through ISO with so little opposition, i.e. the opposition would not have been quashed so easily.
Living in one of these nations, I cannot begin to tell you how much it saddens me.
ISO doesn't just certify software.
Maybe the next poorly conceived ISO spec to get railroaded through will have real world safety implications.
I'd consider having to buy an expensive program for a not at all cheap OS just to open a standardized document a real-world consequence. And with a limited budget that is expected to feed my family, for instance, I'd even call it a safety implication.
Other possible implications are left as an exercise for the reader.
Some of us here are educators, in one way or another. It is our duty to ram this point home to future generations.
Change is possible, but we have to work rather hard to achieve it.
3) MediaDefender is primarily funded by copyright holders, the irony being that the copyrighted works have absolutely no value if there is no demand. If XYZ studio, producer or artist employs the services of MediaDefender, do not purchase their products. Simple.
If you then download (pirate) their products, though, you validate the argument that piracy == lost sales.
Assuming for a brief moment that copyright infringement is theft, just for the purpose of this analogy...
If I broke into your house and put someone else's stuff in your room, then phoned the police that you have stolen property in your room... how nice would that be?
As long as Excel and Word macros are ubiquitously used and locked tightly (not to mention the piles of features built into both apps), Google Docs will have a very hard time prying open Microsoft Office's dominance. Businesses are so dependent on them, in fact, that it would be much more feasible and secure for them to tunnel VNC/Remote Desktop sessions through SSH or VPN and run software off a central application server.
You mean, all the VBA macros in older versions of MS Office, which will not work in new versions of MS Office, but will in OpenOffice.org?
Just asking, since I heard somewhere that OO.o is the basis for Google Docs...
... so, you answer nearly all of them correctly.
Except for the precious few, which, say, redirect you to almost exact copies of pages which take your credit card data.
My estimate is that the mere fact that they were willing to change their usual policy to that extent shows how much weaker their market position has become.
Most new sites, as far as I've noticed, are coded to standards. Most of the others are no longer "Best viewed under IE 6.0" either. Firefox holds about 25% of the global browser marketshare, and over 40% in certain European countries.
Microsoft did not switch to standards because of the goodness of their software-making hearts. They did it because there is no longer any other game in town.
Of course, that does not mean they will not try to subvert standards at some later date, when they have stopped bleeding users and maybe even regained some markertshare. But for now, standards are of utmost importance -- without them, they know they will continue bleeding users to other browsers.
It has to mean something when you have the OS monopoly, when you've used it to gain browser monopoly, and now you're still losing.
I welcome Microsoft's new strategy because it will not help only Microsoft, but also all the others. Unless, of course, people fail to update their sites and Microsoft remains the only browser capable of rendering them. But they are in a minority.
You mean, besides the fact that by the time Vista booted on one of them, the battery would have died...
Oh, so is that the reason for the battery upgrade?
Actually, they are buying twice as much hardware as they would otherwise need, according to TFA. Er, not that I read it or anything, I swear,....
Don't worry, your secret is safe with us.
Real Slashdotters not only fail to read TFAs, but they also completely miss any and all relevant information in other people's posts.
Therefore, someone may hook on your claim that Google is not skimping on hardware and try to argue that they, in fact, do. Your admission to having read TFA will go completely unnoticed.
And before you ask yourself how come I noticed it: I didn't.
And besides, I'm new here.
I suspect you will shortly be entertaining some gentlemen in dark suits with earpieces. I hear they have no sense of humor concerning this particular subject.
While I don't understand why dark suits should have earpieces, I do not doubt in the least that they have no sense of humor whatsoever.
All the funny suits I've seen in my life have been brightly colored.
Slashdot Mirror
DVDs are way more sensitive to damage than CDs, which were not that robust in the first place. It seems to me that every new optical format will be progressively more sensitive to scratches and other kinds of surface damage/warping.
While my need for high-capacity data storage is ever-growing, just like everybody else's, I don't put much hope into optical media anymore.
I just buy a new hard drive, swap it out and put stuff on it.
It's faster, more reliable and takes up less space. It's just a bit less portable, is all.
The only way I'm getting a Blu-Ray or any other contender format, current or future, is if my new laptop comes with a compatible drive. Otherwise... I don't really care, and I doubt it that I ever will.
Really, I seem to remember some of these GUI changes from the KOffice GUI design contest a year or two ago. So who exactly are they copying?
The scope of a tragedy is only assessed by the survivors.
Don't despair yet. We're giving this issue the one thing it cannot stand: Light.
Are you saying this issue is kind of like a cockroach?
I agree completely. However, when you deliberately avoid purchasing something from certain companies and seek out to pirate it for "political" reasons, that is a lost sale. And through the rape of logic so common in these situations, I see the danger of it becoming true by law.
Somewhere along the way we as a society have forgotten and lost track of the fact that copyrights and patents are not a right, they are a privilege granted by the other members of society for very specific reasons.Privileges are more readily defended than rights. Do note that companies more readily and more ferociously defend these privileges than consumers do their rights.
When consumers finally wake up, though, a revolution may occur.
If they fail to do the right thing, well, they're done. Stick a fork in them. The nations of the world would prefer to return to the bad old days of setting their own standards and negotiating equivalence by treaty. They will not stand for having their standards dictated to them by a US corporation, even through a puppet ISO.
Actually, the nations of the world in general will bend over and spread'em for both the US and their corporations with little or no questions asked, and a Thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another-sir afterwards.
Were it not like that, OOXML would not have passed through ISO with so little opposition, i.e. the opposition would not have been quashed so easily.
Living in one of these nations, I cannot begin to tell you how much it saddens me.
I'd consider having to buy an expensive program for a not at all cheap OS just to open a standardized document a real-world consequence. And with a limited budget that is expected to feed my family, for instance, I'd even call it a safety implication.
Other possible implications are left as an exercise for the reader.
Some of us here are educators, in one way or another. It is our duty to ram this point home to future generations.
Change is possible, but we have to work rather hard to achieve it.
If you then download (pirate) their products, though, you validate the argument that piracy == lost sales.
'Tis tricky ground, that.
Even better: how would we go about conning^Wgetting them to DoS their own servers?
Thank you for the correction.
Seems to me you do not take money from women.
I find that... shortsighted.
And kinda sexist.
Do you have a newsletter?
Assuming for a brief moment that copyright infringement is theft, just for the purpose of this analogy...
If I broke into your house and put someone else's stuff in your room, then phoned the police that you have stolen property in your room... how nice would that be?
I only have one question: how can we retaliate?
And we can argue until the civilization collapses.
Lazy and malevolent, that's the ticket. ;)
Maybe the geeks should go on strike.
No patches; no tech support; no maintenance -- until things are organized properly.
You mean, all the VBA macros in older versions of MS Office, which will not work in new versions of MS Office, but will in OpenOffice.org?
Just asking, since I heard somewhere that OO.o is the basis for Google Docs...
... so, you answer nearly all of them correctly.
Except for the precious few, which, say, redirect you to almost exact copies of pages which take your credit card data.
Or did I get it wrong?
Yes, it is a very good move.
The question is, how much good will it do them?
My estimate is that the mere fact that they were willing to change their usual policy to that extent shows how much weaker their market position has become.
Most new sites, as far as I've noticed, are coded to standards. Most of the others are no longer "Best viewed under IE 6.0" either. Firefox holds about 25% of the global browser marketshare, and over 40% in certain European countries.
Microsoft did not switch to standards because of the goodness of their software-making hearts. They did it because there is no longer any other game in town.
Of course, that does not mean they will not try to subvert standards at some later date, when they have stopped bleeding users and maybe even regained some markertshare. But for now, standards are of utmost importance -- without them, they know they will continue bleeding users to other browsers.
It has to mean something when you have the OS monopoly, when you've used it to gain browser monopoly, and now you're still losing.
I welcome Microsoft's new strategy because it will not help only Microsoft, but also all the others. Unless, of course, people fail to update their sites and Microsoft remains the only browser capable of rendering them. But they are in a minority.
You mean, besides the fact that by the time Vista booted on one of them, the battery would have died...
Oh, so is that the reason for the battery upgrade?
I just spent all of my mod points, so here's a virtual +1 Hilarious.
Don't worry, your secret is safe with us.
Real Slashdotters not only fail to read TFAs, but they also completely miss any and all relevant information in other people's posts.
Therefore, someone may hook on your claim that Google is not skimping on hardware and try to argue that they, in fact, do. Your admission to having read TFA will go completely unnoticed.
And before you ask yourself how come I noticed it: I didn't.
And besides, I'm new here.
Therefore, I should urge Windows users not to use IE after dropping Safari.
You just never know.
Because I have a very special fan. Check my journal for details. ;)
So how do Linux servers compare to NT servers? Have you done any comparions?
While I don't understand why dark suits should have earpieces, I do not doubt in the least that they have no sense of humor whatsoever.
All the funny suits I've seen in my life have been brightly colored.