Difficult to see why this is surprising. Its a fairly close business relationship. Office for the Mac is a critical element of keeping the platform alive. Apple and Microsoft have similar approaches to the software business - they both believe in controlling the experience - the display manager, window manager, desktop environment. There are no published APIs which will let another party make a competing window manager for either OSX or XP/Vista. Both also believe in restricting the availability of the applications software to promote their OS. But both have been tempted outside this, though not as far as Linux. Neither one makes applications software for Linux. Both do for the others OS. Apple for instance has released Filemaker for Windows.
Despite the feeling that many Mac people have that Micsrosoft must be the enemy, they are in fact very close. The analogy might be if Coke and Pepsi were to share procurement of some of their flavorings.
The real threat to both is similar. It is that Open Source makes possible unlimited quantities of derivative works. In the end, this must dethrone both MS and Apple. In the end, they will not be able to compete with a business model which promotes unlimited derivative works. It destroys entry barriers on which they both depend. It is more cost effective, quicker to market and will lead to better quality products.
So, when they are sitting together on stage, I would like to see Walt, instead of asking silly questions about linking hardware and software and end to end models, and similar trivia, cut to the main issue.
He should ask as follows. We know that in essentials you both have the same closed business model. How do you think that business model is going to compete against open source in a world in which hardware is open, and open source allows an unlimited quantity of derivative works to run on it?
It is not an April Fool story, it is not the Mail inventing news. Its a real report commissioned by the Historical Association. The point which is made in the body of the report is exactly that reported by the Mail. The worst that can be said is that the Mail gives rather more weight to this accurately reported section than to other parts of the 48 page report. This will be found on page 15:
"For example, a history department in a northern city recently avoided selecting the Holocaust as a topic for GCSE coursework for fear of confronting anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils. In another department, teachers were strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the history of the state of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination. In another history department, the Holocaust was taught despite anti-Semitic sentiment among some pupils, but the same department deliberately avoided teaching the Crusades at Key Stage 3 because their balanced treatment of the topic would have directly challenged what was taught in some local mosques."
So, at least in the opinion of the researchers, this is happening in at least some schools in the UK.
Another difficulty is, most laptops will simply sign on to the first available open net. You have lets say a totally non technical partner, and you share a laptop. Off she goes to another city, turns on, picks up mail. How are you going to start explaining that yes, there was a net she could have used lawfully where she was staying, but the one the machine signed on to was not that? How are you going to start showing a liberal arts major with no interest whatever in this stuff how to configure wireless on a linux or windows laptop?
It really does seem that the combination of the way laptops and wifi points are supplied is an invitation to everyone ending up using one that they are not entitled to, at least some of the time. Especially if they are not technical. Take Norwich UK for instance, I was reading today that like lots of UK cities now, it has a municipal net that you are entitled to use. Can you see the average person realizing that their machine has not signed on to that, but onto a nearby cafe? Or apartment? Should they realize it?
Suppose the argument is accepted that by having an unsecured network, you are tacitly granting permission to use. If this connection is then used by miscreants for felonious purposes, are you then liable for the violations?
Like, someone drives by, uses your connexion which you have left open, and downloads illegal material - perhaps its illegal porn, perhaps its in violation of copyright. Are you liable in any way? Like, if you left a loaded gun on the table in the hall and the door open?
Alternatively, if the answer is no, you have not tacitly granted permission to use, does this fact give you immunity against any charges when the connexion is used for illegal purposes by someone else without your knowledge or consent?
The issue with hormone suppression is that it works for a while only. What happens is, the cancer grows in the presence of androgen, which it requires. You shut off androgen (it used to be done in the past either by surgical castration or by giving estrogen), and it stops growing and shrinks. The psa level then falls. You might think great. Unpleasant, but you live.
Wrong. After some period of time it becomes hormone refractory. That is, it accommodates to the absence of androgen and resumes its growth. PSA rises again. This, under the previous regime, was basically a death sentence. When this happened, the next stage was metastizing to the bones and a very painful end. It was the reason why hormone suppression was the treatment of last resort and was used after a recurrence following surgery. Surgery has unpleasant side effects too, but in effect, hormone treatment was being saved to the last moment, so as not to exhaust it until you really needed it.
However, it is alleged, and I have never had this or known anyone who has, that if the hormone suppression is done with drugs, it can be stopped when PSA levels rise in the absence of hormones. At that point, androgen production resumes, and the cancer, having adapted to the absence of androgen, is now suppressed by its presence. Supposedly at that point PSA levels fall again. You then wait unti they rise, and go back on the hormone suppressants. You can see why this is much better than surgical castration, if the argument is valid. Castration eliminates one source of hormones permanently. What you want to do is eliminate two sources temporarily. To explain.
There are two sources of androgen, the testes and the pituitary. The last time I looked, the advocates of this treatment believed in a combination of the two drug classes which suppress each source of the hormones, forget which they are - one is zoladex, and also to use finasteride (or there's a more recent version of this which is said to be more effective). The combination of the three is said to totally interrupt the hormonal supply which nourishes the cancer, and to be more efficacious in suppressing it. You do this for around a year. The period mentioned was some months after PSA levels fall to zero. But not too long. This results in temporary total suppression, rather than permanent partial.
If you want to know more about this, research Lupron, Flutamide, Casodex and Zoladex and Finasteride. Estradiol has also been suggested via skin patches as having less side effects than the earlier methods of direct administration of estrogen.
Its a mess. And part of the problem is, most people on slashdot will probably find themselves, as amateurs, researching this for a relative who is older, fragile, and made very upset by having to deal with the condition. Not the easiest of people to do this sort of research for, and you'll be hampered by not doing the research for yourself. I might happily bet my own life on my judgment and research, but I understand very well why my older relative might look at this rather geeky young fellow and ask what the hell does he know?
Most of us are probably too young for it to be a personal concern, but it certainly is one for our fathers. This will be a great advance if confirmed and widely used.
The problem is the side effects of current treatments. They are fairly dire, including impotence and incontinence as very common (and probably underreported) side effects of surgery. Because most PCs are not aggressive, the main consequence of intensive screening programs is that we detect more non-aggressive cases, we then needlessly operate, and we thus needlessly produce unpleasant side effects in thousands of men who would have died with, but not of, non-aggressive PC. But, there was no way to know.
So if you could have some way of only treating those we really need to treat, it would have major quality of life implications for a lot of men.
The other question is, what the right treatment is. This is very personal and depends on risks and attitudes to it. It seems from a review of the literature by an amateur, that the treatment which offers the best risk reward ratio is Intermitten Hormone suppression. It is going to be unpleasant, but its temporary. Its not guaranteed to work - but neither is surgery, the recurrence rate is not trivial.
Biopsy is also not either totally reliable or particularly safe in itself. You can miss the tumour, if its small, if there is one. It is also possible that when biopsy is done under general anesthetic, the anesthetic itself can produce total urinary blockage in a man with benign enlargement.
All in all this is a very messy illness and its great that some real progress in diagnosis is being made.
Its pretty simple actually. Let us say that Newton's Principia is still copyright to his surviving family or college. What happens then? It rapidly happens that different expressions of the same idea start to proliferate, and so the value of the copyright falls to zero. Now the owners start to agitate for protection of the ideas. At that point, the society which permits it, freezes and ceases to innovate. We have the equivalent of the medieval guilds. At that point we see a brilliant illustration of the thoughts of the late great Mancur Olson.
Particular small groups in society will always find it to their advantage to impose costs many hundred or thousands or even millions of times what they themselves gain from measures which benefit them. if it costs America trillions, as long as I am better off with it than without it, what do I care? Even if my own gain is a few hundred.
So we will always have people agitating to impose restrictions on how others use what they conceive to be their ideas. They want rent. Its quite understandable, but the reply is, no thanks, its not in our interests. Yes, its in yours. Ours and yours are not the same.
The same basic thing applies to software patents, or patents or protection of methods. What society needs is for there to be innovation in method, but protection for any particular method. That way you get competition. Society needs the idea of the steam engine to be free, but for Watt or Newcomen to be protected in their particular implementation. Because it positively wants competition in steam engine design. But, it wants Watt or Newcomen to be incented to develop a new design, being sure they will profit from it.
So the correct reply to Mr Halperin is, we do not care about you. We are not trying to please you or be fair to you. We are trying to give you just enough protection to make you work harder.
What you are telling us is, we are doing OK. You still want more, you are still complaining.
The great interest of this is that it shows how much the current share price reflects expectations of the performance of the iPhone. It was a great dry run. Those who believe the price has built into it unrealistic expectations of the iPhone can now confidently make a wager using options, and pretty much know for sure that if the thing doesn't take off like a rocket, they are going to clean up.
Expect put option sales to rise gradually over the next week or so.
Nice posts. Do you not think this may be the power of open source? It places no limits either on demand or on derivative works. Derivative works and re-use of anything at all is always possible at any stage of any product. Surely, it must in the end outcompete the closed source model?
They are very good suggestions, but I would start somewhere a bit simpler.
Scott Graneman Linux Phrasebook -- this isa fairly small but amazingly comprehensive and very clear book on using the command line. The OReilly Pocket Linux is also good but much more limited. Ward How Linux Works -- fairly discursive, but once you've read it, you understand how it all works and the detail will slot into place Schroder Linux Cookbook (or actually, anything she writes) -- well, she's brilliant, doesn't cover everything, but what is covered is clear, detailed and after you work through it, you can do it, and you understand it. Linux in a Nutshell -- this is a sort of paper version of man, Graneman's book is a subset with more examples. But if you have this you can find every option in every command in an instant. Have it for reference.
I agree about slackware. Install slackware and work through their brilliant documentation. This is a good accompaniment to Ward's book.
Like most posters, you are not grasping the real issue. It is that Eulas cannot be legally binding if they contain provisions which are contrary to the local law. Now, the prohibition on running an OS on something different from what the seller would like (Mac OS on non-Apple hardware OR Vista on virtual platform) is contrary to the general prohibition on post-sales restraints on use. In all the OECD jurisdictions I am aware of, it is contrary to competition law to restrain the use someone makes of a product after he has bought it by a condition of sale. Whether it be software or hardware, computers or peanuts.
Sales versus licenses are another much misunderstood matter. If I walk out the door with a physical copy and no further financial obligations, it is is a sale. It doesn't matter what it is called. At the moment I can't buy a retail copy of OSX for Intel. But I can buy a retail copy of either Vista or Office or OSX for PPC. No attempt to tell me what to run either of them on is going to be enforceable. A license is going to a quite different sort of contract - it will have a term, payments and so on.
Many academic pricing schemes forbid the use of sold software for profit making purposes - programming languages for instance, Filemaker Developer packs were an example. It must be doubtful if these would hold up if tested in court.
So to conclude: Eulas are enforceable, or may be, but this one, like the Apple one on OSX, is not. And when you buy a retail copy of the OS, you've bought it.
This is not legal advice but a statement of opinion. Take professional advice on this matter before any actions.
And why exactly would it cannibalize their existing hardware sales?
Do you see the weird and twisted logic here. It is insisting that the reason people buy macs is the superior integration of hardware and software, and the better quality hardware, while also arguing that if buyers had a choice they would run X on generic hardware in a flash and cannibalize (interesting marketing term that) the existing hardware sales.
It makes absolutely no sense. Just like someone else arguing on this thread that a Mac mini is actually the same kind of buy as Vista Premium. No its not, one is hardware+OS, the other is an OS.
The question is, how they are going to stop it running on non-Apple branded hardware?
As to the legality, once you can buy a retail copy, whatever the Eula says, you are within the law in running it on whatever you want. You may be violating the Eula but it does not have the force of law.
You need to read Becks article. There is a problem with ice core CO2 measurements. There are real chemical measurements of the levels in the atmosphere since about 1800, and they don't agree with the ice cores. Beck has shown that the CO2 measurements are probably reliable. In addition there are issues with gas solubility and the effects of drilling. It is not clear that the amounts of CO2 found in ice cores are reliably those that existed in the atmosphere at the time of laydown. There are also curious anomalies of dating.
If you are a reasonably sceptical layman, it is not clear that CO2 levels in 1820 were any lower than today. Nor is it clear that the 20C fluctuations have any greater significance than the 19C ones.
If you want to deny this, start by asking a simple question. Of the total amount of CO2 emissions planet wide, what percentage is due to human industrial activity? Do the research, find out. The answer will surprise you.
If you look at the statistical history of CO2 and temperature two things leap out at you.
One is that CO2 rises followed, and did not precede, periods of warming. How then can they have caused them.
Two is that CO2 falls are unrelated to periods of cooling.
We have a quite long history of these two time series, and you cannot look at it without seeing that there is no causal relationship.
So why exactly does anyone think that lowering CO2 levels will produce cooling? It never has before. Let alone, why does anyone think that lowering man made CO2 will lower total atmospheric CO2.
The trend in Britain is increasingly for things to be forbidden not because they are against any law, but because some government employee objects to them. This is the effect of anti social behaviour orders, and the reason why civil liberties organisations are uneasy about them. They make behaviour which is perfectly lawful in general unlawful for just me, just now.
This extends the concept in the direction of orders without any court intervention by an anonymous official. We now have a situation in which someone can be doing something perfectly lawful, but he/she is given an order by a voice which can belong to anyone at all. Doubtless it will be made unlawful to disobey it.
One understands the difficulty with anti social behaviour, which is a real problem. But the answer surely is licensing hours, laws to repress public drunkneness... education...
Not really the point. The point is not, can you match an exact mac configuration at the same price. That's completely unimportant and proves nothing. The question is, if you are getting a machine for a job, do you actually need to spend what the mac costs. Or can you do better buying something different and cheaper?
In this case, its not can you buy 8 core 3Ghz identically equipped cheaper. Its after you have figured out you are just as well off with something with 4 slightly slower cores, what does that cost from Apple?
Same exact thing with a mini. Never mind what it costs to duplicate it. If you want a lowish end desktop with on board graphics, what does a decent one cost? A lot less than a mini.
Generally, the way to find out if a mac is reasonable value is to do it in reverse. Figure out what spec you need, then see what it costs you from different suppliers. Apple is almost always more expensive, often much more, because it has fewer models and fewer price points, so you are always trading up and buying more or different than you need. Often, as with the mini, the extra has to do with form factor and not performance.
Something similar happens with other consumer goods. If you want a car with specific designer label upholstery, you may well find that you cannot get an identical spec one cheaper than from one particular supplier. It doesn't mean it is good value for you. If you start out looking for a quiet comfortable sedan, you'll probably get just as functional or a more functional vehicle elsewhere for a lot less.
The Apple theologians always do it starting from the Mac partly because they are disingenuous and know the above as well as anyone. But its partly because they never seriously consider buying anything but a Mac, so the Mac product line is their standard of comparison.
However, for the rest of us, it is not.
Suppose some company operating in the US, a retailer, was supplied by an overseas company who insisted that there be no sales, or only sales at double the price, to certain ethnic or religious groups. They signed an agreement. After all, they wanted to sell the products. Or maybe they just did it without a written contract.
Do you think this would be either legal or excusable? Would you be all running around complaining about how Federal action was targetting overseas companies or whoever?
This is what is alleged to have happened. Apple is alleged to have signed contracts, or anyway decided, to operate a retail policy, which is contrary to the law of the jurisdiction. Don't do that. Just don't do it. Nothing else matters.
I do not think you have grasped the fairly simple point of the EC. You cannot enter into agreements or conduct yourself in the following way. You cannot run a store and then refuse to sell goods from it for transfer to other nation states in the EU. You cannot discriminate in sales by country of origin of customer. You cannot do this. And you cannot enter into an agreement to do it either.
If you do, you'll be busted. Very simple. Whatever else you do, do not do this.
I know of no other online store that operates multiple locations and tries to prevent people in one EU state from buying from the store in another EU state. Amazon certainly doesn't, for instance.
The reason is, they are terrified of the EU Competition Directorate taking an interest in them. Quite right too.
It makes no difference. The one legally responsible is the one operating the sales outlets. If I am a car dealer, I cannot refuse to sell to someone from another country. If I reply that the auto maker made me do it, the auto maker will get busted too. If you engage in conspiracy to commit anti competitive behaviour, both parties are busted. Makes no difference whose idea it was.
1) Its not about coding. Having different release dates in different languages would be fine, even within the EU.
2) Its not about DRM. Locking to players may or may not be OK in the EU, but its a different issue.
3) Its not about having the same price. No-one says you have to sell for the same price everywhere.
4) Its not about Apple being forced to do things by the record companies. It doesn't matter who wanted it or didn't.
5) It is not the same as buying stuff in Japan and the US, because, you see, Japan and the US are not part of a single market established by treaty and with a transnational body, the Commission, regulating conduct of companies.
What is it about then?
It is unlawful in the EU to restrict imports and exports from one country to another, because that is in restraint of trade and anti competitive. You can sell it for 600 in Germany and 300 in France. But what you cannot do is prevent the Germans from buying the stuff in France.
Consequently, it makes no difference what the record companies or Apple think or say to each other. Apple cannot enter into an agreement to restrict sales from its UK sites to UK cardholders. If it did sign such an agreement, it is unlawful. It will have entered into a conspiracy to commit anti competitive behaviour. Along with whoever it signed the agreement with. They will both be fried for it. If it just did it off its own initiative, only it committed the unlawful acts. If it really did.
So please guys, stop blaming the record companies and exonerating Apple, its all irrelevant. We have, allegedly, one or more parties engaged in anti competitive practices which are unlawful in the EU. If so, one or both are going to get busted. Whoever instigated it is irrelevant.
If you want to get a better handle on it, think violating FTC rules on interstate commerce in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
Difficult to see why this is surprising. Its a fairly close business relationship. Office for the Mac is a critical element of keeping the platform alive. Apple and Microsoft have similar approaches to the software business - they both believe in controlling the experience - the display manager, window manager, desktop environment. There are no published APIs which will let another party make a competing window manager for either OSX or XP/Vista. Both also believe in restricting the availability of the applications software to promote their OS. But both have been tempted outside this, though not as far as Linux. Neither one makes applications software for Linux. Both do for the others OS. Apple for instance has released Filemaker for Windows.
Despite the feeling that many Mac people have that Micsrosoft must be the enemy, they are in fact very close. The analogy might be if Coke and Pepsi were to share procurement of some of their flavorings.
The real threat to both is similar. It is that Open Source makes possible unlimited quantities of derivative works. In the end, this must dethrone both MS and Apple. In the end, they will not be able to compete with a business model which promotes unlimited derivative works. It destroys entry barriers on which they both depend. It is more cost effective, quicker to market and will lead to better quality products.
So, when they are sitting together on stage, I would like to see Walt, instead of asking silly questions about linking hardware and software and end to end models, and similar trivia, cut to the main issue.
He should ask as follows. We know that in essentials you both have the same closed business model. How do you think that business model is going to compete against open source in a world in which hardware is open, and open source allows an unlimited quantity of derivative works to run on it?
http://www.haevents.org.uk/PastEvents/Others/Teach %20report.pdf
It is not an April Fool story, it is not the Mail inventing news. Its a real report commissioned by the Historical Association. The point which is made in the body of the report is exactly that reported by the Mail. The worst that can be said is that the Mail gives rather more weight to this accurately reported section than to other parts of the 48 page report. This will be found on page 15:
"For example, a history department in a northern
city recently avoided selecting the Holocaust as a
topic for GCSE coursework for fear of confronting
anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among
some Muslim pupils. In another department, teachers
were strongly challenged by some Christian parents
for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict and
the history of the state of Israel that did not accord
with the teachings of their denomination. In another
history department, the Holocaust was taught despite
anti-Semitic sentiment among some pupils, but
the same department deliberately avoided teaching
the Crusades at Key Stage 3 because their balanced
treatment of the topic would have directly challenged
what was taught in some local mosques."
So, at least in the opinion of the researchers, this is happening in at least some schools in the UK.
Another difficulty is, most laptops will simply sign on to the first available open net. You have lets say a totally non technical partner, and you share a laptop. Off she goes to another city, turns on, picks up mail. How are you going to start explaining that yes, there was a net she could have used lawfully where she was staying, but the one the machine signed on to was not that? How are you going to start showing a liberal arts major with no interest whatever in this stuff how to configure wireless on a linux or windows laptop?
It really does seem that the combination of the way laptops and wifi points are supplied is an invitation to everyone ending up using one that they are not entitled to, at least some of the time. Especially if they are not technical. Take Norwich UK for instance, I was reading today that like lots of UK cities now, it has a municipal net that you are entitled to use. Can you see the average person realizing that their machine has not signed on to that, but onto a nearby cafe? Or apartment? Should they realize it?
Suppose the argument is accepted that by having an unsecured network, you are tacitly granting permission to use. If this connection is then used by miscreants for felonious purposes, are you then liable for the violations?
Like, someone drives by, uses your connexion which you have left open, and downloads illegal material - perhaps its illegal porn, perhaps its in violation of copyright. Are you liable in any way? Like, if you left a loaded gun on the table in the hall and the door open?
Alternatively, if the answer is no, you have not tacitly granted permission to use, does this fact give you immunity against any charges when the connexion is used for illegal purposes by someone else without your knowledge or consent?
The issue with hormone suppression is that it works for a while only. What happens is, the cancer grows in the presence of androgen, which it requires. You shut off androgen (it used to be done in the past either by surgical castration or by giving estrogen), and it stops growing and shrinks. The psa level then falls. You might think great. Unpleasant, but you live.
Wrong. After some period of time it becomes hormone refractory. That is, it accommodates to the absence of androgen and resumes its growth. PSA rises again. This, under the previous regime, was basically a death sentence. When this happened, the next stage was metastizing to the bones and a very painful end. It was the reason why hormone suppression was the treatment of last resort and was used after a recurrence following surgery. Surgery has unpleasant side effects too, but in effect, hormone treatment was being saved to the last moment, so as not to exhaust it until you really needed it.
However, it is alleged, and I have never had this or known anyone who has, that if the hormone suppression is done with drugs, it can be stopped when PSA levels rise in the absence of hormones. At that point, androgen production resumes, and the cancer, having adapted to the absence of androgen, is now suppressed by its presence. Supposedly at that point PSA levels fall again. You then wait unti they rise, and go back on the hormone suppressants. You can see why this is much better than surgical castration, if the argument is valid. Castration eliminates one source of hormones permanently. What you want to do is eliminate two sources temporarily. To explain.
There are two sources of androgen, the testes and the pituitary. The last time I looked, the advocates of this treatment believed in a combination of the two drug classes which suppress each source of the hormones, forget which they are - one is zoladex, and also to use finasteride (or there's a more recent version of this which is said to be more effective). The combination of the three is said to totally interrupt the hormonal supply which nourishes the cancer, and to be more efficacious in suppressing it. You do this for around a year. The period mentioned was some months after PSA levels fall to zero. But not too long. This results in temporary total suppression, rather than permanent partial.
If you want to know more about this, research Lupron, Flutamide, Casodex and Zoladex and Finasteride. Estradiol has also been suggested via skin patches as having less side effects than the earlier methods of direct administration of estrogen.
Its a mess. And part of the problem is, most people on slashdot will probably find themselves, as amateurs, researching this for a relative who is older, fragile, and made very upset by having to deal with the condition. Not the easiest of people to do this sort of research for, and you'll be hampered by not doing the research for yourself. I might happily bet my own life on my judgment and research, but I understand very well why my older relative might look at this rather geeky young fellow and ask what the hell does he know?
Most of us are probably too young for it to be a personal concern, but it certainly is one for our fathers. This will be a great advance if confirmed and widely used.
The problem is the side effects of current treatments. They are fairly dire, including impotence and incontinence as very common (and probably underreported) side effects of surgery. Because most PCs are not aggressive, the main consequence of intensive screening programs is that we detect more non-aggressive cases, we then needlessly operate, and we thus needlessly produce unpleasant side effects in thousands of men who would have died with, but not of, non-aggressive PC. But, there was no way to know.
So if you could have some way of only treating those we really need to treat, it would have major quality of life implications for a lot of men.
The other question is, what the right treatment is. This is very personal and depends on risks and attitudes to it. It seems from a review of the literature by an amateur, that the treatment which offers the best risk reward ratio is Intermitten Hormone suppression. It is going to be unpleasant, but its temporary. Its not guaranteed to work - but neither is surgery, the recurrence rate is not trivial.
Biopsy is also not either totally reliable or particularly safe in itself. You can miss the tumour, if its small, if there is one. It is also possible that when biopsy is done under general anesthetic, the anesthetic itself can produce total urinary blockage in a man with benign enlargement.
All in all this is a very messy illness and its great that some real progress in diagnosis is being made.
Its pretty simple actually. Let us say that Newton's Principia is still copyright to his surviving family or college. What happens then? It rapidly happens that different expressions of the same idea start to proliferate, and so the value of the copyright falls to zero. Now the owners start to agitate for protection of the ideas. At that point, the society which permits it, freezes and ceases to innovate. We have the equivalent of the medieval guilds. At that point we see a brilliant illustration of the thoughts of the late great Mancur Olson.
Particular small groups in society will always find it to their advantage to impose costs many hundred or thousands or even millions of times what they themselves gain from measures which benefit them. if it costs America trillions, as long as I am better off with it than without it, what do I care? Even if my own gain is a few hundred.
So we will always have people agitating to impose restrictions on how others use what they conceive to be their ideas. They want rent. Its quite understandable, but the reply is, no thanks, its not in our interests. Yes, its in yours. Ours and yours are not the same.
The same basic thing applies to software patents, or patents or protection of methods. What society needs is for there to be innovation in method, but protection for any particular method. That way you get competition. Society needs the idea of the steam engine to be free, but for Watt or Newcomen to be protected in their particular implementation. Because it positively wants competition in steam engine design. But, it wants Watt or Newcomen to be incented to develop a new design, being sure they will profit from it.
So the correct reply to Mr Halperin is, we do not care about you. We are not trying to please you or be fair to you. We are trying to give you just enough protection to make you work harder.
What you are telling us is, we are doing OK. You still want more, you are still complaining.
When we will worry is when you stop complaining.
Best wishes,
Society
The great interest of this is that it shows how much the current share price reflects expectations of the performance of the iPhone. It was a great dry run. Those who believe the price has built into it unrealistic expectations of the iPhone can now confidently make a wager using options, and pretty much know for sure that if the thing doesn't take off like a rocket, they are going to clean up.
Expect put option sales to rise gradually over the next week or so.
Its actually less even than that. No matter what you sign, it will not be unpheld by any court if
(i) it violates consumer protection laws or
(ii) it commits you to colluding in anti comptitive restrive practices
Nice posts. Do you not think this may be the power of open source? It places no limits either on demand or on derivative works. Derivative works and re-use of anything at all is always possible at any stage of any product. Surely, it must in the end outcompete the closed source model?
They are very good suggestions, but I would start somewhere a bit simpler.
Scott Graneman Linux Phrasebook
-- this isa fairly small but amazingly comprehensive and very clear book on using the command line. The OReilly Pocket Linux is also good but much more limited.
Ward How Linux Works
-- fairly discursive, but once you've read it, you understand how it all works and the detail will slot into place
Schroder Linux Cookbook (or actually, anything she writes)
-- well, she's brilliant, doesn't cover everything, but what is covered is clear, detailed and after you work through it, you can do it, and you understand it.
Linux in a Nutshell
-- this is a sort of paper version of man, Graneman's book is a subset with more examples. But if you have this you can find every option in every command in an instant. Have it for reference.
I agree about slackware. Install slackware and work through their brilliant documentation. This is a good accompaniment to Ward's book.
Like most posters, you are not grasping the real issue. It is that Eulas cannot be legally binding if they contain provisions which are contrary to the local law. Now, the prohibition on running an OS on something different from what the seller would like (Mac OS on non-Apple hardware OR Vista on virtual platform) is contrary to the general prohibition on post-sales restraints on use. In all the OECD jurisdictions I am aware of, it is contrary to competition law to restrain the use someone makes of a product after he has bought it by a condition of sale. Whether it be software or hardware, computers or peanuts.
Sales versus licenses are another much misunderstood matter. If I walk out the door with a physical copy and no further financial obligations, it is is a sale. It doesn't matter what it is called. At the moment I can't buy a retail copy of OSX for Intel. But I can buy a retail copy of either Vista or Office or OSX for PPC. No attempt to tell me what to run either of them on is going to be enforceable. A license is going to a quite different sort of contract - it will have a term, payments and so on.
Many academic pricing schemes forbid the use of sold software for profit making purposes - programming languages for instance, Filemaker Developer packs were an example. It must be doubtful if these would hold up if tested in court.
So to conclude: Eulas are enforceable, or may be, but this one, like the Apple one on OSX, is not. And when you buy a retail copy of the OS, you've bought it.
This is not legal advice but a statement of opinion. Take professional advice on this matter before any actions.
What killed the mac in enterprise was
overpriced hardware
unreliable hardware
underperforming hardware
single source hardware
Yes, it was a hardware company. And a terrible one. That's what killed OS9 even when it was way more advanced than its Windows competitors.
And why exactly would it cannibalize their existing hardware sales?
Do you see the weird and twisted logic here. It is insisting that the reason people buy macs is the superior integration of hardware and software, and the better quality hardware, while also arguing that if buyers had a choice they would run X on generic hardware in a flash and cannibalize (interesting marketing term that) the existing hardware sales.
It makes absolutely no sense. Just like someone else arguing on this thread that a Mac mini is actually the same kind of buy as Vista Premium. No its not, one is hardware+OS, the other is an OS.
"Yes, there are hacks out there to let people run OS X on Intel/AMD hardware. No, it's not legal."
Its perfectly legal. It just violates the Eula. Not the same thing.
The question is, how they are going to stop it running on non-Apple branded hardware?
As to the legality, once you can buy a retail copy, whatever the Eula says, you are within the law in running it on whatever you want. You may be violating the Eula but it does not have the force of law.
You need to read Becks article. There is a problem with ice core CO2 measurements. There are real chemical measurements of the levels in the atmosphere since about 1800, and they don't agree with the ice cores. Beck has shown that the CO2 measurements are probably reliable. In addition there are issues with gas solubility and the effects of drilling. It is not clear that the amounts of CO2 found in ice cores are reliably those that existed in the atmosphere at the time of laydown. There are also curious anomalies of dating.
If you are a reasonably sceptical layman, it is not clear that CO2 levels in 1820 were any lower than today. Nor is it clear that the 20C fluctuations have any greater significance than the 19C ones.
If you want to deny this, start by asking a simple question. Of the total amount of CO2 emissions planet wide, what percentage is due to human industrial activity? Do the research, find out. The answer will surprise you.
If you look at the statistical history of CO2 and temperature two things leap out at you.
One is that CO2 rises followed, and did not precede, periods of warming. How then can they have caused them.
Two is that CO2 falls are unrelated to periods of cooling.
We have a quite long history of these two time series, and you cannot look at it without seeing that there is no causal relationship.
So why exactly does anyone think that lowering CO2 levels will produce cooling? It never has before. Let alone, why does anyone think that lowering man made CO2 will lower total atmospheric CO2.
The trend in Britain is increasingly for things to be forbidden not because they are against any law, but because some government employee objects to them. This is the effect of anti social behaviour orders, and the reason why civil liberties organisations are uneasy about them. They make behaviour which is perfectly lawful in general unlawful for just me, just now.
This extends the concept in the direction of orders without any court intervention by an anonymous official. We now have a situation in which someone can be doing something perfectly lawful, but he/she is given an order by a voice which can belong to anyone at all. Doubtless it will be made unlawful to disobey it.
One understands the difficulty with anti social behaviour, which is a real problem. But the answer surely is licensing hours, laws to repress public drunkneness... education...
It cannot be this sort of thing can it?
Not really the point. The point is not, can you match an exact mac configuration at the same price. That's completely unimportant and proves nothing. The question is, if you are getting a machine for a job, do you actually need to spend what the mac costs. Or can you do better buying something different and cheaper? In this case, its not can you buy 8 core 3Ghz identically equipped cheaper. Its after you have figured out you are just as well off with something with 4 slightly slower cores, what does that cost from Apple? Same exact thing with a mini. Never mind what it costs to duplicate it. If you want a lowish end desktop with on board graphics, what does a decent one cost? A lot less than a mini. Generally, the way to find out if a mac is reasonable value is to do it in reverse. Figure out what spec you need, then see what it costs you from different suppliers. Apple is almost always more expensive, often much more, because it has fewer models and fewer price points, so you are always trading up and buying more or different than you need. Often, as with the mini, the extra has to do with form factor and not performance. Something similar happens with other consumer goods. If you want a car with specific designer label upholstery, you may well find that you cannot get an identical spec one cheaper than from one particular supplier. It doesn't mean it is good value for you. If you start out looking for a quiet comfortable sedan, you'll probably get just as functional or a more functional vehicle elsewhere for a lot less. The Apple theologians always do it starting from the Mac partly because they are disingenuous and know the above as well as anyone. But its partly because they never seriously consider buying anything but a Mac, so the Mac product line is their standard of comparison. However, for the rest of us, it is not.
Suppose some company operating in the US, a retailer, was supplied by an overseas company who insisted that there be no sales, or only sales at double the price, to certain ethnic or religious groups. They signed an agreement. After all, they wanted to sell the products. Or maybe they just did it without a written contract.
Do you think this would be either legal or excusable? Would you be all running around complaining about how Federal action was targetting overseas companies or whoever?
This is what is alleged to have happened. Apple is alleged to have signed contracts, or anyway decided, to operate a retail policy, which is contrary to the law of the jurisdiction. Don't do that. Just don't do it. Nothing else matters.
Does this make it a bit clearer?
I do not think you have grasped the fairly simple point of the EC. You cannot enter into agreements or conduct yourself in the following way. You cannot run a store and then refuse to sell goods from it for transfer to other nation states in the EU. You cannot discriminate in sales by country of origin of customer. You cannot do this. And you cannot enter into an agreement to do it either.
If you do, you'll be busted. Very simple. Whatever else you do, do not do this.
I know of no other online store that operates multiple locations and tries to prevent people in one EU state from buying from the store in another EU state. Amazon certainly doesn't, for instance.
The reason is, they are terrified of the EU Competition Directorate taking an interest in them. Quite right too.
It makes no difference. The one legally responsible is the one operating the sales outlets. If I am a car dealer, I cannot refuse to sell to someone from another country. If I reply that the auto maker made me do it, the auto maker will get busted too. If you engage in conspiracy to commit anti competitive behaviour, both parties are busted. Makes no difference whose idea it was.
1) Its not about coding. Having different release dates in different languages would be fine, even within the EU.
2) Its not about DRM. Locking to players may or may not be OK in the EU, but its a different issue.
3) Its not about having the same price. No-one says you have to sell for the same price everywhere.
4) Its not about Apple being forced to do things by the record companies. It doesn't matter who wanted it or didn't.
5) It is not the same as buying stuff in Japan and the US, because, you see, Japan and the US are not part of a single market established by treaty and with a transnational body, the Commission, regulating conduct of companies.
What is it about then?
It is unlawful in the EU to restrict imports and exports from one country to another, because that is in restraint of trade and anti competitive. You can sell it for 600 in Germany and 300 in France. But what you cannot do is prevent the Germans from buying the stuff in France.
Consequently, it makes no difference what the record companies or Apple think or say to each other. Apple cannot enter into an agreement to restrict sales from its UK sites to UK cardholders. If it did sign such an agreement, it is unlawful. It will have entered into a conspiracy to commit anti competitive behaviour. Along with whoever it signed the agreement with. They will both be fried for it. If it just did it off its own initiative, only it committed the unlawful acts. If it really did.
So please guys, stop blaming the record companies and exonerating Apple, its all irrelevant. We have, allegedly, one or more parties engaged in anti competitive practices which are unlawful in the EU. If so, one or both are going to get busted. Whoever instigated it is irrelevant.
If you want to get a better handle on it, think violating FTC rules on interstate commerce in the US.