The campaign for governor and state legislative seats in 2006 has already begun, of course. My sense is that much of this debate is fueled by potential gubernatorial candidates positioning themselves in the upcoming election cycle.
Isn't it striking that the pressure for OpenDoc is coming from a Republican administration (Romney), while the opposition is coming from Democratic legislators? Mass. Secretary of State Galvin and Attorney General Reilly, both Democrats, have their eyes on the "corner office" now occupied by Romney. Reilly in some way is cornered on the question of how Microsoft is treated since it's his office that pursued the Massachusetts case against Microsoft after the Federal case was settled. One can see Galvin thinking that he can position himself against both Romney and Reilly by questioning their support for "anti-Microsoft" initiatives.
The disabled users issue strikes me as an especially effective wedge here. Nobody can be in favor of making it harder for disabled state employees to do their job. Moreover raising this issue suggests an insensitivity on the part of the Romney administration. One might think they would have considered the impact of this decision on the disabled before making it.
Finally, I'm really tired of how this issue is always portrayed as a fight between MS Office and OpenOffice. The proposed Massachusetts standard also includes the Portable Document Format as an acceptable standard because it too is open though proprietary. Remember that one of the state's most compelling arguments is the need to preserve access to official documents for decades to come. My guess is that this role will be filled more and more by PDF, not OpenDoc. In fact, it seems to me that state agencies can claim compliance with this policy by using Microsoft Office to create official documents and then saving them as PDFs.
According to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405159/news, Redding also was distributing a "screener" copy that he received as a member of the Screen Actors Guild. No doubt the terms of the license under which he received the copy forbade redistribution of the movie to others.
None of this applies to movies you purchase legally on DVD. These copies are governed by the "first-sale doctrine" found in 17 USC 109 http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html:
109. Limitations on exclusive rights: Effect of transfer of particular copy or phonorecord
(a) Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106(3), the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.
Now there are some new limitations to the first-sale doctrine as it applies to older works whose copyright was extended under the "Sonny Bono" bill. This is followed by a rather remarkable section (109(b)(i)(A) that essentially nullifies the first-sale doctrine when applied to sound recordings and computer software if the redistribution is "for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage." I find this puzzling since it appears to ban the sale of used phonograph records and CDs. IANAL, so this reading is based on the text of the law itself. (Somehow the MPAA appears to have missed the boat on this one.)
However nothing that I know of prohibits you from lending a DVD you have purchased to a friend. However neither of you have the right to make a copy of that DVD except under the extrememly limited provisions termed "fair use." These include "purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research." Despite constant claims here on Slashdot that there is some type of fair-use exemption for "backup copies," I don't believe such an exemption actually exists in law, at least as it applies to motion pictures. Morever any such copies of most DVD's requires defeating the CSS protections and thus constitutes a violation of Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
I'm not saying I agree with all of these provisions, but that's my understanding of the state of the law regarding redistribution. And, again, IANAL.
Actually, there's another option, it's just an expensive one.
Major academic surveys, and some market research surveys, collect data via personal interviews with respondents in their homes. At one time, we thought it might be possible to rely more on telephone interviewing to reduce costs, but the samples collected by telephone interviewing are typically quite biased because so many people refuse to cooperate with telephone interviewers.
While I agree that plug-in viewers would make a nice addition to the suite of OO tools, my bet is that publicly-visible documents from Massachusetts will be released as PDF files. Remember that PDF is also acceptable as it is an open standard. Most states have already used PDF's for online documents like tax forms.
This raises the question of whether the MA decision will actually lead to the implementation of OpenOffice. I can see a future where people in MA government still use MS Office, but release those documents as PDF's to comply with the requirement.
And, yes, OO has a free export to PDF function, but the cost of buying a bulk license for Acrobat Distiller may be a lot less than retraining thousands of MA government workers to use OpenOffice.
So, perhaps the real "winner" here might be Adobe!
This whole article puzzles the hell out of me. It sounds as though no one in our government has ever heard of firewalling. Is it really the case that there are thousands of government computers directly visible over the Internet? How could anyone managing computers for the government think that's a good idea?
And, even if they're incapable of protecting individual machines, how hard would it be to block inbound access from IP blocks belonging to China (or anyone else for that matter)? Can't they just erect a couple of firewalls between, say, the IP block assigned to the State Department and blocks of foreign IPs?
Others in this thread have pointed out that they see Chinese intrusion attempts on their firewalls. If random Slashdot readers can keep out the Chinese, why the hell can't the US government?
most of Hollywood has almost no desire to make films that appeal to adults, and even less of an idea how to make them
Twenty years or so ago I did a marketing study for Fox about movie attendance. At that time people aged 12-24 in our study saw some 12-15 movies a year in a theater; people over forty watched about 3-4. This meant that the much smaller group of young people actually accounted for a very large share of total admissions.
These days I'd bet the market is even more heavily weighted in favor of younger theater-goers. Adults have even more options for at-home entertainment these days than they did in the 1980's, while teens and young adults have social motives for movie-going that don't apply to most older people.
I also suspect that gaming has a role to play here since such a large chunk of the gaming audience is that same young adult demographic. Two years ago television executives puzzled over substantial declines in TV viewing among younger males. http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1107/p16s02-altv.htm l
What they found were substantial increases in video gaming and Internet usage in this demographic category.
So I wouldn't be surprised to discover that declining theater-going stems as much from people, especially younger people, replacing "traditional" TV viewing and movie-going with gaming and surfing. Unfortunately if that's true, it may not be much of an incentive for improving the content of the movies and television programs being produced.
Slashdot Mirror
The campaign for governor and state legislative seats in 2006 has already begun, of course. My sense is that much of this debate is fueled by potential gubernatorial candidates positioning themselves in the upcoming election cycle. Isn't it striking that the pressure for OpenDoc is coming from a Republican administration (Romney), while the opposition is coming from Democratic legislators? Mass. Secretary of State Galvin and Attorney General Reilly, both Democrats, have their eyes on the "corner office" now occupied by Romney. Reilly in some way is cornered on the question of how Microsoft is treated since it's his office that pursued the Massachusetts case against Microsoft after the Federal case was settled. One can see Galvin thinking that he can position himself against both Romney and Reilly by questioning their support for "anti-Microsoft" initiatives. The disabled users issue strikes me as an especially effective wedge here. Nobody can be in favor of making it harder for disabled state employees to do their job. Moreover raising this issue suggests an insensitivity on the part of the Romney administration. One might think they would have considered the impact of this decision on the disabled before making it. Finally, I'm really tired of how this issue is always portrayed as a fight between MS Office and OpenOffice. The proposed Massachusetts standard also includes the Portable Document Format as an acceptable standard because it too is open though proprietary. Remember that one of the state's most compelling arguments is the need to preserve access to official documents for decades to come. My guess is that this role will be filled more and more by PDF, not OpenDoc. In fact, it seems to me that state agencies can claim compliance with this policy by using Microsoft Office to create official documents and then saving them as PDFs.
According to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405159/news, Redding also was distributing a "screener" copy that he received as a member of the Screen Actors Guild. No doubt the terms of the license under which he received the copy forbade redistribution of the movie to others.
None of this applies to movies you purchase legally on DVD. These copies are governed by the "first-sale doctrine" found in 17 USC 109 http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html:
109. Limitations on exclusive rights: Effect of transfer of particular copy or phonorecord
(a) Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106(3), the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.
Now there are some new limitations to the first-sale doctrine as it applies to older works whose copyright was extended under the "Sonny Bono" bill. This is followed by a rather remarkable section (109(b)(i)(A) that essentially nullifies the first-sale doctrine when applied to sound recordings and computer software if the redistribution is "for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage." I find this puzzling since it appears to ban the sale of used phonograph records and CDs. IANAL, so this reading is based on the text of the law itself. (Somehow the MPAA appears to have missed the boat on this one.)
However nothing that I know of prohibits you from lending a DVD you have purchased to a friend. However neither of you have the right to make a copy of that DVD except under the extrememly limited provisions termed "fair use." These include "purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research." Despite constant claims here on Slashdot that there is some type of fair-use exemption for "backup copies," I don't believe such an exemption actually exists in law, at least as it applies to motion pictures. Morever any such copies of most DVD's requires defeating the CSS protections and thus constitutes a violation of Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
I'm not saying I agree with all of these provisions, but that's my understanding of the state of the law regarding redistribution. And, again, IANAL.
Actually, there's another option, it's just an expensive one. Major academic surveys, and some market research surveys, collect data via personal interviews with respondents in their homes. At one time, we thought it might be possible to rely more on telephone interviewing to reduce costs, but the samples collected by telephone interviewing are typically quite biased because so many people refuse to cooperate with telephone interviewers.
While I agree that plug-in viewers would make a nice addition to the suite of OO tools, my bet is that publicly-visible documents from Massachusetts will be released as PDF files. Remember that PDF is also acceptable as it is an open standard. Most states have already used PDF's for online documents like tax forms.
This raises the question of whether the MA decision will actually lead to the implementation of OpenOffice. I can see a future where people in MA government still use MS Office, but release those documents as PDF's to comply with the requirement.
And, yes, OO has a free export to PDF function, but the cost of buying a bulk license for Acrobat Distiller may be a lot less than retraining thousands of MA government workers to use OpenOffice.
So, perhaps the real "winner" here might be Adobe!
This whole article puzzles the hell out of me. It sounds as though no one in our government has ever heard of firewalling. Is it really the case that there are thousands of government computers directly visible over the Internet? How could anyone managing computers for the government think that's a good idea?
And, even if they're incapable of protecting individual machines, how hard would it be to block inbound access from IP blocks belonging to China (or anyone else for that matter)? Can't they just erect a couple of firewalls between, say, the IP block assigned to the State Department and blocks of foreign IPs?
Others in this thread have pointed out that they see Chinese intrusion attempts on their firewalls. If random Slashdot readers can keep out the Chinese, why the hell can't the US government?
most of Hollywood has almost no desire to make films that appeal to adults, and even less of an idea how to make them
Twenty years or so ago I did a marketing study for Fox about movie attendance. At that time people aged 12-24 in our study saw some 12-15 movies a year in a theater; people over forty watched about 3-4. This meant that the much smaller group of young people actually accounted for a very large share of total admissions.
These days I'd bet the market is even more heavily weighted in favor of younger theater-goers. Adults have even more options for at-home entertainment these days than they did in the 1980's, while teens and young adults have social motives for movie-going that don't apply to most older people.
I also suspect that gaming has a role to play here since such a large chunk of the gaming audience is that same young adult demographic. Two years ago television executives puzzled over substantial declines in TV viewing among younger males. http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1107/p16s02-altv.htm l
What they found were substantial increases in video gaming and Internet usage in this demographic category.
So I wouldn't be surprised to discover that declining theater-going stems as much from people, especially younger people, replacing "traditional" TV viewing and movie-going with gaming and surfing. Unfortunately if that's true, it may not be much of an incentive for improving the content of the movies and television programs being produced.