While that clears up the mechanics, it still points to the MPAA being too powerful since it is an example of a private company being able to control a public government though simple fear of ending up in the crosshairs.
When governments fear corporations, we have gone through full circle though capitalism and can arrive on the other side of communism.
Considering that customers who did call and buy the tested and validated components generally did have more favorable reviews of our stuff then the ones who put in random 3rd party stuff.... yes, I do imply that on the whole they ended up less frustrated if they bought parts that we knew would work then not.
Sure, the 3rd party part would get the unit up and running quicker, but more often then not the part resulted in quirky behavior that degraded the user experience for months before it finally failed again.
And of course during that whole 'quirky' time they end up ranting on boards or calling up tech support complaining how crappy our stuff is because it was not working right... and every user who walked away from the unit was less likely to use the unit again (even at another location) because of the negative experience.
So the problem is, there is more at stake then just the time to get the unit going again.
One of the other amusing things I have found about CNN's attempt to capitalize on 'bloggy' type technology is they have added (in two iterations so far) comments to their news story so now people can sit and discuss them.
At first it looks like any other 'read and discuss' setup, except they have people heavily prune the comments in order to get an artificial 'balance'. I am not sure what criteria they use, but it is not connected to number of reply, number of likes, or even the content.
My best guess is that they want to have a carefully manicured blog to match the strictly controlled story so as to present an editorially consistent package to the passive reader. Which is why I consider them pretend comments.
True. Though what I found disturbing about the computer industry is they tend to seem uninterested in determining what the rates really are. It seems to be enough to say 'well, everyone knows!'.
Other industries you would be required to do some pretty heavy research first.
So I am not saying they made the wrong economic choice.. but in every case that I have been able to actually observe of things like this happening, I have found the research justifying it lacking or completely absent.
*shrug* parts wear out. Hard drives were the most common, but other bits like the screens too. Considering the systems would be out in the field for 5-10 years (or more), often without surge protection or clean shutdowns.... yeah, parts did break and had to be replaced. Even industrial grade components are not going to have a zero percent failure rate over 10 years of heavy use.
There were also companies that would 'clone' our systems with cheaper hardware and install our official software on them. From the outside they looked about the same, and ran the same software, but had parts in them that did not last very long.
And lastly, a common practice was to upgrade a single machine, swap the drive, upgrade that drive, swap, upgrade, repeat, then keep those drives in a stack for putting into machines that you did not feel like runing the upgrade process on. Kinda need lots of extra cheap drives for that.
Small depending on what it is relating to and what it cost them.
Normally, going up to your boss and saying 'hey! I have a plan that will decrease our revenue by 3%!' will get you a hairy eyeball unless you can make a really strong case for where it saves money elsewhere.
Sounds like the whole PC industry to me. Computer nerds in general seem very insecure about WHATEVER hardware they use and often seem to need to point out how horrible other choices are. Just look at the windows crowd. First thing to come up in any apple discussion is "I can get the same specs cheaper! you suck because my hardware is better for the same price!'
Having worked for a hardware+software company that had problems with 3rd party hardware mods.... a thousand times this!
Every time a repair shop or middleman decided to replace parts that had been extensively tested for compatibility for whatever they could find for the cheapest at Best Buy, we ended up with PR problem. People saw our stuff running poorly and faulted us, even when the problem was, say, a hard drive with slightly wrong specs (or a stock firmware) or had differnt sleep characteristics.
We enedup locking down hardware not to keep prices up, but to stop the bad user experiences that would effect people's decisions to buy our products.
XP has checks in it where it only uses instruction sets and capabilities if the processor has them. If the ability is not there it defaults back to a smaller common set. Same with Linux. Both are designed to fall back to whatever they can find.
OS probably does something similar, but the 'common set' is pulled from all processors they support rather then all possible x86 configurations. They control the hardware so they have no reason to invest in all this fallback code, the can optimize for what they know they can expect, which results in smaller, faster, more stable code.
Last I heard, it simply fails to finish booting, which speaks to some code path not functioning (such as a missing instruction or a minor difference that does not have an if statement on it) correctly and the process failing. This is different from an explicit check.
Unless the processor is identical in both instruction set and behavior, failing to explicitly support it will eventually result in failure. Any change to kernel code that is processor dependent can potentially break it unless they explicitly have unit tests as part of their development process to insure that compatibility is maintained.
In other words, it may not work 'just fine'. It just 'happened to work'.
The guy HAS the copyright, but warner is claiming (via DMCA takedown notices) that they have the copyright. MySpace has to obey unless the artist can get warner to stop sending the notices and admit that they do not have the copyright.
And as the OP pointed out, forcing warner to offically admit they are infringing would be expensive and time consuming, all to get someone what they already own.
I never heard (one way or the other) of any being completed, but I do know prototypes were built. At one point I had such a system going using a Rom2.4 based system, but it was only a proof of concept rather then a working MUD.
Probably less someone getting paid based on number of sales, and more getting paid based off how much impact the people above the exec thing they had.
I've seen execs rewarded for horrible sales simply because they convinced their bosses/clients that it 'would have been so much worse if I had not done XYZ'.
I wonder if anyone has actually done the research to find out if the old adage 'any publicity is good publicity'.
Marketing seems full of these 'of course it is true!' rules that they never bother to find out if they are actually, well, true. And some of the biggies are not.. for instance, throwing sex into an existing series usually results in a drop of sales/viewers, not a gain.
Then again, they would probably keep doing it anyway. The above example also applies here since even though at this point the numbers are out there and known, many marketers and execs STILL think that sexing something up will lead to larger profits.
I really do not think advertisers actually think through the effects they have.. only how to convince the people above them that they had an effect. Since no one bothers checking, it really just comes down to force of personality and ability to sell yourself to people like you, i.e. your bosses/clients.
I disagree with this assessment. I have no idea how wide spread it is, but I know in my case it is the opposite. When I had horrible brain draining jobs I tended to play more FPSs. I now have a very challenging programming job and I am playing Civ4 on the train every day.
True, but the people who publish the papers (who do provide a valuable function) DO derive their funding from selling the papers.
There is also the issue of how much money universities pull in from copyrighted and patented works by their researchers. If you cut off the universities ability to do that you need to find other revenue streams for people to actually fund the research.
This is where you run into an interesting conflict. In a way, the researcher is being paid to produce materials FOR someone, and then that someone (university, funding source, contract, etc) gets the rights to that research. This is the same for any type of 3rd party work. For instance, if I paid someone to develop a website for me, I would expect to receive the website and all the rights to it. I would indeed be pretty upset of the author who made it then turned around and started using it for other things, including projects for other people.
Eh, having worked in the game industry.... I've found that 'piracy killed our product' is really a cover for 'we don't understand the market well enough, so we will blame something concrete'.
Thus I tend to take management saying that as they are so out of touch with the actual marketplace that they lead the company into it's own black hole but do not want any blame associated with them and thus hurt their chances of moving on to other companies to ruin.
While I can not imagine it passing, the idea of commercial software entities having to release their source after 5 years if they want copyright protection sounds wonderful.
Software copyright is the only form where the material has no automatic way to enter the public domain when it should. Some kind of escrow as a requirement for protection would do the trick.
Well, they installed changes to another companies application without asking the user first,.. these changes, while more convient, open up security holes (the down side of 'just work' technologies) that many people go to firefox specifically to get away from.... and then they make it difficult to uninstall (anything that requires an average user to modify the registry manually counts as difficult and dangerous). Big deal or not I could see why people would be pissed, esp network admins that do not want this kind of functionality on their network.
Slashdot Mirror
While that clears up the mechanics, it still points to the MPAA being too powerful since it is an example of a private company being able to control a public government though simple fear of ending up in the crosshairs.
When governments fear corporations, we have gone through full circle though capitalism and can arrive on the other side of communism.
Considering that customers who did call and buy the tested and validated components generally did have more favorable reviews of our stuff then the ones who put in random 3rd party stuff.... yes, I do imply that on the whole they ended up less frustrated if they bought parts that we knew would work then not.
Sure, the 3rd party part would get the unit up and running quicker, but more often then not the part resulted in quirky behavior that degraded the user experience for months before it finally failed again.
And of course during that whole 'quirky' time they end up ranting on boards or calling up tech support complaining how crappy our stuff is because it was not working right... and every user who walked away from the unit was less likely to use the unit again (even at another location) because of the negative experience.
So the problem is, there is more at stake then just the time to get the unit going again.
One of the other amusing things I have found about CNN's attempt to capitalize on 'bloggy' type technology is they have added (in two iterations so far) comments to their news story so now people can sit and discuss them.
At first it looks like any other 'read and discuss' setup, except they have people heavily prune the comments in order to get an artificial 'balance'. I am not sure what criteria they use, but it is not connected to number of reply, number of likes, or even the content.
My best guess is that they want to have a carefully manicured blog to match the strictly controlled story so as to present an editorially consistent package to the passive reader. Which is why I consider them pretend comments.
True. Though what I found disturbing about the computer industry is they tend to seem uninterested in determining what the rates really are. It seems to be enough to say 'well, everyone knows!'.
Other industries you would be required to do some pretty heavy research first.
So I am not saying they made the wrong economic choice.. but in every case that I have been able to actually observe of things like this happening, I have found the research justifying it lacking or completely absent.
*shrug* parts wear out. Hard drives were the most common, but other bits like the screens too. Considering the systems would be out in the field for 5-10 years (or more), often without surge protection or clean shutdowns.... yeah, parts did break and had to be replaced. Even industrial grade components are not going to have a zero percent failure rate over 10 years of heavy use.
There were also companies that would 'clone' our systems with cheaper hardware and install our official software on them. From the outside they looked about the same, and ran the same software, but had parts in them that did not last very long.
And lastly, a common practice was to upgrade a single machine, swap the drive, upgrade that drive, swap, upgrade, repeat, then keep those drives in a stack for putting into machines that you did not feel like runing the upgrade process on. Kinda need lots of extra cheap drives for that.
Small depending on what it is relating to and what it cost them.
Normally, going up to your boss and saying 'hey! I have a plan that will decrease our revenue by 3%!' will get you a hairy eyeball unless you can make a really strong case for where it saves money elsewhere.
Except in the computer industry for some reason.
Though what makes this a bit differnt is that in addition to banning the consoles, Microsoft crippled parts of the device before they cut it off.
So offline activities were also effected in a (supposedly) unfixable manner.
If it were just another round of xboxLive bans, people would probably care a lot less.
Sounds like the whole PC industry to me. Computer nerds in general seem very insecure about WHATEVER hardware they use and often seem to need to point out how horrible other choices are. Just look at the windows crowd. First thing to come up in any apple discussion is "I can get the same specs cheaper! you suck because my hardware is better for the same price!'
Having worked for a hardware+software company that had problems with 3rd party hardware mods.... a thousand times this!
Every time a repair shop or middleman decided to replace parts that had been extensively tested for compatibility for whatever they could find for the cheapest at Best Buy, we ended up with PR problem. People saw our stuff running poorly and faulted us, even when the problem was, say, a hard drive with slightly wrong specs (or a stock firmware) or had differnt sleep characteristics.
We enedup locking down hardware not to keep prices up, but to stop the bad user experiences that would effect people's decisions to buy our products.
XP has checks in it where it only uses instruction sets and capabilities if the processor has them. If the ability is not there it defaults back to a smaller common set. Same with Linux. Both are designed to fall back to whatever they can find.
OS probably does something similar, but the 'common set' is pulled from all processors they support rather then all possible x86 configurations. They control the hardware so they have no reason to invest in all this fallback code, the can optimize for what they know they can expect, which results in smaller, faster, more stable code.
Has this been confirmed?
Last I heard, it simply fails to finish booting, which speaks to some code path not functioning (such as a missing instruction or a minor difference that does not have an if statement on it) correctly and the process failing. This is different from an explicit check.
Unless the processor is identical in both instruction set and behavior, failing to explicitly support it will eventually result in failure. Any change to kernel code that is processor dependent can potentially break it unless they explicitly have unit tests as part of their development process to insure that compatibility is maintained.
In other words, it may not work 'just fine'. It just 'happened to work'.
Well, it hit CNN and FoxNews, so that probably covers most Americans.
It was called Orion. Probably would have worked, but it ended up in the wrong end of a funding war against Apollo.
Does not help in this case.
The guy HAS the copyright, but warner is claiming (via DMCA takedown notices) that they have the copyright. MySpace has to obey unless the artist can get warner to stop sending the notices and admit that they do not have the copyright.
And as the OP pointed out, forcing warner to offically admit they are infringing would be expensive and time consuming, all to get someone what they already own.
I never heard (one way or the other) of any being completed, but I do know prototypes were built. At one point I had such a system going using a Rom2.4 based system, but it was only a proof of concept rather then a working MUD.
Probably less someone getting paid based on number of sales, and more getting paid based off how much impact the people above the exec thing they had.
I've seen execs rewarded for horrible sales simply because they convinced their bosses/clients that it 'would have been so much worse if I had not done XYZ'.
I wonder if anyone has actually done the research to find out if the old adage 'any publicity is good publicity'.
Marketing seems full of these 'of course it is true!' rules that they never bother to find out if they are actually, well, true. And some of the biggies are not.. for instance, throwing sex into an existing series usually results in a drop of sales/viewers, not a gain.
Then again, they would probably keep doing it anyway. The above example also applies here since even though at this point the numbers are out there and known, many marketers and execs STILL think that sexing something up will lead to larger profits.
I really do not think advertisers actually think through the effects they have.. only how to convince the people above them that they had an effect. Since no one bothers checking, it really just comes down to force of personality and ability to sell yourself to people like you, i.e. your bosses/clients.
I am sure someone will try to rewrite the proposal to describe how it can be applied to oil exploration.
I disagree with this assessment. I have no idea how wide spread it is, but I know in my case it is the opposite. When I had horrible brain draining jobs I tended to play more FPSs. I now have a very challenging programming job and I am playing Civ4 on the train every day.
True, but the people who publish the papers (who do provide a valuable function) DO derive their funding from selling the papers.
There is also the issue of how much money universities pull in from copyrighted and patented works by their researchers. If you cut off the universities ability to do that you need to find other revenue streams for people to actually fund the research.
This is where you run into an interesting conflict. In a way, the researcher is being paid to produce materials FOR someone, and then that someone (university, funding source, contract, etc) gets the rights to that research. This is the same for any type of 3rd party work. For instance, if I paid someone to develop a website for me, I would expect to receive the website and all the rights to it. I would indeed be pretty upset of the author who made it then turned around and started using it for other things, including projects for other people.
Eh, having worked in the game industry.... I've found that 'piracy killed our product' is really a cover for 'we don't understand the market well enough, so we will blame something concrete'.
Thus I tend to take management saying that as they are so out of touch with the actual marketplace that they lead the company into it's own black hole but do not want any blame associated with them and thus hurt their chances of moving on to other companies to ruin.
While I can not imagine it passing, the idea of commercial software entities having to release their source after 5 years if they want copyright protection sounds wonderful.
Software copyright is the only form where the material has no automatic way to enter the public domain when it should. Some kind of escrow as a requirement for protection would do the trick.
Who said it was not encrypted?
Well, they installed changes to another companies application without asking the user first,.. these changes, while more convient, open up security holes (the down side of 'just work' technologies) that many people go to firefox specifically to get away from.... and then they make it difficult to uninstall (anything that requires an average user to modify the registry manually counts as difficult and dangerous). Big deal or not I could see why people would be pissed, esp network admins that do not want this kind of functionality on their network.
So why didn't they just use Xlib? Sounds like it would have solved a lot of the problems they had... maybe it was not new and sexy enough?