They could be, if not doing it would be enough to leverage their monopoly on MP3 players to gain an advantage in the digital music market.
They have not been declared to have a "monopoly" on MP3 players. They would first have to be declared a monopoly before we can say that they then used that monopoly to unfairly limit the competition. Alternative hardware exists: Sansa players, Zune, and numerous other iPod work-alikes. Alternative music stores existed: Amazon, eMusic, Zune Marketplace; Any MP3 purchased without DRM, any MP3 purchased via iTunes, and any MP3 ripped from your own music sources will load on an iPod just fine. Consumers had plenty of alternatives, and Real could have easily gone out and negotiated DRM-free sales.
It may be implied from that decision that the owner of intellectual property rights has no general obligation to grant a licence to its competitors even if these intellectual property rights may confer a dominant position on the concerned operator. Competition law can limit the exercise of intellectual property rights only where such exercise prevents the development of competition between undertakings. When these intellectual property rights are not essential to access the relevant market, their owner, even if in a dominant position, remains free to refuse to grant a licence.
In other words: Apple's refusal to license FairPlay does not prevent people from competing in the MP3 download market, OR the MP3 player market. It is therefore not an essential facility that people are being denied the use of, and it therefore does not follow that Apple is unfairly limiting competition. The existence of multiple competing MP3 retailers and MP3 player manufacturers is evidence of this.
Irrelevant, simply having a contractual obligation to do something doesn't make it legal (hitmen are still accused of murder).
Entirely relevant. Apple is under no obligation to destroy its own business because Real couldn't develop a viable business model. There is no obligation on Apple's part to provide a platform for its competitors to access a market - the existence of numerous competitors suggests that there is nothing essential about FairPlay that makes it a necessary element of competition in the MP3 or MP3 player market.
But it was an advantage to be able to put DRM-protected music on iPods, so the monopoly on MP3 players was leveraged to gain an advantage in the digital music market.
You have it exactly backwards. If the monopoly on MP3 players were leveraged to gain an advantage in the music market, then they would have said "You may not load any tracks on the iPod EXCEPT for tracks bought through the iTunes store. *That* would be using your size advantage in the MP3 player market to unfairly limit competition in other markets. In fact, there are numerous other ways to purchase music to load on your iPod - Real's complaint is that Apple declined to *help* them become middlemen growing fat on taking a cut of sales of music they did nothing to produce to a device they also didn't produce. I'd love a piece of that racket too, but I would never suggest that Apple declining to help me secure that position is an "antitrust" violation.
This is irrelevant, Apple had a monopoly. If this was a valid counterpoint, it could be used in any anti-trust suit. Microsoft: You could just have coded your own OS, Bell Systems: You could just have laid your own telephone cables, etc.
And if Microsoft hadn't been abusing its position as the dominant OS to prevent alternative OS'es and browsers from being loaded by OEMs, then they probably wouldn't have been penalized. Bell Systems was a government-sanctio
Which is exactly what I just said - a company's behavior is what determines whether they will be subjected to antitrust penalties. It's not simply a matter of "being big", there has to be abuse of that monopoly status (tying, coercion, price fixing etc.) before the law will penalize you.
And technically, just having a "large market share" doesn't mean you're subject to penalties, either.
You have to *abuse* that large market share to unreasonably restrict competition. If you're simply better at what you do than anybody else, and people overwhelmingly choose your product/service, then there's no basis for an antitrust suit. Once you use your dominant position to harm Gateway's or RealNetworks' business, as Microsoft was found to have done.
Antitrust law is intended to encourage competition by making it painful for the big guys to stomp on the little guys who are competing well; it's not intended to punish someone for succeeding in a *legitimate* competition. It's possible to have a large market share without abusing it, though I'm sure it must be awfully tempting.
The suit stems largely from the Apple / RealNetworks dispute regarding the Harmony service Real tried to offer, allowing people to buy music from Real, and load it on iPods by re-DRM'ing the track as a "FairPlay-compatible" track. Apple made changes that (deliberately or not) stopped Harmony-purchased tracks from working on an iPod.
I'm not certain that this rises to the level of "antitrust" for several reasons: 1) They weren't under any obligation to license their FairPlay technology to other vendors, and in fact VirginMega actually got shot down by a court in 2004 for that very reason; 2) It's possible that turning a blind eye to how easily FairPlay was reverse engineered by Real could have put Apple afoul of its agreements with the record labels; 3) iPods have *always* allowed (and played) non-DRM'ed MP3/AAC tracks - Real could have sold non-DRM tracks if they wanted to sell for the iPod - eMusic has been doing it for a while now; 4) Real could have built their own iPod competitor, and had a run at the market that way; Microsoft's Zune and Sansa's various portable models both did this;
In short, there was enough competition and choice for consumers on the market that Apple's product decision didn't reasonably constitute "monopolistic" behavior.
That doesn't really make the final product cheaper for the consumer, though - you CAN listen to songs and watch movies by subscribing to Pandora, last.fm, Netflix, Spotify, and other services quite cheaply, but the amount of money the creators make off of that is dwarfed by more traditional sales channels, and those sales largely subsidize the lower cost streaming alternatives. You don't "own" the track or the movie or the album - you just rent it for a few minutes. If this was the only way MGM had to make money off a $200 million movie, you'd see those subscription fees go up by quite a bit.
It costs money to produce something - the time and effort of many people go into producing a movie, a song, an album, a CD, or a news article. Low distribution & replication costs do not automatically mean that the cost to produce the thing you're replicating has approached zero. If not enough people value the reporting of the Times, this paywall will fail, and perhaps all newspapers will end up using an AP/Reuters-style news agency for all their news reporting. Of course, then we'll bitch that all of the news lacks diversity and that somebody ought to produce something original.
(and ultimately, that is what he was doing: interacting with the computer)
Yeah, if "interacting with the computer" involves breaking into a locked room, removing security controls on a computer with a sensitive function, and then planning to use it to launch DDoS attacks against other "rival groups." This isn't like, "What, I was just at the mall, using a touchscreen kiosk to find directions to the Urban Outfitters store!"
Considering he apparently needed both physical access (in a locked room) to the computers, and he had to disable security controls on the computer, I'd suggest that this indicates pretty a fairly decent attempt to secure the system and prevent it from being exploited.
ObCarAnalogy: Would it be okay for me to break into your locked garage, replace all the software on your car's sensors & control units, and then claim I was "just interacting with a computer," when your brakes failed due to the changes I'd made?
Seriously, what news will I find there that can't be found elsewhere? Commentary? Isn't that like, the Internet?
104 Pulitzers since 1918 would certainly suggest that they've got a generally higher quality of reporting than many other news organizations. If all you're looking for in your "news coverage" is to find out the latest in Lindsay Lohan's theft charges, then yeah, you'll find tons of that for free all over the internet, no need to sign up. If you want well-written journalism, there aren't too many places that offer same-or-better quality than you'll find from the Times.
While hacking into the HVAC computer, McGraw knew the risk of affecting the facility’s temperature, and the treatment and recovery of vulnerable patients. In addition, he could have affected the efficacy of all temperature-sensitive drugs and supplies. Although he denies, it, access to the nurses’ station computer could have opened the door to patient records.
Given the fact that his actions could have breached confidentiality of medical records, or, you know, even killed someone due to the HVAC system going haywire and not controlling the temperature in a patient's room, or a storeroom containing temperature-sensitive medications, I'd say that 9 years and 2 months (probably being served in a minimum-security federal prison camp) doesn't sound all that unreasonable.
Ah, I see - you think that an hour or two worth of original reporting produced & delivered daily, produced by actually hiring and sending journalists all over the world to the places where the stories are happening is MUCH cheaper than a 1-hour-a-week television show, filmed in a single location, usually with a cast and crew numbering in the dozens?
I'm not certain your comparison underscores the point you seem to think it does. Running a news organization requires quite a few salaries, and a lot of travel expenses - if you have a staff of more than a couple people, you can easily spend millions operating it, when you consider salaries, travel expenses, and communication expenses (especially when communications will require reporters to file reports from areas like the tsunami/quake zone in Japan, where communications infrastructure has been significantly disrupted by the event the reporters are there to cover.)
When you consider that, 30-60 hours a month of original reporting from the NYTimes for $35 starts sounding like a pretty-goddamned-good deal compared to 4-5 hours a month of the Sopranos or Six Feet Under or Boardwalk Empire for $40-50.
That would be a more valid comparison if Pandora did something other than stream content other people generated, and pay licensing fees to those people for streaming it. I can guarantee you that if Pandora actually had to find, record, produce and market the bands you're listening to through their service, the subscription fee would be a hell of a lot more than $3 / month.
Great, they've decided to compete on ONE particular wifi-only configuration of the iPad, and they're offering a smaller selection of apps to actually RUN on the tablet, too, plus an eventual upgrade to 4G, which will only work in a handful of places for the next year or two, plus drain the battery significantly faster than any 3G or wifi usage. Where do we sign up?
The 16GB, wifi only iPad is $100 cheaper, and that's what the people looking to buy entry level will pick. Well, that or the RIM Playbook, also at $499.
So, let's say I want a Xoom with 3G - that'll run me $799 - almost as much as the 64GB / 3G iPad, and either $70 or $170 more than the 16GB/3G and 32GB/3G iPads: -- iPad, 16GB, 3G, $629. -- iPad, 32GB, 3G, $729. -- iPad, 64GB, 3G, $829.
You mean the Xoom? Its price is spot on the iPad in it's wifi incarnation
Yes, the 32GB Xoom is $599. There is no 16 GB model for $499 (like the iPad). $799 for the unsubsidized 3G option, $70 more than the 32GB/3G iPad.
You can get a wifi-only 16GB ipad cheaper than the Xoom; You can get the 3G iPad for $70 to $170 cheaper than the Xoom ($629 for 16GB/3G, $729 for 32GB/3G ipad, vs. $799 for 32GB/3G Xoom).
Honestly, RIM's Playbook looks like it'll be more competitive - at least they're pricing it to compete directly with all 3 wifi iPads. The challenge will be whether they generate enough developer interest to build an ecosystem for the device.
Calling something a stereotype is not the same as calling something untrue.
And using a stereotype without any evidence other than your own biased notions doesn't make it true, either.
To make your logical fallacy very clear: all cats are mammals, but not all mammals are cats.
You used "liking musical theater" as evidence that your friend was still gay, despite his assertions to the contrary. "Gay people tend to like musical theater" does not necessarily imply the converse, that "Tending to like musical theater makes you a gay person."
Furthermore, you've offered no evidence that the initial construct is even remotely accurate - *do* gay people tend to like musical theater? I don't know, I've never seen a study to indicate that they do, though if I relied solely on stereotypes as you have, I'd say "Sure, I saw Will & Grace, gay dudes totally love Cats."
You seem to be TRYING to make the point that "being gay" is just "who you are," and that you can't stop being gay simply because you want to, or somebody tells you you should. I believe it's your use of those specific stereotypical traits as proof that he's still *totally gay* that people are finding rather offensive.
None of us give a shit what your friend likes, but I bet your friend would probably be hurt by your characterization of him: "Look at this guy. He's stupid, thinks he's not gay any more because he has a wife and doesn't fuck guys. But he still goes to see musicals and loves antiquing. What a total fag."
Your point would have been fine if you had simply said, "My friend claims he's not gay anymore, but he's also told me that he still finds men sexually attractive, even if he won't act on it." Instead, you started dropping the limp-wristed, lace-collared, mincing fairy stereotypes, and then seem to wonder why people object to that characterization as offensive.
Being gay means you are sexually attracted to your own gender. It doesn't mean you "know the words to some songs from Cats," or "really love nicely designed rooms," or "enjoy finding old things at antique shows." I've been to some antique stores with an ex-girlfriend... I actually found it quite fascinating to talk with some of the dealers about the history of the pieces. And not once did I ever find myself developing an appetite for another man. I've also been to musicals, the opera, the ballet, the symphony, and (*gasp*) a few fine art museums. Still no urge to blow another guy. Amazing how those activities are *completely* unrelated to whether or not someone is gay, isn't it?
You know, I think I covered this already: if you have a valid will, then whoever you designate as the recipient of those rights will own them. If you have no valid will, intestate succession will determine your next of kin, and the rights would go to them. If you are truly the last of your family, and you die alone and unloved by everyone with no possible legal next of kin, then the government would 'inherit' your rights via escheat.
Now, I believe that the government will generally resell property that reverts to it via escheat, but I'm not sure if that applies to copyrights as well - I don't think it should, at any rate. I would think it reasonable (and desirable) to place limits on copyright in the following manner: 1) Author granted lifetime copyrights to their own work; joint works receive protection as long as one of the authors is still alive; 2) Upon the death of the author, the author's will determines where the rights are assigned; if there is no will, the rights go to next of kin; failing to find next of kin, the rights revert to the state; (this is the way the law works today as I understand it); 3) Copyrighted works revert to the public domain X years after the death of the author (or for joint works, X years after the last contributor dies), where X is a reasonably short period of time (maybe 5-10 years?); 4) Any works which the government obtains the rights to via escheat are immediately placed into the public domain by the state;
I'm not a lawyer, but even if an author dies, wouldn't their estate (or their heirs, or their publishers) generally own the rights to their work? If there's a valid will, the rights would transfer according to the dictates of the will; if there's no will, then intestate succession would determine the assignment of the rights, with the rights eventually falling to the government if no appropriate next of kin is found (the process is, in my understanding, known as 'escheat').
There's no such thing as a book that "nobody owns the rights to," unless it's already in the public domain. Even if it's out of print - somebody, somewhere, owns the rights.
You can argue that the copyright terms are too long (I'd agree); You can argue that if the government inherits rights to a work, it should automatically be placed in the public domain (I'd agree); You can argue that the laws should be changed so that all works revert to the public domain immediately upon an author's death, or even after only 40 years of copyright protection, period - write a good book at 22, it goes public domain when you turn 62 (I wouldn't really have a strong opinion against it, though I'm not sure that 40 years is the best number). The merits of any of these proposals are endlessly debatable, but form the basis of some sort of sensible copyright reform.
However, Google simply saying "These books are orphaned" is willfully obtuse. Somebody owns the rights. Would it be difficult to track down the owner of each and every work? Sure, probably as expensive as hell, too. But without copyright reform (and this settlement *is not* copyright reform), they are simply violating somebody's copyright, and hoping to get away with it by throwing some money at the issue, and asking the government to grant them what is - in essence - perpetual indemnity from any copyright claim. This is what the judge deemed unfair, and which he said would be largely fixed by changing their proposal to an opt-in system.
North Korea will just take 1 nuke to wipe out and the UN will not let china give nukes to NK.
Right, because if it came down to nuclear war, I'm sure that Kim Jong Il, the entire North Korean military apparatus, and all of their command and control centers would just be kicking back in downtown Pyongyang, doing nothing but waiting for that bomb to fall, rather than... you know, overrunning the entire southern end of the Korean peninsula.
And as far as the UN preventing China from giving North Korea nukes, I can't imagine a LESS effective body for doing that. Do you really think that the UN security council has a single bit of influence over what happens along the 1400-km-long border between China and North Korea? If China decided to give North Korea a nuke, the UN wouldn't hear about it until moments before the missile landed in downtown Seoul.
And if you want to see a real shit storm, watch how many nukes fly after that "one nuke" takes out Pyongyang, and China decides that they take exception to having a Minuteman deliver a nuclear payload on their doorstep.
Yep, because Microsoft makes a mint off of spending all their time patching old vulnerabilities in software that was paid for 10 years ago. They have no incentive whatsoever to get people to upgrade.
So you don't see touch interface tablets as anything but a "slightly newer" version of pen tablets and convertible tablets?
If that's the case, then the convertibles you're arguing so stridently in favor of are the early, expensive models which didn't sell well? Which means, by extension, the iPad would be a reasonably priced model which makes great improvements over the earlier convertible technology?
Yes they are computers, but they can't replace a laptop/desktop.
Here's what you're overlooking: MANY people do not buy "a computer". They buy a "thing I can email, retouch the redeye in a few photos, browse the web, and watch a movie or listen to some music with."
Slashdot's technical requirements of a device are not the average user's technical requirements. Geeks want IDEs and SDKs and APIs, and as many GEEBEES and MHZEES as possible. Average users - don't really care. Their needs are functional: "How do I send an email with this?" "How do I read the news?" They don't care how many GBs and MHz that requires, they just want an "appliance" that lets them do the things they want to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if there's a landing strip where the bush has been cleared, aim for that.
If it's wide open space instead, give thanks for your good fortune and aim for the open space where the bush used to be.
They have not been declared to have a "monopoly" on MP3 players. They would first have to be declared a monopoly before we can say that they then used that monopoly to unfairly limit the competition. Alternative hardware exists: Sansa players, Zune, and numerous other iPod work-alikes. Alternative music stores existed: Amazon, eMusic, Zune Marketplace; Any MP3 purchased without DRM, any MP3 purchased via iTunes, and any MP3 ripped from your own music sources will load on an iPod just fine. Consumers had plenty of alternatives, and Real could have easily gone out and negotiated DRM-free sales.
From a good overview of the VirginMega decision in France:
In other words: Apple's refusal to license FairPlay does not prevent people from competing in the MP3 download market, OR the MP3 player market. It is therefore not an essential facility that people are being denied the use of, and it therefore does not follow that Apple is unfairly limiting competition. The existence of multiple competing MP3 retailers and MP3 player manufacturers is evidence of this.
Entirely relevant. Apple is under no obligation to destroy its own business because Real couldn't develop a viable business model. There is no obligation on Apple's part to provide a platform for its competitors to access a market - the existence of numerous competitors suggests that there is nothing essential about FairPlay that makes it a necessary element of competition in the MP3 or MP3 player market.
You have it exactly backwards. If the monopoly on MP3 players were leveraged to gain an advantage in the music market, then they would have said "You may not load any tracks on the iPod EXCEPT for tracks bought through the iTunes store. *That* would be using your size advantage in the MP3 player market to unfairly limit competition in other markets. In fact, there are numerous other ways to purchase music to load on your iPod - Real's complaint is that Apple declined to *help* them become middlemen growing fat on taking a cut of sales of music they did nothing to produce to a device they also didn't produce. I'd love a piece of that racket too, but I would never suggest that Apple declining to help me secure that position is an "antitrust" violation.
And if Microsoft hadn't been abusing its position as the dominant OS to prevent alternative OS'es and browsers from being loaded by OEMs, then they probably wouldn't have been penalized. Bell Systems was a government-sanctio
I'm shocked and amazed that you'd suggest that laws are sometimes abused above and beyond their original intent & purpose.
... Apple doesn't sell DRM'ed music anymore. Why would they "license out a scheme" that they are no longer even using?
Other stores can (and do, quite successfully) sell DRM-free tracks that play on an iPod just fine.
Who's being locked out, again?
Which is exactly what I just said - a company's behavior is what determines whether they will be subjected to antitrust penalties. It's not simply a matter of "being big", there has to be abuse of that monopoly status (tying, coercion, price fixing etc.) before the law will penalize you.
And technically, just having a "large market share" doesn't mean you're subject to penalties, either.
You have to *abuse* that large market share to unreasonably restrict competition. If you're simply better at what you do than anybody else, and people overwhelmingly choose your product/service, then there's no basis for an antitrust suit. Once you use your dominant position to harm Gateway's or RealNetworks' business, as Microsoft was found to have done.
Antitrust law is intended to encourage competition by making it painful for the big guys to stomp on the little guys who are competing well; it's not intended to punish someone for succeeding in a *legitimate* competition. It's possible to have a large market share without abusing it, though I'm sure it must be awfully tempting.
The suit stems largely from the Apple / RealNetworks dispute regarding the Harmony service Real tried to offer, allowing people to buy music from Real, and load it on iPods by re-DRM'ing the track as a "FairPlay-compatible" track. Apple made changes that (deliberately or not) stopped Harmony-purchased tracks from working on an iPod.
I'm not certain that this rises to the level of "antitrust" for several reasons:
1) They weren't under any obligation to license their FairPlay technology to other vendors, and in fact VirginMega actually got shot down by a court in 2004 for that very reason;
2) It's possible that turning a blind eye to how easily FairPlay was reverse engineered by Real could have put Apple afoul of its agreements with the record labels;
3) iPods have *always* allowed (and played) non-DRM'ed MP3/AAC tracks - Real could have sold non-DRM tracks if they wanted to sell for the iPod - eMusic has been doing it for a while now;
4) Real could have built their own iPod competitor, and had a run at the market that way; Microsoft's Zune and Sansa's various portable models both did this;
In short, there was enough competition and choice for consumers on the market that Apple's product decision didn't reasonably constitute "monopolistic" behavior.
That doesn't really make the final product cheaper for the consumer, though - you CAN listen to songs and watch movies by subscribing to Pandora, last.fm, Netflix, Spotify, and other services quite cheaply, but the amount of money the creators make off of that is dwarfed by more traditional sales channels, and those sales largely subsidize the lower cost streaming alternatives. You don't "own" the track or the movie or the album - you just rent it for a few minutes. If this was the only way MGM had to make money off a $200 million movie, you'd see those subscription fees go up by quite a bit.
It costs money to produce something - the time and effort of many people go into producing a movie, a song, an album, a CD, or a news article. Low distribution & replication costs do not automatically mean that the cost to produce the thing you're replicating has approached zero. If not enough people value the reporting of the Times, this paywall will fail, and perhaps all newspapers will end up using an AP/Reuters-style news agency for all their news reporting. Of course, then we'll bitch that all of the news lacks diversity and that somebody ought to produce something original.
Yeah, if "interacting with the computer" involves breaking into a locked room, removing security controls on a computer with a sensitive function, and then planning to use it to launch DDoS attacks against other "rival groups." This isn't like, "What, I was just at the mall, using a touchscreen kiosk to find directions to the Urban Outfitters store!"
Considering he apparently needed both physical access (in a locked room) to the computers, and he had to disable security controls on the computer, I'd suggest that this indicates pretty a fairly decent attempt to secure the system and prevent it from being exploited.
ObCarAnalogy:
Would it be okay for me to break into your locked garage, replace all the software on your car's sensors & control units, and then claim I was "just interacting with a computer," when your brakes failed due to the changes I'd made?
104 Pulitzers since 1918 would certainly suggest that they've got a generally higher quality of reporting than many other news organizations. If all you're looking for in your "news coverage" is to find out the latest in Lindsay Lohan's theft charges, then yeah, you'll find tons of that for free all over the internet, no need to sign up. If you want well-written journalism, there aren't too many places that offer same-or-better quality than you'll find from the Times.
Why is it excessive? From TFA:
Given the fact that his actions could have breached confidentiality of medical records, or, you know, even killed someone due to the HVAC system going haywire and not controlling the temperature in a patient's room, or a storeroom containing temperature-sensitive medications, I'd say that 9 years and 2 months (probably being served in a minimum-security federal prison camp) doesn't sound all that unreasonable.
Ah, I see - you think that an hour or two worth of original reporting produced & delivered daily, produced by actually hiring and sending journalists all over the world to the places where the stories are happening is MUCH cheaper than a 1-hour-a-week television show, filmed in a single location, usually with a cast and crew numbering in the dozens?
I'm not certain your comparison underscores the point you seem to think it does. Running a news organization requires quite a few salaries, and a lot of travel expenses - if you have a staff of more than a couple people, you can easily spend millions operating it, when you consider salaries, travel expenses, and communication expenses (especially when communications will require reporters to file reports from areas like the tsunami/quake zone in Japan, where communications infrastructure has been significantly disrupted by the event the reporters are there to cover.)
When you consider that, 30-60 hours a month of original reporting from the NYTimes for $35 starts sounding like a pretty-goddamned-good deal compared to 4-5 hours a month of the Sopranos or Six Feet Under or Boardwalk Empire for $40-50.
That would be a more valid comparison if Pandora did something other than stream content other people generated, and pay licensing fees to those people for streaming it. I can guarantee you that if Pandora actually had to find, record, produce and market the bands you're listening to through their service, the subscription fee would be a hell of a lot more than $3 / month.
And I think we can ALL agree that generating ad revenue is NEVER at odds with producing high-quality articles for people to read!
Great, they've decided to compete on ONE particular wifi-only configuration of the iPad, and they're offering a smaller selection of apps to actually RUN on the tablet, too, plus an eventual upgrade to 4G, which will only work in a handful of places for the next year or two, plus drain the battery significantly faster than any 3G or wifi usage. Where do we sign up?
The 16GB, wifi only iPad is $100 cheaper, and that's what the people looking to buy entry level will pick. Well, that or the RIM Playbook, also at $499.
So, let's say I want a Xoom with 3G - that'll run me $799 - almost as much as the 64GB / 3G iPad, and either $70 or $170 more than the 16GB/3G and 32GB/3G iPads:
-- iPad, 16GB, 3G, $629.
-- iPad, 32GB, 3G, $729.
-- iPad, 64GB, 3G, $829.
You were saying?
Yes, the 32GB Xoom is $599. There is no 16 GB model for $499 (like the iPad). $799 for the unsubsidized 3G option, $70 more than the 32GB/3G iPad.
You can get a wifi-only 16GB ipad cheaper than the Xoom; You can get the 3G iPad for $70 to $170 cheaper than the Xoom ($629 for 16GB/3G, $729 for 32GB/3G ipad, vs. $799 for 32GB/3G Xoom).
Honestly, RIM's Playbook looks like it'll be more competitive - at least they're pricing it to compete directly with all 3 wifi iPads. The challenge will be whether they generate enough developer interest to build an ecosystem for the device.
And using a stereotype without any evidence other than your own biased notions doesn't make it true, either.
To make your logical fallacy very clear: all cats are mammals, but not all mammals are cats.
You used "liking musical theater" as evidence that your friend was still gay, despite his assertions to the contrary. "Gay people tend to like musical theater" does not necessarily imply the converse, that "Tending to like musical theater makes you a gay person."
Furthermore, you've offered no evidence that the initial construct is even remotely accurate - *do* gay people tend to like musical theater? I don't know, I've never seen a study to indicate that they do, though if I relied solely on stereotypes as you have, I'd say "Sure, I saw Will & Grace, gay dudes totally love Cats."
You seem to be TRYING to make the point that "being gay" is just "who you are," and that you can't stop being gay simply because you want to, or somebody tells you you should. I believe it's your use of those specific stereotypical traits as proof that he's still *totally gay* that people are finding rather offensive.
None of us give a shit what your friend likes, but I bet your friend would probably be hurt by your characterization of him: "Look at this guy. He's stupid, thinks he's not gay any more because he has a wife and doesn't fuck guys. But he still goes to see musicals and loves antiquing. What a total fag."
Your point would have been fine if you had simply said, "My friend claims he's not gay anymore, but he's also told me that he still finds men sexually attractive, even if he won't act on it." Instead, you started dropping the limp-wristed, lace-collared, mincing fairy stereotypes, and then seem to wonder why people object to that characterization as offensive.
Being gay means you are sexually attracted to your own gender. It doesn't mean you "know the words to some songs from Cats," or "really love nicely designed rooms," or "enjoy finding old things at antique shows." I've been to some antique stores with an ex-girlfriend... I actually found it quite fascinating to talk with some of the dealers about the history of the pieces. And not once did I ever find myself developing an appetite for another man. I've also been to musicals, the opera, the ballet, the symphony, and (*gasp*) a few fine art museums. Still no urge to blow another guy. Amazing how those activities are *completely* unrelated to whether or not someone is gay, isn't it?
You know, I think I covered this already: if you have a valid will, then whoever you designate as the recipient of those rights will own them. If you have no valid will, intestate succession will determine your next of kin, and the rights would go to them. If you are truly the last of your family, and you die alone and unloved by everyone with no possible legal next of kin, then the government would 'inherit' your rights via escheat.
Now, I believe that the government will generally resell property that reverts to it via escheat, but I'm not sure if that applies to copyrights as well - I don't think it should, at any rate. I would think it reasonable (and desirable) to place limits on copyright in the following manner:
1) Author granted lifetime copyrights to their own work; joint works receive protection as long as one of the authors is still alive;
2) Upon the death of the author, the author's will determines where the rights are assigned; if there is no will, the rights go to next of kin; failing to find next of kin, the rights revert to the state; (this is the way the law works today as I understand it);
3) Copyrighted works revert to the public domain X years after the death of the author (or for joint works, X years after the last contributor dies), where X is a reasonably short period of time (maybe 5-10 years?);
4) Any works which the government obtains the rights to via escheat are immediately placed into the public domain by the state;
I'm not a lawyer, but even if an author dies, wouldn't their estate (or their heirs, or their publishers) generally own the rights to their work? If there's a valid will, the rights would transfer according to the dictates of the will; if there's no will, then intestate succession would determine the assignment of the rights, with the rights eventually falling to the government if no appropriate next of kin is found (the process is, in my understanding, known as 'escheat').
There's no such thing as a book that "nobody owns the rights to," unless it's already in the public domain. Even if it's out of print - somebody, somewhere, owns the rights.
You can argue that the copyright terms are too long (I'd agree); You can argue that if the government inherits rights to a work, it should automatically be placed in the public domain (I'd agree); You can argue that the laws should be changed so that all works revert to the public domain immediately upon an author's death, or even after only 40 years of copyright protection, period - write a good book at 22, it goes public domain when you turn 62 (I wouldn't really have a strong opinion against it, though I'm not sure that 40 years is the best number). The merits of any of these proposals are endlessly debatable, but form the basis of some sort of sensible copyright reform.
However, Google simply saying "These books are orphaned" is willfully obtuse. Somebody owns the rights. Would it be difficult to track down the owner of each and every work? Sure, probably as expensive as hell, too. But without copyright reform (and this settlement *is not* copyright reform), they are simply violating somebody's copyright, and hoping to get away with it by throwing some money at the issue, and asking the government to grant them what is - in essence - perpetual indemnity from any copyright claim. This is what the judge deemed unfair, and which he said would be largely fixed by changing their proposal to an opt-in system.
I thought it was .38 Special that did that song.
Right, because if it came down to nuclear war, I'm sure that Kim Jong Il, the entire North Korean military apparatus, and all of their command and control centers would just be kicking back in downtown Pyongyang, doing nothing but waiting for that bomb to fall, rather than... you know, overrunning the entire southern end of the Korean peninsula.
And as far as the UN preventing China from giving North Korea nukes, I can't imagine a LESS effective body for doing that. Do you really think that the UN security council has a single bit of influence over what happens along the 1400-km-long border between China and North Korea? If China decided to give North Korea a nuke, the UN wouldn't hear about it until moments before the missile landed in downtown Seoul.
And if you want to see a real shit storm, watch how many nukes fly after that "one nuke" takes out Pyongyang, and China decides that they take exception to having a Minuteman deliver a nuclear payload on their doorstep.
Yep, because Microsoft makes a mint off of spending all their time patching old vulnerabilities in software that was paid for 10 years ago. They have no incentive whatsoever to get people to upgrade.
So you don't see touch interface tablets as anything but a "slightly newer" version of pen tablets and convertible tablets?
If that's the case, then the convertibles you're arguing so stridently in favor of are the early, expensive models which didn't sell well? Which means, by extension, the iPad would be a reasonably priced model which makes great improvements over the earlier convertible technology?
God I wish you'd make up your mind.
Here's what you're overlooking: MANY people do not buy "a computer". They buy a "thing I can email, retouch the redeye in a few photos, browse the web, and watch a movie or listen to some music with."
Slashdot's technical requirements of a device are not the average user's technical requirements. Geeks want IDEs and SDKs and APIs, and as many GEEBEES and MHZEES as possible. Average users - don't really care. Their needs are functional: "How do I send an email with this?" "How do I read the news?" They don't care how many GBs and MHz that requires, they just want an "appliance" that lets them do the things they want to do.