Or maybe, just maybe, he has an interest in seeing the field improved by greater, more innovative, competition.
I'd like to see Microsoft become more like Apple. I'd like to see Apple become more like Google (yeah yeah China blah blah blah). The fact is, all the big companies have some excellent traits, and each could stand to learn something from the others. And the more they take these lessons to heart, the better their products get, and the more we benefit from it. Have you considered the possibility that what he wants is for everyone to have the better computer experience that would come from such innovation?
Then someone just goes after them for bundling a "software distribution program" with Windows because they have a similar product.
Broadband isn't available to everyone, and most people don't want to install an OS just to sit and wait several hours for it to download all the components it should have shipped with anyway.
Windows is a package deal. With Linux, you could just install a kernel and shell and have a working OS. Granted, it wouldn't do much, but it would still be an OS. On top of that, the average distro comes with a desktop environment (and everything required to render it), office productivity suite, internet browser, e-mail client, games, developer tools, various editors, and all sorts of nifty workstation and server gadgets. They do this because it makes no sense to just distribute the kernel as an OS and then require people to locate, download, and install each package individually if it can be included on a disk.
Imagine having 56k and needing to download a browser, media player, e-mail client, image viewer, etc just to be able to access your files after an upgrade.
This so-called bundling is a necessity in the OS market. When John Q. "I just want it to work" Public buys Windows XP Home Edition Upgrade, he expects a product that will work once he installs it. If he installed XP, then had to find an internet browser (interesting task without, you know, a browser), an e-mail client, a media player, et cetera just to get what is now considered basic functionality for a computer, he'd simply abandon the idea of computers.
Where MS went wrong with IE was preventing users from removing it. OEMs should have the ability to ship a PC with XP, Firefox, Thunderbird, and iTunes on them if they so choose. If MS makes this difficult or impossible, *then* they are being anticompetitive. With IE becoming more modularized in relation to the OS, it looks like MS is moving toward giving people that ability back.
E-mail is a key part of today's office productivity. Why wouldn't you release an integrated feature-rich e-mail client as part of an office productivity suite? Should they just sell Word, Excel, Access, Powerpoint, and Outlook all seperately? Okay, I actually think they should offer them individually but if you can buy software combinations from Adobe without them getting sued, why not Microsoft? It makes sense to offer packages of products that are commonly grouped and offer them at a discount.
Active directory and Media Server also just "make sense". If you're selling a server solution, shouldn't you build in server features?
I think there's some argument for Media Player, except that the success of iTunes as a WMP alternative shows that there is substantial competition in the market.
"If Mozilla permit the sale of copied versions of its software, it makes it virtually impossible for us, from a practical point of view, to enforce UK anti-piracy legislation, as it is difficult for us to give general advice to businesses over what is/is not permitted."
It's called reading the license agreement. If a product specifically states that copies of said product are free to be distributed, they're okay.
She just wants the answer to be easier. She wants to say "No," and be done with it.
It's good to see a major player in Hollywood acknowledge that games are still in the infancy of their role as a medium. Every time we have another person like Jackson weighing in on the side of games as a legitimate source of entertainment and expression, we get a little closer to the media putting an end to their projected ignorance and real public understanding.
I play because I love to play. But on the rare occasion that I'm asked to sit in on a recording session, I'm reminded that quality recording simply can't be done without at least breaking even.
I know one artist who has a $20,000 studio in his house. It's where several of the guys I know do their recording, and where I've recorded all my samples when people asked for them. He's coming close to getting it paid off through album sales after his concerts. I can assure you, if there were no chance of recovering that investment he never would have spent the money.
Ever since I found out about this project, it's the only upcoming game on my mind. As soon as preorders come up, I'm snagging one. TA is my all-time favorite game (even above X-COM!) and I've been frustrated ever since I lost the ability to run it natively.
I agree. The record labels would have us think that every downloaded song equates a lost CD sale. The movie studios could even say that every downloaded movie is a lost movie ticket AND a lost DVD sale. That's not the case at all, and any rational person understands that most people don't go see a movie a week, yet I know of people who download far more than that.
From 1995 to 2005, movie ticket sales rose 100,000,000 units. And that includes a very sharp decline from almost 1.6b in 2002 to under 1.4b in 2005. A similar period of time--1983 to 1995, shows half the rate of growth (I added two years because 1985 shows a larger drop in ticket sales than 2005 and skews the numbers a bit).
Movie ticket sales are going up. DVD sales are going up. They just aren't going up fast enough for the movie industry. These figures make it clear that not every download represents a lost sale.
If I buy a CD, which I buy often enough, if I want to share with people, I should be able to.
As a musician, I'm going to say you're dead wrong there. Either the label or the artist themselves has invested a great deal of time and money in creating and recording the music. Because they made the investment, they should have the right to control distribution of the music.
Loan the CD out all you want. Make all the copies you want for your own personal use. But every time you give that song away to someone else, you inhibit their ability to recover their investment.
But hey, give away all the music you want to. Encourage the people you give it to, to do the same. When they stop producing the kind of music you like because it's not profitable and yet another fake blonde with surgically enhanced curves tops the charts with soulless, mindless music cut straight from a corporate "one hit wonder" template, you'd better not complain. If you don't want people buying good music, don't expect artists and labels to invest what it takes to get it to you.
Disclaimer: upon reading this post, I realize the language can come across as rather antogonistic. Understand that this is something that affects me and my friends personally, and it really bothers me to see people who are apparently ignorant not only of the law, but of what their actions do. Consequences are ignored all too often in this nation, especially when they only impact others. I've no love of the RIAA and their goon squad tactics, but two wrongs most certainly do not make a right...and music piracy is wrong.
the people that download stuff would not have bought it anyway.
That's just not true. People download more than they would have bought, that goes without saying...but services like iTunes have demonstrated that people will pay for their downloads if they're made available for purchase. I know people who never bought CDs who now buy songs online because they can buy only the songs they want. Prior to that, they pirated the material.
As for the wording of it, whether you like it or not "unauthorized duplication and distribution" is becoming part of the definition of piracy. You might as well give up that fight.
Nobody wants to watch football from the helmet cam. Remember those things? I think Fox had them. Novel, interesting, and utterly useless. People want to see aerial views of the action.
To my knowledge, there's not a single competitive FPS out there with a strong observer system that would be well-suited to television.
I watch paintball tournaments on TV when I can catch them. What's fun is watching the strategies, the overall action. Not what player B is seeing as he bunkers behind a taco in an attempt to press player D out of his hole.
I'm thinking more about those companies not large enough to get Microsoft's special licensing deals. A company that only maintains a dozen servers more than likely will simply buy the licenses with the server because it's cost effective. That same company (hint: I did this at a company I worked for) might buy a Linux or Unix distribution seperately because server vendors don't always offer the specific packages the buyer needs.
iirc, most server sales these days are to small- and medium businesses. Their practices won't be the same as large corporations.
Sounds like the Democrats in the 90s. "The Republicans are cutting funding to ______" when in fact the Republicans were reducing the rate of increase. It just sounds a lot more dramatic their way.
For a lot of families, it's simple math.
2 adult tickets at $7.50 2 child tickets at $4.50 1 massive popcorn barrel at $5.50 3 drinks at $2.50 each
Total: $37 (based on real local prices)
Now, let's say they get a huge TV and surround sound system: NetZero/Blockbuster subscription: $10 a month Entertainment system (50+" HDTV and combo home theater system): $1,500 - $2,000, financed to around $50 a month.
For just $23 more than a trip to the movies, you can watch a dozen movies a month at home.
This has been one of my gripes about Linux for a long time. Non-enterprise admins don't have the training to run a mission-critical Linux server, can't afford to hire an expert, and don't want to spend the time learning a new system. Documentation isn't thorough and easy to read, help is only available through community forums or paid (and very expensive) support contracts.
I'm a casual Linux user who is having a very hard time actually diving into it and really getting to know the OS. There's nowhere for me to go but online to get help, and half the time when I'm trying to work out a problem, suddenly the forum thread I'm posting in goes dead for weeks at a time. The community has really left me unimpressed, and the documentation (when it can be found) assumes entirely too much technical knowledge.
And some Linux zealots wonder why people still use MS...
What the MPAA means to say is that $5.4 billion in movies were pirated at the manufacturer's suggested retail price. That probably doesn't adjust for the fact that a lot of them would have sold for less than what the MPAA lists them at. It also won't admit the fact that a lot more movies are downloaded than would be bought.
I'm not trying to justify piracy. It's wrong. I'm saying they deliberately skew the numbers to make piracy look worse than it is.
Here's some interesting information:
Movie ticket sales declined more in 2000 than in 2004. Online movie piracy was hardly commonplace then, yet sales declined for two years straight. 2005 showed the biggest drop in ticket sales, which might best be explained by rising ticket prices and the market penetration of large, high-definition home entertainment systems.
...which skews the numbers even more. Microsoft's pricing schemes make it much more economical for small businesses to buy Windows with the system, while *nix systems don't have that same price advantage.
An administrator is a lot more likely to purchase a system without an OS and obtain his *nix distribution seperately, as there is no cost benefit and it gives him the ability to install and configure the OS without having to wipe a factory install.
Yahoo and other companies don't publish (or if they do, make readily available) a list of the strings they filter. I've got no problem with them filtering usernames--their servers, their money, their right--but it troubles me that they make it some kind of secret.
Rather than "not available" they SHOULD have simply told her "We're sorry, but your requested username contains the string "allah" which is currently prohibited," and provide a link for more details on WHY that particular string is prohibited.
If it were my service, I'd take it a step further and provide people a way to request an exception. For example, if "Allah" is banned and Mrs. Callahan writes in to explain that it's just part of her name, you add an exception to the rule if "allah" is preceded by "c" and followed by "an".
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe, just maybe, he has an interest in seeing the field improved by greater, more innovative, competition.
I'd like to see Microsoft become more like Apple. I'd like to see Apple become more like Google (yeah yeah China blah blah blah). The fact is, all the big companies have some excellent traits, and each could stand to learn something from the others. And the more they take these lessons to heart, the better their products get, and the more we benefit from it. Have you considered the possibility that what he wants is for everyone to have the better computer experience that would come from such innovation?
Then someone just goes after them for bundling a "software distribution program" with Windows because they have a similar product.
Broadband isn't available to everyone, and most people don't want to install an OS just to sit and wait several hours for it to download all the components it should have shipped with anyway.
Windows is a package deal. With Linux, you could just install a kernel and shell and have a working OS. Granted, it wouldn't do much, but it would still be an OS. On top of that, the average distro comes with a desktop environment (and everything required to render it), office productivity suite, internet browser, e-mail client, games, developer tools, various editors, and all sorts of nifty workstation and server gadgets. They do this because it makes no sense to just distribute the kernel as an OS and then require people to locate, download, and install each package individually if it can be included on a disk.
Imagine having 56k and needing to download a browser, media player, e-mail client, image viewer, etc just to be able to access your files after an upgrade.
Also:
This so-called bundling is a necessity in the OS market. When John Q. "I just want it to work" Public buys Windows XP Home Edition Upgrade, he expects a product that will work once he installs it. If he installed XP, then had to find an internet browser (interesting task without, you know, a browser), an e-mail client, a media player, et cetera just to get what is now considered basic functionality for a computer, he'd simply abandon the idea of computers.
Where MS went wrong with IE was preventing users from removing it. OEMs should have the ability to ship a PC with XP, Firefox, Thunderbird, and iTunes on them if they so choose. If MS makes this difficult or impossible, *then* they are being anticompetitive. With IE becoming more modularized in relation to the OS, it looks like MS is moving toward giving people that ability back.
Active directory and Media Server also just "make sense". If you're selling a server solution, shouldn't you build in server features?
I think there's some argument for Media Player, except that the success of iTunes as a WMP alternative shows that there is substantial competition in the market.
VaporWorks 2.0 should integrate a media player, photo editor, and its own integrated web crawler to compete with Google.
After all, it's always best to try to make your product do everything, even if it sounds impossible. Apparently VC investors like that.
It's called reading the license agreement. If a product specifically states that copies of said product are free to be distributed, they're okay.
She just wants the answer to be easier. She wants to say "No," and be done with it.
It's not Linux. It just won't run under XP. I can play it on my laptop on Win98, but that thing's a POS.
:(
You probably have Core Contingency...I've heard that helps. I don't have CC, and can't find it
It's good to see a major player in Hollywood acknowledge that games are still in the infancy of their role as a medium. Every time we have another person like Jackson weighing in on the side of games as a legitimate source of entertainment and expression, we get a little closer to the media putting an end to their projected ignorance and real public understanding.
I play because I love to play. But on the rare occasion that I'm asked to sit in on a recording session, I'm reminded that quality recording simply can't be done without at least breaking even.
I know one artist who has a $20,000 studio in his house. It's where several of the guys I know do their recording, and where I've recorded all my samples when people asked for them. He's coming close to getting it paid off through album sales after his concerts. I can assure you, if there were no chance of recovering that investment he never would have spent the money.
I have a simple solution to this: a recliner.
I just sit in my recliner, kick my feet up, and push the laptop down so it's well away from the jewels. My knees get nice and toasty though.
Most cell phone commercials, the phone isn't even real. Yay for realistic CGI beecoming accessible to the masses :(
Ever since I found out about this project, it's the only upcoming game on my mind. As soon as preorders come up, I'm snagging one. TA is my all-time favorite game (even above X-COM!) and I've been frustrated ever since I lost the ability to run it natively.
I agree. The record labels would have us think that every downloaded song equates a lost CD sale. The movie studios could even say that every downloaded movie is a lost movie ticket AND a lost DVD sale. That's not the case at all, and any rational person understands that most people don't go see a movie a week, yet I know of people who download far more than that.
From 1995 to 2005, movie ticket sales rose 100,000,000 units. And that includes a very sharp decline from almost 1.6b in 2002 to under 1.4b in 2005. A similar period of time--1983 to 1995, shows half the rate of growth (I added two years because 1985 shows a larger drop in ticket sales than 2005 and skews the numbers a bit).
Movie ticket sales are going up. DVD sales are going up. They just aren't going up fast enough for the movie industry. These figures make it clear that not every download represents a lost sale.
Straight from the horse's mouth: http://www.mpaa.org/researchStatistics.asp
As a musician, I'm going to say you're dead wrong there. Either the label or the artist themselves has invested a great deal of time and money in creating and recording the music. Because they made the investment, they should have the right to control distribution of the music.
Loan the CD out all you want. Make all the copies you want for your own personal use. But every time you give that song away to someone else, you inhibit their ability to recover their investment.
But hey, give away all the music you want to. Encourage the people you give it to, to do the same. When they stop producing the kind of music you like because it's not profitable and yet another fake blonde with surgically enhanced curves tops the charts with soulless, mindless music cut straight from a corporate "one hit wonder" template, you'd better not complain. If you don't want people buying good music, don't expect artists and labels to invest what it takes to get it to you.
Disclaimer: upon reading this post, I realize the language can come across as rather antogonistic. Understand that this is something that affects me and my friends personally, and it really bothers me to see people who are apparently ignorant not only of the law, but of what their actions do. Consequences are ignored all too often in this nation, especially when they only impact others. I've no love of the RIAA and their goon squad tactics, but two wrongs most certainly do not make a right...and music piracy is wrong.
That's just not true. People download more than they would have bought, that goes without saying...but services like iTunes have demonstrated that people will pay for their downloads if they're made available for purchase. I know people who never bought CDs who now buy songs online because they can buy only the songs they want. Prior to that, they pirated the material.
As for the wording of it, whether you like it or not "unauthorized duplication and distribution" is becoming part of the definition of piracy. You might as well give up that fight.
I see a pretty big technical hurdle here.
Nobody wants to watch football from the helmet cam. Remember those things? I think Fox had them. Novel, interesting, and utterly useless. People want to see aerial views of the action.
To my knowledge, there's not a single competitive FPS out there with a strong observer system that would be well-suited to television.
I watch paintball tournaments on TV when I can catch them. What's fun is watching the strategies, the overall action. Not what player B is seeing as he bunkers behind a taco in an attempt to press player D out of his hole.
I'm thinking more about those companies not large enough to get Microsoft's special licensing deals. A company that only maintains a dozen servers more than likely will simply buy the licenses with the server because it's cost effective. That same company (hint: I did this at a company I worked for) might buy a Linux or Unix distribution seperately because server vendors don't always offer the specific packages the buyer needs.
iirc, most server sales these days are to small- and medium businesses. Their practices won't be the same as large corporations.
Sounds like the Democrats in the 90s. "The Republicans are cutting funding to ______" when in fact the Republicans were reducing the rate of increase. It just sounds a lot more dramatic their way.
For a lot of families, it's simple math.
2 adult tickets at $7.50
2 child tickets at $4.50
1 massive popcorn barrel at $5.50
3 drinks at $2.50 each
Total: $37 (based on real local prices)
Now, let's say they get a huge TV and surround sound system:
NetZero/Blockbuster subscription: $10 a month
Entertainment system (50+" HDTV and combo home theater system): $1,500 - $2,000, financed to around $50 a month.
For just $23 more than a trip to the movies, you can watch a dozen movies a month at home.
This has been one of my gripes about Linux for a long time. Non-enterprise admins don't have the training to run a mission-critical Linux server, can't afford to hire an expert, and don't want to spend the time learning a new system. Documentation isn't thorough and easy to read, help is only available through community forums or paid (and very expensive) support contracts.
I'm a casual Linux user who is having a very hard time actually diving into it and really getting to know the OS. There's nowhere for me to go but online to get help, and half the time when I'm trying to work out a problem, suddenly the forum thread I'm posting in goes dead for weeks at a time. The community has really left me unimpressed, and the documentation (when it can be found) assumes entirely too much technical knowledge.
And some Linux zealots wonder why people still use MS...
I'm not trying to justify piracy. It's wrong. I'm saying they deliberately skew the numbers to make piracy look worse than it is.
Here's some interesting information:
Movie ticket sales declined more in 2000 than in 2004. Online movie piracy was hardly commonplace then, yet sales declined for two years straight. 2005 showed the biggest drop in ticket sales, which might best be explained by rising ticket prices and the market penetration of large, high-definition home entertainment systems.
...which skews the numbers even more. Microsoft's pricing schemes make it much more economical for small businesses to buy Windows with the system, while *nix systems don't have that same price advantage.
An administrator is a lot more likely to purchase a system without an OS and obtain his *nix distribution seperately, as there is no cost benefit and it gives him the ability to install and configure the OS without having to wipe a factory install.
Are you saying the Wayans are some even slightly remote way comparable to the perfection that is Python?
You may now die a horrible, painful, agonizing, terrible, excrutiating, cruel death.
Opera is too complicated!
Long live Lynx!
Yahoo and other companies don't publish (or if they do, make readily available) a list of the strings they filter. I've got no problem with them filtering usernames--their servers, their money, their right--but it troubles me that they make it some kind of secret.
Rather than "not available" they SHOULD have simply told her "We're sorry, but your requested username contains the string "allah" which is currently prohibited," and provide a link for more details on WHY that particular string is prohibited.
If it were my service, I'd take it a step further and provide people a way to request an exception. For example, if "Allah" is banned and Mrs. Callahan writes in to explain that it's just part of her name, you add an exception to the rule if "allah" is preceded by "c" and followed by "an".