The intent, as mentioned, was to get people to move to partners MS had licensing agreements with.
The goal is to make money. MS is not after glory , it's after the Benjamin's.
Lawsuits are like nuclear weapons, it's the option of last resort and pretty much assures either destruction of MASSIVE damage to all sides involved. When lawsuits fly the only winners will be the lawyers.
You realize that as much as you like to embody all which is evil as Bill Gates he's not the operational guy running the show over there causing this... right?
The problem here is that I don't think MS would even consider it if they hadn't strategized out that they would "win". Sure, they might take a hit, but they have the meat on their financial bones to survive a lot longer. As I mentioned, they only have to get a few key ones to stick to really hamstring things. Even including an FOSS counterstrike. Before there was no reason for MS to do it because OSS really didn't have all that much to "lose". Now they have actual market penetration, they went off and became a big enough fish to look tasty to the sharks.
I do agree that the end will probably be global patentnuclear war. And the only real losers in that will be people who use software.
Most people are seeing two possible outcomes here:
a) Microsoft whips it out and it does indeed kill open source as we know it by putting a Microsoft tax on everything.
b) The OSS crowd kicks MS in the patented family jewels and continues on it's merry way.
What most aren't considering is that MS is saying it has HUNDREDS of patent infringement claims. Each of which will need to be defeated. Chances are no court is going to do an "all or nothing" which is what OSS would want. They will have individual court cases on each. All MS has to do is pick the person who has the weakest case against a given patent claim and pursue them for JUST THAT ONE in order to give it credence, precedent, and ergo more power for the next person. Lather, rinse, and repeat that process a few hundred times. In the process they find which of their patents can stick and which can't. (If you think none can stick I would like to interest you in some lovely beach front property...and a bridge.)
So in the end what? MS loses 90% of the cases? That still leaves them with say 20-30 valid and legally proven patents. What happens if some of those are in the the cores of the operating systems? What happens if just ONE of those is on a feature that Linux desperately needs to be a viable competitor to windows?
MS is not wielding one big gun here people. They have a machine gun in both hands, and know they can afford to spray bullets into the crowd and only have a small percentage hit.
1. Build bomb 2. Attach a mobile phone running windows mobile 3. Attach triggering to a process which polls a website, if it can't reach the website it sets the timer to go off in 30 seconds. 4. Jamming devices blocks cel signal.. 5. 30 second countdown to detonation activates, giving enough time for the motorcade to get closer.
And letting people know about this ahead of time is the worst part... I'm not a huge fan of security through obscurity, but there's a difference between being obscure and telegraphing your methods.
Yes, but volume sales make online music stores viable. Keeping the stores viable opens up the door for independents to use them as well.
As much as the "great music" may be from smaller artists and labels, if the profits don't roll for Amazon on a venture they can and will pull the plug. Having the widest possible selection would be optimal for highest volume. Even if it means also having crappy choices.
But of course, to each their own on tastes and preference.
They can cross promote, buy the CD, get the MP3's for a discount and have them while the CD ships... Buy a movie, get the MP3's of the soundtrack bundled in...
Searching for information on learning classical spanish guitar? Here are a dozen books, a couple CD's, and oh yeah, some MP3 examples of greats in the field...
On another level, this is the difference between WarMart expanding it's electronics to also sell HDTV, and Best Buy expanding it's selection to do the same...
Yes, but if it's EMI + 12,000 labels that are hosted out of someone's garage then it's basically just EMI... The question would be which of the other big labels will get on this train. And if they did, they would have been mentioned by name I would believe.
What I meant was more if they would modify the end user selling something functions they have already. (i.e. the "buy new and used from...") to allow for end users such as bands to sell their own original MP3's over amazon.
This would be a huge boon for local unsigned and independent bands as they could have people just look them up on amazon. A band could have it's own website, which links to amazon to sell the MP3's , saving them bandwidth costs, and the need to manage/deal with e-commerce on a promotional website, while also allowing them to make money from the sale of their music.
I wonder what strings they were able to pull to get this moving faster/better than iTunes has... hurm....
Will it only be music from the EMI catalog?
They have the section of their site where individuals can sell things as "used" , will they expand this so that unsigned bands can sell their MP3's without a recording label behind them?
a) They "typoed".org instead of.com , for those of us who type in domain names constantly this may be feasible since our brains are probably a few words ahead and.org is in the muscular memory of our typing fingers just as much as.com , but these are bureaucrats and politicians who we're being told aren't all that savvy... b) They manually typed in the addresses. Just this point doesn't make sense. How many addresses do you manually type in? Not click from an address book, not type in the first couple letters and hit TAB to auto-complete... If anything the less savvy user would lean on crutches like mailing lists and auto-completion far more than manually typing in long addresses. c) If he's really REALLY so interested in the right thing happening, and all that, why hasn't he forwarded these to the congressmen who are looking into these matters instead of announcing them on the radio? d) How hard, exactly, is it to fake an SMTP message again? What kind of authenticity can he lend to this? How does he know that someone didn't fake the mail and send it to that domain? Heaven knows it couldn't have been spoofed, right?
Oh yeah, and he happens to be on the publicity trail for a new book now is he? hurm...
The reason this isn't getting much media hype is probably that most of the MSM have strong enough doubts as to the credibility of the evidence as to make it non viable to bring up.
A normal user does not install an OS unless they're upgrading after having a PC for a while. They buy a PC with an OS on it they like. This is one reason I think the Ubuntu Dell thing will bear some nice fruit.
Many of us think of ourselves as "normal users" from time to time, but remember, normal user really means people like our parents and people who haven't ever taken an actual COURSE in computer science in many cases. My big question has always been "Could I install this for my mom and not have her calling me constantly for help?"
I'm all for the need of content providers who provide content over the airwaves to put commercials in and try to make sure they don't get devaluated (i.e. skipped). They HAVE to do this because without it, they have no income, and stop existing.
I can extend this easily enough to cable companies, sat TV providers and such for channels that aren't premium channels for much the same reason. The cost of producing the content is higher than the small fraction of subscription costs they get back.
But premium content (Video on Demand, HBO, Showtime, PPV) are charging explicitly for the content, having ads at ALL invalidates a portion of that premium they get to change. FORCING ads on people is downright greedy. But I suppose if you own stock in Disney this is the idea...
The unfortunate fact is the test to if a child has really learned critical thinking is how well they do once school is no longer a part of their lives.
My wife and I are working on having a spawn of minions right now and I fully expect that it will be "informational tidbits you learn at school, thinking you learn at home". Not because the teachers can't teach it, but because they don't have time. I am just mildly bitter because I feel I got a leg up on life because of a few teachers who really cared and made me learn to think, once I knew how to think, and how to find answers actually "learning" anything became exponentially easier.
The crux of your argument seems to be that the value of the console isn't realized because developers have not "figured out how" to get the maximum our of the cell architecture. There's a problem with this.
The continued popularity of the 360, coupled with the surprise success of the Wii has made many game designers rethink what console they're developing for. Look at the sudden increase in Wii titles in the pipe.
Also, by the time they "figure it out" there will be newer products out. Do you think there won't be an upgrade to the 360? Do you think Nintendo plans on never making another console upgrade?
Sony put all their eggs in the "look at this fantastic new technology and pay for it now on the promise that uses will be made for it later" basket. They should have taken a few eggs into the "have some killer apps ready for it on release day". And this doesn't start to address the fact that whereas you're a hardcore who will pay for the console if it can't find a mass market it won't have legs in the long run.
If the most innovative technology with the best capacity won the fight we'd all be using RISC driven Mac's right now.
It's a pity we don't have a political party which has a viable chance to put people into office in a system designed around only two parties having real power...
But that just doesn't make a catchy sig, ya know?
I actually consider myself one of those "Goldwater republicans who are becoming libertarians" the only problem is our political system is very skewed towards the two parties in power remaining in power, although we can always hope for change.
Not all states are union states. Texas, for instance, has teachers organizations calling themselves "unions" but they don't seem to carry the clout that unions up north do because of Texas laws involving unionization. This would make sense and explain the differences we're seeing I do believe.
As much as I am not a big supporter of unions, this is a case where I think a stronger union would benefit things.
Actually, I do pay property taxes as a home owner. I also know people who work in the teaching profession in the same city in which I pay these strangely high taxes. And in my brain I've made a note to someday figure out where the money is going because it's not going to the teachers.
And whereas yes they do get 3 months a year off, most of the don't make enough to avoid needing to get a summer job. Many of them are either working on grading papers and preparing lesson plans at home, or they're putting 12 hour days in at the school keeping up with some of it. The worst part is knowing how many of them honestly want to instill that vital critical thinking nugget in the heads of kids, but then get beaten down with the fact that they have to teach to a standardized test because that's what they'll be reviewed over.
Maybe where you're at the teachers job is a cushy one, but from my observations in a non suburb city it isn't. The only teachers I know who are thriving and loving the job all teach at private schools, and there aren't enough of those jobs to go around.
"It's OK for a drunken pirate to have a pretty useless degree, but we'll be damned if we're going to enable a drunken pirate to get a low paying stressful thankless job by giving them a certificate!"
Obviously ninja have infiltrated the schools administrative staff...
That this means the single largest collection of hacking and spamming sites will now have protection against people finding out who even owns the domains they run from?
Slashdot Mirror
The intent, as mentioned, was to get people to move to partners MS had licensing agreements with.
The goal is to make money. MS is not after glory , it's after the Benjamin's.
Lawsuits are like nuclear weapons, it's the option of last resort and pretty much assures either destruction of MASSIVE damage to all sides involved. When lawsuits fly the only winners will be the lawyers.
You realize that as much as you like to embody all which is evil as Bill Gates he's not the operational guy running the show over there causing this... right?
The problem here is that I don't think MS would even consider it if they hadn't strategized out that they would "win". Sure, they might take a hit, but they have the meat on their financial bones to survive a lot longer. As I mentioned, they only have to get a few key ones to stick to really hamstring things. Even including an FOSS counterstrike. Before there was no reason for MS to do it because OSS really didn't have all that much to "lose". Now they have actual market penetration, they went off and became a big enough fish to look tasty to the sharks.
I do agree that the end will probably be global patentnuclear war. And the only real losers in that will be people who use software.
Most people are seeing two possible outcomes here:
a) Microsoft whips it out and it does indeed kill open source as we know it by putting a Microsoft tax on everything.
b) The OSS crowd kicks MS in the patented family jewels and continues on it's merry way.
What most aren't considering is that MS is saying it has HUNDREDS of patent infringement claims. Each of which will need to be defeated. Chances are no court is going to do an "all or nothing" which is what OSS would want. They will have individual court cases on each. All MS has to do is pick the person who has the weakest case against a given patent claim and pursue them for JUST THAT ONE in order to give it credence, precedent, and ergo more power for the next person. Lather, rinse, and repeat that process a few hundred times. In the process they find which of their patents can stick and which can't. (If you think none can stick I would like to interest you in some lovely beach front property...and a bridge.)
So in the end what? MS loses 90% of the cases? That still leaves them with say 20-30 valid and legally proven patents. What happens if some of those are in the the cores of the operating systems? What happens if just ONE of those is on a feature that Linux desperately needs to be a viable competitor to windows?
MS is not wielding one big gun here people. They have a machine gun in both hands, and know they can afford to spray bullets into the crowd and only have a small percentage hit.
Curses, I thought choosing Extens would put that URL in there right..
e s-sony-strikes-back/>Gamer.Blorge.com
http://gamer.blorge.com/2007/05/17/34-new-ps3-gam
There's more of an actual list, although still only showing about half of the games, over at 3 -games-sony-strikes-back/>Gamer.Blorge.com</a> But even then of those (which I assume are the best ones in order to get mentioned) only about 3 are exclusives. The others are either going to be available on many platforms, or just sequels to franchises... A good summary was over on Fark somewhere..
SingStar Another franchise entry
Heavenly Sword
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End Movie tie-in
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Movie tie-in
Madden NFL 08 Another franchise entry
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas Another franchise entry
Grand Theft Auto IV Another franchise entry
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway Another franchise entry
Ninja Gaiden Sigma Another franchise entry
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent Another franchise entry
The Bigs Not exclusive, seems like a lame faux sports title.
NCAA Football 2008 Another franchise entry
Timeshift PS3 Not exclusive
Assassin's Creed Not exclusive
The Darkness Not exclusive
Lair
All Pro Football 2K8 Another franchise entry (Used to be the ESPN NFL line)
You have basically 3 exclusives.. yay.
1. Build bomb
2. Attach a mobile phone running windows mobile
3. Attach triggering to a process which polls a website, if it can't reach the website it sets the timer to go off in 30 seconds.
4. Jamming devices blocks cel signal..
5. 30 second countdown to detonation activates, giving enough time for the motorcade to get closer.
And letting people know about this ahead of time is the worst part... I'm not a huge fan of security through obscurity, but there's a difference between being obscure and telegraphing your methods.
Yes, but volume sales make online music stores viable. Keeping the stores viable opens up the door for independents to use them as well.
As much as the "great music" may be from smaller artists and labels, if the profits don't roll for Amazon on a venture they can and will pull the plug. Having the widest possible selection would be optimal for highest volume. Even if it means also having crappy choices.
But of course, to each their own on tastes and preference.
Because Amazon sells far more than just music.
They can cross promote, buy the CD, get the MP3's for a discount and have them while the CD ships... Buy a movie, get the MP3's of the soundtrack bundled in...
Searching for information on learning classical spanish guitar? Here are a dozen books, a couple CD's, and oh yeah, some MP3 examples of greats in the field...
On another level, this is the difference between WarMart expanding it's electronics to also sell HDTV, and Best Buy expanding it's selection to do the same...
Yes, but if it's EMI + 12,000 labels that are hosted out of someone's garage then it's basically just EMI... The question would be which of the other big labels will get on this train. And if they did, they would have been mentioned by name I would believe.
What I meant was more if they would modify the end user selling something functions they have already. (i.e. the "buy new and used from...") to allow for end users such as bands to sell their own original MP3's over amazon.
This would be a huge boon for local unsigned and independent bands as they could have people just look them up on amazon. A band could have it's own website, which links to amazon to sell the MP3's , saving them bandwidth costs, and the need to manage/deal with e-commerce on a promotional website, while also allowing them to make money from the sale of their music.
I wonder what strings they were able to pull to get this moving faster/better than iTunes has... hurm....
Will it only be music from the EMI catalog?
They have the section of their site where individuals can sell things as "used" , will they expand this so that unsigned bands can sell their MP3's without a recording label behind them?
Things you have to buy to believe this guy:
.org instead of .com , for those of us who type in domain names constantly this may be feasible since our brains are probably a few words ahead and .org is in the muscular memory of our typing fingers just as much as .com , but these are bureaucrats and politicians who we're being told aren't all that savvy...
a) They "typoed"
b) They manually typed in the addresses. Just this point doesn't make sense. How many addresses do you manually type in? Not click from an address book, not type in the first couple letters and hit TAB to auto-complete... If anything the less savvy user would lean on crutches like mailing lists and auto-completion far more than manually typing in long addresses.
c) If he's really REALLY so interested in the right thing happening, and all that, why hasn't he forwarded these to the congressmen who are looking into these matters instead of announcing them on the radio?
d) How hard, exactly, is it to fake an SMTP message again? What kind of authenticity can he lend to this? How does he know that someone didn't fake the mail and send it to that domain? Heaven knows it couldn't have been spoofed, right?
Oh yeah, and he happens to be on the publicity trail for a new book now is he? hurm...
The reason this isn't getting much media hype is probably that most of the MSM have strong enough doubts as to the credibility of the evidence as to make it non viable to bring up.
You're actually pretty spot on with this.
A normal user does not install an OS unless they're upgrading after having a PC for a while. They buy a PC with an OS on it they like. This is one reason I think the Ubuntu Dell thing will bear some nice fruit.
Many of us think of ourselves as "normal users" from time to time, but remember, normal user really means people like our parents and people who haven't ever taken an actual COURSE in computer science in many cases. My big question has always been "Could I install this for my mom and not have her calling me constantly for help?"
I'm all for the need of content providers who provide content over the airwaves to put commercials in and try to make sure they don't get devaluated (i.e. skipped). They HAVE to do this because without it, they have no income, and stop existing.
I can extend this easily enough to cable companies, sat TV providers and such for channels that aren't premium channels for much the same reason. The cost of producing the content is higher than the small fraction of subscription costs they get back.
But premium content (Video on Demand, HBO, Showtime, PPV) are charging explicitly for the content, having ads at ALL invalidates a portion of that premium they get to change. FORCING ads on people is downright greedy. But I suppose if you own stock in Disney this is the idea...
but..but.but... I LOVE lamp!
The unfortunate fact is the test to if a child has really learned critical thinking is how well they do once school is no longer a part of their lives.
My wife and I are working on having a spawn of minions right now and I fully expect that it will be "informational tidbits you learn at school, thinking you learn at home". Not because the teachers can't teach it, but because they don't have time. I am just mildly bitter because I feel I got a leg up on life because of a few teachers who really cared and made me learn to think, once I knew how to think, and how to find answers actually "learning" anything became exponentially easier.
The crux of your argument seems to be that the value of the console isn't realized because developers have not "figured out how" to get the maximum our of the cell architecture. There's a problem with this.
The continued popularity of the 360, coupled with the surprise success of the Wii has made many game designers rethink what console they're developing for. Look at the sudden increase in Wii titles in the pipe.
Also, by the time they "figure it out" there will be newer products out. Do you think there won't be an upgrade to the 360? Do you think Nintendo plans on never making another console upgrade?
Sony put all their eggs in the "look at this fantastic new technology and pay for it now on the promise that uses will be made for it later" basket. They should have taken a few eggs into the "have some killer apps ready for it on release day". And this doesn't start to address the fact that whereas you're a hardcore who will pay for the console if it can't find a mass market it won't have legs in the long run.
If the most innovative technology with the best capacity won the fight we'd all be using RISC driven Mac's right now.
I should ammend that...
It's a pity we don't have a political party which has a viable chance to put people into office in a system designed around only two parties having real power...
But that just doesn't make a catchy sig, ya know?
I actually consider myself one of those "Goldwater republicans who are becoming libertarians" the only problem is our political system is very skewed towards the two parties in power remaining in power, although we can always hope for change.
DING I think you mentioned a magic word in there.
Not all states are union states. Texas, for instance, has teachers organizations calling themselves "unions" but they don't seem to carry the clout that unions up north do because of Texas laws involving unionization. This would make sense and explain the differences we're seeing I do believe.
As much as I am not a big supporter of unions, this is a case where I think a stronger union would benefit things.
Actually, I do pay property taxes as a home owner. I also know people who work in the teaching profession in the same city in which I pay these strangely high taxes. And in my brain I've made a note to someday figure out where the money is going because it's not going to the teachers.
And whereas yes they do get 3 months a year off, most of the don't make enough to avoid needing to get a summer job. Many of them are either working on grading papers and preparing lesson plans at home, or they're putting 12 hour days in at the school keeping up with some of it. The worst part is knowing how many of them honestly want to instill that vital critical thinking nugget in the heads of kids, but then get beaten down with the fact that they have to teach to a standardized test because that's what they'll be reviewed over.
Maybe where you're at the teachers job is a cushy one, but from my observations in a non suburb city it isn't. The only teachers I know who are thriving and loving the job all teach at private schools, and there aren't enough of those jobs to go around.
"It's OK for a drunken pirate to have a pretty useless degree, but we'll be damned if we're going to enable a drunken pirate to get a low paying stressful thankless job by giving them a certificate!"
Obviously ninja have infiltrated the schools administrative staff...
The bag, upon further inspection, seems to be devoid of any felines! It would appear they have recently vacated said container!
Well, everybody running sites out of .ru , how many of us do that?
.ru domain somewhere...
Maybe I should go register me a nice
That this means the single largest collection of hacking and spamming sites will now have protection against people finding out who even owns the domains they run from?