let's take the 1960s as an example. how did hollywood make the big bucks back then? how much did a big film cost? i imagine they got money from selling films to cinema chains and to television franchises. as well as this there was a lot of merchandising. one line of income just didn't exist however: selling the film on a tape or similar to each customer individually.
let's move on to the start of film-marketing to the end consumer. i suppose the video cassette was the first example. here you had technical difficulties before you could copy the film. you needed a second player/recorder. since these things were expensive, the film industry was quite happy to sell videos and not worry much about piracy to begin with. a whole new revenue stream appeared.
then the dvd came, and for 3 or 4 glorious years for the film industry, everything was perfect. dvds could be read, but a dvd burner was prohibitively expensive, ripping a film took ages, and no one had quick internet, so ripped films could only be transfered by physically giving someone a disk. lots of dvds were sold, hollywood had never had it so good.
then everybody got faster processors, huge portable hard-drives and dsl-16billion bps. the new oilwell of marketing directly to the end consumer which appeared at the start of the 80s is drying up. the film industry could point to these things and play the old game of "pity me" from eric berne. the result? a new encryption system (already broken) and legal protection. it is now the case in germany for example, that accidentally causing a nuclear explosion has a maximum sentence of 3 years, while copying a dvd can result in a five year prison sentence.
some things have to be looked at here more closely:
1/ have dvd sales really gone down? does anybody have some recent figures for this
2/ what was the total turnover of hollywood in 2000 compared with 1970? how much of this came from dvd sales?
3/ how much was the budget for media in the average household in 1970 (books, records etc) and how much is it nowadays?
4/ how much did the average film cost in 1970 compared with 2005?
in my mind, these are the questions that matter, and we need to be aware of the hard facts here before we buy into the story of the mfia that everybody is a hardened criminal out to get them.
one more reason not to use windows.
you know, i would possibly use windows and office too, if the barrier to entry wasn't so high. as it is, i would have to:
give up my ultrasparc computers and buy something else
give up my sun monitors and buy something else
learn how to install and manage apache, mysql, postgresql, tomcat, zope, gcc, gcj, as, ld.. on a windows box
find replacements for iptables, ssh, vsftp, passwd, rc.d, init, bash...
once microsoft has implemented these basic functionalities, i'll consider switching.
oh, and they can give me the source code at the same time. and do everything for free. and document all their data formats. and listen to me when i want a change.
a friend of mine calls himself a network-technician and works freelance for small companies. he uses windows 2000 as a server platform. he told me about a year ago, that he hasn't installed a single patch on any of the servers he looks after, because he's worring about breaking something. (i wonder what he actually does then?)
interestingly, one of my pupils is at quite a posh school here in germany. he told me that *everybody* (whatever that may mean) is now using ubuntu, because windows is boring. i'm not sure this is the best reason to change.
nope, you're absolutely right there. the trouble with wacko god believers is, they define god as perfect and then rape logic to somehow force everything to make sense. "your child died at the age of 2 after having been eaten by maggots for a month and screaming in pain? rejoice, because that saved your grandmother from being hit by an 18-wheeler!" well hoorah. our logical faculties are all we have to understand this world. presupposing the existence of the christian god always seems to end with dogmatic crap.
when you have undocumented hardware, linux will probably not work. i remember when i got my athlon64 in 2004. there wasn't a windows version for 64bit processors, but linux installed without a hitch. i would try to install windows on my sparc64, or my mips, or my powerpc, or my arm handy, but i don't think it would work. so don't claim that linux has bad hardware support, it has excellent hardware support provided the manufacturers produce the specs for their hardware. if they don't, well, it shouldn't be required of linux developers to go and reverse engineer drivers for every last bit of cheap plastic bought at walmart. i'm happy that i can use the same linux distribution on 7 or 8 totally different architecture and get work done. does windows come with an ftp server or an ssh server? does it have ipsec capabilities? i don't now, but unless it does, it is totally inadequate as an operating system for my needs.
i think he's talking about the techniques envolved in art. try creating your own paints without scientific method, or painting an accurate looking body or face.
this is totally wierd. this should be a discussion about thread handling, mutexes, semaphores and race conditions. instead you come with "linux or F/OSS sould be worse because the fonts are different from the standard fonts on my windows 2000 desktop". We're talking about embedded operating systems running one piece of software for years on end and your more concerned with "a right click on the desktop on gnome doesn't give me the same options as a right-click under windows 2000". this is basically like saying "heck it, i sure don't know what windows does, because nobody knows that, but i'll never come to terms with the default order of entries in the start menu in KDE". i'm surprised you didn't say "but linux as of version 2.6.20 doesn't include any drivers for warships, while you can download them free of charge for windows from the manufacturer's webpage".
well, microsoft can't make much money of patents because the linux community hasn't got much money. if the courts demand that i pay 2million and i only have 2thousand, that's all i can pay.
the reason why microsoft would be terrifically stupid to do this is, if they point out a patent violation in linux, ibm or hp or similar will point out a patent violation in windows. the result could well be all-out nuclear war in the IT industry until the courts decide that software patents are stupid and then microsoft will have nothing left at all.
no, it isn't because linux is a competitor. microsoft has so many revenue streams now that they really couldn't care about linux. the war against linux from microsoft is being fought so that the average american IT guy and the american courts think that there's a threat and that microsoft (american) is fighting to protect the american way of life against anti-capitalist communist socialist viral ideas. that's the point of the fud.
short play with two protagonists: richfatkid and poorskinnyrunt
richfatkid: you stole from me!
poorskinnyrunt: what did i steal?
rfk: you stole an idea i had.
psr: which idea?
rfk: i'm not going to tell you.
psr: but you've been reading all my work for years and now you tell me i stole an idea. i just want to know which one.
rfk: i'm telling the teacher (who happens to be my mother).
psr: look, if you just tell me, i'll find a way to work around it.
rfk: no, i'm going to tell the teacher. then you'll get thrown out of school because she's my mother (and she knows how rarely i have ideas).
psr: but don't you steal ideas from other kids on purpose?
rfk: if you want to use my ideas, you can pay me for them.
psr: look, i already asked the teacher if they were your ideas and she refused to answer me...
yes, it would be better to use ssh or allow xhost. however, microsoft would never (could never?) implement stuff like that and open the standards or make it usable by the average joe so it just ain't going to happen. instead we're going to have heavily crippled slow applications running in a web browser which require the equivalent of big iron computing from 10 ten years ago. well hoorah.
no, of course they won't actually do it. they make far more money taking the odd person to court and scaring others just enough that the average person decides to buy the fucking dvd. they don't want to force people to buy them, that would be bad for business.
Slashdot Mirror
i think he's talking about something like this:
/>
<script
while(true)
alert("an alert message");
to get out of it, you have to kill firefox.
let's take the 1960s as an example. how did hollywood make the big bucks back then? how much did a big film cost? i imagine they got money from selling films to cinema chains and to television franchises. as well as this there was a lot of merchandising. one line of income just didn't exist however: selling the film on a tape or similar to each customer individually.
let's move on to the start of film-marketing to the end consumer. i suppose the video cassette was the first example. here you had technical difficulties before you could copy the film. you needed a second player/recorder. since these things were expensive, the film industry was quite happy to sell videos and not worry much about piracy to begin with. a whole new revenue stream appeared.
then the dvd came, and for 3 or 4 glorious years for the film industry, everything was perfect. dvds could be read, but a dvd burner was prohibitively expensive, ripping a film took ages, and no one had quick internet, so ripped films could only be transfered by physically giving someone a disk. lots of dvds were sold, hollywood had never had it so good.
then everybody got faster processors, huge portable hard-drives and dsl-16billion bps. the new oilwell of marketing directly to the end consumer which appeared at the start of the 80s is drying up. the film industry could point to these things and play the old game of "pity me" from eric berne. the result? a new encryption system (already broken) and legal protection. it is now the case in germany for example, that accidentally causing a nuclear explosion has a maximum sentence of 3 years, while copying a dvd can result in a five year prison sentence.
some things have to be looked at here more closely:
in my mind, these are the questions that matter, and we need to be aware of the hard facts here before we buy into the story of the mfia that everybody is a hardened criminal out to get them.
obligatory quote from the princess bride...
just because you lie about your perceived opponents doesn't mean that your opponents lie about you.
it's like an abbott and costello film...
probably best to install gentoo on it and compile everything yourself
you know, i would possibly use windows and office too, if the barrier to entry wasn't so high. as it is, i would have to:
- give up my ultrasparc computers and buy something else
- give up my sun monitors and buy something else
- learn how to install and manage apache, mysql, postgresql, tomcat, zope, gcc, gcj, as, ld.. on a windows box
- find replacements for iptables, ssh, vsftp, passwd, rc.d, init, bash...
once microsoft has implemented these basic functionalities, i'll consider switching.oh, and they can give me the source code at the same time. and do everything for free. and document all their data formats. and listen to me when i want a change.
a friend of mine calls himself a network-technician and works freelance for small companies. he uses windows 2000 as a server platform. he told me about a year ago, that he hasn't installed a single patch on any of the servers he looks after, because he's worring about breaking something. (i wonder what he actually does then?)
torchwood is great, if you like watching two women or two men snogging.
so basically, summing up. it's great.
interestingly, one of my pupils is at quite a posh school here in germany. he told me that *everybody* (whatever that may mean) is now using ubuntu, because windows is boring. i'm not sure this is the best reason to change.
nope, you're absolutely right there. the trouble with wacko god believers is, they define god as perfect and then rape logic to somehow force everything to make sense. "your child died at the age of 2 after having been eaten by maggots for a month and screaming in pain? rejoice, because that saved your grandmother from being hit by an 18-wheeler!" well hoorah. our logical faculties are all we have to understand this world. presupposing the existence of the christian god always seems to end with dogmatic crap.
so the thousands of companies and government departments worldwide already using linux don't count for some reason.
when you have undocumented hardware, linux will probably not work. i remember when i got my athlon64 in 2004. there wasn't a windows version for 64bit processors, but linux installed without a hitch. i would try to install windows on my sparc64, or my mips, or my powerpc, or my arm handy, but i don't think it would work. so don't claim that linux has bad hardware support, it has excellent hardware support provided the manufacturers produce the specs for their hardware. if they don't, well, it shouldn't be required of linux developers to go and reverse engineer drivers for every last bit of cheap plastic bought at walmart. i'm happy that i can use the same linux distribution on 7 or 8 totally different architecture and get work done. does windows come with an ftp server or an ssh server? does it have ipsec capabilities? i don't now, but unless it does, it is totally inadequate as an operating system for my needs.
i think he's talking about the techniques envolved in art. try creating your own paints without scientific method, or painting an accurate looking body or face.
i'd have gone for plan 9 myself :)
hello? the current theory of gravity is that of a curve in space-time. it's called general relativity.
this is totally wierd. this should be a discussion about thread handling, mutexes, semaphores and race conditions. instead you come with "linux or F/OSS sould be worse because the fonts are different from the standard fonts on my windows 2000 desktop". We're talking about embedded operating systems running one piece of software for years on end and your more concerned with "a right click on the desktop on gnome doesn't give me the same options as a right-click under windows 2000". this is basically like saying "heck it, i sure don't know what windows does, because nobody knows that, but i'll never come to terms with the default order of entries in the start menu in KDE". i'm surprised you didn't say "but linux as of version 2.6.20 doesn't include any drivers for warships, while you can download them free of charge for windows from the manufacturer's webpage".
oh noes! dell sells . They're wasting their money! why don't they just sell one computer with one monitor! i'll never buy from them again!
well, microsoft can't make much money of patents because the linux community hasn't got much money. if the courts demand that i pay 2million and i only have 2thousand, that's all i can pay.
the reason why microsoft would be terrifically stupid to do this is, if they point out a patent violation in linux, ibm or hp or similar will point out a patent violation in windows. the result could well be all-out nuclear war in the IT industry until the courts decide that software patents are stupid and then microsoft will have nothing left at all.
well, show me a country in the world whose citizens are outside the reach of the american legal system when it comes to intellectual property.
no, it isn't because linux is a competitor. microsoft has so many revenue streams now that they really couldn't care about linux. the war against linux from microsoft is being fought so that the average american IT guy and the american courts think that there's a threat and that microsoft (american) is fighting to protect the american way of life against anti-capitalist communist socialist viral ideas. that's the point of the fud.
this is so wierd:
short play with two protagonists: richfatkid and poorskinnyrunt
richfatkid: you stole from me!
poorskinnyrunt: what did i steal?
rfk: you stole an idea i had.
psr: which idea?
rfk: i'm not going to tell you.
psr: but you've been reading all my work for years and now you tell me i stole an idea. i just want to know which one.
rfk: i'm telling the teacher (who happens to be my mother).
psr: look, if you just tell me, i'll find a way to work around it.
rfk: no, i'm going to tell the teacher. then you'll get thrown out of school because she's my mother (and she knows how rarely i have ideas).
psr: but don't you steal ideas from other kids on purpose?
rfk: if you want to use my ideas, you can pay me for them.
psr: look, i already asked the teacher if they were your ideas and she refused to answer me...
etc. etc. etc.
yes, it would be better to use ssh or allow xhost. however, microsoft would never (could never?) implement stuff like that and open the standards or make it usable by the average joe so it just ain't going to happen. instead we're going to have heavily crippled slow applications running in a web browser which require the equivalent of big iron computing from 10 ten years ago. well hoorah.
no, of course they won't actually do it. they make far more money taking the odd person to court and scaring others just enough that the average person decides to buy the fucking dvd. they don't want to force people to buy them, that would be bad for business.
?
I would however concede that footnotes would be a lot more difficult using this method.