Microsoft's asking for RUR 266000, i.e. USD 8886 according to this. http://lenta.ru/story/ponosoff/.
An important nuance: it's a small village school, which would probably not have a budget for this. But I think in any case, they should use Linux.
When I need Linux source code, I go to http://kernel.org./ Or sourceforge for any godzillion Open Source projects and get it. Or openoffice.org. Also, I can contribute, make changes, in other words code is not a snapshot. It's a river. I think EU is absolutely correct: Microsoft exhibits barbaric business model based on closed source and some fairly scary business practices. This cannot be good for EU, or for China, US, Russia, India or any country in the world. Go, EU, go.
UNIX is good for desktop = Mac OS X. UNIX is good for appliances. UNIX is good for Media Centers. UNIX is good for cell phones. UNIX is good for servers. UNIX is good for space programs. So, what was your point again, what is Microsoft good then?
Punished? I don't think Russia needs the WTO or the US for the matter anymore. Although, Russia will indeed be a member of WTO on its own terms, when dollar falls a few points further against ruble (has falled about 20% for the last 5 years) and the energy market allows Russia to open energy trading on own soil, stimulating ruble demand. The US is pretty much stuck in the middle of two failing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, weak international stance, unpopular administration and is now being pushed out of the former Soviet Union and Asia. I also noticed Russia's opening of military bases in Siria and a new naval base in Mediterranean. It's rather ironic, that the US almost got us to believe it can get as far as Ukraine, but it seems, the collapse of the new superpower is getting closer: Russia has learned a lesson and managed to survive and rise, whereas the US still keeps us curious of what the outcome of the fall of the Empire is going to be... yawnnn... Baltic states? You mean those with the governments that endorse Nazis? Don't think they are there for a long time.
I don't know what would have happened in Soviet Russia or United States during the Great Depression. But I'm sure that in contemporary Russia, with booming markets, dollar falling 5 years straight: http://stock.rbc.ru/demo/cb.0/daily/USD.rus.shtml? show=5Y, own movie and music industry booming when Hollywood is stagnating, I'm sure in this Russia there are courts and decisions are made in a hm... smarter way than what happens in the US under the current US admistration.
Is it legal to download music from AllOFMP3.com?
The availability over the Internet of the ALLOFMP3.com materials is authorized by the license # LS-3?-05-03 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society (ROMS) and license # 006/3M-05 of the Rightholders Federation for Collective Copyright Management of Works Used Interactively (FAIR). In accordance to the licenses' terms MediaServices pays license fees for all materials downloaded from the site subject to the Law of the Russian Federation "On Copyright and Related Rights". All these materials are solely for personal use. Any further distribution, resale or broadcasting are prohibited.
The works available from ALLOFMP3.com are protected by the Law of the Russian Federation "On Copyright and Related Rights" and are for personal use of a buyer. Commercial use of such material is prohibited. Recording, copying, distribution on any media is possible only upon special consent of a Rightholder.
The user bears sole responsibility for any use and distribution of all materials received from AllOFMP3.com. This responsibility is dependent on the national legislation in each user's country of residence. The Administration of AllOFMP3.com does not possess information on the laws of each particular country and is not responsible for the actions of foreign users.
http://music.allofmp3.com/help/help.shtml?help=on# top
Everybody's opionion is that all this site sells is pirated music from the US. This is wrong. This site sells completely legal Russian music and audio otherwise unavailable in the United States or Europe: to 10 to 30 million Russian diaspora abroad. The problem with RIAA demands is that they demand a closing of a completely legitimate resource for such content for all of us, Russian speakers forced to look at empty shelves of RIAA storefronts and desperate to find hits of Russian music.
The model of selling songs by burning them on bulky things called DVDs or CDs is completely dead, when you look at it from the prospective of a Russian speaking teenager trying to find a Russian 2005-2006 hit in the stores owned by RIAA in the US. There are none. Typically this stores sells some junk from the last century, so the only place we can get that music is from the sites like allofmp3.com.
Russian showbusiness is booming now: have you seen any Russian movie from 2005-2006 in the stores owned by MPAA/RIAA? If Hollywood can't make decent movies for the last 5 years, it doesn't mean it's like this everywhere in the world. So, to cut it short: no: Russian courts are right, ignore RIAA.
Finally I see something from the accounting prospective that is justifiable. The government is using open source, why not give the developers a tax incentive? I think it's an excellent idea.
From the trenches of a large investment firm, where Microsoft was rarely dominating: decency often prevailed over a decision to get unmaintainable Microsoft products.
Recently, however, I noticed that some of the executives started to fly to Redmond. Then you can hear from their offices a talk similar to one of the drug pushers: they were pushing almost openly unreleased versions of crappy future Microsoft products. These things don't work, they don't integrate in our environments, they are almost unmanageable, because of poor scripting capability and integration with standards. But drug dealers keep flying to Redmond....
I think this issue is too big to slip between/. posts. So I created a http://digitalcrimesagainsthumanity.blogspot.com/" blog for it, with this post only.. I really want these names to stay on the Web together: crimes, humanity, holocaust, RIAA, Nazi, SONY.
DIGITAL CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
This post is a science fiction. There's no such a thing as a crime against digital human rights. But perhaps, there ought to be. As our digital culture evolves, corporate censorship, digital genocide, arrests and police actions against some very specific digital groups begins to appear. One of these groups is P2P: peer-to-peer networks, raided often by governments in response to lobby by corporations: SONY and others.
According to some definitions:
Genocide is a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of *** groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.
In the 1945 world, the *** in the term of genocide meant "national". But in today's world, corporations and governments take an aim at the digital life of individuals. I wrote this post when RIAA (SONY and others) raided Razorback2 servers in Switzerland (Razorback is a server helping eMule community locate each other's files on the Internet). Does it mean at some point these raids will cross into something threatening our digital lives, our freedoms? Do we feel helpless, when legitimate files, otherwise inaccessible via other means are targeted by these organizations?
Clearly, RIAA (SONY and others) does an indiscriminatory digital genocide against entire networks, groups of peaceful people with the aim of annihiliating groups themselves. This is a definition of the digital genocide.
Now, to the Holocaust. According to the holocaust encyclopedia (http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/) the holocaust was systematic, bureaucratic, state sponsored persecution and murder of millions of people.
Well, in today's world, the Digital Holocaust committed by RIAA IS a SYSTEMATIC, BUREAUCRATIC, STATE SPONSORED PERSECUTION of millions of P2P network users.
Think about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft's asking for RUR 266000, i.e. USD 8886 according to this. http://lenta.ru/story/ponosoff/. An important nuance: it's a small village school, which would probably not have a budget for this. But I think in any case, they should use Linux.
When I need Linux source code, I go to http://kernel.org./ Or sourceforge for any godzillion Open Source projects and get it. Or openoffice.org. Also, I can contribute, make changes, in other words code is not a snapshot. It's a river.
I think EU is absolutely correct: Microsoft exhibits barbaric business model based on closed source and some fairly scary business practices. This cannot be good for EU, or for China, US, Russia, India or any country in the world. Go, EU, go.
UNIX is good for desktop = Mac OS X. UNIX is good for appliances. UNIX is good for Media Centers. UNIX is good for cell phones. UNIX is good for servers. UNIX is good for space programs. So, what was your point again, what is Microsoft good then?
Punished? I don't think Russia needs the WTO or the US for the matter anymore. Although, Russia will indeed be a member of WTO on its own terms, when dollar falls a few points further against ruble (has falled about 20% for the last 5 years) and the energy market allows Russia to open energy trading on own soil, stimulating ruble demand. The US is pretty much stuck in the middle of two failing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, weak international stance, unpopular administration and is now being pushed out of the former Soviet Union and Asia. I also noticed Russia's opening of military bases in Siria and a new naval base in Mediterranean. It's rather ironic, that the US almost got us to believe it can get as far as Ukraine, but it seems, the collapse of the new superpower is getting closer: Russia has learned a lesson and managed to survive and rise, whereas the US still keeps us curious of what the outcome of the fall of the Empire is going to be... yawnnn... Baltic states? You mean those with the governments that endorse Nazis? Don't think they are there for a long time.
Interesting... last time I checked dollar is falling 5 years straight in Russia: http://stock.rbc.ru/demo/cb.0/daily/USD.rus.shtml? show=5Y sucks to have dollas.
I don't know what would have happened in Soviet Russia or United States during the Great Depression. But I'm sure that in contemporary Russia, with booming markets, dollar falling 5 years straight: http://stock.rbc.ru/demo/cb.0/daily/USD.rus.shtml? show=5Y, own movie and music industry booming when Hollywood is stagnating, I'm sure in this Russia there are courts and decisions are made in a hm... smarter way than what happens in the US under the current US admistration.
Is it legal to download music from AllOFMP3.com? The availability over the Internet of the ALLOFMP3.com materials is authorized by the license # LS-3?-05-03 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society (ROMS) and license # 006/3M-05 of the Rightholders Federation for Collective Copyright Management of Works Used Interactively (FAIR). In accordance to the licenses' terms MediaServices pays license fees for all materials downloaded from the site subject to the Law of the Russian Federation "On Copyright and Related Rights". All these materials are solely for personal use. Any further distribution, resale or broadcasting are prohibited. The works available from ALLOFMP3.com are protected by the Law of the Russian Federation "On Copyright and Related Rights" and are for personal use of a buyer. Commercial use of such material is prohibited. Recording, copying, distribution on any media is possible only upon special consent of a Rightholder. The user bears sole responsibility for any use and distribution of all materials received from AllOFMP3.com. This responsibility is dependent on the national legislation in each user's country of residence. The Administration of AllOFMP3.com does not possess information on the laws of each particular country and is not responsible for the actions of foreign users. http://music.allofmp3.com/help/help.shtml?help=on# top
Everybody's opionion is that all this site sells is pirated music from the US. This is wrong. This site sells completely legal Russian music and audio otherwise unavailable in the United States or Europe: to 10 to 30 million Russian diaspora abroad. The problem with RIAA demands is that they demand a closing of a completely legitimate resource for such content for all of us, Russian speakers forced to look at empty shelves of RIAA storefronts and desperate to find hits of Russian music. The model of selling songs by burning them on bulky things called DVDs or CDs is completely dead, when you look at it from the prospective of a Russian speaking teenager trying to find a Russian 2005-2006 hit in the stores owned by RIAA in the US. There are none. Typically this stores sells some junk from the last century, so the only place we can get that music is from the sites like allofmp3.com. Russian showbusiness is booming now: have you seen any Russian movie from 2005-2006 in the stores owned by MPAA/RIAA? If Hollywood can't make decent movies for the last 5 years, it doesn't mean it's like this everywhere in the world. So, to cut it short: no: Russian courts are right, ignore RIAA.
Finally I see something from the accounting prospective that is justifiable. The government is using open source, why not give the developers a tax incentive? I think it's an excellent idea.
From the trenches of a large investment firm, where Microsoft was rarely dominating: decency often prevailed over a decision to get unmaintainable Microsoft products. Recently, however, I noticed that some of the executives started to fly to Redmond. Then you can hear from their offices a talk similar to one of the drug pushers: they were pushing almost openly unreleased versions of crappy future Microsoft products. These things don't work, they don't integrate in our environments, they are almost unmanageable, because of poor scripting capability and integration with standards. But drug dealers keep flying to Redmond....
I think this issue is too big to slip between /. posts. So I created a http://digitalcrimesagainsthumanity.blogspot.com/" blog for it, with this post only.. I really want these names to stay on the Web together: crimes, humanity, holocaust, RIAA, Nazi, SONY.
DIGITAL CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
This post is a science fiction. There's no such a thing as a crime against digital human rights. But perhaps, there ought to be. As our digital culture evolves, corporate censorship, digital genocide, arrests and police actions against some very specific digital groups begins to appear. One of these groups is P2P: peer-to-peer networks, raided often by governments in response to lobby by corporations: SONY and others.
According to some definitions:
Genocide is a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of *** groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.
In the 1945 world, the *** in the term of genocide meant "national". But in today's world, corporations and governments take an aim at the digital life of individuals. I wrote this post when RIAA (SONY and others) raided Razorback2 servers in Switzerland (Razorback is a server helping eMule community locate each other's files on the Internet). Does it mean at some point these raids will cross into something threatening our digital lives, our freedoms? Do we feel helpless, when legitimate files, otherwise inaccessible via other means are targeted by these organizations?
Clearly, RIAA (SONY and others) does an indiscriminatory digital genocide against entire networks, groups of peaceful people with the aim of annihiliating groups themselves. This is a definition of the digital genocide.
Now, to the Holocaust. According to the holocaust encyclopedia (http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/) the holocaust was systematic, bureaucratic, state sponsored persecution and murder of millions of people.
Well, in today's world, the Digital Holocaust committed by RIAA IS a SYSTEMATIC, BUREAUCRATIC, STATE SPONSORED PERSECUTION of millions of P2P network users.
Think about it.
I will not buy Windows Vista or get any hardware that bears it. Just because I can afford not to.