Of course people complain about change. But there's more, and you've dismissed it.
There are tasks which can be done with the old version which cannot be done with the new version. It's not a question of learning a new way to do it, it's that there simply is NO way to do it.
Sure, people complained about the ribbon interface in the new version of Word. That's what you are talking about. What if it couldn't open old documents? That's what I'm talking about. What if the new version couldn't print? Those are the type of issues some users are complaining about. If all you ever did was business letters, maybe you wouldn't miss opening old documents. If all you ever did was email documents, maybe you would never miss printing. Those people are happy with the new version, which is better in other ways. But the new version is not usable by businesses which must provide printed documents, or revise old documents, and so on.
Yes, professionals is too broad a category. But the article does have a point; Apple is moving away from software that scales. They are very good at delivering products that meet the needs of single users. If you have one copy of FCP, you'll probably be happy to switch to the new version. If you have 20 copies, you not only won't be happy, you probably can't switch. The new version isn't designed for multiple people working on the same project. Multiple independent projects? Try it and see.
It's not just the software. Apple does a great job of providing service and support to one user at a time. Home user or business user, you can take your MacBook into an Apple store and get it fixed. Need some training? Same deal - works great for one or two users at a time, if you are near a store, and during business hours. But Apple doesn't scale to enterprises. I'm talking about 24/7 on-site repairs, on-site training for large groups, and so on. That's OK, it may be better for Apple to elect to stay out of certain markets rather than do it poorly.
Apple is focused on consumers. There are professionals whose needs match those of consumers, so Apple serves them. Other than tools, developer's needs overlap home users, so you shouldn't worry. Other professionals are finding that Apple no longer serves them. The more your professional workflow differs from that of home users, the more you should worry.
Because FCX won't ever catch up. It's a question of scale.
The old versions of FCP are designed to allow teams to work on projects. The new software is designed to be used by a single user. If only one person at a time is editing, the new version may well be better than the old version. That workflow matches how a huge number of people work, so it makes sense for Apple to focus on that market. From amateur home user to professionals working on smaller projects, Apple is moving in the right direction.
For the broadcast market, it's the wrong direction. If your work scales beyond one user per project, it's time to move on. Apple makes high margins on consumer electronics, lower but OK margins on home computers, and not much at all from businesses or government sales. Apple is going to focus on the market segment where they make higher profits, not the niche market with high sales and support costs.
At one time, if it had an engine, Ford and GM made it. Ford sold tractors and airplanes. GM sold buses, locomotives, and heavy trucks. Those markets are willing to pay a higher initial price for products which last a long time and can be repaired and rebuilt over and over. The market for cars is different. People will junk cars after 10 years if they get a lower price up front. Consumers don't see cars as an investment used to make money, cars are an expense. Make it as cheap as possible and sell me a new one every couple of years, driving the latest model impresses people. Ford and GM still sell light trucks, and probably always will. But they got out of those other markets. Some of the technology may be the same, but each market demands a different set of trade-offs, a different way of doing business. It's easier to structure your business around one large market than try to do everything.
Apple sells to consumers. They're good at it. If they sold vehicles, they'd sell cars. If you need the equivalent of a van or pickup, Apple is still in that market. But they won't, can't, scale up a pickup to a tractor trailer.
Oracle donated the copyrights and trademarks to ASF. The ASF OpenOffice.org effort is not shutting down. Among others, IBM employees are paid to work on it. Suggesting that OO.o is shutting down is just plain wrong.
What may shut down is a separate group in Germany that Oracle used to fund. That group does not own the copyrights or trademarks. It is not the project. It may be part of some broader community, just as the GPL fork called LibreOffice is part of a broader community. Communities don't own copyrights, trademarks, or domain names. People and legal entities own them.
Oracle may have left this group high and dry, which entitles them to some sympathy. Alarmist press releases misrepresenting who owns the project and the software cancels that sympathy. Guess what? When you work on a project that requires copyright assignment, you give up ownership. When you work on a project under a name trademarked by someone else, they own the name. Oracle screwed them. The 'I've Been Screwed By Oracle Club" is not exclusive, anyone can join.
Perhaps I did not explain that well enough, if that's what you think. I'll try again.
Developing proprietary software for internal use is indeed a common and successful business model. Developing proprietary software which is embedded within some greater product is a common and successful business model. So are using open source software for internal and embedded applications. In all of these cases, profits do not come from sales of software. Software is a necessary expense, not a profit center. Open source development can lower those expenses.
That's completely different than the proprietary software business model, which is developing software and selling it to others.
Another example: Ford and GM are in the business of selling cars, not bolts. Anything they can do to lower the cost of bolts is good for them, but not good for the bolt makers. So auto makers cooperate to standardize threads and so on, turning bolts from specialty items into commodities. There will still be places where a standard bolt won't do, so some specialty bolts are still needed, but fewer of them. The push for open standards does not come from bolt makers, it comes from bolt buyers.
The push for open source software comes from businesses who make profits from using software, not businesses who sell software. Software that everyone needs is becoming a commodity. Specialty software will still exist, often as a layer on top of commodity software.
Look at the phone market. Apple basically treats phones as embedded systems. They don't sell the OS separately. HTC uses a commodity open source OS, and spends a small amount to customize a thin layer on top of that. Both of those models are working for the phone makers.
Nokia made a lot of money using the embedded system business model, but their software development was mismanaged. Their very success with Symbian in the feature phone market blinded them to the smart phone market. They tried to upgrade their proprietary software into smart phone territory, and failed. They tried using open source software to make smart phones, and failed. The problem wasn't the software business model (they tried all the models), it was that their upper management never learned how to manage software projects. Costs were too high, projects were late, the software wasn't good enough. So now they are buying the software from Microsoft. I think that's a mistake; Microsoft will skim off the profit on every phone sold, leaving very little for Nokia.
You know, selling software isn't the only way to make money. In fact, the only reason *anyone* sells software is that their customers can make money using it.
When you make money by using software, driving down the cost of acquiring said software helps profits. That's where open source comes in. If you are in the business of web hosting, it makes sense to use Apache or other open source software, and maybe hire a developer or two if you need enhancements. Your competitive advantage isn't being the only company using that software, it's using it better than others; another reason to hire developers who know the software better than anyone else.
Google makes money selling Internet advertising. Anything that they can do to get people to spend more time on the Internet increases the value of the ads they sell. They don't need to sell software. Selling software would interfere with their core business.
The vast majority of programmers write code that is not sold as a separate product. It's used internally, like the trading programs used by investment bankers. Or it's embedded within the real product, like the software that controls the engine in your car.
Stop thinking about software as a product and realize that most people see it as a cost. Reducing your costs improves your bottom line.
No, voting for this doesn't mean that they are stupid. Hypocrisy is a more likely explanation than stupidity.
Here's how it works: Some parent gets offended because their kid did something that the parent didn't know about. Maybe the parents are jerks, maybe there's a real problem, but you can be sure that one or more parent was offended.
The parent makes a fuss, and a TV station gets involved. TV stations and newspapers love controversy, so they blow the story up into a huge sensation. The public loves to get self-righteous.
Something must be done. Cue the politicians. They come up with something. It doesn't matter if the law is good or bad, what matters is that Politicians A, B, and C are in the paper and on TV doing something about the outrage of the month. Let the judge take the heat from idiot parents, the politicians tried to Protect Our Children.
Will the TV station explain what's wrong with the law? No, that's bad for ratings. Facts are boring. Emotion is good for ratings. See talk radio for more examples. Hell, see Slashdot headlines and summaries.
The politician will lose maybe three votes from people who understand the Constitution. If he votes against the law, he loses hundreds or thousands of votes.
There are people who view holding office as public service, and they try to write good laws. But most voters and most media personalities don't care. Prayer in School! Abortion! Guns! Drugs! Gay Marriage! Immigrants! Why tackle hard issues that TV will ignore when you can invoke rage about high-emotion issues?
To your first point, of course BSA only represents members of BSA. Did I say otherwise?
To your second point, this is civil, not criminal. They don't have prove anything. Neither do you. The decision rests on the preponderance of evidence. They certainly can and will challenge the license for any BSA-member software found on your computers. Anything that you have that shows that you are properly licensed strengthens your case. Anything that you are missing strengthens their case. You should be safe if you have receipts. You're toast if you don't have any evidence of a valid license. If your only evidence of purchase is possession of manuals and media, you're at risk. You might win in court, but that misses the point. If you have proof of purchase, the BSA won't take you to court. If all you have is media, they will take you to court. Winning in court is better than losing, but best of all is avoiding court. If you want to stay out of court, you need to meet the BSA's criteria, not the court's. BSA wants proof of purchase.
Companies get in trouble when they assume that are safe because they didn't pirate anything. For example, Joe bought a new camera which came bundled with Photoshop Elements. He installs it on his company laptop. The company will now fail an audit. The company can't show that the company - not Joe, the company - purchased a license for something installed on a company computer. It may not be fair, it may not be reasonable, but that's the kind of thing that the BSA will decide to take to court. Joe probably has the receipt for the camera for the sake of the warranty, but the only item listed is the camera. It may be hard to prove that Elements was bundled with the camera, especially if it was a limited-time promotion. Rather than go to court, the company elects to settle with BSA, and buys another license. They didn't want that software, they didn't need that software, and they might have won in court. But it was cheaper to settle than to go to court. That's the BSA model you are up against. You don't win by going to court, you win by having BSA decide you aren't worth it. That means you have dated receipts in the company name for every piece of software found on any company computer. It doesn't matter that the software wasn't stolen; the only thing that matters is the BSA going away.
The BSA is going to spend much more effort on "properly licensed" than you have. They know all of the ways that companies can have media and licenses without the licenses being valid.
Licenses may be non-transferable. Can you prove that you purchased the license, and not someone else? Can you prove that the license applies to that particular machine?
I've seen original media and licenses at every swap meet and computer show I've ever attended. Some may be legal. Many were bundled with a particular system and are not valid to be used with any other system. Some are 'used', that is, purchased by a company who no longer needs that many copies or has ceased operations. Vernor v. Autodesk shows that licensing is not as clear and simple as you or I would like it to be. You aren't safe unless you can show proof of purchase.
You run your firewall on a desktop? You run Plone on a desktop? You do realize that Poettering was saying that BSD is not relevant to the desktop, don't you? He wasn't talking about servers, yet the examples you cite are servers.
Certainly, BSD continues to play a role in the server market. On desktops, it's a different story. BSD as a desktop OS has faded away. Some may claim OS X is BSD, but that's nonsense in the context of this particular discussion. What makes OS X a desktop OS is the non-BSD, non-open parts. Such as Core Audio, which addresses the same issues as Pulse Audio, and for the same reason: those issues are ignored in BSD.
50Hz requires more iron in the core of power transformers than 60Hz. Similar effects apply to motors. Now that consumer electronics have switched to high frequency switching supplies, that's not much of an issue for the end user. It does still matter for the transformers used in the power grid to step down from higher distribution voltages to lower domestic voltages.
Hell no, the media isn't reliable. It never has been. It never will be. That's not the issue.
The problem is that ownership of our major news organizations is concentrated into fewer hands than ever before. There used to be a chance that for every story that a newspaper got wrong, some other paper would get right. Truth had a chance. You had to dig for it, it might take a long time, but you had chance to find out what really happened.
Now, we have a generation of reporters who have given up on facts. They report what people with power think about things, and stop when they have two differing opinions. Drama sells, facts don't. The fact that Iraq had no connection to 9/11 didn't matter, the fact that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis didn't matter; the President wanted to go to war with Iraq and the only story that the US media covered was the argument between leading Democrats and leading Republicans over when and how. Hans Blix didn't matter; he wasn't a Democrat, he wasn't a Republican, he didn't live in Washington. He was a foreigner. Television only cares about horse races and he wasn't in the race.
Religion is an evolutionary development that, like many others, provides a useful shortcut to difficult questions. Evolution doesn't have a goal, there is no ideal we are moving towards, it simply provides that "good enough" survives and "not so good" dies out. We have a multitude of biological and cultural mechanisms for coping with the word that aren't ideal, but are rules of thumb: not correct in all cases, not the best answer, but a good enough answer in most cases. We eat things that smell and taste good, and that usually works. But then we create new foods and lace them with fat, salt, and sugar, and our sense of taste betrays us.
Humans clearly have some sort of need for spirituality. In the broadest sense, I'd include art, music and dance in that category of coping mechanisms that don't serve an immediate obvious purpose, but are the very things that make life worth living. Some are private, some are social. Why is one form more pleasing to the eye than another? Why is one arrangement of sounds more pleasing than another? Pleasure is the reward for pushing ourselves beyond mere survival.
I view religion as the failure mode of spirituality, just as war is the failure mode of competition. Spirituality and competition are often productive, but they can be twisted into something destructive instead. Organized religion is the High Fructose Corn Syrup version of spirituality - a useful reflex misused for the sake of greed and power.
Genre fiction is certainly not limited in its artistic aspirations. It is limited in its themes and forms, much as sonnets are limited to a certain form. Artistry often thrives under the influence of limits.
You don't see anything odd that a show sub-titled "The Books We Really Read" ignored nearly all popular books and focused on a very narrow subset favored by self-appointed elite? I assumed that "We" referred to the general public, but apparently I was wrong. BBC was using the royal "We".
Sure, most popular entertainment is crap. So is most of the "Literary Fiction" genre. Sturgeon's Law applies to all writing: 90% of everything is crap. The BBC should cover the 10% that is good, which is not limited to any one genre. I appreciate skillful use of language no matter where I find it.
Microsoft could end the patent issue once and for all by granting a royalty-free license for any and all patents needed to implement a C# runtime. They have not done so. That suggests that they reserve the right to use those patents against any competitor who becomes a large enough threat, or any one else with deep pockets.
IBM has more patents than anyone else, yet they give patent grants in situations like this. Many companies do. Sometimes growing the market by making standards more affordable is better than protecting your share of a smaller market. Microsoft's actions speak louder than their words, and their actions come down on the side of reserving the option of shutting down the use of C# in ways that Microsoft doesn't like. You think that it's silly to fear that Microsoft would do that, I think it's silly for Microsoft to fear that someone might someday use Microsoft's C# patents to harm Microsoft.
Creativity brings its own reward. The purpose of copyrights and patents is to encourage making information available to the public. Don't leave "public" out of "publishing". Prior to copyright, readers often subscribed to private printings of limited editions, where resale value encouraged keeping books private. Copyright rewards making books available to the public under a temporary monopoly, with the books eventually entering the public domain.
Writing a book does not "promote the general Welfare", to use the words of the US Constitution. Growing the public domain does. Publishing, making it available to the public rather than private collectors, also serves that public purpose. That's what the incentive rewards.
Scenario One: Use a scoop to move flour from bulk storage to a measuring cup, dump into mixing bowl. Do the same for sugar, oatmeal, and butter or shortening. Wash the greasy measuring cup and spoon or spatula.
Scenario Two: Place the mixing bowl on the scale and press the tare button to subtract the weight of the bowl. Use the scoop to add flour until the desired quantity is in the bowl. Press tare again, and add sugar. Repeat for oatmeal and shortening. Wash the spoon or spatula.
One less object to wash. Greater accuracy measuring the flour and oatmeal. I'll take the simpler, more accurate method.
Very wrong. Patents exist to provide an incentive to the inventor for making knowledge about his patent available to the public. It's not about inventors; it's about growing the body of public knowledge. A patent is the reward for publication, not a reward for inventing.
Inventors can profit when they keep their inventions secret, for certain types of inventions. Keeping a better mousetrap secret wouldn't work, because anyone could buy one and figure out how to make it. But if the invention is a better way to make a mousetrap, secrecy could be more profitable than a patent. First to market is another powerful reward that does not depend on patents.
The government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers; the market, with certain notable failure modes, does a much better job. On the other hand, providing incentives to people to act in ways that benefit the public at large is the principle role of the government.
The confirmation should include the number of destinations. That's one extra click and a little reading to reply to the reasonable number people involved with a project, and one extra cancel button click when you realize that replying to everyone in the company isn't what you meant to do.
You don't need information about the person, you need information known only to the person and the card company. Using easily obtained information such as address or phone number is much less secure than a shared secret.
My credit card has my name on it. I'm the only person with that name in the phone book. Anyone who steals my card can give you my address and phone number. How's that validate the card?
It's sad that my Slashdot login is more secure than my credit card. And it preserves more of my privacy.
Invention is rewarded by the market, which usually does so in an effective and efficient manner. First to market is all the incentive an inventor needs. Directly rewarding the act of invention is something that the government is notoriously bad at. History is full of examples of the corruption that occurs when governments pick winners and losers.
What the government can do well, and often does, is promote the public good. It's in the inventor's private interest to invent, and the market rewards him, even if he keeps his invention secret. But secrecy does not expand the body of public knowledge; it does not "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". It is the publication of inventions that serves the public interest.
This is similar to copyrights. The intent of copyright is not to reward authors for writing, it is to reward authors for making their work available to the public. The public interest is served by copyrighted works eventually entering the public domain. It is easy to forget that in the past, authors sometimes had their works privately printed and sold by subscription to collectors, rather than sold to the public. Copyright and patents exist to expand public knowledge. They reward publication, not writing or invention.
In both cases, there are well-funded special interests who work hard to confuse the issue. It's useful to examine the basic concepts. Why should government reward inventors for doing a good job? Should government reward farmers for doing a good job? How about house painters? No, that's something that markets do well and governments do poorly. Patents are the reward for the inventor telling the public about his invention. Tell the public, and the public will reward you.
The Constitution authorizes the government to issue patents to reward the publication of inventions. Making information widely available to the public is the ONLY reason for the government to be involved at all with inventions. Government has no business rewarding invention itself.
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Of course people complain about change. But there's more, and you've dismissed it.
There are tasks which can be done with the old version which cannot be done with the new version. It's not a question of learning a new way to do it, it's that there simply is NO way to do it.
Sure, people complained about the ribbon interface in the new version of Word. That's what you are talking about. What if it couldn't open old documents? That's what I'm talking about. What if the new version couldn't print? Those are the type of issues some users are complaining about. If all you ever did was business letters, maybe you wouldn't miss opening old documents. If all you ever did was email documents, maybe you would never miss printing. Those people are happy with the new version, which is better in other ways. But the new version is not usable by businesses which must provide printed documents, or revise old documents, and so on.
Yes, professionals is too broad a category. But the article does have a point; Apple is moving away from software that scales. They are very good at delivering products that meet the needs of single users. If you have one copy of FCP, you'll probably be happy to switch to the new version. If you have 20 copies, you not only won't be happy, you probably can't switch. The new version isn't designed for multiple people working on the same project. Multiple independent projects? Try it and see.
It's not just the software. Apple does a great job of providing service and support to one user at a time. Home user or business user, you can take your MacBook into an Apple store and get it fixed. Need some training? Same deal - works great for one or two users at a time, if you are near a store, and during business hours. But Apple doesn't scale to enterprises. I'm talking about 24/7 on-site repairs, on-site training for large groups, and so on. That's OK, it may be better for Apple to elect to stay out of certain markets rather than do it poorly.
Apple is focused on consumers. There are professionals whose needs match those of consumers, so Apple serves them. Other than tools, developer's needs overlap home users, so you shouldn't worry. Other professionals are finding that Apple no longer serves them. The more your professional workflow differs from that of home users, the more you should worry.
Because FCX won't ever catch up. It's a question of scale.
The old versions of FCP are designed to allow teams to work on projects. The new software is designed to be used by a single user. If only one person at a time is editing, the new version may well be better than the old version. That workflow matches how a huge number of people work, so it makes sense for Apple to focus on that market. From amateur home user to professionals working on smaller projects, Apple is moving in the right direction.
For the broadcast market, it's the wrong direction. If your work scales beyond one user per project, it's time to move on. Apple makes high margins on consumer electronics, lower but OK margins on home computers, and not much at all from businesses or government sales. Apple is going to focus on the market segment where they make higher profits, not the niche market with high sales and support costs.
At one time, if it had an engine, Ford and GM made it. Ford sold tractors and airplanes. GM sold buses, locomotives, and heavy trucks. Those markets are willing to pay a higher initial price for products which last a long time and can be repaired and rebuilt over and over. The market for cars is different. People will junk cars after 10 years if they get a lower price up front. Consumers don't see cars as an investment used to make money, cars are an expense. Make it as cheap as possible and sell me a new one every couple of years, driving the latest model impresses people. Ford and GM still sell light trucks, and probably always will. But they got out of those other markets. Some of the technology may be the same, but each market demands a different set of trade-offs, a different way of doing business. It's easier to structure your business around one large market than try to do everything.
Apple sells to consumers. They're good at it. If they sold vehicles, they'd sell cars. If you need the equivalent of a van or pickup, Apple is still in that market. But they won't, can't, scale up a pickup to a tractor trailer.
Oracle donated the copyrights and trademarks to ASF. The ASF OpenOffice.org effort is not shutting down. Among others, IBM employees are paid to work on it. Suggesting that OO.o is shutting down is just plain wrong.
What may shut down is a separate group in Germany that Oracle used to fund. That group does not own the copyrights or trademarks. It is not the project. It may be part of some broader community, just as the GPL fork called LibreOffice is part of a broader community. Communities don't own copyrights, trademarks, or domain names. People and legal entities own them.
Oracle may have left this group high and dry, which entitles them to some sympathy. Alarmist press releases misrepresenting who owns the project and the software cancels that sympathy. Guess what? When you work on a project that requires copyright assignment, you give up ownership. When you work on a project under a name trademarked by someone else, they own the name. Oracle screwed them. The 'I've Been Screwed By Oracle Club" is not exclusive, anyone can join.
Perhaps I did not explain that well enough, if that's what you think. I'll try again.
Developing proprietary software for internal use is indeed a common and successful business model. Developing proprietary software which is embedded within some greater product is a common and successful business model. So are using open source software for internal and embedded applications. In all of these cases, profits do not come from sales of software. Software is a necessary expense, not a profit center. Open source development can lower those expenses.
That's completely different than the proprietary software business model, which is developing software and selling it to others.
Another example: Ford and GM are in the business of selling cars, not bolts. Anything they can do to lower the cost of bolts is good for them, but not good for the bolt makers. So auto makers cooperate to standardize threads and so on, turning bolts from specialty items into commodities. There will still be places where a standard bolt won't do, so some specialty bolts are still needed, but fewer of them. The push for open standards does not come from bolt makers, it comes from bolt buyers.
The push for open source software comes from businesses who make profits from using software, not businesses who sell software. Software that everyone needs is becoming a commodity. Specialty software will still exist, often as a layer on top of commodity software.
Look at the phone market. Apple basically treats phones as embedded systems. They don't sell the OS separately. HTC uses a commodity open source OS, and spends a small amount to customize a thin layer on top of that. Both of those models are working for the phone makers.
Nokia made a lot of money using the embedded system business model, but their software development was mismanaged. Their very success with Symbian in the feature phone market blinded them to the smart phone market. They tried to upgrade their proprietary software into smart phone territory, and failed. They tried using open source software to make smart phones, and failed. The problem wasn't the software business model (they tried all the models), it was that their upper management never learned how to manage software projects. Costs were too high, projects were late, the software wasn't good enough. So now they are buying the software from Microsoft. I think that's a mistake; Microsoft will skim off the profit on every phone sold, leaving very little for Nokia.
You know, selling software isn't the only way to make money. In fact, the only reason *anyone* sells software is that their customers can make money using it.
When you make money by using software, driving down the cost of acquiring said software helps profits. That's where open source comes in. If you are in the business of web hosting, it makes sense to use Apache or other open source software, and maybe hire a developer or two if you need enhancements. Your competitive advantage isn't being the only company using that software, it's using it better than others; another reason to hire developers who know the software better than anyone else.
Google makes money selling Internet advertising. Anything that they can do to get people to spend more time on the Internet increases the value of the ads they sell. They don't need to sell software. Selling software would interfere with their core business.
The vast majority of programmers write code that is not sold as a separate product. It's used internally, like the trading programs used by investment bankers. Or it's embedded within the real product, like the software that controls the engine in your car.
Stop thinking about software as a product and realize that most people see it as a cost. Reducing your costs improves your bottom line.
No, voting for this doesn't mean that they are stupid. Hypocrisy is a more likely explanation than stupidity.
Here's how it works: Some parent gets offended because their kid did something that the parent didn't know about. Maybe the parents are jerks, maybe there's a real problem, but you can be sure that one or more parent was offended.
The parent makes a fuss, and a TV station gets involved. TV stations and newspapers love controversy, so they blow the story up into a huge sensation. The public loves to get self-righteous.
Something must be done. Cue the politicians. They come up with something. It doesn't matter if the law is good or bad, what matters is that Politicians A, B, and C are in the paper and on TV doing something about the outrage of the month. Let the judge take the heat from idiot parents, the politicians tried to Protect Our Children.
Will the TV station explain what's wrong with the law? No, that's bad for ratings. Facts are boring. Emotion is good for ratings. See talk radio for more examples. Hell, see Slashdot headlines and summaries.
The politician will lose maybe three votes from people who understand the Constitution. If he votes against the law, he loses hundreds or thousands of votes.
There are people who view holding office as public service, and they try to write good laws. But most voters and most media personalities don't care. Prayer in School! Abortion! Guns! Drugs! Gay Marriage! Immigrants! Why tackle hard issues that TV will ignore when you can invoke rage about high-emotion issues?
To your first point, of course BSA only represents members of BSA. Did I say otherwise?
To your second point, this is civil, not criminal. They don't have prove anything. Neither do you. The decision rests on the preponderance of evidence. They certainly can and will challenge the license for any BSA-member software found on your computers. Anything that you have that shows that you are properly licensed strengthens your case. Anything that you are missing strengthens their case. You should be safe if you have receipts. You're toast if you don't have any evidence of a valid license. If your only evidence of purchase is possession of manuals and media, you're at risk. You might win in court, but that misses the point. If you have proof of purchase, the BSA won't take you to court. If all you have is media, they will take you to court. Winning in court is better than losing, but best of all is avoiding court. If you want to stay out of court, you need to meet the BSA's criteria, not the court's. BSA wants proof of purchase.
Companies get in trouble when they assume that are safe because they didn't pirate anything. For example, Joe bought a new camera which came bundled with Photoshop Elements. He installs it on his company laptop. The company will now fail an audit. The company can't show that the company - not Joe, the company - purchased a license for something installed on a company computer. It may not be fair, it may not be reasonable, but that's the kind of thing that the BSA will decide to take to court. Joe probably has the receipt for the camera for the sake of the warranty, but the only item listed is the camera. It may be hard to prove that Elements was bundled with the camera, especially if it was a limited-time promotion. Rather than go to court, the company elects to settle with BSA, and buys another license. They didn't want that software, they didn't need that software, and they might have won in court. But it was cheaper to settle than to go to court. That's the BSA model you are up against. You don't win by going to court, you win by having BSA decide you aren't worth it. That means you have dated receipts in the company name for every piece of software found on any company computer. It doesn't matter that the software wasn't stolen; the only thing that matters is the BSA going away.
The BSA is going to spend much more effort on "properly licensed" than you have. They know all of the ways that companies can have media and licenses without the licenses being valid.
Licenses may be non-transferable. Can you prove that you purchased the license, and not someone else? Can you prove that the license applies to that particular machine?
I've seen original media and licenses at every swap meet and computer show I've ever attended. Some may be legal. Many were bundled with a particular system and are not valid to be used with any other system. Some are 'used', that is, purchased by a company who no longer needs that many copies or has ceased operations. Vernor v. Autodesk shows that licensing is not as clear and simple as you or I would like it to be. You aren't safe unless you can show proof of purchase.
You run your firewall on a desktop? You run Plone on a desktop? You do realize that Poettering was saying that BSD is not relevant to the desktop, don't you? He wasn't talking about servers, yet the examples you cite are servers.
Certainly, BSD continues to play a role in the server market. On desktops, it's a different story. BSD as a desktop OS has faded away. Some may claim OS X is BSD, but that's nonsense in the context of this particular discussion. What makes OS X a desktop OS is the non-BSD, non-open parts. Such as Core Audio, which addresses the same issues as Pulse Audio, and for the same reason: those issues are ignored in BSD.
50Hz requires more iron in the core of power transformers than 60Hz. Similar effects apply to motors. Now that consumer electronics have switched to high frequency switching supplies, that's not much of an issue for the end user. It does still matter for the transformers used in the power grid to step down from higher distribution voltages to lower domestic voltages.
Hell no, the media isn't reliable. It never has been. It never will be. That's not the issue.
The problem is that ownership of our major news organizations is concentrated into fewer hands than ever before. There used to be a chance that for every story that a newspaper got wrong, some other paper would get right. Truth had a chance. You had to dig for it, it might take a long time, but you had chance to find out what really happened.
Now, we have a generation of reporters who have given up on facts. They report what people with power think about things, and stop when they have two differing opinions. Drama sells, facts don't. The fact that Iraq had no connection to 9/11 didn't matter, the fact that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis didn't matter; the President wanted to go to war with Iraq and the only story that the US media covered was the argument between leading Democrats and leading Republicans over when and how. Hans Blix didn't matter; he wasn't a Democrat, he wasn't a Republican, he didn't live in Washington. He was a foreigner. Television only cares about horse races and he wasn't in the race.
Religion is an evolutionary development that, like many others, provides a useful shortcut to difficult questions. Evolution doesn't have a goal, there is no ideal we are moving towards, it simply provides that "good enough" survives and "not so good" dies out. We have a multitude of biological and cultural mechanisms for coping with the word that aren't ideal, but are rules of thumb: not correct in all cases, not the best answer, but a good enough answer in most cases. We eat things that smell and taste good, and that usually works. But then we create new foods and lace them with fat, salt, and sugar, and our sense of taste betrays us.
Humans clearly have some sort of need for spirituality. In the broadest sense, I'd include art, music and dance in that category of coping mechanisms that don't serve an immediate obvious purpose, but are the very things that make life worth living. Some are private, some are social. Why is one form more pleasing to the eye than another? Why is one arrangement of sounds more pleasing than another? Pleasure is the reward for pushing ourselves beyond mere survival.
I view religion as the failure mode of spirituality, just as war is the failure mode of competition. Spirituality and competition are often productive, but they can be twisted into something destructive instead. Organized religion is the High Fructose Corn Syrup version of spirituality - a useful reflex misused for the sake of greed and power.
Genre fiction is certainly not limited in its artistic aspirations. It is limited in its themes and forms, much as sonnets are limited to a certain form. Artistry often thrives under the influence of limits.
You don't see anything odd that a show sub-titled "The Books We Really Read" ignored nearly all popular books and focused on a very narrow subset favored by self-appointed elite? I assumed that "We" referred to the general public, but apparently I was wrong. BBC was using the royal "We".
Sure, most popular entertainment is crap. So is most of the "Literary Fiction" genre. Sturgeon's Law applies to all writing: 90% of everything is crap. The BBC should cover the 10% that is good, which is not limited to any one genre. I appreciate skillful use of language no matter where I find it.
Microsoft could end the patent issue once and for all by granting a royalty-free license for any and all patents needed to implement a C# runtime. They have not done so. That suggests that they reserve the right to use those patents against any competitor who becomes a large enough threat, or any one else with deep pockets.
IBM has more patents than anyone else, yet they give patent grants in situations like this. Many companies do. Sometimes growing the market by making standards more affordable is better than protecting your share of a smaller market. Microsoft's actions speak louder than their words, and their actions come down on the side of reserving the option of shutting down the use of C# in ways that Microsoft doesn't like. You think that it's silly to fear that Microsoft would do that, I think it's silly for Microsoft to fear that someone might someday use Microsoft's C# patents to harm Microsoft.
Creativity brings its own reward. The purpose of copyrights and patents is to encourage making information available to the public. Don't leave "public" out of "publishing". Prior to copyright, readers often subscribed to private printings of limited editions, where resale value encouraged keeping books private. Copyright rewards making books available to the public under a temporary monopoly, with the books eventually entering the public domain.
Writing a book does not "promote the general Welfare", to use the words of the US Constitution. Growing the public domain does. Publishing, making it available to the public rather than private collectors, also serves that public purpose. That's what the incentive rewards.
Let's make oatmeal cookies:
Scenario One: Use a scoop to move flour from bulk storage to a measuring cup, dump into mixing bowl. Do the same for sugar, oatmeal, and butter or shortening. Wash the greasy measuring cup and spoon or spatula.
Scenario Two: Place the mixing bowl on the scale and press the tare button to subtract the weight of the bowl. Use the scoop to add flour until the desired quantity is in the bowl. Press tare again, and add sugar. Repeat for oatmeal and shortening. Wash the spoon or spatula.
One less object to wash. Greater accuracy measuring the flour and oatmeal. I'll take the simpler, more accurate method.
Very wrong. Patents exist to provide an incentive to the inventor for making knowledge about his patent available to the public. It's not about inventors; it's about growing the body of public knowledge. A patent is the reward for publication, not a reward for inventing.
Inventors can profit when they keep their inventions secret, for certain types of inventions. Keeping a better mousetrap secret wouldn't work, because anyone could buy one and figure out how to make it. But if the invention is a better way to make a mousetrap, secrecy could be more profitable than a patent. First to market is another powerful reward that does not depend on patents.
The government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers; the market, with certain notable failure modes, does a much better job. On the other hand, providing incentives to people to act in ways that benefit the public at large is the principle role of the government.
Compared to the hassle of finding the right size measuring cup? It's easier to have one universal scoop and a scale.
The confirmation should include the number of destinations. That's one extra click and a little reading to reply to the reasonable number people involved with a project, and one extra cancel button click when you realize that replying to everyone in the company isn't what you meant to do.
You don't need information about the person, you need information known only to the person and the card company. Using easily obtained information such as address or phone number is much less secure than a shared secret.
My credit card has my name on it. I'm the only person with that name in the phone book. Anyone who steals my card can give you my address and phone number. How's that validate the card?
It's sad that my Slashdot login is more secure than my credit card. And it preserves more of my privacy.
It's good if a small decline in our standard of living now prevents a major decline later.
Invention is rewarded by the market, which usually does so in an effective and efficient manner. First to market is all the incentive an inventor needs. Directly rewarding the act of invention is something that the government is notoriously bad at. History is full of examples of the corruption that occurs when governments pick winners and losers.
What the government can do well, and often does, is promote the public good. It's in the inventor's private interest to invent, and the market rewards him, even if he keeps his invention secret. But secrecy does not expand the body of public knowledge; it does not "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". It is the publication of inventions that serves the public interest.
This is similar to copyrights. The intent of copyright is not to reward authors for writing, it is to reward authors for making their work available to the public. The public interest is served by copyrighted works eventually entering the public domain. It is easy to forget that in the past, authors sometimes had their works privately printed and sold by subscription to collectors, rather than sold to the public. Copyright and patents exist to expand public knowledge. They reward publication, not writing or invention.
In both cases, there are well-funded special interests who work hard to confuse the issue. It's useful to examine the basic concepts. Why should government reward inventors for doing a good job? Should government reward farmers for doing a good job? How about house painters? No, that's something that markets do well and governments do poorly. Patents are the reward for the inventor telling the public about his invention. Tell the public, and the public will reward you.
The Constitution authorizes the government to issue patents to reward the publication of inventions. Making information widely available to the public is the ONLY reason for the government to be involved at all with inventions. Government has no business rewarding invention itself.