Except that once software is released with a license, that never changes. It can never be controlled, altered, destroyed, because it *exists*. They can't go into every home that has that software on their computer and force them to change that license, and with the GPL it helps ensure that future versions will also never be destroyed or controlled. I'm not underestimating Microsoft, I'm sure their lawyers are thinking long and hard about all the kinds of mean twisted tactics they can to demolish all competition, but I'm simply asking how would it be possible for them to E.E.E. licenses? Or were you just being prepared and saying they would try? If so, no doubt about it.
Oh Steve don't worry about Linux, it's okaaaay, it'll fade away in time. After all, someone will probably just buy it out, of course *you* understand how that works Steve. The only reason you don't control it now is...I dunno, I heard these rumors about this thing called the GPL, it's really weird, but I'm sure your lawyers will figure it out soon so you can absorb it into your monopoly, so I wouldn't worry about it. Besides, Vista is Great Success!
Oh, I agree. Google is a business not a charity. However they are pressing for an open market against the incumbents businesses, which benefits the population. Just because an entity makes profit doesn't mean it's bad. Google got big in part because it gave searchers relevant search results as well as "do no evil". However with new leadership Google can turn out the same as other businesses. If they do though another startup can just step up and do the same. Such as "Jimbo" Jimmy Wales from the wikipedia, he's working on a collaberative search engine. Yesh, that was what I was trying to say, was that they have done and are doing a lot of good, even though getting money is high on their agenda. They still put many consumer-friendly and anti-monopolistic ideals ahead of a lot of other things.
Thanks for the info about Jimbo, I wasn't aware of it and am very happy that someone is working on such a project. I remember when Wikipedia started out as this strange project on the net which many thought seemed like a silly idea. Collecting information? Who needs it, we've got X, Y, and Z. Well, now not only is Wikipedia big enough to the point where it's an extremely useful resource for mostly unbiased information (moreso than most anything else), but X, Y, and Z are mostly gone now, gobbled up by money-hungry companies, or like Google have slightly given in to marketing pressures. It was disappointing when Ask bought out Teoma, that was a good search engine. Now it's littered with ads worse than Google is. At least Google can sometimes give you relevant links, unless it's about something someone is trying to sell.
W0ot! Yeah! L3TS DO IIIIIIT!!!!!111 *opens some beer and keeps hitting the refresh button, waiting for some kind of images of explosions or fire or mobs to appear on Slashdot*
Joking aside, there are other news sites out there if Slashdot has gone too far down hill and doesn't get fixed. Just don't ask me what they are, because I don't know of any anywhere near the size of/..
It would have been nice if there was some checking and thinking done before this article was posted on Slashdot. Especially if the sender, Xemu, didn't seem to provide, as far as we know, any information about how this is possible, where the company came from, etc. Just a sales pitch, and a link. If you get a sales pitch and a link in your inbox, do you immediately send them money? No, you usually flag it as spam, because it's probably a scam. At the VERY least, PLEASE put comments in the title and/or body of the news blurb mentioning that there is nothing to back these claims up, and a warning to beware because of a possible scam. Even now, it doesn't even have any added entries telling everyone to beware. Yes, live without warning, but seriously it does deserve mention in the main body that this is probably a scam, by now at least.
Maybe they are just a poor startup, but yeah, definitely stay suspicious. Maybe they're just selling hardware that is slow/old enough to be really cheap, so it's almost like the prices you'd pay from Ebay, except completely new.:)
...as I pass it by for a whopping $1B! All it'd take is making thousands of copies of the smallest, most expensive codec you can find. I wonder if I'd get an award.:)
I don't think I could accomplish this with Adobe CS3, though...
Google isn't just being a saint, either, and fighting for our rights, which apparently are at the mercy of corporations with lots of money (fun!). Google's business strategy is breaking up the current monopolistic industries as a whole so that it can compete in all those markets with it's own software. The current industries are far bigger than Google in the U.S., so they could never get into those markets unless they use their growing financial weight against them to allow some real competition.
Sure, Google has done some irritating things here and there but as a whole they stick up for consumer freedoms I think. I hope Google never reaches the point where it will be more profitable for them to start taking away freedoms in the spirit of most current monopolies. Hopefully never, since their current leaders seem to understand the benefit of actually going with the grain of consumer freedoms like FOSS, instead of against it, at least for some of their supported software.
In other words: The government created the mechanism, they don't create the monopolies.
I'm pretty sure the previous poster didn't think the government went out and manually created monopolies, but simply provided the mechanisms. It's many of the laws that the government has created to give benefits to monopolies with lots of control and money, reducing the chance for competition. If you got rid of all government regulation of businesses, you'd help competition in some ways, but monopolies may more easily exist in other ways. At the very least, you'd probably have to have watchdog groups of some sort fill in the gap.
The real question is, does anyone really know what would happen in a completely free market? Would the government still have to step in to try to discourage cooperation between companies and other monopolistic practices, or is such cooperation completely inherent in the system and very difficult to prevent?
When us young capitalists were taught in the classroom about how communism meant no choice, and capitalism meant lots of choice, we were also taught that competition between companies was the reason. But, what happens when companies put down their swords, and realize that cooperating is much more beneficial than competition? Perhaps competition is an old theory back in the days when business owners had too much testosterone that, now days, no longer applies.
On the other, we also see them putting pressure on the OEMs not to bundle any software but their own with new computers.
I'm still amazed how this practice isn't being banned by the U.S. government. The E.U. has some sense to block similar practices in support of consumers, but of course here in the U.S. we apparently love our monopolistic practices. Contract agreements like these are extremely common here, the consumers all get fucked over, and no one seems to care, or realize the goods and prices they *could* be getting, simply because they can't see them in front of their noses.
How about nothing? Quit trying to make information sharing illegal, and stop being babies and admit that the current business models of Hollywood, the gaming, and the music industries are obsolete now, like newspapers, and either die out, or find a business model that's compatible with the internet?:)
Correct, it's not anything that actually helps everyone, it's something that helps monopolies, that helps the few squeeze even more money from the already heavily-overtaxed populace. I'd like to see the whole thing done away with, and alternate systems take it's place, even ones that may naturally develop, like companies working together to get a good product *into market* to make money. Competition! Amazing concept!
At the VERY least, since throwing it out would send monopolies into convulsions so it'll never happen since they control the government, the patent system reform that needs to be made is one that forces technology to *enter* the marketplace. So many patents are bought up by big industries and sat on because their release would actually better technology for the world and make things *cheaper*, thus taking away their revenue stream. Industries don't WANT many technologies from getting to you, the consumer. You have no clue all the things you don't have right now because technology has been withheld from you. Unfortunately, we'll never know all the things we could have had those technologies gotten out, gotten used by everyone, so that new ideas *could* be thought of to build upon and better those technologies.
Agreed, and I also find it really amusing when companies mention patents in advertisements. "This product is great, because we're going to charge you more because of our stranglehold on the technology!"? You don't need patents in order to use good ideas.
...because most all of these distros are compatible with the LSB. Linux has SOME standards, and they seem to be getting better all the time, unlike Unix did.
At some point the artists who "sell their soul" will have to regret doing so. Let true internet radio competition begin! Goodbye RIAA, I won't miss you.:)
Exactly, thanks a lot guys for patenting it and screwing the rest of us over. Now we have to wait for the patent to expire from the grips of a big oil or energy company before we can actually use it. Yay.
Maybe you already understood this, but his joke was still relevant given that there are many ways Microsoft extends it's grip on the market. Patents, software, licenses, and formats are all methods of control. Microsoft has lots of reasons to not want others to adopt formats other than ones it controls, obviously. It just adds one more hurdle for competition to overcome. So anything and everything Microsoft can do to stop this, they will do, to add to all the lobbying they've already done everywhere to prevent anyone from adopting anything not controlled by them. Once their monopoly is destroyed though, they will be forced to play nice, because only then will intelligent IT directors be able to see clear enough to make better choices. I know those words intelligent and IT director don't go together very often though so maybe that's wishful thinking.
Perhaps you already understood all that though, apologize if that was redundant, or I completely missed your point.:) Yeah this topic was about standards, not software or licenses, but it's just one more bullet Balmer has to deal with, and throwing those other things at them will in turn help fight standards. Especially if Office 2007 doesn't come with a way to save files as ODFs. Not that I really care. It's all tied in together, is all I'm saying. =P
Patents clearly are "good" for monopolies, and bad for consumers, postponing many technologies from reaching society until the expiration of the patent and preventing new ideas based on those patents from being created, slowing the overall advancement of new ideas. If some kind of compensation is to be given to an inventor other than the advantages that already exist, the idea must be shared with society and the time should be shortened or the current system completely changed.
OK, again, a link to some supported chipsets that are supposed to work under Linux. Like I said, there are lists of compatible chipsets. What is difficult is finding an actual card that has those chipsets on them that you can actually buy. Newegg and other sites fail horribly when you type in most chipsets, probably because in many cases that information isn't even given. You'd think Google would be your best bet possibly, but most of the stuff you pull up is information about the chipsets, not cards that you can buy.
I see no one has answered yet. I'm pretty sure the reason is there aren't any yet, but I may have just not found them.
The http://www.dohickey-project.com/ is trying to provide a system to give feedback about compatible Linux hardware. At the very least, a place where you can go check to see what hardware to buy for a Linux system would be nice. A lot of hardware is compatible with Linux, but Wi-Fi is definitely one of the areas that's highly lacking, you're right. The closest thing I've really found to a big list of what is compatible is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_so urce_wireless_drivers. However, this is a list of drivers that are available on Linux and their chipsets, not the actual cards, so then you have to find out which cards use the chipsets. Not an ideal solution, definitely not very friendly.
I can find some places where you can buy cards that are compatible but none of them are wireless N. Wireless N is a brand new technology. Intel and others make Linux-friendly chipsets, but once again, good luck finding the associated cards. You might try asking Linux Emporium or other Linux vendors who sell hardware to see if they know of wireless N cards for Linux.
Pointless? You mean, difficult to obtain, but all statistics are not completely pointless. Finding out how many users use Unix, Linux, OS X, Windows Vista, Windows XP, etc etc, is not pointless. If software companies, for example, have this information they can potentially better decide what "platform" to create software for.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that once software is released with a license, that never changes. It can never be controlled, altered, destroyed, because it *exists*. They can't go into every home that has that software on their computer and force them to change that license, and with the GPL it helps ensure that future versions will also never be destroyed or controlled. I'm not underestimating Microsoft, I'm sure their lawyers are thinking long and hard about all the kinds of mean twisted tactics they can to demolish all competition, but I'm simply asking how would it be possible for them to E.E.E. licenses? Or were you just being prepared and saying they would try? If so, no doubt about it.
Woohooooooo! Tho Opera is still faster. =/ I'm curious to know what causes the performance difference between the two.
How about both? ^^
Oh Steve don't worry about Linux, it's okaaaay, it'll fade away in time. After all, someone will probably just buy it out, of course *you* understand how that works Steve. The only reason you don't control it now is...I dunno, I heard these rumors about this thing called the GPL, it's really weird, but I'm sure your lawyers will figure it out soon so you can absorb it into your monopoly, so I wouldn't worry about it. Besides, Vista is Great Success!
Thanks for the info about Jimbo, I wasn't aware of it and am very happy that someone is working on such a project. I remember when Wikipedia started out as this strange project on the net which many thought seemed like a silly idea. Collecting information? Who needs it, we've got X, Y, and Z. Well, now not only is Wikipedia big enough to the point where it's an extremely useful resource for mostly unbiased information (moreso than most anything else), but X, Y, and Z are mostly gone now, gobbled up by money-hungry companies, or like Google have slightly given in to marketing pressures. It was disappointing when Ask bought out Teoma, that was a good search engine. Now it's littered with ads worse than Google is. At least Google can sometimes give you relevant links, unless it's about something someone is trying to sell.
W0ot! Yeah! L3TS DO IIIIIIT!!!!!111 *opens some beer and keeps hitting the refresh button, waiting for some kind of images of explosions or fire or mobs to appear on Slashdot*
/..
Joking aside, there are other news sites out there if Slashdot has gone too far down hill and doesn't get fixed. Just don't ask me what they are, because I don't know of any anywhere near the size of
It would have been nice if there was some checking and thinking done before this article was posted on Slashdot. Especially if the sender, Xemu, didn't seem to provide, as far as we know, any information about how this is possible, where the company came from, etc. Just a sales pitch, and a link. If you get a sales pitch and a link in your inbox, do you immediately send them money? No, you usually flag it as spam, because it's probably a scam. At the VERY least, PLEASE put comments in the title and/or body of the news blurb mentioning that there is nothing to back these claims up, and a warning to beware because of a possible scam. Even now, it doesn't even have any added entries telling everyone to beware. Yes, live without warning, but seriously it does deserve mention in the main body that this is probably a scam, by now at least.
Maybe they are just a poor startup, but yeah, definitely stay suspicious. Maybe they're just selling hardware that is slow/old enough to be really cheap, so it's almost like the prices you'd pay from Ebay, except completely new. :)
Has anyone priced everything out yet to compare?
...as I pass it by for a whopping $1B! All it'd take is making thousands of copies of the smallest, most expensive codec you can find. I wonder if I'd get an award. :)
I don't think I could accomplish this with Adobe CS3, though...
Google isn't just being a saint, either, and fighting for our rights, which apparently are at the mercy of corporations with lots of money (fun!). Google's business strategy is breaking up the current monopolistic industries as a whole so that it can compete in all those markets with it's own software. The current industries are far bigger than Google in the U.S., so they could never get into those markets unless they use their growing financial weight against them to allow some real competition.
Sure, Google has done some irritating things here and there but as a whole they stick up for consumer freedoms I think. I hope Google never reaches the point where it will be more profitable for them to start taking away freedoms in the spirit of most current monopolies. Hopefully never, since their current leaders seem to understand the benefit of actually going with the grain of consumer freedoms like FOSS, instead of against it, at least for some of their supported software.
The real question is, does anyone really know what would happen in a completely free market? Would the government still have to step in to try to discourage cooperation between companies and other monopolistic practices, or is such cooperation completely inherent in the system and very difficult to prevent?
When us young capitalists were taught in the classroom about how communism meant no choice, and capitalism meant lots of choice, we were also taught that competition between companies was the reason. But, what happens when companies put down their swords, and realize that cooperating is much more beneficial than competition? Perhaps competition is an old theory back in the days when business owners had too much testosterone that, now days, no longer applies.I'm still amazed how this practice isn't being banned by the U.S. government. The E.U. has some sense to block similar practices in support of consumers, but of course here in the U.S. we apparently love our monopolistic practices. Contract agreements like these are extremely common here, the consumers all get fucked over, and no one seems to care, or realize the goods and prices they *could* be getting, simply because they can't see them in front of their noses.
How about nothing? Quit trying to make information sharing illegal, and stop being babies and admit that the current business models of Hollywood, the gaming, and the music industries are obsolete now, like newspapers, and either die out, or find a business model that's compatible with the internet? :)
Correct, it's not anything that actually helps everyone, it's something that helps monopolies, that helps the few squeeze even more money from the already heavily-overtaxed populace. I'd like to see the whole thing done away with, and alternate systems take it's place, even ones that may naturally develop, like companies working together to get a good product *into market* to make money. Competition! Amazing concept!
l /against.htm/ is an interesting read, it's an interesting argument that patents prevented the industrial revolution from occurring for a few decades.
At the VERY least, since throwing it out would send monopolies into convulsions so it'll never happen since they control the government, the patent system reform that needs to be made is one that forces technology to *enter* the marketplace. So many patents are bought up by big industries and sat on because their release would actually better technology for the world and make things *cheaper*, thus taking away their revenue stream. Industries don't WANT many technologies from getting to you, the consumer. You have no clue all the things you don't have right now because technology has been withheld from you. Unfortunately, we'll never know all the things we could have had those technologies gotten out, gotten used by everyone, so that new ideas *could* be thought of to build upon and better those technologies.
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectua
Agreed, and I also find it really amusing when companies mention patents in advertisements. "This product is great, because we're going to charge you more because of our stranglehold on the technology!"? You don't need patents in order to use good ideas.
...because most all of these distros are compatible with the LSB. Linux has SOME standards, and they seem to be getting better all the time, unlike Unix did.
That's right, it's time to move on up from the po open standad ODF to da MS bling!
At some point the artists who "sell their soul" will have to regret doing so. Let true internet radio competition begin! Goodbye RIAA, I won't miss you. :)
Exactly, thanks a lot guys for patenting it and screwing the rest of us over. Now we have to wait for the patent to expire from the grips of a big oil or energy company before we can actually use it. Yay.
Maybe you already understood this, but his joke was still relevant given that there are many ways Microsoft extends it's grip on the market. Patents, software, licenses, and formats are all methods of control. Microsoft has lots of reasons to not want others to adopt formats other than ones it controls, obviously. It just adds one more hurdle for competition to overcome. So anything and everything Microsoft can do to stop this, they will do, to add to all the lobbying they've already done everywhere to prevent anyone from adopting anything not controlled by them. Once their monopoly is destroyed though, they will be forced to play nice, because only then will intelligent IT directors be able to see clear enough to make better choices. I know those words intelligent and IT director don't go together very often though so maybe that's wishful thinking.
:) Yeah this topic was about standards, not software or licenses, but it's just one more bullet Balmer has to deal with, and throwing those other things at them will in turn help fight standards. Especially if Office 2007 doesn't come with a way to save files as ODFs. Not that I really care. It's all tied in together, is all I'm saying. =P
Perhaps you already understood all that though, apologize if that was redundant, or I completely missed your point.
Patents clearly are "good" for monopolies, and bad for consumers, postponing many technologies from reaching society until the expiration of the patent and preventing new ideas based on those patents from being created, slowing the overall advancement of new ideas. If some kind of compensation is to be given to an inventor other than the advantages that already exist, the idea must be shared with society and the time should be shortened or the current system completely changed.
OK, again, a link to some supported chipsets that are supposed to work under Linux. Like I said, there are lists of compatible chipsets. What is difficult is finding an actual card that has those chipsets on them that you can actually buy. Newegg and other sites fail horribly when you type in most chipsets, probably because in many cases that information isn't even given. You'd think Google would be your best bet possibly, but most of the stuff you pull up is information about the chipsets, not cards that you can buy.
Fuck the RIAA and any big middleman organizations, you don't need them anymore. Promote independent musicians. It's called the intarwebz, use it!
I see no one has answered yet. I'm pretty sure the reason is there aren't any yet, but I may have just not found them.
o urce_wireless_drivers. However, this is a list of drivers that are available on Linux and their chipsets, not the actual cards, so then you have to find out which cards use the chipsets. Not an ideal solution, definitely not very friendly.
:)
The http://www.dohickey-project.com/ is trying to provide a system to give feedback about compatible Linux hardware. At the very least, a place where you can go check to see what hardware to buy for a Linux system would be nice. A lot of hardware is compatible with Linux, but Wi-Fi is definitely one of the areas that's highly lacking, you're right. The closest thing I've really found to a big list of what is compatible is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_s
I can find some places where you can buy cards that are compatible but none of them are wireless N. Wireless N is a brand new technology. Intel and others make Linux-friendly chipsets, but once again, good luck finding the associated cards. You might try asking Linux Emporium or other Linux vendors who sell hardware to see if they know of wireless N cards for Linux.
If anyone finds something, let everyone know.
...shouldn't we be able to spy on it too?
Pointless? You mean, difficult to obtain, but all statistics are not completely pointless. Finding out how many users use Unix, Linux, OS X, Windows Vista, Windows XP, etc etc, is not pointless. If software companies, for example, have this information they can potentially better decide what "platform" to create software for.