Microsoft Licensing Fee Intended To Reduce Hobbyists 355
BokLM writes "Microsoft's Amir Majidimehr, Corporate VP of the Windows Digital Media Division, explained at a DRM conference in London why they require a license fee from device makers." From the article: "According to Amir, the fee is not intended to recoup the expenses Microsoft incurred in developing their DRM, or to turn a profit. The intention is to reduce the number of licensees to a manageable level, to lock out 'hobbyists' and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with."
hobby (Score:5, Funny)
Do as we say, not as we do... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ballmer: Developers! Developers! Developers!
Yeah, uh huh... right... sounds more like THIS discussion...
Dr. Walter Gibbs: User requests are what computers are for!
Ed Dillinger: DOING OUR BUSINESS is what computers are for.
Xbox points to the future (Score:5, Insightful)
But they are starting the long slow trend that ends with Xbox bow. They still want developers, but only large ones. Because in the end the goal is to turn the PC into an Xbox. All applications are signed by Microsoft and they collect a piece of the action in exchange for it. It solves most of their security problems, lets them tap vast new revenue streams to show investors some growth and allows them the total freedom to screw each developer in turn by introducing their own replacement and deciding the 3rd party app no longer 'meets our strategic vision' and refusing to continue signing.
Trusted Network Connect (Score:3, Informative)
There's competition now from the free software world.
Not if free software can't boot. Have you tried to run free software on a video game console without making modifications that are illegal in at least one major developed country? Even if free software is allowed to boot, it is likely not to be able to get an IP address because all the residential high-speed ISPs use Trusted Network Connect and only "trust" specific unmodified Microsoft and Apple operating systems. It could very well happen by 2015 [slashdot.org].
Monopoly? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2)
You're free to reverse engineer the DRM and implement a free version, possibly, though oddly enough, nobody does that with DRM. I wonder why.
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2)
Re:Monopoly? (Score:2)
BoingBoing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:BoingBoing? (Score:2, Insightful)
If something is submitted and its accepted does it really matter where it coems from?
Besides in this case, boingboing has a decent enough rep and Cory was actually at the discussed conference so I think its best to use his link.
Re:BoingBoing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Surprised? (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? I thought that everybody -- especially Slashdot -- had this impression.
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Insightful)
more patience than me (Score:5, Funny)
Sweet Zombie Jesus (Score:4, Insightful)
The intention is to reduce the number of licensors to a manageable level, to lock out "hobbyists" and other entities that Microsoft doesn't want to have to trouble itself with.
Is it just me, or does anyone else think that Microsoft has the resources to "manage" nearly any number of "hobbyists"? I mean, laziness is one thing, but sheesh...
I wonder if there are any backroom deals being made here?
Re:Sweet Zombie Jesus (Score:2)
So, either they'd rather not have to invest more to keep on top of the open-source competition and would just prefer it to go away, or they just feel they're unable to.
And of course, fair competition is out of the picture at Microsoft for historical and cultural reasons. They've come all that way by being assholes, why would they want to change their ways now ?
anagram (Score:5, Funny)
Re:anagram (Score:2, Funny)
Another one? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Another one? (Score:2)
Well we had a War on Poverty -- and Poverty won!
Re:Another one? (Score:5, Funny)
Here's a little viral propaganda you might like to try spreading. Refer to it always as the war against terror. In conversation. In posts. On IRC. It's the war AGAINST terror. Try to get that alternative phrase into common currency. Get your friends to do the same. Spread the meme throughout /. - there's nearly a million of us, and we're quite talkative, so if we work in concert to subvert the language we can make a difference. Think of it as linguistic Googlebombing.
It's just possible that the acronym of the new phrase, and its appropriateness to the likes of Bush and Blair, will have a subliminal effect on all who hear the phrase. George Bush leads us in the war against terror. TWAT.
Re:Another one? (Score:3, Informative)
Driving the wedge deeper (Score:5, Interesting)
I do have to wonder how much of this is to show a strong front to the increasingly powerful media companies and their mostly oppresive DRM schemes.
Jerry
http://www.networkstrike.com/ [networkstrike.com]
Re:Driving the wedge deeper (Score:2)
That presupposes that MS gives a rat's ass about winning over the open source community. They'd much rather crush it.
No, it gives people more reason to not use open source software, because if it doesn't work in Windows, nobody cares about it. Sad, but true.
Re:Driving the wedge deeper (Score:2)
Right now a lot of people write software to release for the windows market because of the profit/risk ratio. If they add another layer of fees to pay then that ratio shifts in favor of other solutions.
There only needs to be one "killer game" for linux that is not on windows and the jig is up. Linux would probably gain 10% penetration from that one event.
By driving away developers who are creating things- just not "big enough"- they are creating a set of developers for o
Re:Driving the wedge deeper (Score:3, Insightful)
Mmmm, I'd say more likely Windows users will just wait until the game comes out on Windows. Because it will.
Re:Driving the wedge deeper (Score:2)
What about the article leads you to believe they are trying to "win over" the FOSS community?
Big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
If it turns out that hobbyists are a bad thing, then the market will demonstrate that. There's no need to act as if your rights are being suppressed.
Sometimes hobbyists are phenomenal for a platform (the Apple II platform, Linux). Sometimes they don't seem to provide enough benefit to be essential. Game consoles are effectively closed to hobbyists and despite the degree of amateur work, Flash was never really a free platform to seriously develop for.
The only area in which I can think of that this isn't true is when monopolies exist (such as the cell phone market, where cell providers can force the platform closed by requiring that anyone that uses their services provide only a closed platform).
Anyone can sit down and provide something an an encoded audio and video format. There are a lot more MPEG-based players out there than anything else, and it's not as if hobbyists can't produce content for these. Microsoft's chosen their market (at least in the short term). Let them play with the idea and see whether it pans out.
Re:Big deal (Score:2)
Too late. Microsoft has already demonstrated it, and they have much more influence in the market than you or I. There is no amorphous "market." There are companies that sell products. And they are lining up against fair use, and creating a barrier to entry for others who are not on their side.
Re:Big deal (Score:2)
This is basic business profit maximization logic, and you hear it all the time. There's a whole industry of management consultants who do little more than point out that if you
Re:Big deal (Score:2)
Not really true -- every console from the VCS to the PSP has had homebrewed software developed for and executed on it.
Re:Big deal (Score:3, Insightful)
DRM is self-collapsing (Score:2)
Every leg of DRM is trying to collapse it: except two.
The only supporting legs are a company's desire to "protect" their work and the necessary laws to make circumvention of DRM illegal
And, as we all
Standard Business Practice (Score:3, Interesting)
When pricing a product, you typically want to set a minimum price specifically for the purpose of eliminating the deadbeat/hobbyist factor. Yes, you'll lose a couple of potential sales because the price presents a barrier to entry, but if you did the math properly, that minor loss is substantially easier to swallow than the loss from a huge non-revenue-generating support obligation. If the majority of your customers are businesses, they won't blink at a couple-hundred bucks for a product.
Re:Standard Business Practice (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't news, nor is it some grand conspiracy.
Actually, it is. A monopolist has partnered with two cartels and all three of them have been convicted of illegally abusing their market positions. They are partnering to build an artificial barrier to entry in the convergence of their markets and to leverage their existing position to gain an advantage in new markets. This is most definitely a conspiracy and it is news. Here's a hint. It is illegal to use a monopoly to gain an advantage in other markets or to build barriers to entry to those markets. MS has partnered to do just that, implementing software restrictions to provide some parties with a market advantage using their monopoly on desktop OSs.
When pricing a product, you typically want to set a minimum price specifically for the purpose of eliminating the deadbeat/hobbyist factor.
Since when is an artificial restriction on use a "product?"
If the majority of your customers are businesses, they won't blink at a couple-hundred bucks for a product.
And you think that makes it ok or something? MS has a monopoly and they are using that monopoly to collect an additional toll from developers in the separate software application market. That is illegal.
Economics of support (Score:2)
Pricing something just to freeze out a certain segment of the population might be standard business practice, but it has nothing to do with the economics of support. It has to do with freezing out a ce
Biting the hand that feeds it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I don't understand this behavior because it is so damaging in the long term - students (who can also be thought of as "hobbyists") will not be able to easily work on Microsoft products and will naturally gravitate towards more open solutions...
I've never understood why Microsoft wasn't more supportive of the student, hobbyist and small business marketplace. I can understand that they do not want products propagating that use obsolute interfaces/methodologies but there should be some halfway point, not freezing out those of us that want to experiment with PC applications and don't have deep pocket sponsors.
myke
Not limited to Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of that stuff is FREE to corporate customers, companies will voluntarily lose money just to get people to try to use their product. However for people on the street, or companies too small to be "real", they will charge thousands upon thousands of dollars for these materials, if they will let you have them at all.
On one hand they're right, true hobbyists often have day jobs that are not in the industry (since those in the industry often gank this stuff from work) and can generate a lot of cost by a multitude of questions and misunderstandings. On the other hand, one persons hobby could turn into a good business, if their idea or project becomes interesting. By discouraging this, they are effectively discouraging innovation in anything less than a rather well funded start-up.
Re:Not limited to Microsoft (Score:2)
Xilinx [xilinx.com] provide the basic ISE synthesis tools[1] for their smaller FPGAs for free, no matter who you are, and for their more powerful tool
Damage is Done (Score:2, Insightful)
I recently bought (and returned) a Philips mp3 player to use for audiobooks. Not only can the thing not display track time > 1 hr.,
Bad move (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not the smartest thing Microsoft has ever done...
Wasn't the OSS movement a "bunch of hobbyists"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux: Hobbyist wanted reformatted or alive! (Score:2)
so they decided to make a "WinSelection":
Microsoft Certification Test:
1) Are you a windows hobbyist? [YES: 1 point, NO: 0 points]
2) Do you have a planty of cash? [YES: 2 point, NO: 0 points]
Test results:
0-1 points - useless windows community member (possible linux hacker)
2-3 points - usefull windows community member
Gates: Small reminder... (Score:2)
Perhaps someone should remind Bill Gates where MS came from, wasn't he (and co) a hobbyist at Uni where MS started??
Haydn.
Depends on how do you define "hobbyist". (Score:2, Interesting)
A lot of DVDs made in Finland get region code 0. I can understand that (some noble but ultimately futile dreams on Finnish cinema getting big on foreign market, I guess =). But most of the DVDs don't seem to have CSS either, which kind of puzzles me.
I'm not familiar with how CSS licensing works for content authors, but maybe, maybe some Finnish producers said "hey, let's copy protect these things" and another producer said "well, that's not going to happen, have you seen what prices they're asking for tha
Hobbyists, Or ...? (Score:3, Interesting)
I find it way too easy to replace "hobbyists" with "independent music producers" in that quote. And lock them out to benefit who? Organized Music? Almost certainly. MS wants to play nice with Big Music, get their content, and make a few more tens of billions in the process. Get government to close the so called "Analog Hole". Lock struggling producers out of a standard for DRM. Nothing here to hurt the big players at all. All this is just another reason why MS must die.
(As a company, you idiot lawyers.)
Irony (Score:3, Insightful)
TranslatorBot To The Rescue (Score:3, Funny)
*BEEP* *BOP* *BOOP* CHICKACHICKACHICKA *ZIP* *BOOP*
Readout:
We write software! NOT YOU!
This is not an MS apology (Score:3, Informative)
Now the major difference is these distributors have competition, but the only competetion to protected WMA/V DRM is Apple's FairPlay, which only Apple gets to use.
Also realize that, in effect, this is exactly what the DVD-CCA does. Only issues liscences to people who agree to play by their restrictive terms.
On a certain level MS probably also believes that their DRM will be cracked more easily/quickly if smaller, less "ethical" coders could get their hands on it. But it didn't do the DVD people much good. IIRC, DVD Jon was able to crack CSS after the cypher was anonymously leaked to him
Statement taken out of context (Score:3, Insightful)
Whatever you may feel about DRM, Microsoft's position on the potential use of DRM is pretty clear - they believe, right or wrong, that consumers can have access to the best content if and only if that content can be protected.
Honestly, what would hobbyists do with a truly open DRM SDK for devices? The secure path audio only applies to media sources LEAVING the PC, not input sources, so it doesn't affect microphones, instruments and the types of devices that casual users might actually be developing. Hobbyists won't have the substantial financial backing to produce their own playback device. Any small company who has the desire and financial resources is going to have the cash to spend on this liscensing scheme, especially considering that Microsoft has always employed hefty discounts for small ISVs. This doesn't prevent hobbyists from working with DRM'd media streams on devices they purchased - if the device manufacturer liscensed the DRM from Microsoft (which it would have to, or you couldn't enjoy media on the device), then you can still use a healthy amount of the Windows Media SDK to work with media stream, limitted to some extent by the secure path, but that's a different gripe.
Given the financial difficulty of building a full device capable of full media playback, what would hobbyists do with an SDK that allowed raw access to protected content - most of them would write software the emulates a virtual device to circumvent the DRM. That's exactly what Microsoft is attempting to prevent.
Re:Statement taken out of context (Score:2, Insightful)
Stupid on top of stupid and doomed to fail. (Score:3, Insightful)
Whatever you may feel about DRM, Microsoft's position on the potential use of DRM is pretty clear - they believe, right or wrong, that consumers can have access to the best content if and only if that content can be protected.
By protection, you must mean lock out all but a few publishers. Why else limit who can make a player? This
Change of headline (Score:2, Interesting)
Balancing openness with business reality (Score:4, Interesting)
If Microsoft is hoping to get real devices out there that include their DRM component, then what they're doing is putting up a barrier to entry to ensure that only those who are truly committed to building a mass-market product get the attention of internal staff so that MS can make money indirectly through devices that use and license the DRM component.
Whether or not that's a sound business practice is their decision to make. But it's not a unique model. If you want to release a game on PlayStation, Gamecube or XBox, you license the development kits from Sony, Nintendo or XBox. They do this because they're in a mass market and need to ensure that the companies they work with and who use their name are equipped for what happens when something succeeds massively or has major problems. Microsoft's approach for their DRM is no different--the only difference is that a VP went out and actually set realistic expectations for what it takes to be a developer for those platforms in a forum that pissed boingBoing off--enough of a commitment and a financial stake in the game to make sure that something useful comes out of all the work people put into it.
It's true that hobbyists are often the source of completely original, unexpected innovations, and any company that is serious about innovation encourages that. Developer programs that embrace this open themselves up to very new ideas. But let's make a clear distinction between encouraging hobbyists and the business drive behind encouraging real applications, services or devices that make money for a developer and the company that makes money from the platform.
Please don't get me wrong: I stay at my job managing a developer program because I love answering developer questions. I love helping someone out and seeing them succeed, particularly if they have a great idea and the nads to see it through. I also believe that developers should have as many tools freely available as they can have. Where I work, I always try to argue for making information, APIs and toolkits open and accessible to every developer. I often get into some very heated discussions with people who argue that we should only make this API or that piece of documentation available to existing partners because they don't want to deal with hobbyists--in fact, I'm actively lobbying for something like that as I type. I tell internal resistors that by staying closed off they're never going to hear of the new stuff, they'll only hear from the same people over and over again and they'll still have to deal with hobbyists. I also help hobbyists and independent developers figure out ways of selling their product without having to build a business relationship with MegaCorp and dealing with what can be a bureaucratic process.
Being on the support side of things, I also contend with the reality of this internal advocacy--I often have to guide hobbyists and amateurs who are dabbling and who can consume hours of my day while clearly showing me that they're very unlikely to actually come up with something that could be a marketable product even if they go it alone.
Hobbyists-cum-entrepreneurs often have very unrealistic expectations regarding what they need to do to succeed. Some hobbyists tend to consume an inordinate amount of time from a company's developer relations and business development staff and don't turn out something that can actually become a product--and honestly, my business is to get developers from idea to market. These things include adequate support staff, sales teams, marketing funds, technical acumen and enough wherewithal to deal with contract n
I wonder what would Bill (Score:2)
The first computer he used was a DEC PDP-10 that was owned by General Electric. His high school paid General Electric for time that the students could use to program the computer. Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen spent many hours at the computer, eventually causing their grades to suffer from skipped classes and late homework. When they were given a new system to work with, they hacked into the system to make it so that the computer did not record the t
Don't take their position as just a nuisance ... (Score:2, Interesting)
It is still so, because, unfortunately, various Windows are still most ubiquituous, despite recent explosive proliferation of free OS's. I am certain they are cospiring to, using DRM as an excuse, lock free competition out, by bullying hardware vendors into ever tighter subjugation to themselves. In the end (and I suppo
What Microsoft is really saying ... (Score:2)
yup (Score:2)
1997 is calling. they want their news back assholes. and i want my fucking mod points you didnt give me the first time around for this story.
Remember the Microchannel? (Score:5, Insightful)
It was good. Unlike the DRM junk, this was REALLY good. It only had one single flaw:
IBM threatened to execute patent rights. And the card manufacturers were afraid they couldn't actually make a buck with MCA cards after paying royalties to IBM for the patents.
So most of them, besides a few big players, went down the conservative road and decided it would be better to stick with ISA. It's slower, yes, it's limited, yes, but at least we can actually make a buck there.
Customers split up. Those who decided to stick with ISA, to be compatible with their old hardware, hardware they needed and was not available on MCA, and those who stood true to IBM and trusted them to create new line of hardware. The first group saw that they could get cheaper hardware, not only add-on cards but even the "main machine" from 3rd party vendors that are still compatible with their old ISA cards.
The other group went after the first when IBM decided to dump the Microchannel Architecture in the early 90s, leaving their customers with big investments that led into a dead end, forcing them to buy completely new hardware altogether as well. And understandably, they did not want to sink more money into IBM...
And the MCA, which was a great design, went away before it even started to fly. And marked one of the cornerstones of IBMs decline from THE computer company to ONE computer company today.
Let's hope DRM will be the same for MS.
Need to validate drivers (Score:3, Informative)
Just replace 'hobbyists' with... (Score:3, Insightful)
Another reason - DVD John (Score:3, Interesting)
From what I remember, DVD CSS was cracked because one company used a weak key. That key was SO bad it was fairly easy to brute-force, and then there were more fundamental weaknesses that allowed them to extract the other keys, given the first one.
Had there never been a weak key, perhaps DVD John never would have gotten his 15 minutes of fame.
So perhaps this DRM developer restriction is to make sure that nobody makes a weak key, that they do a better job of educating this smaller set of developers.
Uhmm... pay Microsoft to write software?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft wants companies to pay them if they plan on writing software that works on Windows. If they don't pay, they don't get a "certificate" from microsoft, and they intend for Windows to refuse to execute any software that doesn't have this special "certificate"?
This sounds conspicuously like "pay us a 'protection' fee so nothing 'bad' will happen".
You're worried about the wrong company (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:3, Funny)
Holds true for some values of "more" and "advance"
OTOH, if you factor out Mr. Softy, and just consider $800_pound_gorilla, I think a contrary case can be made that the positive network effect of $800_pound_gorilla has been substantial.
Consider CUA, or any other standard that has helped focus the market.
Somewhere between monoculture and chaos is a reasonable operating point.
So, a helpful question might be: how can we manage $800_pound_gorilla such t
Linux didn't really advance computing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux didn't really advance computing, Linux is yet another reimplementation of Unix. AT&T advanced computing by developing Unix. I'm open to the idea of giving UC Berekeley some credit too, but we have the reimplementation issue as well. However Berkeley does deserve credit for it's open license, Linux's GPL license being a reimplementation of the the open distribution idea. Please don't misunderstand, I am not slamming Linux or minimizing the enormous efforts that went into it's development. Linux is an outstanding technical achievement, but it does not offer original ideas, it merely offers original source code.
Re:Linux didn't really advance computing ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Linux didn't really advance computing ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Linux didn't really advance computing ... (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to ignore the fact that FreeBSD was also available to the PC masses, with source code for the hobbyists to tinker with. It was no ivory tower demo. FreeBSD was used to host major sites long before Linux was ready for such duties, many a Linux distribution was downloaded from a site hosted by FreeBSD. To use your analogy, there was more than one Petri dish. Again, Linux is an outstanding achievement, but original, first, or irreplacable it is not. Irreplacable in a technical sense, certainly not in a political sense.
Re:Linux didn't really advance computing ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hobby computing is not merely limited to Linux.
Re:Linux didn't really advance computing ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Linux didn't really advance computing ... (Score:3, Insightful)
What Linux is is different from whether it advanced computing or not. Your two sentences I quoted are not connected.
Whether Linux is a re-implementation of Unix is unrelated to whether it advanced computing.
You also make an implicit assumption that advance computing must necessarily mean that it has some amazingly innovative new technical feature.
The fact that I can download and install a free, high quality OS,
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:3, Interesting)
If it wasn't for people like the HOBBYISTS who were hand wire-wrapping intel 8008's into S100 boards and their own TV Dazzler cards from articles in hobbyist magazines; IBM never would have made the PC which is now killing their profitable mainframe business and Billy Gates never would have had a platform to launch either DOS/Basic or Windows on. My first computer used an RCA 1802 CPU, was programmered by hand toggleing the machine code in byte by by
It was not. (Score:3, Interesting)
My first 'OS' was GEOS (unless you count Commodore64 basic as an OS)
After that it was PC Dos (not MS Dos although I switched to that later)
THEN Windows OS/2, THEN Windows 95.
MS grew on the backs of hobbyists and enthusiasts (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, this is WRONG. By and large we use computers DESPITE using Microsoft Windows, not BECAUSE of it. Microsoft has always been a low-innovation company; it takes old ideas and finds new opportunities for them. Microsoft's very first product, BASIC for the MITS Altair, was an old idea brought into a new market space. Bill and Paul didn't invent BASIC, and didn't invent the OS. By the mid 70's writing
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:5, Informative)
'll paraphrase the above for you in fewer words.
Interesting. I don't see one instance of Billy G mentioning:
What I do see is a screed claiming that:
So how is that paraphrasing again?
Come on. I'm not fan of Billy G, but you can't honestly claim that the paragraph above says what you say it does.
Read his entire letter... (Score:3, Interesting)
He says hobbyists cannot write good software:
He says he's the best at doing it:
Re:Read his entire letter... (Score:3, Informative)
He doesn't say he "is the best at doing it" - he says he has put a lot of time and effort in.
He doesn't say that "Free software is bad because he can't make money" - he says that he is not in the business of offering free software and the lack of sales is dissuading him further development work.
Hope that helps. It isn't that hard to comprehend.
I don't like Bill G, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
The quotes you offer are nowhere near "smoking guns". Does he dislike hobbyists? Well, I think it's fairly clear he strongly dislikes the 'hobbyists' who are stealing his software. But then you twist that and put words into his mouth, such as "hobbyists cannot write good software". Correction: what he SAID was that he doesn't see how programmers can spend 3 years on their '
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:2)
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:2)
So I think the comparison is an apt one.
I don't disagree with the sentiment; I simply feel that the paragraph did not convey the same message that the poster's "summary" did. I have since been told that "above" referred to the link, and not to the selection given. An odd way to present an argument, but the full text of the letter certainly has more substance to it.
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:2)
People are going to pirate software.
If it can be built, it can be taken apart.
These two things will never change. So instead of fighting the system you work with it to find things to exploit for the purpose of getting ahead..
Lock up the data and people will be forced to migrate to your schedule on your terms.
Never been impressed
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:4, Insightful)
What BG is particularily upset about is that the shared dev. tools are used to create competitive software. Whats more, this is done using software that was never going to make a profit anyway. So BG is upset about a faulty business plan. If he didn't sell dev. tools he would be alright and he could complain about people stealing his OS's (kinda like he did at the start with DOS - he payed much less for it that it was worth, kinda like people that steal windows because they feel that a windows license isnt $500).
Bottom line: Hobbyists will push their software and hardware. Hobbyists create worms and virii for all we know. Hobbyists are bad. Im a hobbyist. A+B != C always.
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:2, Interesting)
All your idiotic paraphrasing did was make you sound like an advocate for software theft. If you don't like someone's software, you should go write your own, you shouldn't steal it. If you don't like how much Photoshop costs, you shouldn't steal it, you
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:3, Interesting)
Violating a shrink-wrap EULA is just as egregious as violating the GPL. If we wish to be strict about the one, we have to be strict about the other. I think with the increasing "DRM" and act
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:4, Insightful)
Please do not perpetuate the myth of IP. RMS is dead right on this one, ceeding the enemy control of the language will lose us the war. Yes I do respect Copyright, patent and Trademarks.... at least most of the time.
> Violating a shrink-wrap EULA is just as egregious as violating the GPL.
No it isn't. A shrink wrap EULA is meaningless unless you live in Virgina and perhaps not even there. A contract requires two parties and if I refuse to accept the EULA I'm still allowed to use the software by virtue of having purchased a copy of it. I don't believe allowing software publishers to impose one sided "contracts' you can't even read until you no longer have a right to get your money back is something worthy of even considering submitting to. To compare it to the GPL shows your ignorance of the difference between the two.
You are not required to accept the GPL either, btw. If you refuse it you may still use the copy you aquired in any way that is acceptable under the Copyright laws of your jurisdictiom. By accepting it you gain permission to redistribute the work subject to the terms and conditions of the GPL. Notice the difference between this and any EULA. All EULAs attempt to subtract rights otherwise granted under Copyright law.
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:2)
Looks like he was right on that one. Although I fail to see how you can blame MS Windows on those stealing hobbyists.
Amazing Hypocracy (Score:5, Interesting)
Gates: "No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system." -- From: 'Programmers at work', Microsoft Press, Redmond, WA [c1986]:
In 1975 Bill Gates and Paul Allen, who were students at Harvard University at the time, adapted BASIC to run on the popular Altair 8800 computer and sold it to the Altair's manufacturer, MITS. The Altair BASIC interpreter was the first computer language program to run on the type of computer that would later become known as the home computer or personal computer. Even though the BASIC programming language was already in the public domain by then, the interpreter that could run it on home computers wasn't. Thus Gates and Allen had created an original product; a true innovation. It would be one of their last.
Gates and Allen had initially met at Lakeside School (an exclusive private school for rich boys) where Gates became an adept at BASIC on a General Electric Mark II. Shortly thereafter they got access to a PDP-10 run by a private company in Seattle. The company offered free time to the Lakeside school kids to see if they could crash the system. Gates proved to be particularly adept at doing so. When the free time ran out Gates and Allen figured out how to get free time on the PDP-10 by logging on as the system operator. About a year later the private company running the PDP-10 went bankrupt.
This left Gates and Allen without a source of free computing power. Therefore Allen went over to the University of Washington and began using a Xerox computer by pretending to be a graduate student. Gates soon followed, and this went on until they were caught and removed from the campus. They continued to break into university and privately owned computer systems until about 1975. By that time Gates was a student at Harvard University. The BASIC he sold to MITS had been developed and tested on a Harvard PDP-10 using an 8080-emulation program that Allen had adapted from earlier code. In fact, by the time Gates contacted MITS to announce their product, it had never ran on an actual 8080 CPU. The demonstration Gates and Allen put up for MITS in New Mexico was the first time the product actually ran on the system it was intended for. Gates sold it by announcing a product that didn't exist, developing it on the model of the best version available elsewhere, not testing it very seriously, demonstrating an edition that didn't fully work, and finally releasing the product in rather buggy form after a lengthy delay. From then on this modus operandi became Microsoft's trademark.
After Gates sold the new BASIC interpreter to MITS he left Harvard University, and went into business for himself with Allen as a partner. Allen was also an MITS employee at the time, which made his position rather interesting. Gates' departure from Harvard is shrouded in controversy: some say he dropped out, others say he was expelled for stealing computer time. Whatever the case may be, the fact is that Gates did most of the work on his BASIC version in a Harvard computer lab without having been authorized to use the (expensive) computer time needed for the project. Perhaps he did not really steal unauthorized computer capacity (which was a valuable commodity in those days) to develop his first commercially successful product. Yet he has never offered another explanation. He did however send his now-infamous "Open Letter To Hobbyists" to every major computer publication in February 1976, in which he decried the copying of Microsoft software by home computer hobbyists as simple theft. -- excerpt borrowed from Why I hate Microsoft [freedomware.us]
Piracy allows Gates to squash would be competitors (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Piracy allows Gates to squash would be competit (Score:2)
You mention two extremes, the mega corporation and open source. The little guy is in the middle. He's the guy that ends up working for the former and sometimes donating to the latter, rather than having his own small company. Gates claimed 90% piracy, lets dial that back to 50%. Do you thin
Re:Things haven't changed since 1976... (Score:4, Funny)
Do you have a Torrent link for that movie? (j/k)
Re:What effect? (Score:2)
Ultimately this will just drive the technologically inquisitive towards linux. Linux won't displace Windows or even OS/X today, or tomorrow, or next year. But after a generatio
Re:What effect? (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless Big Business puts enough money into the government to legislate it out of existence.
Re:What effect? (Score:2)
Re:Duct Tape? (Score:2)
2) Emulate what is done here: http://www.octanecreative.com/ducttape/walltaping
3) ??? 4) Profit!
I dare to disagree (Score:3, Interesting)
Everyone is to busy hanging out at the mall, or spending their pocket money for ringtones and other junk. A "buy this!" generation is growing up, unable to do the most basic tasks by themselves.
In the 80s, people dumped video games for home computers. The slogan was "Why buy your kid a game when you can buy him something that gets him to college?"
That trend has already changed.
Today the slogan is more akin to "Why bother with operating systems and incompatible hardware when you can just slip
Precisely (Score:4, Insightful)
The current generation of teens/(very) young adults is taking a step backwards as far as the amount of functional knowledge. Generation X will be looked upon by history as the high point of digital innovation. Gen X will be to network-driven innovation what the Apple II/C64 generation was to computer hardware development: the initial blossoming of innovation before the chilling onset of a corporate homogenization of methods and implementations (an ice age, if you will).
So many people honestly believe that they aren't complete morons for paying a dollar (or more) for a fucking ringtone! (And a ringtone that has terrible sound quality at that.) The current young generation's attitude towards learning is far more apathetic than gen X's. The prevailing attitude is, "Why should I learn about something when I can just google it on demand?"
What I think is really going to define the social dynamics of the Gen Y job market and society is a new kind of digital divide. Not the 'digital divide' that refers to some people not having access to technology. The real digital divide will be between those people who have made technology their masters (by refusing to actually learn anything - relegating knowledge to the machines - and elites), and those who instill in their children the importance of being the masters of technology. That will be the real digital divide.
This is the very same education ethic you refered to when you said Why buy your kid a game when you can buy him something that gets him to college? The difference will be that getting the access to the physical hardware isn't the barrier to success. It's going to be the inquisitive epiphany that "I should pull that compliance chip off my motherboard and figure out what's happening inside that $30 computer? After all, if the hardware's so cheap, what is it about computers that makes them the key to making a lot of money in the (idustrialized) world?"
And that epiphany is going to become something that is less and less spontaneous as companies like MS, Apple, Google, etc. start pumping more and more of their advertising budgets into building a "just use it - don't worry about how it works" culture.