I'm going to have to say you're doing it completely the wrong way.
Either that, or you're intentionally making life difficult for yourself.
Linux can indeed be compiled from source, and you can then download compile all your apps manually. But that's not how 99% of people use Linux.
Most people get Linux through a distribution, which pre-compiles everything into packages for them. The distribution's Package Management system then handles the installation of those pre-compiled binaries for you.
It will even handle the dependencies you mention - going back to its repositories and downloading/installing them automatically.
A decent Package Manager will even go so far as to know which packages can conflict (it's rare, but it happens) and refuse to install new software until the conflict is fixed - which may sound bad, but I'd rather have a system protect itself by not installing something than hose itself by trying to please me.
Better yet, if I install a package from outside the package management system's repositories, all of this still happens. So if I download and install Corel's Aftershot Pro software, and it needs a library for printing or colour management, then the package just needs to say so and all of the installation will be handled automatically.
(Even versioning.)
There are a couple of distributions - like Gentoo - which have a package management system that prefers to compile from source, but even then its package management is automating that for you. And those are very niche systems, which most users won't ever consider using. (For example, LibreOffice takes hours to compile on many systems, which is offputting - using a Red Hat or Debian based system which has precompiled packages suddenly becomes much more attractive!)
Basically, Linux doesn't work the way you think it does. It actually works in a very sane, very safe way to try to ensure that the complexities of software installation are something the user doesn't have to bother with.
Of course, some software authors may choose not to use the package management system. And in that case, you might get a self-contained .tar.gz file (or similar) which you just unpack and run the contents of. But that's hardly Linux's fault.
I'm unsure where you found your Linux philosophy, but frankly it doesn't match the experiences of any Linux distribution I know.
WINE is a different issue, as it's an abstraction layer. It should ideally be a last resort rather than a first port of call - which is why people want AAA titles on Linux, not on WINE on Linux.
Sadly, the DMCA's Safe Harbour part and takedown processes are still some of the saner parts of US copyright law.
But they're obviously broken when this can happen - so let's amend them.
Let's bring in game theory.
The issuer of a takedown has to declare the value of the material. This value is legally binding, and can be used in court when discussing damages. (Except statutory damages.)
Conversely, if the takedown turns out to be bogus, then the issuer is liable for an instant statutory fine of 10x the value declared, multiplied by the number of downloads/views the material has (if available).
(The multiplier hopefully prevents late claims or attempts at censorship.)
No value means no takedown.
A value below a certain threshold (set by the Library of Congress, based on combination of length & content type) means no takedown.
This should solve the problem. Those with genuine takedown needs get a takedown, AND for playing nicely they get to declare how much they think their goods are worth for the court's consideration later.
And those who are just trolling get their wallets emptied on a regular basis.
An interesting side effect means that we may actually get to see companies start to put realistic values on their goods, and that if the load for DMCA takedowns becomes too high the data is there to begin processing them in "most expensive losses" order first.
Which raises an entirely new dilemma on the part of the issuer. Submit high and get takedown sooner, or submit low and hedge against having made a mistake?
(There is a third option - submit low and go for statutory damages in court. Except that will mean that the figures will end up showing that statutory damages are too high, and give hard facts which allow the law to be altered there. A good short term option, but a very dangerous long term one.)
I think that if those changes were made, DMCA takedowns might actually approach something which almost resembles sanity...
I think that we're seeing two worlds fail to understand each other.
Louis CK made money, yes. But he failed to MONETIZE.
By which it's meant that he failed to make the most out of the process.
Not the product, mind you - the process.
Louis had a very simple proposition: Pay me money, I give you something funny.
Louis CK viewed DRM as a cost that wasn't worth it, and that alone is a threat to the MPAA's reality. It's also what most people here have focused on, because of this guy's job title.
But we need to ignore the job title, and remember that this guy is steeped in an industry. Language shapes how you think, and I believe we can see more than just DRM being referred to here.
Louis CK didn't sell plushies, action figures, and clothing. Or re-release earlier goods with a little sticker on them that advertised the new product whilst pretending to be a reference of quality ("From the man who brought you...")
Louis CK didn't do that not only because he didn't have the rights to previous works, but because that would be a waste of time and money. He could - nay, should - be writing material or working on the new product.
He also didn't choose to get paid for holding a particular brand of soft drink whilst he did his act.
A smart move, because even if $sponsor were to pay for him to be using their product during the filming, the costs of lawyers to land the deal would leave him with little money.
And the sponsor would no doubt want some "creative control", to ensure he didn't say anything that they don't want their brand associated with...
Which is effectively self-censorship for the project. And when you realise that the deal will probably land him no more than minimum wage (given how long it will take to do the project), suddenly he needs more sponsors, which means a death spiral of more censorship...
Basically, Louis CK is smart. He saw what people wanted, he budgeted it out, he delivered JUST WHAT THEY WANTED, and didn't waste time doing much else.
But that's not what Hollywood does. Hollywood doesn't just sell films to customers, it sells advertising space in those films too. It doesn't just sell a film, it sells merchandising - or at least the rights to it. It doesn't just sell a medium with the film on it, it sells the rights to distribute those films.
THAT'S monetization.
That's how the MPAA thinks. Total control for maximum profit. Don't take risks, and do whatever it takes to get the most money from every stage of the process.
Who cares if the film is sanitised by sponsorship requirements? Who cares if the distribution chain creates artificial delays that encourage piracy? Who cares if merchandising is shoddy? Who cares if DRM means buyers are annoyed by unskippable adverts?
Not one of those is a concern to this man.
The business he lives and breathes in a "monetized" world. He may not quite understand how the new generation of Connecting-With-Fans and Reason-To-Buy artists can make money without doing this.
Subconsciously, he's almost certainly wondering why Louis CK didn't "monetize" as I've described. Because such monetization is all he sees, every day.
Which is slightly frightening.
But what's also slightly sad is that he probably hasn't even considered the downsides I've listed. He's not even capable of seeing them as serious downsides, because everyone around him sees only the upsides - the bottom line from the deals.
I've always wondered if Hollywood execs are just unscrupulous salesmen. They often seem to share one key quality - they only care about the money that they, individually, bring in. If the sale hurts business reputations, or damages future sales, then they don't care. "Just look at this quarter's bottom line! I'M ON FIRE!"
That's monetization. The pursuit of many individual bottom lines, with no care for the effect on the final product.
Bloggers are clearly a massive problem. A blogger can write whatever they like, submit it to their "internal editor" for cleanup and approval, and then publish.
Whereas a journalist - well, they can write whatever they like. Then submit it to their editor for cleanup and approval. And then have it published.
If it wasn't true or was obtained by unethical means, then the blogger must explain themselves and risk losing readers if their explanation is found wanting.
If the journalist's product wasn't true or was produced by unethical means, then they simply point people to the Press Complaints Commission.
Who, as a non-regulatory body with less power than an asthmatic ant with some heavy shopping bags, will leap into action.
Depending on how bad it is, they will either a) say there's no problem; b) recommend a retraction/correction/apology be printed in a tiny space deep in the bowels of the paper, possibly in a foreign language or in complicated meaningless pictograms; c) say it's very bad and do nothing.
Often, in a very reasonable and productive week, they will do all three in order, as they gradually realise how ineffectual and wrong their previous action was.
No matter what the PCC does, it then looks to readers like an action was taken and that the industry is effectively regulated, so the readers shut up and stop complaining.
(Or they don't, and the PCC escalates as previously described. Sometimes, you just have to do nothing several times before people are satisfied!)
So the PCC is massively threatened by bloggers, because they make the mistake of trying to handle the problem themselves.
Which means that there's no need for the PCC.
Which means that there's nowhere for editors to go when they retire.
And that would mean an end to the capture by the press of an ineffective self-regulating non-regulatory body for the press.
Which, frankly, sounds a bit like a gravy train screeching to a halt just because some idiot with a blog pulled the emergency cord...
I don't believe the "showing people things" argument.
Because it costs too much.
In the UK, I could "show you" via a videocall at 50p a minute. Ouch. Or I could send you an MMS, for 10p.
If I need to show you, which method will I choose?
MMS costs have gone down, and when I last checked the number of MMS messages being sent was going up. (Services like twitpic may be changing that.)
The argument against "show me" via MMS is the low resolution of an MMS. But video resolution isn't much higher in this case.
Frankly, if I need to show you for anything diagnostic, a picture uploaded to twitpic or emailed to you is the better option.
Video calling isn't wanted socially, because it's intrusive and expensive. If you make it cheap, it merely becomes intrusive. Video call me and I'm likely to not answer, and I don't think I'm alone in that.
I've had the option to video call for a long time now, and never made or received one. I don't think that's about to change.
Developers are generally free to use whatever tools they like to develop games for consoles. It's true that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft all license the games and won't allow them to ship without their approval, but that's enforced through trademarks more than anything else. If you've never signed a contract with them then nothing is stopping you from shipping without approval, you'll just have a very hard time marketing it.
Most famously, Nintendo refused overly violent games a license/approval back during the early nineties, making them virtually unshippable because you couldn't put the Nintendo logo, the machine name or other information consumers needed to know for compatibility purposes on them.
When you remember that people had to go into shops to buy these games, and would often rely upon such logos to know they were buying the right one for their system, the lack of approval from Nintendo/Sega/Sony/Microsoft becomes a big issue.
However, for the App Store on Apple's platform, this is an entirely artificial limitation. QA checks like "doesn't crash" and "fits in the user interface guidelines" are very easy to reason, but "must be written in our tools only" begins to look like it's preventing an app from being ported to other systems.
Personally, I don't think that it's the job of the government to go looking at this yet. Apple doesn't have a monopoly as such, and this is something that the market can still easily correct - developers can just switch to Android, S60 or WebOS.
On the other hand, if a company behind a competitor like Android, S60 or WebOS has complained - or perhaps even a few developers - then the government is duty bound to look at it.
I'll reserve judgement until that point is cleared up. And hope that the market can correct itself before the glacial gears of government grind too far...
I'm wading through logs today, looking for evidence of a problem. My colleague is handling requests from the business. At the end of the day, I will have accomplished one "job", which will confirm whether we have serious problems that must be addressed. He will have done perhaps as many as 30.
Who was more productive?
That's why people like to measure it in time. It's the simplest, easiest unit that isn't going to cause huge arguments about what "productivity" is.
And, of course, because businesses like metrics. They allow nincompoops to hide behind figures as though they were facts. It's what the Peter Principle is built on.
It's like the telecommuting paradox. Working in central London it probably costs my employer thousands of pounds a year to merely have a desk for me to turn up to. Real estate, light, water, heat, power for the PC, air conditioning, lifts, cleaning services... It all adds up. And for what gain? I have email, I have instant messaging, I could have a webcam with ease. Even allowing for bandwidth costs, it would certainly be cheaper to buy me a laptop and let me work from home.
The only people who actually need to be here are the receptionist and anyone having a face-to-face meeting (usually with a client or supplier).
But then if we all worked remotely they would definitely have to measure productivity differently.
Oh, that's easy. Work for a Hollywood studio or a major record label, and either:
a) blatantly rip off someone else's idea, profess innocence, and settle out of court with a small chunk of your huge profits
b) sit on a number of bits of property, waiting for someone to make a profit from something similar, and then sue them for it.
Smart cookies may notice that these two options are effectively two sides of the same transaction. However, as the money stays with people who have an understanding of copyrights and copywrongs, this is all OK. Hence, you are effectively a Privateer.
Have you seen how many "friends" most people have?
Facebook has a long since hit the critical problem that its predecessor - myspace - hit.
People are now "friends" with all kinds of folks, many of whom they met once and haven't seen since.
Now, it's possible to become firm friends with people online, without ever meeting them. But it's not all that common.
A list of friends is useless, because people are often TOO POLITE to not enter into a status of mutual friendship, even though they one party may not want to.
What you really need is traffic analysis. Who sent what to whom?
And yet that's flawed too. Just because someone sends me something on Facebook, doesn't mean I was interested in it. People are often advertising their causes, usually by invites to events/apps/whatever.
This is, sadly, as likely to cause a grave miscarriage of justice as it is to catch terrorists... :-(
They've managed to convince many companies to do bundle packs. Of the 61+ games I have, just over half came from one purchase - a pack of every game iD ever did. Every version of DOOM, Quake, and goodies like Wolfenstien 3D.
It probably cost iD very little in terms of modifications to get them running in Steam. Yet - and this is the kicker - they and Valve had a $99 sale to me. *Despite me owning some of the games already*.
Steam's convenient, and I was prepared to pay $99 for the supreme convenience of just downloading all those old classics, rather than rooting through boxes in the loft looking for install media and CD keys. (Or worse - floppies! Ugh!)
To install the various versions of Quake I had, it'd take me about a day of CD shuffling and poking and prodding. Or I could let Steam take the strain out of it.
To be honest, the bundle was a bargain even though I knew I was paying a second time for many of the games.
I've bought games outside of bundles, but I've noticed that bundling a game with lots of others seems to make them more attractive to me. Valve have nurtured a great catalogue of games available on Steam, and then made it easy for publishers to make them even more inviting by bundling.
They're a canny lot, this Valve crew. I'd just like to be the first to say that I for one welcome our new Game Publisher Overlords...
I'm one of those many that bought Left 4 Dead at that great price.
I bought it not just because it's cheap though. I bought it because it was from Valve, and Valve rock. Steam is a great content delivery platform (ugh! corporate-ese!).
The halo effect I allude to is that I bought Left 4 Dead and then bought a completely unrelated Crazy Machines bundle pack at the same time. I spent 50 quid on Sunday, but that 50 quid bought me four games and two expansion packs, as far as I recall.
The complete Crazy Machines pack included version 1, two packs of additional levels for version 1, Version 1.5 and Version 2. (I think. Something like that, anyway.) And it was about 35 quid - which I thought was fair given the many hours of tinkering it'll give me.
But I'd not have bought it if not for that Left 4 Dead deal. Much as I love Steam, I tend not to go into the shop - I already have 61 games from them, and I've become quite picky about what other games I might want given how many I already have to play!
I wonder how may other games were sold that weekend because of the Left 4 Dead deal - games which might not have been bought otherwise, and which pull people further into the Steam community and systems.
And I suspect that's also why Valve do these sales. They're not just good for one game...
I like the idea of this, except for two assumptions:
1. That a centralised copyright registry should exist. That sounds expensive and prone to the kinds of institutional failures we're seeing in patents. Here in the UK, I get copyright just by claiming it. No registration, no cost, no hassles.
It shifts the burden of such costs to the courtrooms when a dispute does occur, but for 99% of cases it's a better solution - despite the high cost for that 1% of disputes.
2. What about Creative Commons? I *immensely* dislike the assumption that copyright only applies to for-sale works. If I go to the trouble of writing a novel, in the process creating characters, locations, events and so forth, but then choose to release it for free - does that mean my work is now fair game for plagiarism?
I don't bloody well think so! Remove the "commercially" from "commercially available", and I have no problems whatsoever. But the assumption that I must charge for my works will effectively remove any copyright from too many people.
I understand that he's trying to solve the issue of music copyright only, but I fail to see why any copyright reform should treat one medium in a different manner to another.
Remove the registry, remove the commercially available requirement, and you have an interesting reform for copyright on all mediums. I'd certainly put it towards the top of my list of ways to reform copyright.
But as it stands, it seems like a way to try and punish corporates, and in doing so will punish the small individual creators even further...
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Philip Storry.
Re:
I'm going to have to say you're doing it completely the wrong way.
Either that, or you're intentionally making life difficult for yourself.
Linux can indeed be compiled from source, and you can then download compile all your apps manually. But that's not how 99% of people use Linux.
Most people get Linux through a distribution, which pre-compiles everything into packages for them. The distribution's Package Management system then handles the installation of those pre-compiled binaries for you.
It will even handle the dependencies you mention - going back to its repositories and downloading/installing them automatically.
A decent Package Manager will even go so far as to know which packages can conflict (it's rare, but it happens) and refuse to install new software until the conflict is fixed - which may sound bad, but I'd rather have a system protect itself by not installing something than hose itself by trying to please me.
Better yet, if I install a package from outside the package management system's repositories, all of this still happens. So if I download and install Corel's Aftershot Pro software, and it needs a library for printing or colour management, then the package just needs to say so and all of the installation will be handled automatically.
(Even versioning.)
There are a couple of distributions - like Gentoo - which have a package management system that prefers to compile from source, but even then its package management is automating that for you. And those are very niche systems, which most users won't ever consider using. (For example, LibreOffice takes hours to compile on many systems, which is offputting - using a Red Hat or Debian based system which has precompiled packages suddenly becomes much more attractive!)
Basically, Linux doesn't work the way you think it does. It actually works in a very sane, very safe way to try to ensure that the complexities of software installation are something the user doesn't have to bother with.
Of course, some software authors may choose not to use the package management system. And in that case, you might get a self-contained .tar.gz file (or similar) which you just unpack and run the contents of. But that's hardly Linux's fault.
I'm unsure where you found your Linux philosophy, but frankly it doesn't match the experiences of any Linux distribution I know.
WINE is a different issue, as it's an abstraction layer. It should ideally be a last resort rather than a first port of call - which is why people want AAA titles on Linux, not on WINE on Linux.
A quick change to the law, and this stops
Sadly, the DMCA's Safe Harbour part and takedown processes are still some of the saner parts of US copyright law.
But they're obviously broken when this can happen - so let's amend them.
Let's bring in game theory.
The issuer of a takedown has to declare the value of the material. This value is legally binding, and can be used in court when discussing damages. (Except statutory damages.)
Conversely, if the takedown turns out to be bogus, then the issuer is liable for an instant statutory fine of 10x the value declared, multiplied by the number of downloads/views the material has (if available).
(The multiplier hopefully prevents late claims or attempts at censorship.)
No value means no takedown.
A value below a certain threshold (set by the Library of Congress, based on combination of length & content type) means no takedown.
This should solve the problem. Those with genuine takedown needs get a takedown, AND for playing nicely they get to declare how much they think their goods are worth for the court's consideration later.
And those who are just trolling get their wallets emptied on a regular basis.
An interesting side effect means that we may actually get to see companies start to put realistic values on their goods, and that if the load for DMCA takedowns becomes too high the data is there to begin processing them in "most expensive losses" order first.
Which raises an entirely new dilemma on the part of the issuer. Submit high and get takedown sooner, or submit low and hedge against having made a mistake?
(There is a third option - submit low and go for statutory damages in court. Except that will mean that the figures will end up showing that statutory damages are too high, and give hard facts which allow the law to be altered there. A good short term option, but a very dangerous long term one.)
I think that if those changes were made, DMCA takedowns might actually approach something which almost resembles sanity...
What we have here is a failure to communicate...
I think that we're seeing two worlds fail to understand each other.
Louis CK made money, yes. But he failed to MONETIZE.
By which it's meant that he failed to make the most out of the process.
Not the product, mind you - the process.
Louis had a very simple proposition: Pay me money, I give you something funny.
Louis CK viewed DRM as a cost that wasn't worth it, and that alone is a threat to the MPAA's reality. It's also what most people here have focused on, because of this guy's job title.
But we need to ignore the job title, and remember that this guy is steeped in an industry. Language shapes how you think, and I believe we can see more than just DRM being referred to here.
Louis CK didn't sell plushies, action figures, and clothing. Or re-release earlier goods with a little sticker on them that advertised the new product whilst pretending to be a reference of quality ("From the man who brought you...")
Louis CK didn't do that not only because he didn't have the rights to previous works, but because that would be a waste of time and money. He could - nay, should - be writing material or working on the new product.
He also didn't choose to get paid for holding a particular brand of soft drink whilst he did his act.
A smart move, because even if $sponsor were to pay for him to be using their product during the filming, the costs of lawyers to land the deal would leave him with little money.
And the sponsor would no doubt want some "creative control", to ensure he didn't say anything that they don't want their brand associated with...
Which is effectively self-censorship for the project. And when you realise that the deal will probably land him no more than minimum wage (given how long it will take to do the project), suddenly he needs more sponsors, which means a death spiral of more censorship...
Basically, Louis CK is smart. He saw what people wanted, he budgeted it out, he delivered JUST WHAT THEY WANTED, and didn't waste time doing much else.
But that's not what Hollywood does. Hollywood doesn't just sell films to customers, it sells advertising space in those films too. It doesn't just sell a film, it sells merchandising - or at least the rights to it. It doesn't just sell a medium with the film on it, it sells the rights to distribute those films.
THAT'S monetization.
That's how the MPAA thinks. Total control for maximum profit. Don't take risks, and do whatever it takes to get the most money from every stage of the process.
Who cares if the film is sanitised by sponsorship requirements? Who cares if the distribution chain creates artificial delays that encourage piracy? Who cares if merchandising is shoddy? Who cares if DRM means buyers are annoyed by unskippable adverts?
Not one of those is a concern to this man.
The business he lives and breathes in a "monetized" world. He may not quite understand how the new generation of Connecting-With-Fans and Reason-To-Buy artists can make money without doing this.
Subconsciously, he's almost certainly wondering why Louis CK didn't "monetize" as I've described. Because such monetization is all he sees, every day.
Which is slightly frightening.
But what's also slightly sad is that he probably hasn't even considered the downsides I've listed. He's not even capable of seeing them as serious downsides, because everyone around him sees only the upsides - the bottom line from the deals.
I've always wondered if Hollywood execs are just unscrupulous salesmen. They often seem to share one key quality - they only care about the money that they, individually, bring in. If the sale hurts business reputations, or damages future sales, then they don't care. "Just look at this quarter's bottom line! I'M ON FIRE!"
That's monetization. The pursuit of many individual bottom lines, with no care for the effect on the final product.
You misunderstand...
Bloggers are clearly a massive problem. A blogger can write whatever they like, submit it to their "internal editor" for cleanup and approval, and then publish.
Whereas a journalist - well, they can write whatever they like. Then submit it to their editor for cleanup and approval. And then have it published.
If it wasn't true or was obtained by unethical means, then the blogger must explain themselves and risk losing readers if their explanation is found wanting.
If the journalist's product wasn't true or was produced by unethical means, then they simply point people to the Press Complaints Commission.
Who, as a non-regulatory body with less power than an asthmatic ant with some heavy shopping bags, will leap into action.
Depending on how bad it is, they will either a) say there's no problem; b) recommend a retraction/correction/apology be printed in a tiny space deep in the bowels of the paper, possibly in a foreign language or in complicated meaningless pictograms; c) say it's very bad and do nothing.
Often, in a very reasonable and productive week, they will do all three in order, as they gradually realise how ineffectual and wrong their previous action was.
No matter what the PCC does, it then looks to readers like an action was taken and that the industry is effectively regulated, so the readers shut up and stop complaining.
(Or they don't, and the PCC escalates as previously described. Sometimes, you just have to do nothing several times before people are satisfied!)
So the PCC is massively threatened by bloggers, because they make the mistake of trying to handle the problem themselves.
Which means that there's no need for the PCC.
Which means that there's nowhere for editors to go when they retire.
And that would mean an end to the capture by the press of an ineffective self-regulating non-regulatory body for the press.
Which, frankly, sounds a bit like a gravy train screeching to a halt just because some idiot with a blog pulled the emergency cord...
Showing peope things?
I don't believe the "showing people things" argument.
Because it costs too much.
In the UK, I could "show you" via a videocall at 50p a minute. Ouch. Or I could send you an MMS, for 10p.
If I need to show you, which method will I choose?
MMS costs have gone down, and when I last checked the number of MMS messages being sent was going up. (Services like twitpic may be changing that.)
The argument against "show me" via MMS is the low resolution of an MMS. But video resolution isn't much higher in this case.
Frankly, if I need to show you for anything diagnostic, a picture uploaded to twitpic or emailed to you is the better option.
Video calling isn't wanted socially, because it's intrusive and expensive. If you make it cheap, it merely becomes intrusive. Video call me and I'm likely to not answer, and I don't think I'm alone in that.
I've had the option to video call for a long time now, and never made or received one. I don't think that's about to change.
Not a good analogy
The games console analogy isn't very good...
Developers are generally free to use whatever tools they like to develop games for consoles. It's true that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft all license the games and won't allow them to ship without their approval, but that's enforced through trademarks more than anything else. If you've never signed a contract with them then nothing is stopping you from shipping without approval, you'll just have a very hard time marketing it.
Most famously, Nintendo refused overly violent games a license/approval back during the early nineties, making them virtually unshippable because you couldn't put the Nintendo logo, the machine name or other information consumers needed to know for compatibility purposes on them.
When you remember that people had to go into shops to buy these games, and would often rely upon such logos to know they were buying the right one for their system, the lack of approval from Nintendo/Sega/Sony/Microsoft becomes a big issue.
However, for the App Store on Apple's platform, this is an entirely artificial limitation. QA checks like "doesn't crash" and "fits in the user interface guidelines" are very easy to reason, but "must be written in our tools only" begins to look like it's preventing an app from being ported to other systems.
Personally, I don't think that it's the job of the government to go looking at this yet. Apple doesn't have a monopoly as such, and this is something that the market can still easily correct - developers can just switch to Android, S60 or WebOS.
On the other hand, if a company behind a competitor like Android, S60 or WebOS has complained - or perhaps even a few developers - then the government is duty bound to look at it.
I'll reserve judgement until that point is cleared up. And hope that the market can correct itself before the glacial gears of government grind too far...
What is productivity?
I'm wading through logs today, looking for evidence of a problem. My colleague is handling requests from the business. At the end of the day, I will have accomplished one "job", which will confirm whether we have serious problems that must be addressed. He will have done perhaps as many as 30.
Who was more productive?
That's why people like to measure it in time. It's the simplest, easiest unit that isn't going to cause huge arguments about what "productivity" is.
And, of course, because businesses like metrics. They allow nincompoops to hide behind figures as though they were facts. It's what the Peter Principle is built on.
It's like the telecommuting paradox. Working in central London it probably costs my employer thousands of pounds a year to merely have a desk for me to turn up to. Real estate, light, water, heat, power for the PC, air conditioning, lifts, cleaning services... It all adds up. And for what gain? I have email, I have instant messaging, I could have a webcam with ease. Even allowing for bandwidth costs, it would certainly be cheaper to buy me a laptop and let me work from home.
The only people who actually need to be here are the receptionist and anyone having a face-to-face meeting (usually with a client or supplier).
But then if we all worked remotely they would definitely have to measure productivity differently.
So they fall back on the simple familiarities...
@another mike
"How do I get to be a copyright privateer?"
Oh, that's easy. Work for a Hollywood studio or a major record label, and either:
a) blatantly rip off someone else's idea, profess innocence, and settle out of court with a small chunk of your huge profits
b) sit on a number of bits of property, waiting for someone to make a profit from something similar, and then sue them for it.
Smart cookies may notice that these two options are effectively two sides of the same transaction. However, as the money stays with people who have an understanding of copyrights and copywrongs, this is all OK. Hence, you are effectively a Privateer.
Fat lot of good that'll do...
Have you seen how many "friends" most people have?
Facebook has a long since hit the critical problem that its predecessor - myspace - hit.
People are now "friends" with all kinds of folks, many of whom they met once and haven't seen since.
Now, it's possible to become firm friends with people online, without ever meeting them. But it's not all that common.
A list of friends is useless, because people are often TOO POLITE to not enter into a status of mutual friendship, even though they one party may not want to.
What you really need is traffic analysis. Who sent what to whom?
And yet that's flawed too. Just because someone sends me something on Facebook, doesn't mean I was interested in it. People are often advertising their causes, usually by invites to events/apps/whatever.
This is, sadly, as likely to cause a grave miscarriage of justice as it is to catch terrorists... :-(
And furthermore...
Oh yes - one more thing that's great about Steam.
They've managed to convince many companies to do bundle packs. Of the 61+ games I have, just over half came from one purchase - a pack of every game iD ever did. Every version of DOOM, Quake, and goodies like Wolfenstien 3D.
It probably cost iD very little in terms of modifications to get them running in Steam. Yet - and this is the kicker - they and Valve had a $99 sale to me. *Despite me owning some of the games already*.
Steam's convenient, and I was prepared to pay $99 for the supreme convenience of just downloading all those old classics, rather than rooting through boxes in the loft looking for install media and CD keys. (Or worse - floppies! Ugh!)
To install the various versions of Quake I had, it'd take me about a day of CD shuffling and poking and prodding. Or I could let Steam take the strain out of it.
To be honest, the bundle was a bargain even though I knew I was paying a second time for many of the games.
I've bought games outside of bundles, but I've noticed that bundling a game with lots of others seems to make them more attractive to me. Valve have nurtured a great catalogue of games available on Steam, and then made it easy for publishers to make them even more inviting by bundling.
They're a canny lot, this Valve crew. I'd just like to be the first to say that I for one welcome our new Game Publisher Overlords...
And then there's the halo effect...
I'm one of those many that bought Left 4 Dead at that great price.
I bought it not just because it's cheap though. I bought it because it was from Valve, and Valve rock. Steam is a great content delivery platform (ugh! corporate-ese!).
The halo effect I allude to is that I bought Left 4 Dead and then bought a completely unrelated Crazy Machines bundle pack at the same time. I spent 50 quid on Sunday, but that 50 quid bought me four games and two expansion packs, as far as I recall.
The complete Crazy Machines pack included version 1, two packs of additional levels for version 1, Version 1.5 and Version 2. (I think. Something like that, anyway.) And it was about 35 quid - which I thought was fair given the many hours of tinkering it'll give me.
But I'd not have bought it if not for that Left 4 Dead deal. Much as I love Steam, I tend not to go into the shop - I already have 61 games from them, and I've become quite picky about what other games I might want given how many I already have to play!
I wonder how may other games were sold that weekend because of the Left 4 Dead deal - games which might not have been bought otherwise, and which pull people further into the Steam community and systems.
And I suspect that's also why Valve do these sales. They're not just good for one game...
Nice idea - but not appropriate for me
I like the idea of this, except for two assumptions:
1. That a centralised copyright registry should exist. That sounds expensive and prone to the kinds of institutional failures we're seeing in patents. Here in the UK, I get copyright just by claiming it. No registration, no cost, no hassles.
It shifts the burden of such costs to the courtrooms when a dispute does occur, but for 99% of cases it's a better solution - despite the high cost for that 1% of disputes.
2. What about Creative Commons? I *immensely* dislike the assumption that copyright only applies to for-sale works. If I go to the trouble of writing a novel, in the process creating characters, locations, events and so forth, but then choose to release it for free - does that mean my work is now fair game for plagiarism?
I don't bloody well think so! Remove the "commercially" from "commercially available", and I have no problems whatsoever. But the assumption that I must charge for my works will effectively remove any copyright from too many people.
I understand that he's trying to solve the issue of music copyright only, but I fail to see why any copyright reform should treat one medium in a different manner to another.
Remove the registry, remove the commercially available requirement, and you have an interesting reform for copyright on all mediums. I'd certainly put it towards the top of my list of ways to reform copyright.
But as it stands, it seems like a way to try and punish corporates, and in doing so will punish the small individual creators even further...