Think about this for a moment: How many Firefox installs have been without the explicit and informed consent of the person who owned the computer? How do you think those people would feel about whoever installed Firefox on their computer if Microsoft decided to killswitch the program?
The only time a kill switch is ever justifiable is if the person who actually owns the machine is the one pushing it.
Microsoft, perhaps, but everyone knows about Apple's kill switches in the iPhone, and even Google's ones in Android, but there isn't much controversy surrounding either one of them here. I wonder why that is.
I'm going to assume that the ones commenting on some stories are probably not commenting in the others.
The plugins being discussed do more than just change the User Agent of the browser. They allow for XAML applications to run in Firefox and ClickOnce program distribution. For everyone that normally cries about Microsoft pushing IE and trying to lock users into their browser, this is an attempt to allow people to use an alternative browser while still having access to their other Microsoft-centric technologies (.NET in this case). Isn't this a good thing?
No, because
That being said, I agree with you that the blocking of these add-ons without the option to override the blocklist, regardless of whether the vulnerability is fixed, is a very poor move on Mozilla's part and they deserve far more flak than they are getting right now for merely having such an un-optional thing part of the browser in the first place. Even their automatic updates can be disabled if need be.
I don't know. All I see is more gripe about Microsoft's addition of the thing in the first place. Microsoft had no right to silently install the add-on to begin with, but two wrongs don't make a right. Mozilla had no right to tell their user base what's good for them, at least not without an option to override the blocklist, which the Mozilla blocklist information site linked to in the submission makes no mention of.
Does this mean that my Windows 3.1 box will finally get the DST update?
3) I'm a snake
5) I live in a data-center
Huh?
Until we can make the jump to digital textbooks, regardless of where the money comes from, I don't think changing the licensing is going to make enough of the difference to shift the paradigm to more affordable/available textbooks.
I disagree. Case in point: public domain books.
Public domain books are dirt cheap, regardless of whether they are of the electronic or the dead tree variety. Why? Remember that copyright is a government-granted monopoly, and like all monopolies, the monopolist has the ability to set the price. But once the monopoly vanishes, suddenly market forces kick in, and books only cost what supply and demand dictate they should cost. Now, freely-licensed books are not exactly the same as public domain, but in practice they are similar, the biggest differences being attribution and the possibility of a copyleft. Neither one is as huge of a hurdle for a company who wishes to publish cheap books as the full-on copyright system is.
No, a bill such as this won't endanger publishing companies... publishing companies have endangered themselves by pissing off their customers with insanely high pricing.
No, they haven't. Every attempt to secure the cheaper alternative for textbooks fails for one of several reasons:
1. Planned obsolescence of the original edition (see the posts above me for a more elaborate explanation of this). In particular, the changing of textbook problems and the unwillingness of the professor to use an alternative way to assess students (such as custom problems written by the professor himself/herself), as well as online stuff that only works once and therefore kills any chance of resale of the textbook. regardless of its edition status.
2. So-called "cheap" textbook sites not having much difference at all in the price of the textbook verses that set in the bookstore, or even in some cases actually costing more than what the bookstore charges.
3. The unwillingness of the bookstore to make any real difference on pricing of used and new books, buying back books for less than 20% of what they cost new, or even outright refusing to buy or sell used books entirely.
The result: while theoretically students have a choice in where to purchase textbooks, in practice this is irrelevant because outside factors mandate the latest edition, and most places seem to charge the same amount.
To make college so that everyone can graduate, you need to dumb down the material significantly, so the truly gifted get screwed twice -- 1) Their degree means nothing because everyone else had one and 2) they got a lousy education because the professors had to simplify everything so that the dumbasses could pass.
See also: American public high school.
Well, it's not like they haven't tried before.
The MPEG-LA license only protects you against the MPEG-LA members. In no way does it provide any sort of guarantee that someone who isn't in MPEG-LA won't start suing at any point in time. The argument against Theora in this regard can really be made against any codec.
As for your "safe" codecs, MPEG-1 may not be patentable my MPEG-LA's standards anymore, but that doesn't mean someone hasn't patented some part of the format at a later time than the standard came out, thus making the patent still valid today. Would such a patent pass the test of prior art? It depends on what they patented, but even if it didn't all it takes is for a patent grant by the USPTO to allow a lawsuit, and the patent must be invalidated afterwards. You still can get sued, even if the claim can be found baseless.
The BBC may have done research about Dirac and came up with nothing, but are they more open about what exactly they did than Xiph? If they are, please give a link showing what you considered acceptable for Dirac but not for Theora.
CAPTCHAs can be defeated right now by using mechanical turk or social engineering to get humans to solve the CAPTCHAs for the spammers.
Which are completely useless to the vast majority of people.
How so? The ability to modify your software and study the source code isn't useful to non-developers, but everyone can distribute.
The same set will tune in both HD and ST content, so you can compare the two signals side-by-side
Apparently not to everyone. I have repeatedly demonstrated the different formats of the same channel on the same set to some people and the only thing they notice is the pillerboxing of the SD broadcast.
Seriously, do Apple give out free tee-shirts every time someone uses their trademarks to describe everyday items?
Quite the contrary. Apple is far more likely to send out free cease-and-desist letters. If everyone uses "iPod" to describe every single digital audio player on the market, there is no longer any trademark, hence why retailers are sure to always say "iPod and MP3 players" or "MP3 and iPod" or "digital audio and iPod" in their marketing.
No doubt Apple loves the free publicity, but that will swiftly end the moment people start referring to their Zunes as "iPods."
The nation that controls magnetism controls the universe. -- Chester Gould/Dick Tracy
