No, that WOULD be "it's" =)

"Its".

That is all.

I guess you're trying to say that scarcity exists, in a sense, and that it's artificial, and that's the impetus for libraries. I guess that's sort of true. But that's the same for purely digitally-copied objects as well - scarcity exists but is artificial.

The exact same protections that prevent me from GIVING all my friends copies of my music, prevents me from burning CDs of all my music for them. The scarcity doesn't come from difficulty of reproduction, it comes from copyright and access granted by publishers.

These things are the same regardless of media.

The fact that it's substantially easier to reproduce a purely-digital book is not at issue here. The scarcity of LEGAL content doesn't come from difficulty of reproduction - it comes from how many copies the copyright owner decided to sell. And natural market forces take over for the "used goods" market, which is a very healthy thing.

You haven't said anything new, and I don't think your argument holds any water. For one thing, you seem to be talking about making NEW copies, not transferring ownership (temporarily), which would (often) be illegal.

I bought a thing. I should be able to give it away, sell it, or lend it. Whether you think that's related to copyright or some limited way to produce an object, it remains true.

But your scarcity argument is totally bogus. Libraries exist and continue to exist not because it's difficult to get books, but to provide cheap or free access to resources that would cost significantly more to buy a unique copy of (the cost for a paper book is primarily from the content, not the production/transport/etc). They're a public (or private) service. Virtually any of the books in that library are available by other means. Scarcity is not the issue - cost is. There are exceptions, but that's true in 99% of cases.

And the libraries exist legally because it's legal to loan out a Thing once you've purchased it! I understand the tricky part here is that it's dramatically easier to make a COPY of an electronic object, and that's what most people are doing (not giving it to others in a way that deprives you of your object), but that's a different issue that what you're describing.

Instead you're giving special magic powers to content. I bought a copy of a Thing. I can't make additional copies without certain restrictions (copyright law). But beyond that the restrictions being applied are simply profit-motivated and very little to do with the format that the objects are available on or ease of their duplication. I bought the Thing, I should be able to lend it out (hard to enforce, but I'll err on the side of freedom).

Libraries exist to provide lower-cost access to resources whose cost comes from the content, they do not exist because of scarcity. They exist legally because it is legal to transfer ownership of your copy of content to a new owner, even if it is temporary. There is no reason why either of these things would be different if the content is easy to copy - it'd be illegal (assuming copyright applies) for me to make a new copy, but ownership transfer is no different.

The scarcity isn't the issue - it's that you purchased a thing. The issue is that people's brains break when they can't physically touch it, but there should be no difference.

There's no question that I can sell or lend a chair to my friend. Or a knife. Or a DVD. Or a camera. Or a book. It's property - I bought a thing. Nobody questions that I bought a thing, and I can do whatever I want with a thing.

Somehow people think different about digital THINGS that you buy. Some people are fooled with a weak (though arguably legal) argument that you've really bought a "license". The only reason this argument continues to exist is because a huge number of people - including smart, tech-savvy people - can't wrap their brains around the idea that the whether the thing you bought came embedded on a dead tree, burned into plastic, or stored as magnetic bits, the content is the same. Why should it be treated any differently?

It seems like the problem with digital rights discussions is the fact that they include the word "digital".

How can there be even a question that people would be able to lend out their books? That we'd be able to re-sell our used music and games? Whether media has a a physical media attached to it should make absolutely zero difference to what you can do with it. The only difference between the two is how they're stored, so why should what you can do with the content be any different, period?

If content owners want the same *protections* for digital-only media as media that also comes stored on some physical item, the same rights need to be given.

This is a large reason why I refuse to buy ebooks over paper books.

Who? I access 6 financial sites, they're all fine with pretty much whatever browser at this point.

If it's SchenechtedyBank or some 4-branch thing you're talking about, I guess I understand.

Hurray! Now the UI can be the state of the art in UI design for 1994!

Great that they got it running in some form, whether as an app overlay or something significantly more low-level, but it doesn't really interest me from a technical level, and from a practical level it's like taking the powertrain and drive train from a Model T (complete with totally different controls) to a 2007 Honda Civic.

Actually, THAT would be kind of cool =) This is "we put Who Cares? in a Who Cares?"

As other posters mentioned, it's news because Windows (finally!) would do it out-of-the-box, but because you don't have to remember nerd syntax or jump through any technical hoops to do it.

And I don't think there's a huge parallel between the ability to run an "obscure" CLI command versus cross-the-UI intergration ("obscure" in the sense that 90+% of users will never, ever learn it, and it's not their fault). If you knew what you were doing you could always MAKE Windows handle disk images like ISOs, but since it was relegated to the world of nerddom, it's never really taken off on the Windows platform.

One of my favorite userspace concepts in OS X (besides App Bundles, which I still think are something that Every Other OS should be implementing as a primary way to build applications) has always been the innate concept of file-as-disk. It's rue that there's no technical magic to it - the concept of mounting a file as a virtual disk is old - but the fact that it's commonplace for Regular Users is a great thing. For software distribution to regular users, backups, doing mastering, etc - it's just another way to deal with data that the average user can deal with. I've been getting software digitally distributed to me that way, etc. for 10 years. That's a nice place to be.

It's something we all know. But it's tougher for the bought-off politicians to ignore if AT&T's own documents publicly support it. Remember, AT&T's public statement is that it will actually INCREASE competition; they're not stifling anything.

So why would you "meh" this, except to be That Guy On The Internet?

There is a bit of a mandate at the moment to reduce government debt/growth. There's far too much dysfunctional, ideological infighting to do this effectively or efficiently.

Since we apparently can't reduce ANY spending to the military (a few less $1B planes?) or on a variety of wars, and our economy would collapse if we ended recent tax breaks on the rich, the money has to come from SOMEwhere. One of those places is IT spending. Another is NASA. Another is medical research grants. (And a variety of scientific, infrastructure, and social programs).

This is indirectly related to the game of hostage-taking that's being played with the US economy that resulted in this week's major market correction and credit downgrade.

I don't understand why there are so many geeks that don't like this company. A small minority, but still. How can you not?? =)

I'm not sure I understand. Based on the summary, this video was supposed to have been created by Microsoft? It was posted by The Linux Foundation and doesn't seem like a video that would be produced by Microsoft (not so much the style or content, but the perspective; it doesn't seem like it's Microsoft telling the story at all).

Instead, it plays like some sort of lead-up to an announcement OSDL/TLF are planning to make...?

You just reinforced my core point.

Blaming add-ons for FF's memory leaks and failure to reclaim is like the "repair your disk permissions" or "update your drivers" of the browser world.

It's sometimes add-ons. Very rarely.