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Comment Re:I hope the article is right (Score 1) 315

You're thinking about this from an engineer's perspective. Logic and facts and such.

The key thing to realize is that in the commercial world, THAT DOESN'T MATTER. Perception is everything. Facts are a distant second. Having a good platform is necessary, but not sufficient. The spin and marketing are everything.

It's ALL about the public opinion. How many cool technological innovations have lost because of poor marketing?

Look at Apple's own 1980s experience with the Macintosh versus Windows. They've learned their lesson, and now they're marketing experts. They have successfully trained the public to believe they invented cool features.

And, incidentally, their phone really does work better compared to every other clunky phone web browser I've ever used, including Android.

How about some non-subjective reasons? The UI is designed intuitively - to adapt to human thought processes, rather than forcing the user to adapt to computer programming conveniences, or the convoluted thoughts of a semi-autistic KDE developer. If you need a painfully detailled explanation, check out http://developer.apple.com/documentation/userexperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGIntro/chapter_1_section_1.html

The Courts

An Appeal In the "Harry Potter Lexicon" Case 189

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "RDR Books, the would-be publisher of the book version of the 'Harry Potter Lexicon' Web site, has filed an appeal from the judge's decision in Warner Bros. Pictures v. RDR Books, the case involving the Harry Potter Lexicon. The judge, after a bench trial, issued an injunction and awarded statutory damages of $6,750 (as we discussed at the time), holding that the Lexicon was not protected by fair use due to (a) sloppiness in attribution in sections, (b) the length of some of the quotes, and (c) imitation of J. K. Rowling's writing style in portions. I recently wrote an article criticizing the opinion, but doubting that an appeal would be taken in view of the small damages award. I guess I underestimated the resolve of the defendants and defendants' lawyers — who include the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society."

Comment Re:Which would work great, except... (Score 1) 1019

It doesn't matter whether you or I think that it's right or wrong that people are trading information freely. It is what is happening already, whether you personally approve of the change or not, and it's a trend that's only going to get stronger as home internet use increases and home bandwidth increases. Welcome to the Information Age.

Short of not allowing people to transfer information freely, cheaply, and fast amongst themselves, there's absolutely no way to stop it. Environmental conditions are changing. Evolve, or you'll be out-competed and pushed out by others who do.

(Fortunately, the current intellectual property model will take a while yet to die, so you've still got plenty of time to come up with another means of supporting yourself..)

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