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A proposal for Copyright Reform

Today’s copyright legislation is out of balance, and out of tune with the times. It has turned an entire generation of young people into criminals in the eyes of the law, in a futile attempt at stopping tech- nological development. Yet file sharing has continued to grow ex- ponentially. Neither propaganda, fear tactics, nor ever harsher laws have been able to stop the development.

It is impossible to enforce the ban against non-commercial file sharing without infringing on fundamental human rights. As long as there are ways for citizens to communicate in private, they will be used to share copyrighted materials. The only way to even try to limit file sharing is to remove the right to private communication. In the last decade, this is the direction that copyright enforcement legislation has moved in, under pressure from big business lobby- ists who see their monopolies under threat. We need to reverse this trend to safeguard fundamental rights.

The Pirate Party Copyright Reform Proposal

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SkyDrive: Service Update, Windows Application, Mobile Apps

“SkyDrive has offered tons of free storage for years, but it’s never provided a seamless or simple way to access it from the PCs and devices that people use so regularly. This was, believe it or, by design. In 2009, I was told that the company would never offer seamless, Explorer-based access to SkyDrive from Windows because people would actually use it. And that would require Microsoft to protect and replicate that data at great expense.“

Paul Thurrot – Winsupersite.com

Apparently a leopard can’t change his spots. Every time i read something about a new Microsoft product that i actually consider using or trying out or even, god forbid, recommending to others, Microsoft just goes and shows its truly craptastic nature. It’s like somewhere down there they have this weird desire of being the cool kid and providing everyone with gifts and cool stuff so that they would be liked and popular but then they just can’t resist their lazy-cornercutting-ways and their obnoxious (( i could’t decide on what insult i wanted to insert here. I just went with obnoxious but please, choose your own from its synonyms: unpleasant, disagreeable, nasty, distasteful, offensive, objectionable, unsavory, unpalatable, off-putting, awful, terrible, dreadful, frightful, revolting, repulsive, repellent, repugnant, disgusting, odious, vile, foul, abhorrent, loathsome, nauseating, sickening, hateful, insufferable, intolerable, detestable, abominable, despicable, contemptible; informal horrible, horrid, ghastly, gross, putrid, yucky, godawful, beastly, skanky; literary noisome. )) nature and end up providing you with a cheap knockout of something that was popular 20 years ago, collect-on-delivery, at your expense. I really don’t understand why this hundred thousand employees company could get this distorted culture and modus operandi so deeply entrenched into everything they do.

And now, after this “anecdotal” warning i can’t possibly trust my data into Microsoft’s care because they will probably just screw it up. Or maybe they’re on their finest moment, which is usually followed and preceded by really long crappy ones. With MicroSoft there’s really no way of telling and so, as a precaution, i just try, each time harder, to avoid it all together.

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8 Days of Nokia Lumia 900, Day 7

” The big difference between them and iPhone or Android users, so far at least, is that unlike those people, Windows Phone users tend to have used other smart phone platforms first. And their love of Windows Phone is perhaps more meaningful because they actually have experiences with at least one other system too. I bet most iPhone users simply stop looking around and have no idea what they’re missing. And they’re missing a lot.”

Paul Thurrot

I wonder if Paul would also stand by this reasoning if it was applied to “regular” Windows and Mac/Linux.

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Why Do Copyright Industry Profits Get To Be The Yardstick For Civil Liberties?

“The role of any entrepreneur is to make money given the contemporary constraints of society and technology. They do not get to dismantle civil liberties, even if – and perhaps especially if – they are unable to make money in the face of sustained civil liberties.”

Rick Falkvinge – Techdirt

“Now they resort to logic! By God man, where will this end?” – says the Big Media executive…

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Instagram’s Buyout: No Bubble to See Here

“If we look strictly at the acquisition cost per user, Facebook got a relative deal with the Instagram purchase, paying roughly $28 for each of Instagram’s 35 million users. (The median cost across all the acquisitions is about $92 per user.)”

[…]

But if you look at the payout per employee, Instagram is completely off the charts. If split equally, each of Instagram’s 13 employees would make nearly $77 million (though Wired’s Mike Isaac reported exclusively that CEO Kevin Systrom and co-founder Mike Krieger would take home $500 million themselves alone).

Andy Baio – Wired.com

The author tries to prove that this is no bubble by stacking it together with other bubble purchases and using random custom-made ratios and indicators that involve absolutely no revenue or profit measures.

Yep, it sure makes sense… (( Sarcasm sign in case you didn’t get it… ))

One of the best parts of the article for me is a small comment by Paul Arnold:

“The financial measures you mention do not work well for a pre-revenue company like Instagram. Neither does looking outside the tech world where you don’t have comparable companies that can scale like this.”

It fully reveals why another bubble is growing in Sillicon Valley if this kind of reasoning is accepted and considered valid. (( please note that i have no idea about who the commenter is or if he has any relationship with the Valley.))

The good parts of this deal are that a) Instagram founders and stock-holders just made a boatload of money, money that they would probably never make and b) Facebook just got a billion dollars poorer; and anything that accelerates the end of Facebook just makes me smile a bit more.

I can’t simply wonder in my mind that most, if not every time, these large IT companies start to make these absurd value acquisitions they are always very close to their decline.

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Stardock 2011 Report

Other Platforms

Stardock expects to make some announcements later this year in this area.

Windows 8 concerns

Stardock remains concerned about the direction of Windows 8. Since we are not currently a crossplatform development shop, our success relies heavily on the success of Windows.

It is our projection that if Microsoft does not address the following items in Windows 8, then that version of the OS will be considered a general failure:

  1. Allowing desktop users to use Windows 8 entirely as a desktop OS. Specifically, interface and experience changes are necessary to prevent users from being shifted back and forth between the desktop and “Metro”.

  2. A realistic way to organize programs on Metro. Currently, Microsoft has termed “Groups” as being columns of tiles with a column label. Users are expected to either show a tile or hide it. If they are hidden, they can only be found through searching (typing). There is no folder concept in Metro as there is on the desktop, Android, Mac, or iOS.

  3. A migration away from mouse-over discovery of features back to visual discovery features. In the present consumer beta, Windows 8 requires the user to move the mouse around the screen to discover new elements, which work inconsistently depending on the context or the application.

[…]

Stardock Customer Report 2011

The times, they are changing…

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The Linux Foundation Releases Annual Linux Development Report

“For the first time, Microsoft appears on list of companies that are contributing to the Linux kernel. Ranking at number 17, the company that once called Linux a “cancer,” today is working within the collaborative development model to support its virtualization efforts and its customers. Because Linux has reached a state of ubiquity, in which both the enterprise and mobile computing markets are relying on the operating system, Microsoft is clearly working to adapt.”

The Linux Foundation

I’m not sure how Microsoft could just leap into the the top20 but i must admit it has the pretty sweet taste of ultimate irony.

You can download the entire Linux Foundation report here.