Able to upgrade not just the speed but manufacturer of CPU?


But those are far from the only ARM SoC manufacturers out there. Among others, AMD, Broadcom, Marvell, NXP, ST Micro, etc. may be worthy competitors down the line. We simply do not know because the future has yet to happen.

Have you even looked at what these companies have to offer? It's been mentioned twice in this topic alone that AMD only has server SoCs that would not be satisfactory for use in the Pyra. Broadcom, Marvell, and ST Micro all offer chips that don't even offer the same kind of functionality that mobile chipsets offer, or are so underpowered (read: less powerful than the SoC the Pyra alread contains) that they don't even bear consideration. And from what I can tell NXP doesn't even have any chipsets that have a GPU, aside from the i.MX series they acquired along with Freescale and their S32 series, which still doesn't offer anything powerful.

-God Ginrai
 
@levi If I may. Why? What is it good for other than artificial scarcity - or earning money for practically doing nothing?
Distributing cost over multiple sales. Without any copyright any easily copyable thing would make your first sale also your first competitor. Now, I believe there should be a good- much shorter than the current -limit to the duration or total profit so while you can distribute the cost of production and modest profit over multiple sales, the restriction of distribution should be kept to a minimum to allow for maximum benefit to the society while keeping the profession of authorship profitable. Another possiblity is to sell every intangible good using a threshold pledge system (after which they can be freely copied), but this raises the question of what to do with items that do not reach their goal.

It's not an easy thing to both provide a profitable market for intangible things and not restrict the users in any way.
 
@levi If I may. Why? What is it good for other than artificial scarcity - or earning money for practically doing nothing?
Now you are turning things upside down.

It is not for earning money for doing nothing, it is intended to earn money with something you have done. In order to facilitate that possibility you limit the ability for others to earn money from your work. If the initial creation is very costly and the subsequent reproduction very cheap then IP can facilitate up-front investment in the initial creation because you have a chance to recover that investment.

Without IP, you would need to pre-order, crowd-fund etc... in order to pay for this investment. With no guarantee or control that the outcome will be good. For crowdfunding this places the risk at the consumer. In my opinion, the risk should be on the side of the creator and thus he needs protection to prevent his work from being stolen by others afterwards.

This is not to say that there are no problems in the IP world. There are, and big ones too. Software patents are a prime example, where essential building blocks are getting patented offensively. I see them doing more harm than good as software is a market where innovation seems to be a given anyway. In principle a program works forever, so the initial sale will be the only one if you do not innovate.

An update and reform of IP laws is certainly needed, but to say it has no purpose is oversimplifying matters.
 
The original author still has the edge in know how (not to be underestimated) and upgradeability even without any copyright protection (modifying a binary blob isn't exactly easy). I'm not saying that the world would definitively be a better place without copyright (e.g. share-alike clauses would not be possible) but it is also not clear that it would actually be worse. Without trying we won't know (there were examples in history which seem to show that copyright limits innovation and therefore GDP growth, but relevant factors may have changed since then and what is beneficial for GDP may not necessarily be desirable for other reasons).
 
The original author still has the edge in know how (not to be underestimated) and upgradeability even without any copyright protection (modifying a binary blob isn't exactly easy). I'm not saying that the world would definitively be a better place without copyright (e.g. share-alike clauses would not be possible) but it is also not clear that it would actually be worse. Without trying we won't know (there were examples in history which seem to show that copyright limits innovation and therefore GDP growth, but relevant factors may have changed since then and what is beneficial for GDP may not necessarily be desirable for other reasons).
That doesn't extend to things that don't require support and maintenance services after publication like music, movies, games and such. For software that needs to be maintained and trained, sure.
 
If anyone here does not believe in property rights for anything, then give me your Pandora, because you don't own it.
 
Although I'm a firm enemy of DRM and am always miffed at how much less I earn by building physical goods which practically have to be made from scratch every time in addition to all the development work beforehand and people don't value the work nearly enough, I'm not against copyright laws, just the valid time frames need to be changed drastically, especcially for digital goods.
 
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http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ15a.pdf said:
For works made for hire and anonymous and pseudonymous works, the duration of copyright is 95 years from first publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter (unless the author's identity is later revealed in Copyright Office records, in which case the term becomes the author's life plus 70 years).

How does this make sense for software? If we ignore the babbage engine for the moment, then that's longer than the whole existence of computers.
 
If anyone here does not believe in property rights for anything, then give me your Pandora, because you don't own it.
Property rights are distinct from copyright. Copyright is a temporary ban on reproducing works devised to facilitate the creation of more culture and science. Just because the author (or other copyright holder) has a temporary right to prevent others from doing one specific thing, reproduction, on something doesn't make it their property. Of course, since they control the distribution of the work they can set terms users must adhere to if they want a copy, but that's still distinct from property.
 
That doesn't extend to things that don't require support and maintenance services after publication like music, movies, games and such. For software that needs to be maintained and trained, sure.
I agree (thouh the know how part extends to all forms of expression). I could imagine that an unalienable right to authorship allows the original author to profit in enough ways to be an acceptable substitute for copyright (where the original author often doesn't profit much).
 
There is no meaningful difference between asking why shouldn't software be free versus asking why shouldn't everything be free. A copyright is an intellectual property right as opposed to a right to physical property. Ownership in intellectual property can be transferred, sold, licensed, or given away just like physical property. It takes time and energy to create many things of value, whether they are intellectual or physical. Without any financial incentive to create some time-consuming or energy-consuming things, many things would not get created or could not get created.
 
I could imagine that an unalienable right to authorship allows the original author to profit in enough ways to be an acceptable substitute for copyright (where the original author often doesn't profit much).

An unalienable right to authorship? That would itself just be copyright, wouldn't it?
 
There is no meaningful difference between asking why shouldn't software be free versus asking why shouldn't everything be free.
There's a significant difference that for software, like many intangible things, there's only the initial lump cost to create. There are no unit costs associated with them and they are trivially reproducible by anyone. After the original creators have been compensated justly for their effort and work, restricting the free use of that information becomes a wholly different question. There's no such aspect with physical goods.

A copyright is an intellectual property right as opposed to a right to physical property.
"Intellectual property" is a somewhat confusing term because it covers copyright, patents, trademarks and whatever else allows for any kind of legal power over certain pieces of information. These things should be discussed in individually since their justifications and methods are different. Moreover, all their justifications and methods are significantly different from (physical) property rights.

Ownership in intellectual property can be transferred, sold, licensed, or given away just like physical property.
I have never seen one car being "licensed" for a million users at once. For that matter, neither have I seen anyone actually SELLING copyrights for the general public. There's a significant difference in how they are profited from because of the zero unit cost of intangibles.

It takes time and energy to create many things of value, whether they are intellectual or physical. Without any financial incentive to create some time-consuming or energy-consuming things, many things would not get created or could not get created.
To be honest, some things DO happen even without profit motive, but in general I don't think anyone here is trying to argue things don't take time and energy to create. Mainly the point of contest is how to balance the motivational aspects with civil liberties and in larger context the benefit for society.
 
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Have you even looked at what these companies have to offer? It's been mentioned twice in this topic alone that AMD only has server SoCs that would not be satisfactory for use in the Pyra. Broadcom, Marvell, and ST Micro all offer chips that don't even offer the same kind of functionality that mobile chipsets offer, or are so underpowered (read: less powerful than the SoC the Pyra alread contains) that they don't even bear consideration. And from what I can tell NXP doesn't even have any chipsets that have a GPU, aside from the i.MX series they acquired along with Freescale and their S32 series, which still doesn't offer anything powerful.

-God Ginrai

I explicitly said they may be competitive in the future, implying they aren't right now. Neither of us know for sure if one of those companies are planning to enter the high-end phone SoC market. It's unlikely for most of them, I agree, but hardly impossible.

I do find it odd however that you're very quick to dismiss Broadcom, which I think has a fairly good shot at entering said market if they put some effort into it, yet you hold on to Allwinner which have legally disqualified themselves outside of Asia.
 
unalienable right to authorship
What you are describing is some right held by the author by which they in some way legally own, control, or are otherwise mandated to profit from copies: ie, a copyright. Your solution to copyright is to replace it with a different copyright suggesting that your problem is not with copyright itself but, like everyone else here, the way it's been implemented.
 
There is no meaningful difference between asking why shouldn't software be free versus asking why shouldn't everything be free. A copyright is an intellectual property right as opposed to a right to physical property. Ownership in intellectual property can be transferred, sold, licensed, or given away just like physical property. It takes time and energy to create many things of value, whether they are intellectual or physical. Without any financial incentive to create some time-consuming or energy-consuming things, many things would not get created or could not get created.
They came up with the concept of intelectual property and made laws for it modeled after those regarding actual property. Now you point at those laws and use their uniformity to argue IP and AP are practically the same. Doesn't hold much value, which @bzar already showed.

An unalienable right to authorship? That would itself just be copyright, wouldn't it?
I may be wrong, but I think what @_jr_ meant is a right that correct information about the original author must be maintained. So that credit is given to the one who deserves it, a way of building a reputation and such. ?

I'm not trying here to convince anybody or start a revolution, though it might be an interesting outcome. It's just that to me IP seems to be a doctrine - to quickly accepted (by most). So I like to throw thoughts around for consideration. It's nice to see, that some at least see the current implementation as not ideal, too.

Just a thought, someone gives me knowledge and then owns, what's in my head? Something's wrong here. :)

One argument pro IP is, A puts in time and money to create IP1, then B could take IP1 for free making money with it.
- Is it not that this argument dismisses, that A equally can profit from the works of others, minimizing the investment needed to create IP1?
- How is it B can make money of it, but A can't?

Musicians: What about doing actual work for their money, like playing music? Or just do it in their freetime. I can do without musicians, who are in it for money first.

Computer-Games: I guess games that rely on the publisher's infrastructure are covered (MMOs)(subscriptions, µtransactions). For the rest I have no concrete idea, but I'm quite confident, there'd be a way. I know enough people, who prefer buying over "stealing" just to support the creator.

Movies, TV shows: Some kind of culture tax maybe? I don't know. BTW, I don't see a need to provide a way for actors to earn millions in a few weaks. Neither for athletes nor anyone alse, but that would be another off-topic topic.

I do think, good, useful work should be rewarded by means of money, but their must be more natural ways. The concept IP has no hold in reality and as can be seen makes some people senseless rich and hinders others as well as society as a whole a lot.
 
I may be wrong, but I think what @_jr_ meant is a right that correct information about the original author must be maintained. So that credit is given to the one who deserves it, a way of building a reputation and such. ?
Yes. This already exists in some legislations and I'm not claiming it works wonders there, but it might be the basis for a creator's competitive edge. The major difference to copyright is that it cannot be sold, licensed, or whatever.
 
@levi If I may. Why? What is it good for other than artificial scarcity - or earning money for practically doing nothing?
Now you are turning things upside down.

It is not for earning money for doing nothing, it is intended to earn money with something you have done. In order to facilitate that possibility you limit the ability for others to earn money from your work.
How is that turning things upside down? You get paid for allowing others to have and use your information. That is practically doing nothing and disallowance as a baseline is creating artificial scarcity. Well, you may still be doing something by means of distribution, but that does not by itself justify the sums that usually are demanded. And the work of keeping the legal copy and using it is actually done by the user. It is not getting paid for the work you have done beforehand.
So, if you know how to appeal to the masses and know to do good marketing, it's basically a way to print money.

I understand why it's in place, what purpose it's meant to serve. I just say it's not a good tool, and it needs to be replaced. I'm not saying, I've got a better tool ready.
 
Musicians: What about doing actual work for their money, like playing music? Or just do it in their freetime. I can do without musicians, who are in it for money first.

Computer-Games: I guess games that rely on the publisher's infrastructure are covered (MMOs)(subscriptions, µtransactions). For the rest I have no concrete idea, but I'm quite confident, there'd be a way. I know enough people, who prefer buying over "stealing" just to support the creator.

Movies, TV shows: Some kind of culture tax maybe? I don't know. BTW, I don't see a need to provide a way for actors to earn millions in a few weaks. Neither for athletes nor anyone alse, but that would be another off-topic topic.
Music: There are many musicians who make their money off of concerts and such, as well as selling merchandise. I have heard from several professional musicians that there isn't all that much money in album sales. Because of this, some have decided to handle all of that themselves instead of having most of the money that can be made off of albums going to all the middle men. The end result appears to be lower prices for fans (not to mention a personal touch, which matters to many) and more money from each album sale goes to those that actually put in the effort to make the music.

This seems to be a good option with the internet. This seems to be the sort of thing that came from punk (although it did exist prior to that, but with a lot of exploitation of the musicians, so not so good for them most of the time). Indie labels and DIY were a good start, and this led to mail order and subscription music before the rise of the internet. Obviously this will not work for all types of musicians, however many of those exceptions are getting regular paychecks other ways (paid for the piece/project, being on hand for when they are required, etc).

Games (and other software: I think there are plenty of good options that have been tried, although I really only know about the consumer side of it. Some of this isn't just applicable to games, but fits all software. I know of some projects (that are still maintained) where the user pays what they feel is appropriate. Often those that "purchase" it will later give larger donations. I wish this approach was more common.

There are a handful of software projects, some of which are available free of charge, that I wish to financially support. A major one, with no cost associated with its use, has a handful of different ways to support the project. I will either end up buying merchandise or making a small donation soon. There are some others where there is a cost associated with it, and I am in that weird place that I hate to be where I want to use it but cannot afford it atm. So I pirated one I plan on "buying" at least one copy of (btw, I do this with music also, although sometimes it is impossible to purchase small releases that are copied and distributed by the musicians). (One copy will be for me, one copy for someone else that may be interested, and possibly a third copy for @ptitSeb if I think it could benefit from optimization for the Pyra, or just as a thank you to him.) The funny thing about this is that there used to be higher support tiers, and I was going to pay for one of those, however I had no time for the game at the time. I shouldn't have waited...

I am not trying to discuss what is right or wrong, as often comes up with piracy. The important part, as I see it, is that people make things that people want to use or play, and get what the USER thinks it is worth. One contributing factor to pirating software is the high price. There will always be people that won't pay. There are also those that have been "burned" due to high prices and low quality (although many Microsoft customers don't seem to mind :p). Then you have those like me that either want to test it out first (demos, when available aren't always adequate, and watching/reading reviews is extremely unreliable), or want to make sure they are getting their money's worth for it. (And of course, those that can't afford it.) I know this is probably oversimplification, but which is better, a handful of paid users that paid a higher amount, or many happy customers that paid less and are actively spreading the word. If you make the same off of both, the latter seems to have a potential for a much higher return on investment in the long run. Bring things like shareware back. (I am aware it is still around in various forms, but freemium software and such often suck. I am also aware of how shareware can lead to lower quality, or watered down software.)

Actors, athletes, and other highly paid personalities: I have thought about this before. I really don't have a good solution. Many of these people are way over paid.

Television shows and movies: Here is a crazy idea: Maybe advertisers can pay for it. Product placement, sponsorships (with the company or product name prominently stated and displayed before the show starts) and ads played during breaks. Hmmm, seems like these ideas are already being used, so why should the viewer pay even more to be abble to watch these ads? Even on youtube and such, you get ads presented to you (unless you have them blocked). Youtube is just an example, as I know they are owned by a company many dislike. One of the things I hated about Hulu is that we paid for it, yet we still got interruptions for ads. I have no clue why it should be any more acceptable for things like this with cable and satellite television providers, although I do think they should get paid for their infrastructure and everything else. It would be nice if advertisers paid a little (lot) more of that. This can also be carried over into ISPs, in some ways, but I really don't want to get into that debate. It would be nice if reliable internet access was provided at a decent speed for no cost, but I can't even get free water unless I collect the polluted rain.

I think I have been wrong enough for one post, now.
 
FWIW, I am against the 'death+' component of most copyright terms these days. If you're using scarcity enforced by copright to make money from your product, then I don't see why you should be paid after you die - it's not like your dependents did the work, and they've presumably got a chunk of it through inheritance anyway. I can't see that I'd have anything against any of my open source components being used in closed source products after my death - they'd be old hat by then.
 
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