Slashback: Spolsky, Mandrake, Geography

Tonight's Slashback features another string of updates, corrections, etc. to previous stories. In this case, that means more on the discoveries of America, the Mandrake-StarOffice connection, Joel Spolsky and more, all below.

Update: not everyone agrees on everything. ipoverscsi writes: "SoftwareMarketSolution has a followup interview with Joel Spolsky comprised mainly of rebuttals from the comments section of an older article on Slashdot. A quote I found interesting regarding re-writing software: 'Don't even talk to me about spending money replacing something that works. The only question that is relevant is -- what does it cost to fix it if it doesn't work?'"

'First' seems to be relative. MattJ writes: "A week or two ago, Gavni Menzies' theory about Chinese explorations preceding Columbus were mentioned on Slashdot. He has now made his presentation to the Royal Geographical Society. According to MSNBC, the response from historians who saw it was somewhat muted. They say they need to wait for his book to come out to treat the theory fairly, but right now it looks like a tower of suppositions."

"Or, to vote for 'irresponsible disclosure,' please press No ...". juliao writes: "The IETF has dropped the draft proposal for responsible disclosure of bugs."

Fax early and often. jd142 writes: "A follow up to Friday's CBDTPA story. Electronic petitions and e-mail are unlikely to sway a Senator. Dead trees do. Luckily you can easily have a message faxed to your Senators. Letters are good too, so send both. This is a case where the more paper we can swamp them with, the better chance we have of killing this. And take the time to personalize your faxes and letters."

A matter of phrasing? I mentioned that StarOffice 6.0 was due for retail release in April; Jacques Le Marois from Mandrakesoft (among many others) wrote to point out that "MandrakeClub is the first and only place in the world where you can get StarOffice 6.0 currently!" They've worked out an OEM deal with Sun to let those who've paid for a "Silver" membership to MandrakeClub ($120 annually) download the software.

Exactly which MandrakeClub members were eligible for the payware StarOffice was the cause of some contention. "We also answer to your previous post about the ZDNet controversy. It's an interesting case of mis-information spread."

Comments

*cringe*

[Reality Master 101]

Boy that letter really sucks. See my other post about this. Let me take it point by point:

The Hollings bill will restrict my personal use rights. Congress and the courts have traditionally upheld my right to freely use content that I have legally acquired. But the Hollings bill takes away most of those rights and leaves me with virtually none. Until my fair use rights are ensured, any further encroachment on them must not occur.

Flat out wrong, at least as far as the Senators will see it. The bill in question specifically addresses fair use rights.

The Hollings bill will inevitably prevent innovation because it is the most sweeping regulation of the information technology sector in its history. The bill will give content companies the ability to veto devices like the VCR and the digital Walkman.

This really doesn't say anything, and sounds reactionary.

The Hollings bill is the wrong approach to solving the problem of piracy. A government-mandated standard will never be able to adapt to the rapidly changing digital world. The new "anti-piracy" measures will only harm law-abiding consumers. Every copy protection measure will be defeated by dedicated foreign pirates who sell the stolen goods illicitly. Copy protection will only defeat fair use.

Once again, this sounds reactionary and ill-informed. It might be true in some ways, but it doesn't really address any real issues. The industry knows that they don't have to defeat "foreign pirates", they only have to stop the average consumer.

The content companies said that the DMCA would allow them to deliver great broadband content. Yet four years later, the only outcome of the DMCA has been lawsuits against innovative companies and threats against consumers. We have no reason to believe that the Hollings bill will be any different.

Unfortunately, this is completely irrelevent. The point of this bill is not to provide broadband content, it's to stop piracy.

Once again I have to say: Laws are generally written to solve problems, not just to irritate you. Understand why this law is being written, and attack it based on the fact that the cure will create more problems that it solves. Places to attack: making devices more expensive for law-abiding citizens, privacy (will registration be required for music?), etc.

I particularly liked one of the follow-ups to my original post, where he complained that the music industry is attempting to shift the enforcement of copyright from their own lawyers (where it belongs) to the tech sector. If the music industry wants to attack copyright infringement, then let them go out and start identifying piraters. It's their problem, not the tech industry's problem. I think this would be an excellent point to make in a letter.

But that whiny letter is worse than useless. I recommend against using it.

Re:Customizing?

[Otter]

What I've heard from ex-interns:
You want to make it look like you put effort into it. Anything is better than nothing. Customization is better than sending the zillionth copy of a form. Envelopes are better than email. Handwriting is better than a printout.

Think of it from the point of view of the legislator. If you received a thousand messages a day, which would you think came from voters with a serious concern about the issue?

I also write a lot of letters and rarely receive even a form letter back. It's still worthwhile, probably. There's a lot of people out there (at least in the US) and it's important to vote and write and be a statistic, because it's those statistics that determine representation and policy.

Re:Joel on bloatware

[Darren Winsper]

Err...you missed his point. He's refering to the fact that Word contains so many features because different people use different features.

For example, it is often said that 99% of people only use 5% of the features. However, each person uses a different 5%. Thus, if you only include 5% of the features, not that many people will want to use your product.

Re:The petition stuff NEVER WORKS!

[Alsee]

The bill is not the SSSCA. That was the name when they were working on it, but they tweaked it an renamed it CBDTPA - Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act.

Please use the new name when contacting your legislators. The authors of the bill have been paying attention to our critism. It is no longer a "secruity standards act". No one (except RIAA and MPAA) wants these security standards. It is now a "broadband promotion act" (cough cough). That's a good thing, isn't it? The bill says it will require exemptions for fair use, libraries, schools and researchers, etc. (coughbullshitcough)

If you reffer to it as SSSCA you risk being totally ignored. The SSSCA does not exist. They will point to the *new and improved* CBDTPA and it's lip-service to all of the issues and say CBDTPA is a good thing because it already addresses all of your concerns. Since all of the problems are fixed (coughbullshitcough) you must be in favor of CBDTPA!

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