Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Spolsky, Mandrake, Geography
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."
I was wondering about this the other day. Does it really make a difference to the politicians when you customize some comments for them. I've participated in innumerable fax spamming operations when some controversial bill has been introduced. I'll usually spend some time putting some thoughtful commentary into it, but I wonder whether it's of any value.
I've never received any sort of direct response to any of my customized messages. I've only on rare occasions received a "this is how I stand" form letter form a politician. Do they seriously consider any of the messages? Is it really worth the time I put into it? Anybody out there who had worked for a politician that cares to comment on how such faxes were handled?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
After reviewing CBDTPA http://cryptome.org/broadbandits.htm I found that the bill makes the following statements:
"13) Consumers receive content such as video or programming in analog form."
First off we all not this is not entirely true for everybody. Maybe this statement means sum content.
"(14) When protected digital content is converted to analog for consumers, it is no longer protected and is subject to conversion into unprotected digital form that can in turn be copied or redistribute illegally."
So now analog should be illegal? I believe audio gurus will still tell you that analog can be better in quality compared to digital. I am not saying digital is bad, as I prefer it, but I know many people who would not want to give up analog audio.
These are just some of the weird things in this bill. And on top of that there are several early statements which contradict this:
"(10) Today, cable and satellite have a competitive advantage over digital television because the closed nature of cable and satellite systems permit encryption, which provides some protection for digital content. " So wait analog is safe?
Of course the entire nature of this bill is wrong, but there are many small things that are wrong with this bill including a lot of contradictions and facts that are not true.
My 2 cents
I remember a story somebody told me once. There use to be this neighborhood with a thousand little shops in a city in England. You could get almost anything you wanted there. Enter the bureaucrats. TheY see squalor and poverty. Enter the bulldozers, the high rise complexes, etc, Now the place really is poor, whereas before most were gainfully employed somehow, etc.
The old situation was aworking living community. The new situation was a death trap.
So the maxim applies to coding, to social policy, and a number of other places.
Sometime the new solutions are far worse than the old problems, despite what marketing says.
Reminds me of a Ferengi proverb somehow.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
> SMS: Another interesting point was raised in reference to bloatware... Do you ...The WWW is bloatware. Finding things is impossible because there's so .00000000001% of the world ever reads. Since the vast majority of
> think a product like Microsoft Word would benefit by having every feature that is
> used by 1% or less of the installed base removed from the product?
>
> Joel:
> much stuff out there. Think how much hard drive space is wasted on all kinds of web
> pages that only
> people only go to Yahoo, Ebay, and MSN, wouldn't the WWW be better if it only had
> Yahoo, Ebay, and MSN? It would be much more "optimized."
With Joel from Microsoft at the helm the entire contents of the Internet would reside on a single loooooong web page.
The oposite of MS-Bloatware (TM) is not lack of features. The opposite is UN*X's lean tool approach. Use tools for one function or a small set of tightly related functions. Create a screwdriver to screw screws, a hammer to nail nails. You do not create a Rube Goldberg machine with a flight simulator.
---
Anonymity is freedom!
When will people get it through their thick skulls that petitions dont work.
Lets look at DMCA, did petitions stop it? Hell no.
Lets look at Napster, did petitions save Napster? Hell no.
Why isnt marijuana legal? People have been petitioning for it by the millions for 20 years or more now.
Face it, Petitions have never solved a thing.
Tabacco was made Legal because people didnt obey the laws, civil disobedience by the millions, and there arent enough jails to enforce it, alcohol? Alcohol was illegal once, it took the mafia and illegal activities, corruption and control of the government through the mafia, essentially terrorism tactics to make alcohol legal.
SSSCA, you arent going to stop this unless you fight, you dont have to be violent to fight, you can fight with your intelligence, programmers should write unstopable programs like freenet, rich people should support lobby groups on our side, people who are good writers should write books, articles, editorials, and give as much media attention as possible to this, public speakers should host rallies along with musicians at local colleges where other intelligent people are. Contact churches, libaries, civil rights groups, and convince them how important it is to protect our rights. Contact patriotic groups, anti government groups, and anarchist groups and explain to them how the government is trying to control them not just offline but online as well.
Contact the elderly, contact teachers, and highschool students, explain to all of these groups whats going on, hang posters in front of highschools, near libraries, near sam goody and HMV, Blockbuster and other stores which tell people about the SSSCA, use clever images, such as comparing the SSSCA to Nazism, Explain how unfair it is, use images of jail and rich CEOs, show images of locks on their computer.
If all of the people reading this did this in their towns seperately, meaning true activism on a LARGE scale, Well its simple to break it down into parts.
INFORM --- Tell the public what the SSSCA is!
Explain ---- Tell the public whats wrong with the SSSCA
Results ---- Tell them what will happen if the SSSCA passes, and what kinda society it will lead to if the trend continues
Solution ---- Tell them how to stop the SSSCA, tell them a msg similar to what I'm telling you, explain to them not to just stop the SSSCA, but to promote absolute freedom of speech online, meaning no one can control what you do with your computer, if the RIAA and MPAA does not want us to pirate stuff, they should make it impossible to pirate or undesirable to do so, if this means lowering the price so its not worth buying a CD or DVD burner, or if this means locking the DVD up, they have options, what they shouldnt do is take away our freedoms, its like saying you cant use your hands to draw a copy of a picture you like.
And PLEASE post this on slashback to replace that other lame msg.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Flat out wrong, at least as far as the Senators will see it. The bill in question specifically addresses fair use rights.
No it doesn't. It provides a maximum penalty of $2,500 per work for prohibiting fair use. As I wrote in my letter, that's pocket change to Hollywood, and a more appropriate solution would be to put any work whose encoding prohibits fair use into the public domain.
The industry knows that they don't have to defeat "foreign pirates", they only have to stop the average consumer.
I fixed that, noting that the industry likes to brand fair users as "casual pirates."
The point of this bill is not to provide broadband content, it's to stop piracy.
I think I ought to post my version of the letter. Just wait 2 minutes.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The point of this bill is not to provide broadband content, it's to stop piracy.
Where did you get this? Certainly not from the *title* of the bill, which after all is "The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Act of 2002." In Hollings's own statement, he refers to it as "legislation that will promote broadband and the digital television transition by securing content on the Internet and over the nation's airwaves.
"
Read that again.
The means: Preventing piracy.
The end: promotion of broadband and the digital television transmission.
If the law in fact fails to promote broadband, then it is fundamentally flawed, even if it magically prevents all piracy.
Damn, I had thought the native Americans discovered America.
It's increasingly looking like the current crop of native americans bumped off a preceding group of peoples. Here for more info
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Tell that to Eisner and his lackeys, tell it to the PR people from all the major studios. These people have all been saying that they are unable to release high resolution (not necessarily high quality) digital content unless their markets are assured through digital copy prevention measures. They constantly harp about there being no way they will release content in HDTV forum unless they have complete control over it.
This bill is all about content - that is the stick the megalocorps are using to beat it through congress (and the carrot is the trivially small sums of money they use to bribe our elected representativs). Without the explicit threat of withholding digital content, this bill would never have made it out of Fritz's office.
Now to go a bit further, that threat is a complete and utter fallacy and here's why - as long as the megalocorps are not producing hi-def content, the market is open for new competitors to move in and fill the market need. Once you get a couple of little guys making a profit by servicing the pent-up demand for hi-def content, sooner or later one of the big studios will break ranks and jump in with their own product. It will not be long after that before all of the megalocorps have caved and are producing hi-def content without any sort of hyper-intrusive legislation or technology.
It is merely a case of who blinks first and the longer we wait, the harder it is for them to keep from blinking.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
As a consumer, why the hell should I buy into this mess just because Holling's eased Disney's fears that I'll make a copy of Fantasia 2005 for myself rather than pay them $5 each time I want to view it? What makes Disney think I'll pay-per-view forever when I used to (circa 2002) be able to buy it once and view it as often as I please? What makes Sony et.al. think I'll pay thousands of dollars to buy hardware that enables this piracy? The MPAA and RIAA are the real pirates in this story, not me.
Solving the "piracy" problem -- even if they could -- will not promote broadband under the current conditions, and that's what my letters to my Senators say.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Helpful links:
(An identical letter was sent to Sen. John Kerry.)
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.