Ultimately, the consumer has to bear the invasion of their rights to do what they wanna do. Consumers tolerate alot now, what with macrovision and all, but when it comes to a total restriction and worse yet, potential for monitoring of behaviors done in their own homes, consumers just won't buy. Digital TV is still a helluva long way off for mainstream consumption so I imagine that this noise will have played out before we see the first unit for sale at Best Buy. If not, DTV is the DiVX of the next decade.
The quote was that early leader of the publishing and thought, Benjamin Franklin and goes more like this:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
While I respect the sentiment, I hardly think that Al Gore represents armies of jack-booted thugs poised to crush free thought and expression. While I didn't support the Parents Music Resource Center and the various other efforts pushed by Tipper and opposed by the likes of Ice-T and Jello Biafra in the late 80s, I am forced to admit that there has been little impact on free expression by requiring labelling of music for potentially offensive content.
It astounds me that Slashdot continues to provoke the armchair attorneys with microanalyses of legal issues. It's great to encourage literacy of the legal system, but it's getting a little silly with the hard-core pro-Napster sentiments that are regularly provoked and now the popularity of anti-Apple sentiments that smack of the same vigor that the anti-Microsoft posting did during the MS trial.
In repsonse to "look-and-fee" this is a trade dress issue and while in the mid-eighties, the legal climate didn't support the idea that computers could even be proprietary much less protected IP (though there were exceptions for outright code theft ala Apple Computer, Inc., vs. Franklin) the current legal climate would likely have yielded a trade dress protection for MacOS versus Windows. Windows, clearly, was attempting to blur the product distinctiveness and confuse the GUI issue with the design or the Windows GUI. That makes it and infringing product. Period. In the eighties, MacOS was simply found to not be entitled to that kind of legal protection, right or wrong. Today, iMacs have been protected from products that are clearly designed to capitalize on the iMac success. Legitimate competition is OK, theft of trade dress isn't, at least in the current legal climate.
Also, prerelease of product information can be very damaging to corporate sales. The leakage of Adobe's Photoshop 6 info on MacNN's AppleInsider site two months ago has undoubtedly delayed purchases of new copies of Photoshop 5.5 pending the release of 6. Companies guard their new product data to avoid being toasted like Osborne was back in the early eighties where early announcement of the next computer model killed current sales and the company subsequently tanked due to lack of revenues. Had Apple not released the cube at MacWorld SF (which was a possibility and since the machine hasn't yet started shipping a Seybold announcement would have made more sense) the leaked information could very well have damaged sales for other G4 macs. That's certainly materially damaging as leaked information often is.
Just my grumblings. I'm not a lawyer, but I spend many days buried in Intellectual Property issues, so I have some fluency in them.
Unless of course you are running IE on a Mac, in which case nothing happens. The same is true with Netscape on Mac for that matter. I may take a look from one of the Windoze boxes at work monday, but it probably doesn't work from 2000 or something else moronic.
The GPLing of Star Office does not bode well for it's viability. Why? Well...
1. Sun is now admitting that the idea of giving away a free office suite is non-viable and they are opening the source as a way to divest their engineering resources. Don't expect help from Sun in this area. 2. Cross-platform support will die. Open Source projects of significant magnitude just don't happen on the major GUI OSes. StarOffice for Windows will lag far enough behind StarOffice for Linux that it won't be the cross-platform solution that it is touted as today. 3. This might even spell the death of StarOffice. GPL has produces a whole bunch of useful code, but the inevitable branching of the project will kill the corporate acceptability of StarOffice. Branching has proven inevitable on all but the simplest of projects. 4. If all that's not enough, GPL'd projects don't generally produce good end user software in terms of UI. Granted StarOffice pretty well sucks now in this regard, GPL won't help.
Assuming Sun goes forward with GPLing StarOffice, we can all pretty much stop watching it.
It's f'ing amazing to me that it's impossible to carry on lucid and thought out discussion on the relative merits of open source versus any other model. It has become so typical to see the guys in these forums react this way such that an end-user focused OS must suck because users suck and supporting them is too much work. Apparently, the slashdot crown lives only in server closets and never venture out. Heck, surely these self same people are annoyed that their own mothers can't send them email because computers are too hard to use. Really, there are merits to everything. I use a Macintosh for the things that it's good at, I also heavily make use of linux/unix boxes both as servers and workhorses. I wouldn't trade either one for the other since both have strengths. The very idea that open source has brought us tools as strong as Photoshop and Illustrator and Freehand is ludicrous. If I don't have time to write a decent illustration tool then I can't have on linux. And I don't buy the idea that the GIMP even comes close to Photoshop in real utility, it's a silly comparison. (something that will no doubt get me flamed) All that said, it's unfortunate that the open source community or more accurately based on the posts replying to this piece open source mob can't be challenged with the idea that linux can't and won't be a panacea for all computing needs. It's also sad to see commentary that is so self centered and insular that anything that you might not need is of no value. Very sad, really.
Andy Grove is sitting having coffee right now thinking that he'll lots of high speed motherboard chipset and ram. He's also thinking that all this is good since developers will use the power and force upgrade cycles across the industry. Everything that hypes the platform is good for Intel.
AMD is really interesting but will have to prove that they have the staying power to keep up for more than a single generation of processors. Historically, AMD has been an also ran who offered interesting ways to upgrade older machines. Eighteen months from now they may demonstrate true leadership. For now, it's interesting but not really exciting.
Disrupting interstate commerce is a federal crime. Guess what, the net is interstate. It's time to accept the fact that while much of the net can slide quietly by many traditional laws, once you start playing games with things that violate federal statute the FBI notices. Moreover, the disruptions impacted the stock prices of the sites involved. The Securities and Exchange Commission is watching for people who might have profited as a result. Manipulating stock prices is illegal. I feel sorry for the poor schmucks who got lucky as the script kiddies did their deeds. Also, we add to the mix the Federal Trade Commission because of the interstate commerce issue. You start jacking with trade you bring all kinds of evils out of the woodwork. This is very bad. It's a shame, but some minimally clever h4x0rs are going to cost us all a whole lot of freedom once this all shakes out.
As a physician, I've turned my attention to efforts directly in the computer industry rather than trying valiantly to bring my collegues forward into the computer age. The reasons are many: Physicians don't want technology. I make this assertion based on observation of physician habits and policy statements. In fact, I attended a medical informatics conference last year with thoughts of doing a fellowship there were several prominent physician informaticists there who stated "I'd rather take someone into my program who knows nothing about technology rather than someone who has ideas about how it can change the world," and "we don't want to use technology to change the practice of medicine." So, I've moved on to the private sector. Physicans won't spend money on technology. The only Y2K disasters that I know of are private doctor's medical billing systems that they've been too cheap to upgrade. There are more 8088 based machines in physician offices than just about anywhere else. Physicans can't get along well enough to open source. Peer review in medicine is so much of a 'good ol' boy' game that the Reviewers would likely never relinquish control of medical information. Physicians fear liability too much. Doctors aren't going to take a risk on something new unless they can be totally insulated from liability. If a CT scanner produces a faulty image, they can blame GE. Who can they foist blame on if the code that produced the buggy image was Open Source? I know this sounds kind of jaded and bitter, but the medical profession needs to get to 1990 in their technological thinking before they are ready for a 21st century solution like Open Source. Dr. Warren Magnus
This really creates something new and different. No matter what it is that I'm good at, now I can do it from the privacy of my own home without shaving or bothering to get dressed. This looks to me like the ultimate economic hack. I wonder if there will be infomarco parlors that come up as knowledgable folk gather together at high speed connected hubs the way that day traders gather now.
The whole thing is silly. If any of the anti-Unisys crowd had bothered reading the material at Unisys' site, they'd see that the real beef that Unisys has is with the GIF generating code. Basically, sites that generate their GIFs on the fly via unlicensed code or use images generated with unlicensed apps are liable. Others are not. For those that are using the various free sources for their GIF generating code, it seems likely that they can be held legally accountable. I'm not worried about the stuff that I've done in GIF format since I know it to be legally generated.
The real problem with Suits per se is the fundamental lack of understanding of the engineering mentality and perspective. Since most IS managers, it seems, have come out of business training with only a modicum of technical knowledge. Those few engineering managers who have both the technical savvy to herd cats in the traditional engineering sense and have the ability to speak the financial-babble of upper management should work together to promote that unique blend of skills that prevents the boneheaded Suitian behavior we so often associate with management. Perhaps Engineering Degrees with associated MBAs as a secondary training path. Engineers first, suits second. Of course, that probably would just produce alot of dangerous whores.
Slashdot Mirror
Ultimately, the consumer has to bear the invasion of their rights to do what they wanna do. Consumers tolerate alot now, what with macrovision and all, but when it comes to a total restriction and worse yet, potential for monitoring of behaviors done in their own homes, consumers just won't buy. Digital TV is still a helluva long way off for mainstream consumption so I imagine that this noise will have played out before we see the first unit for sale at Best Buy. If not, DTV is the DiVX of the next decade.
The quote was that early leader of the publishing and thought, Benjamin Franklin and goes more like this:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
While I respect the sentiment, I hardly think that Al Gore represents armies of jack-booted thugs poised to crush free thought and expression. While I didn't support the Parents Music Resource Center and the various other efforts pushed by Tipper and opposed by the likes of Ice-T and Jello Biafra in the late 80s, I am forced to admit that there has been little impact on free expression by requiring labelling of music for potentially offensive content.
It astounds me that Slashdot continues to provoke the armchair attorneys with microanalyses of legal issues. It's great to encourage literacy of the legal system, but it's getting a little silly with the hard-core pro-Napster sentiments that are regularly provoked and now the popularity of anti-Apple sentiments that smack of the same vigor that the anti-Microsoft posting did during the MS trial.
In repsonse to "look-and-fee" this is a trade dress issue and while in the mid-eighties, the legal climate didn't support the idea that computers could even be proprietary much less protected IP (though there were exceptions for outright code theft ala Apple Computer, Inc., vs. Franklin ) the current legal climate would likely have yielded a trade dress protection for MacOS versus Windows. Windows, clearly, was attempting to blur the product distinctiveness and confuse the GUI issue with the design or the Windows GUI. That makes it and infringing product. Period. In the eighties, MacOS was simply found to not be entitled to that kind of legal protection, right or wrong. Today, iMacs have been protected from products that are clearly designed to capitalize on the iMac success. Legitimate competition is OK, theft of trade dress isn't, at least in the current legal climate.
Also, prerelease of product information can be very damaging to corporate sales. The leakage of Adobe's Photoshop 6 info on MacNN's AppleInsider site two months ago has undoubtedly delayed purchases of new copies of Photoshop 5.5 pending the release of 6. Companies guard their new product data to avoid being toasted like Osborne was back in the early eighties where early announcement of the next computer model killed current sales and the company subsequently tanked due to lack of revenues. Had Apple not released the cube at MacWorld SF (which was a possibility and since the machine hasn't yet started shipping a Seybold announcement would have made more sense) the leaked information could very well have damaged sales for other G4 macs. That's certainly materially damaging as leaked information often is.
Just my grumblings. I'm not a lawyer, but I spend many days buried in Intellectual Property issues, so I have some fluency in them.
Unless of course you are running IE on a Mac, in which case nothing happens. The same is true with Netscape on Mac for that matter. I may take a look from one of the Windoze boxes at work monday, but it probably doesn't work from 2000 or something else moronic.
The GPLing of Star Office does not bode well for it's viability. Why? Well...
1. Sun is now admitting that the idea of giving away a free office suite is non-viable and they are opening the source as a way to divest their engineering resources. Don't expect help from Sun in this area.
2. Cross-platform support will die. Open Source projects of significant magnitude just don't happen on the major GUI OSes. StarOffice for Windows will lag far enough behind StarOffice for Linux that it won't be the cross-platform solution that it is touted as today.
3. This might even spell the death of StarOffice. GPL has produces a whole bunch of useful code, but the inevitable branching of the project will kill the corporate acceptability of StarOffice. Branching has proven inevitable on all but the simplest of projects.
4. If all that's not enough, GPL'd projects don't generally produce good end user software in terms of UI. Granted StarOffice pretty well sucks now in this regard, GPL won't help.
Assuming Sun goes forward with GPLing StarOffice, we can all pretty much stop watching it.
Just my controvertial $.02.
It's f'ing amazing to me that it's impossible to carry on lucid and thought out discussion on the relative merits of open source versus any other model.
It has become so typical to see the guys in these forums react this way such that an end-user focused OS must suck because users suck and supporting them is too much work. Apparently, the slashdot crown lives only in server closets and never venture out.
Heck, surely these self same people are annoyed that their own mothers can't send them email because computers are too hard to use.
Really, there are merits to everything. I use a Macintosh for the things that it's good at, I also heavily make use of linux/unix boxes both as servers and workhorses. I wouldn't trade either one for the other since both have strengths. The very idea that open source has brought us tools as strong as Photoshop and Illustrator and Freehand is ludicrous. If I don't have time to write a decent illustration tool then I can't have on linux. And I don't buy the idea that the GIMP even comes close to Photoshop in real utility, it's a silly comparison. (something that will no doubt get me flamed)
All that said, it's unfortunate that the open source community or more accurately based on the posts replying to this piece open source mob can't be challenged with the idea that linux can't and won't be a panacea for all computing needs. It's also sad to see commentary that is so self centered and insular that anything that you might not need is of no value.
Very sad, really.
Well,
Andy Grove is sitting having coffee right now thinking that he'll lots of high speed motherboard chipset and ram. He's also thinking that all this is good since developers will use the power and force upgrade cycles across the industry. Everything that hypes the platform is good for Intel.
AMD is really interesting but will have to prove that they have the staying power to keep up for more than a single generation of processors. Historically, AMD has been an also ran who offered interesting ways to upgrade older machines. Eighteen months from now they may demonstrate true leadership. For now, it's interesting but not really exciting.
Disrupting interstate commerce is a federal crime. Guess what, the net is interstate. It's time to accept the fact that while much of the net can slide quietly by many traditional laws, once you start playing games with things that violate federal statute the FBI notices. Moreover, the disruptions impacted the stock prices of the sites involved. The Securities and Exchange Commission is watching for people who might have profited as a result. Manipulating stock prices is illegal. I feel sorry for the poor schmucks who got lucky as the script kiddies did their deeds. Also, we add to the mix the Federal Trade Commission because of the interstate commerce issue. You start jacking with trade you bring all kinds of evils out of the woodwork. This is very bad. It's a shame, but some minimally clever h4x0rs are going to cost us all a whole lot of freedom once this all shakes out.
As a physician, I've turned my attention to efforts directly in the computer industry rather than trying valiantly to bring my collegues forward into the computer age. The reasons are many: Physicians don't want technology. I make this assertion based on observation of physician habits and policy statements. In fact, I attended a medical informatics conference last year with thoughts of doing a fellowship there were several prominent physician informaticists there who stated "I'd rather take someone into my program who knows nothing about technology rather than someone who has ideas about how it can change the world," and "we don't want to use technology to change the practice of medicine." So, I've moved on to the private sector. Physicans won't spend money on technology. The only Y2K disasters that I know of are private doctor's medical billing systems that they've been too cheap to upgrade. There are more 8088 based machines in physician offices than just about anywhere else. Physicans can't get along well enough to open source. Peer review in medicine is so much of a 'good ol' boy' game that the Reviewers would likely never relinquish control of medical information. Physicians fear liability too much. Doctors aren't going to take a risk on something new unless they can be totally insulated from liability. If a CT scanner produces a faulty image, they can blame GE. Who can they foist blame on if the code that produced the buggy image was Open Source? I know this sounds kind of jaded and bitter, but the medical profession needs to get to 1990 in their technological thinking before they are ready for a 21st century solution like Open Source. Dr. Warren Magnus
This really creates something new and different. No matter what it is that I'm good at, now I can do it from the privacy of my own home without shaving or bothering to get dressed. This looks to me like the ultimate economic hack. I wonder if there will be infomarco parlors that come up as knowledgable folk gather together at high speed connected hubs the way that day traders gather now.
The whole thing is silly. If any of the anti-Unisys crowd had bothered reading the material at Unisys' site, they'd see that the real beef that Unisys has is with the GIF generating code. Basically, sites that generate their GIFs on the fly via unlicensed code or use images generated with unlicensed apps are liable. Others are not. For those that are using the various free sources for their GIF generating code, it seems likely that they can be held legally accountable. I'm not worried about the stuff that I've done in GIF format since I know it to be legally generated.
The real problem with Suits per se is the fundamental lack of understanding of the engineering mentality and perspective. Since most IS managers, it seems, have come out of business training with only a modicum of technical knowledge. Those few engineering managers who have both the technical savvy to herd cats in the traditional engineering sense and have the ability to speak the financial-babble of upper management should work together to promote that unique blend of skills that prevents the boneheaded Suitian behavior we so often associate with management. Perhaps Engineering Degrees with associated MBAs as a secondary training path. Engineers first, suits second. Of course, that probably would just produce alot of dangerous whores.