i think what he's trying to refer to is things like how people say at one time 'i support freedom of speech', and then at another time say 'i think (such and such which consists of speech) is bad'. this particular thing annoys me, and i'd prefer people would delineate their meaning of 'free speech', because generally speaking people don't actually want free speech, meaning people being able to speak whenever and however they wanted to (including yelling in someone else's ear or something else that could be damaging).
since almost everyone wants almost-free speech, they get along saying 'free speech', but i think people should better delineate what they mean by that. great-great-grandparent seems to dislike the idea of people insulting people based on race, for example, but if we asked someone like that whether he thinks free speech is a good thing, he'd say yes and it'd be unlikely he'd add a caveat to the response. by comparison, no-one seems to want people to have freedom to enslave:)
my personal opinion: people should be allowed to communicate with others however they want if it's not immediately disruptive to people outside the conversation. i mean, _all_ communication, even that which i find insulting, if i can't hear it i oughtn't complain about it. however, people should not be able to talk to other people if the person being talked to does not want to be. so people would be able to make evilish remarks to friends, but talking to people that aren't expecting it (like, talking to random people on the street) would be covered more or less like it is now (where if a policeman/judge/legislator thinks you're being an ass, you get in trouble). this would mean, for example, we can publish anything we want on a website, because in order to be offended you'd have to actually visit it (an http get).
actually, stuff like portions of spectrum have been given away to existing big players for free on occasion, no auction. i wish i still had the link... anyway, yes, the internet in the us has all the negatives of lasseiz-faire and all the negatives of government control.
online i often use 'hugh jass', like from the bart simpson prank calls.
it was quite comical when my little brother used the name to register his xbox live account. later on when the family called had to call the customer help line for some reason there was confusion:)
you bring up a decent view. you shouldn't be modded down or given stupid answers so i'll try to give a good one. i can definitely understand the feeling of wanting money for selling one's work.
i can try to give a rebuttal, but to do so requires primarily me giving an anti-intellectual-property speech. well, here it is. the argument here is that having a world of all free software is _more_ according to capitalist ideals than having a world that is all or mostly proprietary software. the capitalist ideal involves a lot of different things, but a large part of it is that the government should stay out of the workings of things and keep order. second, a big part of capitalism is having people invest in something then get a benefit later because they invested wisely in some corporation.
if we get rid of software (or other stuff) patents or copyrights or whatever, there will be fewer laws. this means that people are, literally, freer to do stuff. since copyright and patent involve governments stepping in and telling people not to do stuff (much like with real property), a person who desires smaller government would prefer property laws be there only for situations that disrupt the system (in other words, it primarily depends on whether you think an idea can be property).
a big thing about capitalism that separates it from the simple ideals anarchy or libertarianism is the concept of capital-- that is, one invests in a way that he wishes to see returns. this spirit would live on in a world without sofware patents and software copyright, and we already see the beginnings of it. many corporations hire people to work on open source stuff (probably the biggest example is ibm, though they're not the best example since they have a huge stake in keeping z/os and aix proprietary). basically, if someone wants some software, he and others who want software to do something would invest in some group of coders who would then produce the software. the benefit to the investors is not as obvious as investing in stocks and bonds, but it would produce the same net effect; if the investors were wise in their choice and thus the software is useful to them, they benefit.
at the same time, software or information freedom has all the benefits of communism without the downsides. if i and some friends want a program, we can code it or hire people to code it. then, if we give it away, we are not made worse off, while the world can benefit from it. communism didn't work because the efforts of a person weren't seen by that person.
basically, it's got the best elements of laissez-faire and communism. it's pretty compelling if you look at it that way. businesses that have built up on intellectual property would be harmed, and significantly so. but the practice of coding would definitely not die, or even diminish (most coding and/or computer science is done for in-house stuff, not for sale of a software product).
ok, that got kind of disorganized, but anyway, my 2 cents.
just curious -- is that american or canadian dollars? if it's canadian that sounds like a great deal. if it's american... well it still sounds like a great deal.
i think i read something somewhere (sorry, can't find a link) saying that 'day' was a semi-mistranslation; it was supposed to be like 'back in my day' sort of day. ah, if only i could read languages other than english, i'd have this settled by now. anyway, there's plenty of other stuff that's messed up about genesis, even in that little bit (like how all plants were created before all animals... yeah right).
in other religions a lot of creation myths don't actually describe the beginning of the universe, simply the reconfiguration of things that were already there, so personally i think that people have been taking the jewish/christian/whatever religion a bit too far.
it seems that a lot of people are perfectly fine with the government wiretapping them, saying "if i'm not doing anything wrong, why should i mind?"
tell them that unencrypted data across the internet can be read by his isp and/or the government, they'll either say it's implausible/absurd, or that they don't mind and it's perfectly within their rights to do so, and anyone who would use encryption for anything other than bank data must be a crook of some sort. perhaps it stems from various shows and movies showing law enforcement tapping phones and using sophisticated (and unrealistic) software to track things.
i know i'm a more-paranoid-than-most person when it comes to security, but jeez, some people need to change their views on things in a harsher online world.
they don't have to be the clueless unintelligent sort of person who's distractable by american idol -- smart people can be ignorant about these things, and very obstinant in their opinion (sometimes maybe because they're smart and used to being right).
a government can print money (though they usually choose not to to maintain trust)
a government can imprison or kill anyone they want (though they usually choose not to to maintain trust)
at least the us government has very strong control over an american citizen's finances (on the lighter side, they can freeze accounts, on the heavier side they can fine people).
a government that has trust can do whatever it wants. the issue is maintaining the trust. it's the only reason that government doesn't just give money directly to people, rather doing it by favoring them through various methods, like intentionally purchasing their product whether it's the best or not, or making laws in their favor. a similar tactic is being used here; the eve online players could get their accounts deleted or get money given or taken however the gamemasters want, but the gm's will instead create situations that go in their favor. it's a lot harder to prove.
i think this demonstrates a fundamental flaw with credit cards; they're trying to do asymmetric crypto using a shared secret key.
in order to pay with a credit card, you must give your number -- your secret key -- to the merchant. you must then trust the merchant to not do something evil with it. therein lies the problem; merchants can be evil or can be incompetent (usually incompetent/ignorant). they're just not trustworthy with security. but because credit card fraud is not generally worried about that much, people go on as usual.
the real solution would be to digital signatures -- specifically, you carry something around that has a computer on board (like a cell phone or blackberry or whatever) and when you need to pay for something, you create a message (we'd have to construct a standard for these) saying you are paying x amount to them and digitally sign that message and give the message (which would not contain your key, obviously) to the merchant.
voila, merchant is no longer a problem. the credit card companies don't even have to store the secret key if the customer wants, just the public key. in that case, the credit card companies wouldn't even be hackable for the purposes of credit card fraud. (though they would be for the data, which is also valuable)
hold on -- ok, it's obvious you know more about this than i do, but you say after one point about the slowly rising sea level that you don't mind its slowness. then right after you say that it's rising faster than anyone predicted; what's going on? (i suppose both could be true, but it seems strange)
there are some things we can do to clean up fossil fuel powerplants, but it's not as effective as just replacing them with something better. and production of co2 is a fact of combustion; the only thing we could do is make the c into something else, and that takes a lot of effort. we need modern nuclear reactors (they're cleaner too) and more solar/wind/wave powered things.
after some googling, i found a bit of a something, though i didn't find the presentation i saw.
this article is more an anti-gore thing, but it mentions gieg.
anyway, battery technology is getting there, and there are some that point to an oil conspiracy... ok whatever. i'll give a link, say i don't necessarily trust it, you decide (i mean, it is the internet).
it might not be hard for gas stations to set up power outlets that monitor usage, then charge customers who use them. the transition would not be hard for them, though it would require they change their business model perhaps.
hey, i'm not the climatologist, he is; you want to hear what he has to say, go right ahead. his argument was pretty convincing, though i'm not completely convinced. my personal opinion now is that we still shouldn't be producing as much co2 or anything, to be on the safe side.
as far as the thing about humans vs planet, i meant that more in an overall sense (i referenced dinosaurs...).
the hybrid thing though; the infrastructure is there -- there are electrical outlets everywhere. furthermore, personal sized engines are much less efficient than ones based on creating electrical energy could be (at least in theory; i don't know about the actual efficiency of coal powerplants, but if i were to build one i'd care about that a lot, and i don't have to facilitate changes in rpm like a car's engine would, even in a hybrid).
so, even if the electricity is taken from a fossil fuel plant it's not as bad as a hybrid. a hybrid, though, has some of the downsides of an electric car: in the production of batteries there is often pollution, for example. we could say that about pretty much anything, but just wanted to throw that out there, since we could say the same thing about solar panels....and i think we all have problems with the use of fossil fuel powerplants anyway. we probably agree there. we should be using, well, pretty much anything else.
thing is, there are some legit claims against the greenhouse effect causing global warming (ie, things not from corporate shills -- friend of a friend of a friend is professor giggengack (spelling?) who pokes holes in the inconvenient truth movie). but, in general, the thing is that we, humans, are more endangering ourselves than the planet. earth and its creatures evolve, they'll be fine. there were times millions of years ago that co2 was way way higher than today (but not necessarily temperature), and the dinosaurs etc were perfectly comfortable.
anyway, much bigger dangers than global warming are things like how we poison ourselves by dumping chemical crap in unsafe ways, how we let politics (politics between and within corporations as well) get in the way of efficiency, all sorts of stuff. (what the hell happened to electic cars? why are we using hybrids?)
probably the biggest threat of all is the desire of politicians, corporations, and even much of the general public to not know what's gonna happen ten years, a hundred years, a thousand years in the future.
dealing with bandwidth hogs is easy for routers to do without even having to look at the body of the ip packets. the whole thing about p2p is just that they want an excuse to give poor service.
your legitimate use of an encrypted channel to transmit private data you need for work too slow? aww, well we had to slow all encrypted data transfer because of pirates.
and places do have decreased speed for encrypted communications. they also sometimes have limitations on bittorrent in general, which while most bittorrents (vast majority) are illegal, some aren't.
if there's an excuse that most customers find plausible, they won't lose business. so, the businesses are smart and blame pirates.
routers are smart. if they get a lot of traffic on one port, one so configured could realize that that person should get lower priority. so, your voip call shouldn't be squashed by someone else doing some heavy downloads.
it takes someone else's research that separated people into four groups, then merges two groups... for no apparent reason
it had very few (thirtysomething) people interviewed, and many times they say things like "all but two in this category believed somethingorother", when you have to realize that all but two could have been 10, or 5, or 15. it's a decent claim, but using the phrasing he does makes it seem as if it was a grand sweeping truth.
it also doesn't seem to bring up any ideas we haven't already seen, though i guess if we read/. we already put an atypical amount of thought into the subject.
additionally, it is unclear to me what weight mr maccormack, who from the paper seems very much a business type of person and not a software developer at all, has in making a 'developer's bill of rights' for open source folks, especially if he's not a dev himself. (his harvard page says that he has electrical engineering training, which is admirable compared to others who write similar papers, though i have a biased negative-ish opinion of people who go into business after getting an engineering degree)
his business orientation is evident in some of the views he puts into the story, perhaps most obviously in his use of microsoft funded research apparently without a second thought on what bias might exist there...
this already happens on really lossy transmissions -- especially things like satellite tv or, say, deep-ish space missions don't want to waste time retransmitting (in satellite tv, if you didn't get it, you can't ask for it again, your picture just looks terrible for a split second).
so, they use error correcting codes, like, for example, parity (like raid 4,5) or reed-solomon (i think that's used in raid 6 or 7 or something), or turbo-codes.
fyi, for the latter i don't actually know how it works.
anyway, this is a pretty good idea (even though it's certainly been thought before); i'd be happy to see tcp replaced with something a bit smarter and just as functional.
as there are people with a lot of money who are interested in one format winning over the other, things will not be allowed to be worked out 'organically'.
in the case of odf vs ooxml (i'm tempted to call ooxml msooxml, but i might get flamed), odf is sort of linked to how openoffice/staroffice is designed. ooxml is _very_ closely linked to how ms office is designed. essentially, there are two formats and they're not that similar though they have very similar purposes. both sides would want theirs to be chosen because the winner gets a much easier job of dealing with it.
another reason why it wouldn't work out nicely to have two formats is that people seem to not like to conform to standards. just look at html and xml and xhtml and css and how tremendously non-standard pretty much every website is. with all the bugs peoples' webpages have (some of which placed intentionally to make it appear nicely in browser-of-choice), it's suddenly not so surprising that web browsers are so bloated for what they need to do. many browsers (including ie and firefox) claim to support some standard and only come partway, or implement it wrong.
so, essentially, it would be wonderful to have one standard on which documents could be traded between programs, unless people learn to test their programs against others, bugs in one would mean interoperability.
now, combine that with having two standards. a small error in creating a document in one standard, which we then convert to another to view in some other app... the potential for error avalanches.
ok, i haven't looked closely at either of the two specs, but even though odf appears much better than ooxml, they both seem to suck.
i think that the best sort of spec would be one that's simple (i like xhtml+css much more than html+css), much as the cisc vs risc instruction set battle -- except the document formats are much more complicated than any assembly language i've ever seen. personally, i kind of like latex, where things are simple by necessity, as a human often is writing it.
however, the best format (which i personally don't think exists) wouldn't win in this battle, because which format wins is more dependent on the users, who will automatically use whichever is the default for their application... and if it's ms word, it will, unfortunately, be ooxml.
Slashdot Mirror
i think what he's trying to refer to is things like how people say at one time 'i support freedom of speech', and then at another time say 'i think (such and such which consists of speech) is bad'. this particular thing annoys me, and i'd prefer people would delineate their meaning of 'free speech', because generally speaking people don't actually want free speech, meaning people being able to speak whenever and however they wanted to (including yelling in someone else's ear or something else that could be damaging).
:)
since almost everyone wants almost-free speech, they get along saying 'free speech', but i think people should better delineate what they mean by that. great-great-grandparent seems to dislike the idea of people insulting people based on race, for example, but if we asked someone like that whether he thinks free speech is a good thing, he'd say yes and it'd be unlikely he'd add a caveat to the response. by comparison, no-one seems to want people to have freedom to enslave
my personal opinion: people should be allowed to communicate with others however they want if it's not immediately disruptive to people outside the conversation. i mean, _all_ communication, even that which i find insulting, if i can't hear it i oughtn't complain about it. however, people should not be able to talk to other people if the person being talked to does not want to be. so people would be able to make evilish remarks to friends, but talking to people that aren't expecting it (like, talking to random people on the street) would be covered more or less like it is now (where if a policeman/judge/legislator thinks you're being an ass, you get in trouble). this would mean, for example, we can publish anything we want on a website, because in order to be offended you'd have to actually visit it (an http get).
actually, stuff like portions of spectrum have been given away to existing big players for free on occasion, no auction. i wish i still had the link... anyway, yes, the internet in the us has all the negatives of lasseiz-faire and all the negatives of government control.
online i often use 'hugh jass', like from the bart simpson prank calls.
:)
it was quite comical when my little brother used the name to register his xbox live account. later on when the family called had to call the customer help line for some reason there was confusion
you bring up a decent view. you shouldn't be modded down or given stupid answers so i'll try to give a good one. i can definitely understand the feeling of wanting money for selling one's work.
i can try to give a rebuttal, but to do so requires primarily me giving an anti-intellectual-property speech. well, here it is. the argument here is that having a world of all free software is _more_ according to capitalist ideals than having a world that is all or mostly proprietary software. the capitalist ideal involves a lot of different things, but a large part of it is that the government should stay out of the workings of things and keep order. second, a big part of capitalism is having people invest in something then get a benefit later because they invested wisely in some corporation.
if we get rid of software (or other stuff) patents or copyrights or whatever, there will be fewer laws. this means that people are, literally, freer to do stuff. since copyright and patent involve governments stepping in and telling people not to do stuff (much like with real property), a person who desires smaller government would prefer property laws be there only for situations that disrupt the system (in other words, it primarily depends on whether you think an idea can be property).
a big thing about capitalism that separates it from the simple ideals anarchy or libertarianism is the concept of capital-- that is, one invests in a way that he wishes to see returns. this spirit would live on in a world without sofware patents and software copyright, and we already see the beginnings of it. many corporations hire people to work on open source stuff (probably the biggest example is ibm, though they're not the best example since they have a huge stake in keeping z/os and aix proprietary). basically, if someone wants some software, he and others who want software to do something would invest in some group of coders who would then produce the software. the benefit to the investors is not as obvious as investing in stocks and bonds, but it would produce the same net effect; if the investors were wise in their choice and thus the software is useful to them, they benefit.
at the same time, software or information freedom has all the benefits of communism without the downsides. if i and some friends want a program, we can code it or hire people to code it. then, if we give it away, we are not made worse off, while the world can benefit from it. communism didn't work because the efforts of a person weren't seen by that person.
basically, it's got the best elements of laissez-faire and communism. it's pretty compelling if you look at it that way. businesses that have built up on intellectual property would be harmed, and significantly so. but the practice of coding would definitely not die, or even diminish (most coding and/or computer science is done for in-house stuff, not for sale of a software product).
ok, that got kind of disorganized, but anyway, my 2 cents.
just curious -- is that american or canadian dollars? if it's canadian that sounds like a great deal. if it's american... well it still sounds like a great deal.
i think i read something somewhere (sorry, can't find a link) saying that 'day' was a semi-mistranslation; it was supposed to be like 'back in my day' sort of day. ah, if only i could read languages other than english, i'd have this settled by now. anyway, there's plenty of other stuff that's messed up about genesis, even in that little bit (like how all plants were created before all animals... yeah right).
in other religions a lot of creation myths don't actually describe the beginning of the universe, simply the reconfiguration of things that were already there, so personally i think that people have been taking the jewish/christian/whatever religion a bit too far.
it seems that a lot of people are perfectly fine with the government wiretapping them, saying "if i'm not doing anything wrong, why should i mind?"
tell them that unencrypted data across the internet can be read by his isp and/or the government, they'll either say it's implausible/absurd, or that they don't mind and it's perfectly within their rights to do so, and anyone who would use encryption for anything other than bank data must be a crook of some sort. perhaps it stems from various shows and movies showing law enforcement tapping phones and using sophisticated (and unrealistic) software to track things.
i know i'm a more-paranoid-than-most person when it comes to security, but jeez, some people need to change their views on things in a harsher online world.
they don't have to be the clueless unintelligent sort of person who's distractable by american idol -- smart people can be ignorant about these things, and very obstinant in their opinion (sometimes maybe because they're smart and used to being right).
you mean like eve online? :)
a government can print money (though they usually choose not to to maintain trust)
a government can imprison or kill anyone they want (though they usually choose not to to maintain trust)
at least the us government has very strong control over an american citizen's finances (on the lighter side, they can freeze accounts, on the heavier side they can fine people).
a government that has trust can do whatever it wants. the issue is maintaining the trust. it's the only reason that government doesn't just give money directly to people, rather doing it by favoring them through various methods, like intentionally purchasing their product whether it's the best or not, or making laws in their favor. a similar tactic is being used here; the eve online players could get their accounts deleted or get money given or taken however the gamemasters want, but the gm's will instead create situations that go in their favor. it's a lot harder to prove.
pff. next you'll be telling me that the dutch don't live in the deuchland
this is an improvement, but if it can be used for recurring purchases, then can't the merchant still erroneously charge you for stuff?
this is only a partial solution. it still requires a lot of trust, both in the merchant and the credit card company.
i think this demonstrates a fundamental flaw with credit cards; they're trying to do asymmetric crypto using a shared secret key.
in order to pay with a credit card, you must give your number -- your secret key -- to the merchant. you must then trust the merchant to not do something evil with it. therein lies the problem; merchants can be evil or can be incompetent (usually incompetent/ignorant). they're just not trustworthy with security. but because credit card fraud is not generally worried about that much, people go on as usual.
the real solution would be to digital signatures -- specifically, you carry something around that has a computer on board (like a cell phone or blackberry or whatever) and when you need to pay for something, you create a message (we'd have to construct a standard for these) saying you are paying x amount to them and digitally sign that message and give the message (which would not contain your key, obviously) to the merchant.
voila, merchant is no longer a problem. the credit card companies don't even have to store the secret key if the customer wants, just the public key. in that case, the credit card companies wouldn't even be hackable for the purposes of credit card fraud. (though they would be for the data, which is also valuable)
hold on -- ok, it's obvious you know more about this than i do, but you say after one point about the slowly rising sea level that you don't mind its slowness. then right after you say that it's rising faster than anyone predicted; what's going on? (i suppose both could be true, but it seems strange)
there are some things we can do to clean up fossil fuel powerplants, but it's not as effective as just replacing them with something better. and production of co2 is a fact of combustion; the only thing we could do is make the c into something else, and that takes a lot of effort. we need modern nuclear reactors (they're cleaner too) and more solar/wind/wave powered things.
a _greenhouse_gasbag
after some googling, i found a bit of a something, though i didn't find the presentation i saw.
http://phillymag.com/articles/science_al_gore_is_
this article is more an anti-gore thing, but it mentions gieg.
anyway, battery technology is getting there, and there are some that point to an oil conspiracy... ok whatever. i'll give a link, say i don't necessarily trust it, you decide (i mean, it is the internet).
http://www.ev1.org/
it might not be hard for gas stations to set up power outlets that monitor usage, then charge customers who use them. the transition would not be hard for them, though it would require they change their business model perhaps.
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/earth/giegenga.html
hey, i'm not the climatologist, he is; you want to hear what he has to say, go right ahead. his argument was pretty convincing, though i'm not completely convinced. my personal opinion now is that we still shouldn't be producing as much co2 or anything, to be on the safe side.
as far as the thing about humans vs planet, i meant that more in an overall sense (i referenced dinosaurs...).
the hybrid thing though; the infrastructure is there -- there are electrical outlets everywhere. furthermore, personal sized engines are much less efficient than ones based on creating electrical energy could be (at least in theory; i don't know about the actual efficiency of coal powerplants, but if i were to build one i'd care about that a lot, and i don't have to facilitate changes in rpm like a car's engine would, even in a hybrid).
so, even if the electricity is taken from a fossil fuel plant it's not as bad as a hybrid. a hybrid, though, has some of the downsides of an electric car: in the production of batteries there is often pollution, for example. we could say that about pretty much anything, but just wanted to throw that out there, since we could say the same thing about solar panels.
thing is, there are some legit claims against the greenhouse effect causing global warming (ie, things not from corporate shills -- friend of a friend of a friend is professor giggengack (spelling?) who pokes holes in the inconvenient truth movie). but, in general, the thing is that we, humans, are more endangering ourselves than the planet. earth and its creatures evolve, they'll be fine. there were times millions of years ago that co2 was way way higher than today (but not necessarily temperature), and the dinosaurs etc were perfectly comfortable.
anyway, much bigger dangers than global warming are things like how we poison ourselves by dumping chemical crap in unsafe ways, how we let politics (politics between and within corporations as well) get in the way of efficiency, all sorts of stuff. (what the hell happened to electic cars? why are we using hybrids?)
probably the biggest threat of all is the desire of politicians, corporations, and even much of the general public to not know what's gonna happen ten years, a hundred years, a thousand years in the future.
dealing with bandwidth hogs is easy for routers to do without even having to look at the body of the ip packets. the whole thing about p2p is just that they want an excuse to give poor service.
your legitimate use of an encrypted channel to transmit private data you need for work too slow? aww, well we had to slow all encrypted data transfer because of pirates.
and places do have decreased speed for encrypted communications. they also sometimes have limitations on bittorrent in general, which while most bittorrents (vast majority) are illegal, some aren't.
if there's an excuse that most customers find plausible, they won't lose business. so, the businesses are smart and blame pirates.
routers are smart. if they get a lot of traffic on one port, one so configured could realize that that person should get lower priority. so, your voip call shouldn't be squashed by someone else doing some heavy downloads.
the study itself has a lot of flaws:
/. we already put an atypical amount of thought into the subject.
it takes someone else's research that separated people into four groups, then merges two groups... for no apparent reason
it had very few (thirtysomething) people interviewed, and many times they say things like "all but two in this category believed somethingorother", when you have to realize that all but two could have been 10, or 5, or 15. it's a decent claim, but using the phrasing he does makes it seem as if it was a grand sweeping truth.
it also doesn't seem to bring up any ideas we haven't already seen, though i guess if we read
additionally, it is unclear to me what weight mr maccormack, who from the paper seems very much a business type of person and not a software developer at all, has in making a 'developer's bill of rights' for open source folks, especially if he's not a dev himself. (his harvard page says that he has electrical engineering training, which is admirable compared to others who write similar papers, though i have a biased negative-ish opinion of people who go into business after getting an engineering degree)
his business orientation is evident in some of the views he puts into the story, perhaps most obviously in his use of microsoft funded research apparently without a second thought on what bias might exist there...
just a couple of cents.
this already happens on really lossy transmissions -- especially things like satellite tv or, say, deep-ish space missions don't want to waste time retransmitting (in satellite tv, if you didn't get it, you can't ask for it again, your picture just looks terrible for a split second).
so, they use error correcting codes, like, for example, parity (like raid 4,5) or reed-solomon (i think that's used in raid 6 or 7 or something), or turbo-codes.
fyi, for the latter i don't actually know how it works.
anyway, this is a pretty good idea (even though it's certainly been thought before); i'd be happy to see tcp replaced with something a bit smarter and just as functional.
what tactics has the intel laptop used against the olpc? i'm something of an olpc fan/geek/whatever andam curious.
as there are people with a lot of money who are interested in one format winning over the other, things will not be allowed to be worked out 'organically'.
in the case of odf vs ooxml (i'm tempted to call ooxml msooxml, but i might get flamed), odf is sort of linked to how openoffice/staroffice is designed. ooxml is _very_ closely linked to how ms office is designed. essentially, there are two formats and they're not that similar though they have very similar purposes. both sides would want theirs to be chosen because the winner gets a much easier job of dealing with it.
another reason why it wouldn't work out nicely to have two formats is that people seem to not like to conform to standards. just look at html and xml and xhtml and css and how tremendously non-standard pretty much every website is. with all the bugs peoples' webpages have (some of which placed intentionally to make it appear nicely in browser-of-choice), it's suddenly not so surprising that web browsers are so bloated for what they need to do. many browsers (including ie and firefox) claim to support some standard and only come partway, or implement it wrong.
so, essentially, it would be wonderful to have one standard on which documents could be traded between programs, unless people learn to test their programs against others, bugs in one would mean interoperability.
now, combine that with having two standards. a small error in creating a document in one standard, which we then convert to another to view in some other app... the potential for error avalanches.
ok, i haven't looked closely at either of the two specs, but even though odf appears much better than ooxml, they both seem to suck.
i think that the best sort of spec would be one that's simple (i like xhtml+css much more than html+css), much as the cisc vs risc instruction set battle -- except the document formats are much more complicated than any assembly language i've ever seen. personally, i kind of like latex, where things are simple by necessity, as a human often is writing it.
however, the best format (which i personally don't think exists) wouldn't win in this battle, because which format wins is more dependent on the users, who will automatically use whichever is the default for their application... and if it's ms word, it will, unfortunately, be ooxml.
i usually end up using yahoo or hotmail to make fake accounts for use over tor. you know, which i can then use to make fake accounts elsewhere.
my point is that if everyone crowds into .com, then there isn't a reason for tld's anymore.
they could be applecomputers and applerecords and things would be fine...