It's funny that (especially those from the 60's) despise corporations, and somehow fail to realize corporations provide us with jobs, health coverage, a place in which to feel pride, et cetera. Companies aren't evil.
They also are loudspeakers that can be used to drown out the public's voice and act as a mechanism for concentrating power. Democracy and Capitalism are a delicate ballence. Democracy is one person one vote; Captitalism is one dollar one vote. Unfortunately our current trend is to allow Capitalism to speak in our democracy proportional to the dollars that the organization has (you can't get on the ballot unless you raise enough money). This is problematic since those few people who own the most of the companies have the most say... in who gets on the ballot. And this undermines our democracy (you can choose from one of the few that have the corporate stamp of approval). So... you are right, they are not evil, but when ever one group has too much power; evil tends to emerge. Fix this and I'll be happier about companies.
For those of you who don't know him. Jamie is a wonderful character. He organized and ran a conference on "Remedies for Microsoft" that I attended about 2 and a half years ago. It was a very insightful conference (the audio is still available on his site).
What was interesting in this meeting was the talk by Visio's president; who was the most vocal proponent of Microsoft. I got the feeling that he was completely prepared by the Microsfot PR staff. He constantly asserted that Microsoft was even handed and a great business partner. He denied an acquisition was in the works when asked by one of the more pronounced anti-Microsoft people in the audience. He empathatically denied that he was "in-bed" with Microsoft and asserted that Microsoft is very good to _all_ of it's development _partners_. The buy-out, of course, occured shortly there after.
You may want to ask Jamie about this conference. It was very insightful for me to hear. But there were a suprising lack of technical people there, it was mostly lawyer suits; anti-trust experts. There were only a hand-full of "real" programmers there and we were largely in the audience.
You don't like an ethnic group that occupies a current area... and you'd like to settle it yourself; what a wonderful solution. Certainly takes the pain out of war, I wonder if the bombs can also distingrate the carcuses as well? That would really help morale -- not having to see the people you killed would be a boon to the new settlers. No more remorse. How cool.
The first book was very good, could not put the book down. The second was ok, took me a few days to plough through it. But the third book was tedious and I just couldn't finish it. I'm not looking forward to the fourth.
If indeed NT has a lower TCO than Linux, it is only a short-term item. For every person that learns how to use $500 NT advanced server there are two who can't afford the $500 and learn $0 Linux instead. Eventually this change-in-mindshare will catch up with Microsoft and the TCO table will shift; with Microsoft on the higher end... since those who know Microsoft NT Advanced Server will be in shorter supply.
So... Microsoft may be right about their price in the short term; the market is quite inelastic. But in the long term the market is quite elastic... and it certainly notices the value proposition Linux provides.
The labor component of TCO (the biggest) is inversely proportional to the population of people who know about and can support the system. As more and more programmers/sysadmin get "on board" with Linux, TCO goes down.
This is also called "lock-in", the primary value of a software product is not intrinsic, it's how many people know about and use your system. It works very much like rock music... the more well known it is, the more popular it becomes (even if it is god awful). Of course, in software it's double powerful beacuse people familar with the software make other software that is dependent on the base software, thus creating a multiplier to this effect which is so very powerful.
NT and Office have a "low" TCO, since one can *hire* people off the streets to administer and use these products without additional raining. Hopefully Linux will be the TCO leader by saturating the sysadmin market from the bottom up. If sysadmins perfer Linux over NT, then Linux will eventually have the lower labor component of the TCO.
Reading all of these made me revisit what I think would be a good microsoft remedy? How about:
1. No use of patents against open source software
2. Open specifications for their protocols.
3. Maintain a fully-operable port of Office to
Linux not more than 2 years behind their
windows offering.
One and two are from RMS's proposed remedies... but seeing that office compatibility is so important; perhaps 3 should be added to the list?
I'm not going to report to a boss after taking this long to become my own boss.
You always have a "boss". Be it your business partners (who boss you and whom you boss) or your customers... there is someone that you are ultimately responsible to...
One question I have is... is it truly ethical to use a non-profit organization as a front for your for-profit business venture?
You probably won't have much chance for 501c3 status unless you completely separate the two businesses... better to stick with a for-profit. Starting a non-profit is hard work, and not something that should be taken lightly... or with expect for anything but a trival return on your time investment.
IMHO, the best thing to do is to charge fees to cover the mailing and administration expense.
Don't I already pay enough for my annual rent of domain names? Please.
Re:At least you MANAGED to get registered...
on
ICANN At-Large Study
·
· Score: 1
I think I'm registered. The problem isn't registration, the problem is their draconian access restrictions which get in my way everytime I try to participate. I'd like them to just send me a letter with (a) a URL to a client side certificate and (b) the password to install the certificate. Then I don't need anything further!
Right now I have to jump through several hoops... and then once I do, they expire the cookie... in essence makign me jump through all the hoops a second, third, time. Of course they don't get the participation that their "registration" numbers would indicate.... if you have to fight to use the system even with the registration!
Further, their entire organizational structure and web site is opaque. How can I participate if the system is a "inner circle" where all the participant is given is the right to bless what someone else decides. Ba!
A few days ago my girlfriend showed me an on-line exhibition of photographs made from 1905 to 1915 by Prokudin-Gorskii at the Library of Congress. What is interesting is that these photos not only beautyful, but in color. As you may recall, color photography didn't emerge for some time later. This individual would take three pictures of his target, one with a red filter, one with a green filter, and one with a blue filter. Then he would show these pictures via a home-grown slide show projector made from stacking three projectors on top of each other and focusing them on the same location on the wall. There is a really nice description as to how they made color composite images (now available as JPG and TIFF). Very pretty pictures. Even more amazing when you consider the time period they were made in. If you look closely, some of the images are slightly blurred, for instance in this picture the target's left foot must have moved slightly between the three pictures. Enjoy!
Do you think that this will make crypto security conference organizers think twice about having meetings here? I guess the DMCA could really hurt our ability to be an acedemic powerhouse in the security/cryptography field. I certainly wouldn't want to enroll in a U.S. based PhD program if my research could land me in Jail.
I bet this isn't an intended consequence of the DMCA is it.
Where do I sign the on-line petition?
on
Sklyarov Indicted
·
· Score: 1
I looked around for a letter written to the DOJ to drop this case, but came up with my hands empty. If such a petition were on-line (with thousands of signatures) it would make for a nice item for the Press to point to next time the DOJ makes a statement.
The on-line petition should be well written, thought out (by EFF) and should allow me to enter my Name, Address, Telephone and give me an area to write Supporting Comments and a place to put in a credit card number for a donation. This should be hosted on the EFF site. The petition should not be a "vote" and thus any non-supporting comments should be immediately removed. Those in-favor of this process can get their own web-site.
We should be protesting against Adobe
until they make a public contribution
to the EFF and, ideally ship some
hundred or so programmers to Washington
for various rallies.
Could you point a url to some background on this? There are lots of people speaking
about what *is* without backing it up and
it's hard to know what the facts are. For instance, one of my friends said Max OS X
was based on _open_ BSD. I guess that
is wrong. What *is* Max OS X based one
exactly?
I was wondering if you had tested alot with text browsers like lynx and w3m? I've been unable to submit comments and have received numerous problems using these two user agents.
Would you argue that copyright and patent laws are unamerican as well; after all, they create unnatural monopolies (beacuse it is seen to be in the best interest of the public to provide insentive where otherwise it wouldn't).
Other than that I agree... the government should own all communications infrastructure since it is most efficient when it is a singleton. Right?
You seem to have forgotton how the bells got started... it happened with *huge* grants which the federal government gave the rail road industry in the 1800's; the major telecom wires were laid along the tracks. Without these rail road monopolies (yes, very expensive investments, and huge economies of scale) we wouldn't be where we are today.
Are publicly owned roads necessary? Perhaps we should sell off the roads? I bet that won't lead to a monopoly. I can just hear it: "You can't drive on my road beacuse you drive on a competitor's road". Would you approve of legislation in this case? After all, property ownership is unnatural too. Property ownership is entirely a creature of the state... a monopoly on a parcel of land granted by the government. If someone abuses their parcel of land... isn't it the right of the government (the people) to step in?
I guess to the extent that their software
will be build upon known components
(with known root kits) this probably
isn't a bad idea. But I fail (as others have
noted here) how weaknesses in the software
itself will be discovered unless a few
White Hat crackers are hired.
Python makes a much better teaching language. My girlfriend, an art history person tried Java and was constantly confused. Python on the other hand, and she didn't even ask me questions. Hmm.
They could always contact Ferguson and pay for the research, no? It's not like Ferguson is not well known... and they could make payment contingent upon an actual "master key".
Although Verhoeven and Pendray have patented their technique...Can you say Prior Art?
IANAL, Patent law is concerned with techniques
of the trade (state of the art). If this
knowlege has been lost, and is not known
or easily discoverable by someone skilled
in the art, then it should be patentable.
Slashdot Mirror
It's funny that (especially those from the 60's) despise corporations, and somehow fail to realize corporations provide us with jobs, health coverage, a place in which to feel pride, et cetera. Companies aren't evil.
... in who gets on the ballot. And this undermines our democracy (you can choose from one of the few that have the corporate stamp of approval). So... you are right, they are not evil, but when ever one group has too much power; evil tends to emerge. Fix this and I'll be happier about companies.
They also are loudspeakers that can be used to drown out the public's voice and act as a mechanism for concentrating power. Democracy and Capitalism are a delicate ballence. Democracy is one person one vote; Captitalism is one dollar one vote. Unfortunately our current trend is to allow Capitalism to speak in our democracy proportional to the dollars that the organization has (you can't get on the ballot unless you raise enough money). This is problematic since those few people who own the most of the companies have the most say
to establish that it's the caffeine, then a control study should have been done with decaffeinated coffee.
I'm not sure that decaffeniated coffee is caffeine free...
For those of you who don't know him. Jamie is a wonderful character. He organized and ran a conference on "Remedies for Microsoft" that I attended about 2 and a half years ago. It was a very insightful conference (the audio is still available on his site).
What was interesting in this meeting was the talk by Visio's president; who was the most vocal proponent of Microsoft. I got the feeling that he was completely prepared by the Microsfot PR staff. He constantly asserted that Microsoft was even handed and a great business partner. He denied an acquisition was in the works when asked by one of the more pronounced anti-Microsoft people in the audience. He empathatically denied that he was "in-bed" with Microsoft and asserted that Microsoft is very good to _all_ of it's development _partners_. The buy-out, of course, occured shortly there after.
You may want to ask Jamie about this conference. It was very insightful for me to hear. But there were a suprising lack of technical people there, it was mostly lawyer suits; anti-trust experts. There were only a hand-full of "real" programmers there and we were largely in the audience.
Best,
Clark
You don't like an ethnic group that occupies a current area... and you'd like to settle it yourself; what a wonderful solution. Certainly takes the pain out of war, I wonder if the bombs can also distingrate the carcuses as well? That would really help morale -- not having to see the people you killed would be a boon to the new settlers. No more remorse. How cool.
The first book was very good, could not put the book down. The second was ok, took me a few days to plough through it. But the third book was tedious and I just couldn't finish it. I'm not looking forward to the fourth.
If indeed NT has a lower TCO than Linux, it is only a short-term item. For every person that learns how to use $500 NT advanced server there are two who can't afford the $500 and learn $0 Linux instead. Eventually this change-in-mindshare will catch up with Microsoft and the TCO table will shift; with Microsoft on the higher end... since those who know Microsoft NT Advanced Server will be in shorter supply.
So... Microsoft may be right about their price in the short term; the market is quite inelastic. But in the long term the market is quite elastic... and it certainly notices the value proposition Linux provides.
The labor component of TCO (the biggest) is inversely proportional to the population of people who know about and can support the system. As more and more programmers/sysadmin get "on board" with Linux, TCO goes down.
This is also called "lock-in", the primary value of a software product is not intrinsic, it's how many people know about and use your system. It works very much like rock music... the more well known it is, the more popular it becomes (even if it is god awful). Of course, in software it's double powerful beacuse people familar with the software make other software that is dependent on the base software, thus creating a multiplier to this effect which is so very powerful.
NT and Office have a "low" TCO, since one can *hire* people off the streets to administer and use these products without additional raining. Hopefully Linux will be the TCO leader by saturating the sysadmin market from the bottom up. If sysadmins perfer Linux over NT, then Linux will eventually have the lower labor component of the TCO.
Reading all of these made me revisit what I think would be a good microsoft remedy? How about:
1. No use of patents against open source software
2. Open specifications for their protocols.
3. Maintain a fully-operable port of Office to
Linux not more than 2 years behind their
windows offering.
One and two are from RMS's proposed remedies... but seeing that office compatibility is so important; perhaps 3 should be added to the list?
I'm not going to report to a boss after taking this long to become my own boss.
You always have a "boss". Be it your business partners (who boss you and whom you boss) or your customers... there is someone that you are ultimately responsible to...
One question I have is... is it truly ethical to use a non-profit organization as a front for your for-profit business venture?
You probably won't have much chance for 501c3 status unless you completely separate the two businesses... better to stick with a for-profit. Starting a non-profit is hard work, and not something that should be taken lightly... or with expect for anything but a trival return on your time investment.
IMHO, the best thing to do is to charge fees to cover the mailing and administration expense.
Don't I already pay enough for my annual rent of domain names? Please.
I think I'm registered. The problem isn't registration, the problem is their draconian access restrictions which get in my way everytime I try to participate. I'd like them to just send me a letter with (a) a URL to a client side certificate and (b) the password to install the certificate. Then I don't need anything further!
Right now I have to jump through several hoops... and then once I do, they expire the cookie... in essence makign me jump through all the hoops a second, third, time. Of course they don't get the participation that their "registration" numbers would indicate.... if you have to fight to use the system even with the registration!
Further, their entire organizational structure and web site is opaque. How can I participate if the system is a "inner circle" where all the participant is given is the right to bless what someone else decides. Ba!
;( Clark
For the record, I currently own 35 domain names..
Nope. You rent 35 domain names.
A few days ago my girlfriend showed me an on-line exhibition of photographs made from 1905 to 1915 by Prokudin-Gorskii at the Library of Congress. What is interesting is that these photos not only beautyful, but in color. As you may recall, color photography didn't emerge for some time later. This individual would take three pictures of his target, one with a red filter, one with a green filter, and one with a blue filter. Then he would show these pictures via a home-grown slide show projector made from stacking three projectors on top of each other and focusing them on the same location on the wall. There is a really nice description as to how they made color composite images (now available as JPG and TIFF). Very pretty pictures. Even more amazing when you consider the time period they were made in. If you look closely, some of the images are slightly blurred, for instance in this picture the target's left foot must have moved slightly between the three pictures. Enjoy!
Do you think that this will make crypto security conference organizers think twice about having meetings here? I guess the DMCA could really hurt our ability to be an acedemic powerhouse in the security/cryptography field. I certainly wouldn't want to enroll in a U.S. based PhD program if my research could land me in Jail.
I bet this isn't an intended consequence of the DMCA is it.
I looked around for a letter written to the DOJ to drop this case, but came up with my hands empty. If such a petition were on-line (with thousands of signatures) it would make for a nice item for the Press to point to next time the DOJ makes a statement.
The on-line petition should be well written, thought out (by EFF) and should allow me to enter my Name, Address, Telephone and give me an area to write Supporting Comments and a place to put in a credit card number for a donation. This should be hosted on the EFF site. The petition should not be a "vote" and thus any non-supporting comments should be immediately removed. Those in-favor of this process can get their own web-site.
We should be protesting against Adobe
until they make a public contribution
to the EFF and, ideally ship some
hundred or so programmers to Washington
for various rallies.
Could you point a url to some background on this? There are lots of people speaking
about what *is* without backing it up and
it's hard to know what the facts are. For instance, one of my friends said Max OS X
was based on _open_ BSD. I guess that
is wrong. What *is* Max OS X based one
exactly?
Beacuse Gates *is* Microsoft, but there
is a lot more to GNU than Stallman.
I was wondering if you had tested alot with text browsers like lynx and w3m? I've been unable to submit comments and have received numerous problems using these two user agents.
Would you argue that copyright and patent laws are unamerican as well; after all, they create unnatural monopolies (beacuse it is seen to be in the best interest of the public to provide insentive where otherwise it wouldn't).
Other than that I agree... the government should own all communications infrastructure since it is most efficient when it is a singleton. Right?
You seem to have forgotton how the bells got started... it happened with *huge* grants which the federal government gave the rail road industry in the 1800's; the major telecom wires were laid along the tracks. Without these rail road monopolies (yes, very expensive investments, and huge economies of scale) we wouldn't be where we are today.
Are publicly owned roads necessary? Perhaps we should sell off the roads? I bet that won't lead to a monopoly. I can just hear it: "You can't drive on my road beacuse you drive on a competitor's road". Would you approve of legislation in this case? After all, property ownership is unnatural too. Property ownership is entirely a creature of the state... a monopoly on a parcel of land granted by the government. If someone abuses their parcel of land... isn't it the right of the government (the people) to step in?
I guess to the extent that their software will be build upon known components (with known root kits) this probably isn't a bad idea. But I fail (as others have noted here) how weaknesses in the software itself will be discovered unless a few White Hat crackers are hired.
Python makes a much better teaching language. My girlfriend, an art history person tried Java and was constantly confused. Python on the other hand, and she didn't even ask me questions. Hmm.
is here. I wrote it about 3 years ago, right about when ESR formed OSI. Best, Clark
They could always contact Ferguson and pay for the research, no? It's not like Ferguson is not well known... and they could make payment contingent upon an actual "master key".
IANAL, Patent law is concerned with techniques of the trade (state of the art). If this knowlege has been lost, and is not known or easily discoverable by someone skilled in the art, then it should be patentable.