I think you may not be giving them enough credit for their linguistic skills; the writer (we're all thinking Mudge because we know his name, and who knows maybe it is him) may have meant exactly what he said.
After all, we'll never find the ultimate solution to any security problem, but we'll find the best one for now. Penultimate is a pretty good word to describe that state of affairs.
All crackers are hackers; not all hackers are crackers.
Thus, the statement about which you're complaining is correct, in the same sense that saying "sentencing primates to death" would be correct, since all crackers are primates, but not all primates are crackers.:-)
You, and the others arguing for long patent life, keep bringing up this same assertion that these products "wouldn't have been developed if not protected by patent".
What exactly is it that you think the pharmaceuticals companies would do if patent life was shortened; shut their doors?
Quit researching things altogether?
Rubbish; they'd just have to work faster to build markets, and keep their information just about as secret as they do now before the patent is filed.
In most countries anybody can copy their formulas who cares to; shortening the patent life would just extend that to a few more countries.
You can still innovate, and if you can't get quite so rich on the individual products (for instance, can't charge $125 a month for Prilosec), well then you'll have to find new ways to make a buck. Producing good products at low prices and marketing them well, for instance. There's a novel freakin' concept.
We don't need long term patents on chemical formulas, or anything else. Big business wants them because it lets them do less work for more money. Me, I'd rather have medicines available at affordable prices for the 80% of Americans (and various other population percentages in various other countries) who don't have adequate insurance coverage and aren't wealthy.
Incorrect. IBM is a smaller percentage player in a much larger pond.
They've made vast scads of money off PCs. If they weren't open, they'd have made 100% of a tiny market, for much less money than what they've made of their tiny piece of a huge market.
IBM's own stupidity in trying to close it back up hurt them, not their decision to open it.
If IBM didn't agree with this, they wouldn't be pushing open software now as well as the open hardware.
Hell, this is the company that recently release an open spec for PowerPC motherboards, too.
I didn't get the history wrong, folks. I was there, I lived it, and I'm telling you that the majority of you are reading this now because the hardware was cloneable, not despite it.
You are obviously unaware that in many fields, drugs and genetic reasearch come immedeiately to mind, it can take more than 25 years to bring a product to market *after* the patent in approved.
I'm not unaware of that at all, I just don't think sick people are willing to wait 25 years to get well.
If you can't bring your product to market in 3 years, then somebody else will. You can play on a level playing field after that.
If it takes 25 years to figure out if the product is safe and effective, then everybody else is in the same boat as you anyway, and your patent doesn't protect you anyway because nobody can sell the product.
If 3 year patents mean we have to come up with faster ways to test drugs, then good. If we can't, which is entirely possible, then we don't need the damn patents anyway.
IBM is not going to spend billions researching "copper" etc. and give as those lovely gigahertz processors if some company in tiawan can rip off the design as soon as it is working.
Wouldn't they? They spent billions on the PC, and made it open. That didn't turn out so badly for them.
People spend big bugs on researching things that are then made freely available to the body of human knowledge every day. It's called "science".
I'd say patents shouldn't last 25 years; 3 sounds good.
While I understand that you weren't actually responding to my post, just using it as an excuse to toot your own horn and engage in a polemic against people who you don't feel meet your standards for chess skills, I think you're doing a tremendous disservice to the community by discouraging people from exploring.
If someone makes a post that clearly indicates they're interested in something, but not expert level at it, a much more community-oriented response would be to gently guide them to a greater understanding of the subject.
I mean, the guy who posted the solution could have insulted *YOU* for not meeting his standards of chess skill.
Last time I checked, this was "News for Nerds", not "Tech News for Nerds".
Whether you love chess or hate it, you have to admit it's a passtime in which many nerds (and geeks too, for that matter) engage, and is thus "Stuff That Matters" for a large contingent of our colleagues.
So, in summary, Hemos; you go, girl. Keep posting that chess shit.
Note to the clueless; Hemo is not female. I am aware of this. Get off the computer and do something else for a while. Watch Springer or something.
I completely agree; if more than a tiny fraction of a site's stuff isn't getting there on time, it's the fault of the site, *NOT* the shipping company.
Assuming they're using a big-name, FedEx, UPS, RPS, Airborne; you're taking chances otherwise.
Frankly, most of these guys shouldn't even be using their own warehouses; the big shipping companies will do that for you, too. All you have to do is process the orders and route 'em over to the shipping co's computers, and they'll do the rest.
This scheme is used in lots of situations where actual fault tolerance, not just high availability, is required. Here's a link to a company that makes Solaris servers that use this scheme:
It is my belief that an Open Source programmer is far less likely to be "corrupted" by money that they're paid for working on Open Source projects than they would be by money that they're paid for for working on closed-source projects.
If you can work on Open Source full time and still eat, that's a good thing.
If you have to work on closed-source to eat, there's a powerful incentive for you to concentrate on that closed-source work.
Additionally, some companies make their employees sign contracts basically stating that anything they write while working for the company belongs to the company. Now, of course you can always choose not to sign that kind of a contract and work for that kind of a company, but that's not good unless there are alternatives. Open Source companies are the best alternative.
Bottom line: we've been telling companies for years now that they should open their source. Are we now going to berate the companies that do so successfully? Are we going to hurt their sales with boycotts, so that they fail, causing the established companies to say "see, Open Source doesn't work, we're closing our stuff again."?
Hey, you can bash the l335 13 year old kids out there breaking into systems, but who's fault is it if you leave your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition and leave it unattended while you go shopping all day?
The thief's fault, dammit.
Let's not lose sight of that; no matter how stupid you are about security, whether it's with your car, your person, or your web site, somebody still has to do something actively *WRONG* here for there to be a true problem.
It's becoming very fashionable in this country to claim the victim bears the responsibility for the attack, but "she was asking for it, wearing that short skirt and using that old buggy web server without closing down the known holes" doesn't work as a defense.
In your example, the thief is still guilty of grand theft auto, and you *WILL* collect on your insurance if you push the matter toward court.
The moral of the story; stay out of other people's holes without permission.
I guess I'm just not seeing this. A thought experiment:
Shares are worth $32. You own one. It goes up by 1/16th, or $2. Your stock is now worth $34.
Now it doesn't go up; instead, it splits. Now you own two shares worth $16 each. The value goes up by 1/16th, or $1 per share. Your total stock is now worth $34.
If the US government becomes much more oppressive in the future, that's scary; but this technology doesn't really make it that much scarier.
There are lots of ways to track people, and this technology isn't revolutionary.
Don't focus on the tools; focus on the policies and the people. Condemning this technology because it can (and probably will) be misused is EXACTLY the same thing as blaming Columbine on Doom.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you may not be giving them enough credit for their linguistic skills; the writer (we're all thinking Mudge because we know his name, and who knows maybe it is him) may have meant exactly what he said.
After all, we'll never find the ultimate solution to any security problem, but we'll find the best one for now. Penultimate is a pretty good word to describe that state of affairs.
Hell, I've had to tape over the power switch on production Unix servers. Just depends on who your junior admins are. :-)
Got mine too, except they sent me the JAVA one instead of the LINUX one by mistake.
Oh, well; it was free, I'm not gonna say a word to 'em about it.
All crackers are hackers; not all hackers are crackers.
:-)
Thus, the statement about which you're complaining is correct, in the same sense that saying "sentencing primates to death" would be correct, since all crackers are primates, but not all primates are crackers.
Perfect place for steaming WEB CAM!
I guess that can't be a "live steaming WEB CAM", because if it got hot enough to actually steam that would probably kill it.
You, and the others arguing for long patent life, keep bringing up this same assertion that these products "wouldn't have been developed if not protected by patent".
What exactly is it that you think the pharmaceuticals companies would do if patent life was shortened; shut their doors?
Quit researching things altogether?
Rubbish; they'd just have to work faster to build markets, and keep their information just about as secret as they do now before the patent is filed.
In most countries anybody can copy their formulas who cares to; shortening the patent life would just extend that to a few more countries.
You can still innovate, and if you can't get quite so rich on the individual products (for instance, can't charge $125 a month for Prilosec), well then you'll have to find new ways to make a buck. Producing good products at low prices and marketing them well, for instance. There's a novel freakin' concept.
We don't need long term patents on chemical formulas, or anything else. Big business wants them because it lets them do less work for more money. Me, I'd rather have medicines available at affordable prices for the 80% of Americans (and various other population percentages in various other countries) who don't have adequate insurance coverage and aren't wealthy.
Right. Remember that Open Systems != Open Source. People still get them confused.
:-)
No shit; I've spent half the day responding to those people over in another story.
Dare to say that the PC architecture is prevalent because of it's "Openness", and you'll get flamed for not knowing your history.
Dare to suggest, in fact, that IBM makes money off the PC world, and you'll get flamed.
Careful, Bruce, there are piranhas in the pool.
(Thankfully, with a little moderation they'll go from piranha to pariah. Just set your threshold to 2 and you can swim freely.)
So, I have a question; why has no one released a "mainstream" GPL'ed BSD? Is it just because everybody inclined to do so is working on Linux instead?
Incorrect. IBM is a smaller percentage player in a much larger pond.
They've made vast scads of money off PCs. If they weren't open, they'd have made 100% of a tiny market, for much less money than what they've made of their tiny piece of a huge market.
IBM's own stupidity in trying to close it back up hurt them, not their decision to open it.
If IBM didn't agree with this, they wouldn't be pushing open software now as well as the open hardware.
Hell, this is the company that recently release an open spec for PowerPC motherboards, too.
I didn't get the history wrong, folks. I was there, I lived it, and I'm telling you that the majority of you are reading this now because the hardware was cloneable, not despite it.
You are obviously unaware that in many fields, drugs and genetic reasearch come immedeiately to mind, it can take more than 25 years to bring a product to market *after* the patent in approved.
I'm not unaware of that at all, I just don't think sick people are willing to wait 25 years to get well.
If you can't bring your product to market in 3 years, then somebody else will. You can play on a level playing field after that.
If it takes 25 years to figure out if the product is safe and effective, then everybody else is in the same boat as you anyway, and your patent doesn't protect you anyway because nobody can sell the product.
If 3 year patents mean we have to come up with faster ways to test drugs, then good. If we can't, which is entirely possible, then we don't need the damn patents anyway.
Oh, I have an easy solution to that:
I wasn't talking about three years for technology patents, I was talking about three years for patents, period.
If you can't make a buck off your technology in three years, license it to somebody who can.
If not, then get out of my way and let me use it.
IBM is not going to spend billions researching "copper" etc. and give as those lovely gigahertz processors if some company in tiawan can rip off the design as soon as it is working.
Wouldn't they? They spent billions on the PC, and made it open. That didn't turn out so badly for them.
People spend big bugs on researching things that are then made freely available to the body of human knowledge every day. It's called "science".
I'd say patents shouldn't last 25 years; 3 sounds good.
While I understand that you weren't actually responding to my post, just using it as an excuse to toot your own horn and engage in a polemic against people who you don't feel meet your standards for chess skills, I think you're doing a tremendous disservice to the community by discouraging people from exploring.
If someone makes a post that clearly indicates they're interested in something, but not expert level at it, a much more community-oriented response would be to gently guide them to a greater understanding of the subject.
I mean, the guy who posted the solution could have insulted *YOU* for not meeting his standards of chess skill.
Grrr. Hemos is not female, either.
Bad Syberghost, bad.
Last time I checked, this was "News for Nerds", not "Tech News for Nerds".
Whether you love chess or hate it, you have to admit it's a passtime in which many nerds (and geeks too, for that matter) engage, and is thus "Stuff That Matters" for a large contingent of our colleagues.
So, in summary, Hemos; you go, girl. Keep posting that chess shit.
Note to the clueless; Hemo is not female. I am aware of this. Get off the computer and do something else for a while. Watch Springer or something.
I completely agree; if more than a tiny fraction of a site's stuff isn't getting there on time, it's the fault of the site, *NOT* the shipping company.
Assuming they're using a big-name, FedEx, UPS, RPS, Airborne; you're taking chances otherwise.
Frankly, most of these guys shouldn't even be using their own warehouses; the big shipping companies will do that for you, too. All you have to do is process the orders and route 'em over to the shipping co's computers, and they'll do the rest.
The other fairly compelling reason why handwriting recognition has uses that voice recognition won't fit is:
Sometimes you don't want to be blurting everything out for the world to hear.
This scheme is used in lots of situations where actual fault tolerance, not just high availability, is required. Here's a link to a company that makes Solaris servers that use this scheme:
http://www.resilience.com
Yeah, tell yourself that you're maintaining your principles while you're flipping those burgers.
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It is my belief that an Open Source programmer is far less likely to be "corrupted" by money that they're paid for working on Open Source projects than they would be by money that they're paid for for working on closed-source projects.
If you can work on Open Source full time and still eat, that's a good thing.
If you have to work on closed-source to eat, there's a powerful incentive for you to concentrate on that closed-source work.
Additionally, some companies make their employees sign contracts basically stating that anything they write while working for the company belongs to the company. Now, of course you can always choose not to sign that kind of a contract and work for that kind of a company, but that's not good unless there are alternatives. Open Source companies are the best alternative.
Bottom line: we've been telling companies for years now that they should open their source. Are we now going to berate the companies that do so successfully? Are we going to hurt their sales with boycotts, so that they fail, causing the established companies to say "see, Open Source doesn't work, we're closing our stuff again."?
Hey, you can bash the l335 13 year old kids out there breaking into systems, but who's fault is it if you leave your car unlocked with the keys in the ignition and leave it unattended while you go shopping all day?
The thief's fault, dammit.
Let's not lose sight of that; no matter how stupid you are about security, whether it's with your car, your person, or your web site, somebody still has to do something actively *WRONG* here for there to be a true problem.
It's becoming very fashionable in this country to claim the victim bears the responsibility for the attack, but "she was asking for it, wearing that short skirt and using that old buggy web server without closing down the known holes" doesn't work as a defense.
In your example, the thief is still guilty of grand theft auto, and you *WILL* collect on your insurance if you push the matter toward court.
The moral of the story; stay out of other people's holes without permission.
As for the Indians, I thought the US's Thanksgiving was last month.
It was, but we let them off the reservation for an entire month now.
I guess I'm just not seeing this. A thought experiment:
Shares are worth $32. You own one. It goes up by 1/16th, or $2. Your stock is now worth $34.
Now it doesn't go up; instead, it splits. Now you own two shares worth $16 each. The value goes up by 1/16th, or $1 per share. Your total stock is now worth $34.
What's the difference?
Actually, you're completely backwards.
:-)
The book sales lose money; the banner ads make money.
More visits equals more banner ad revenue.
Just say "no" to Amazon. Block their site in your firewall or web browser so you don't accidentally go there.
If the US government becomes much more oppressive in the future, that's scary; but this technology doesn't really make it that much scarier.
There are lots of ways to track people, and this technology isn't revolutionary.
Don't focus on the tools; focus on the policies and the people. Condemning this technology because it can (and probably will) be misused is EXACTLY the same thing as blaming Columbine on Doom.