This is a good point. A friend of mine says that you know you've done "eBusiness" not just when you've put stuff online, but when you've changed who has the power. For example, before online car shopping, car dealers had all the power: they knew how much any specific new or used car was really worth on the market, but as a consumer you had no easy way to come up with that same information. eBusiness changed that: consumers now have that same power. Currently we can see that eBusiness is finally "happening" in the movies and music business, not because movies and music are available online, but because power is shifting away from the "middle men".
Maybe a similar argument applies to "open content". For any particular medium of expression, we can tell when "open content" has finally "happened" not by when stuff becomes available online, but by when "who has the power" has shifted.
"There is still a finite set of bandwidth available." Clarification: saying that there is a shortage of radio spectrum is like saying there is a shortage of colors. Both are infinite. Colors become finite only when you restrict yourself to a discrete color-space, like a box of Crayola crayons. Radio spectrum becomes finite only when you chop it into big discrete chunks, like radio stations. Reference, for example, http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interes ting-people/199507/msg00023.html, as well as numerous other discussions along the same lines. Radio bands are as big as they are only because early 20th century vacuum tube technology required them to be. Modern microlectronics could allow modern radio bands to be however "skinny" we like.
The problem is easily solved. The community just needs to agree to adopt a common name for all Linux derivatives that don't wish to use the Linux trademark. Users will then come to learn that this new term is also a form of Linux, but one that simply doesn't carry the Linux brand name (like a "generic" pharmaceutical).
Backward references are always better than forward references. That's why in my FORTRAN days I often argued that we could replace GOTO statements very easily if we simply added a COMEFROM statement to the language instead:
10 MOL = 42
DO 20 I = ID+1, X
X = H * 0.5
SUM = SUM + F(X)
20 CONTINUE
IF (SUM.LT. 4.0) COME FROM 10
I had some mod points briefly, but they disappeared before I could use them. Conjecture: something's amiss with the duration of awarded mod points. We're being given points, but they're disappearing before we can use them.
The Rumsfeld Doctrine on space already promotes its militarization and has now for a while. It's not surprising that U.S. Space Command would agree with the U.S. Secretary of Defense.
Apple's PCs never got a strong hold in the business market, but once upon it's most powerful machine did:
From Wikipedia: "The Apple LaserWriter was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market. Combined with GUI-based programs like Adobe PageMaker on the Macintosh, it is generally considered to have sparked the Desktop publishing (DTP) revolution in the mid-1980s.
Unlike models from HP, which had been introduced a few months earlier and used their proprietary PCL printing language, the LaserWriter included the PostScript page description language which allowed for far more complex graphics, high-resolution bitmap graphics, outline fonts, and generally much better-looking output.
The use of PostScript comes at a cost. Unlike PCL and other early printer control languages, PostScript is a complete programming language and requires a complete computer to run it. In the case of the LaserWriter this was a Motorola 68000 CPU running at 12MHz, making it the fastest machine in Apple's lineup, and the most expensive at $6,995 when it was introduced in late 1985."
"There's a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the code and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a mess. And here is the interesting observation: they are probably wrong. The reason that they think the old code is a mess is because of a cardinal, fundamental law of programming: It's harder to read code than to write it."
For almost two years I have been using a Kyocera 7135 Smartphone from Verizon (it runs PalmOS), and I use it to browse the web all the time...but it is rough. Not because of the phone per se; it is because of all the bloated websites. Here's when I usually use my smartphone:
- when I'm on the subway (DC Metro)
- when I'm waiting in an airport
- when I'm waiting for my girlfriend to get ready to go out
- when I'm waiting for Chinese take-out to be ready
- when I'm waiting for somebody to meet me in a restaurant
- when I'm bored in a meeting (sad but true)
In other words, there are LOTS of occasions when I find it useful to be able to browse the Web on my handheld. I primarily use two browsers: EudoraWeb (which just delivers text) and "Web" (came with the cellphone, and delivers text and graphics). Neither browser supports advanced features such as Java, for example.
Websites I often try to visit include Slashdot, Ars Technica, Groklaw, eBay, Amazon, Moviefone, Yahoo Maps or Mapquest, Travelocity, various white pages (i.e., for telephone number lookups), Wikipedia, Google, and various news and airline (flight status) sites. In some cases these sites also have custom clients, or thin/text-only versions of their content, and that does help. But in general, most of these sites are barely tolerable or entirely unworkable on my Smartphone.
For instance, I'll read Slashdot in EudoraWeb, and it takes a long time to scroll through all the header text to get to the stories.
I believe that in the future more people, like me, will want to browse the web via their handhelds -- for all kinds of purposes (like the ones I listed above) and in call kinds of situations (like the ones I listed above). I think the sooner Website authors learn to accomodate handheld clients, the better.
As long as they watch old movies, even young whipper-snappers should know that floppy disks used to be considered very expensive. After all, floppies were the penalty that Anthony Michael Hall had to pay if he couldn't get Molly Ringwald's panties in the John Hughes' film, "Sixteen Candles".
"I mean, not many girls in contemporary American society today would give their underwear to help a geek like me."
A 0.500 batting average might be good in the creative world; a writer that churns out really great stuff half the time is probably a really good writer. But the executive producer position is basically a "CEO" of a business, in this case a business that we call "the Star Trek franchise" -- with UPN basically a holding company for many such businesses. When your job is running a business, a batting average of 0.500 is pretty bad.
Hmmmm....you may be right! Maybe we are in an alternative universe! The last time I saw Leonard Nimoy on a Priceline commercial, he had a beard. That's how you can always tell when you're in an alternate universe, when Spock has a beard.
I don't know why they're doing this, but I've tended to agree with others and wonder if:
(a) SCO started this because they thought they could get IBM to buy them, making all of the SCO executives rich, but then
(b) when IBM clearly signalled it wasn't going to fall for that old trick, SCO had to keep making a strong public appearance of a credible case in order to avoid getting sued -- or worse, SCO executives jailed by the SEC for some form of stock fraud. I.e., if they lose to IBM in a fair trial the executives can claim they honestly thought they had a case. If they simply give up and admit they never had a case, then what kind of legal attacks from shareholders or the SEC might they they open themselves up to? At this point, mayby Darl is just trying to avoid personal liability and an assault on his own personal assets.
As I recall, to get a product put on the GSA schedule in the first place (for purchase by government customers), the vendor has to offer their "best commercial price" to the GSA. So it's not surprising that that GSA/DOD price is low. Collectively, the Federal government is buying in bulk after all.
I suspect the diference is a combination of a) lack of body language when using a cellphone b) latency in the cellphone audio (which is significant -- try calling your home phone on your cellphone and talk to yourself, you'll see what I mean) c) lower volume + static, requiring that you pay attention to the cellphone audio more carefully
The three factors add up. Talking on a cellphone requires paying close attention to the cellphone. Like I said previously: so much so that we actually slow even WALKING when we talk on a cellphone (just watch somebody on a sidewalk sometime).
Have you ever noticed that when somebody is walking down the sidewalk, if they start talking on their cellphone their walk slows, or they even stop and stand during the cellphone conversation?
If we can't even -walk- and talk on cellphones, why would anybody think we could -drive- and talk on cellphones? Just our walking behavior alone tells us that there's something inherently distracting about talking on a cellphone.
My suggestion was serious, but I think you're being purposely obtuse...maybe with the intent of irony? Of course a hypothetical "right to drive" wouldn't apply to people who create a public hazard by driving, any more than the right to bear arms applies now to citizens for whom gun ownership constitutes a public hazard. Likewise you also know that a gun in the wrong hands can kill 60 school children just as easily as a car in the wrong hands...and you also know that all guns are not "handguns"...so I assume all those reasons you cited were intentional strawmen.
The reason why "taxis and other public transportation" wouldn't work, of course, is that under a totalitarian regime public transportation is controlled BY the totalitarian regime. "In Soviet Russia, they don't bus you to the political demonstrations..." to paraphrase a slashdot meme. The notion that chatrooms are a credible threat to totalitarianism is an amusing conceit however, I will grant you that!
I've been thinking about "the right to free assembly" lately. Once upon a time, when people lived within horse-riding distance of their meeting houses, it was possible to exercise this right without any technological support, but nowadays it would be almost impossible to exercise this right without access to, for example, a car. And yet states still consider driving a "privilege" rather than a "right." It seems to me that in this day and age, with access to a car essentially a prerequisite for free assembly, American's ought to have a "right" to drive, protected as a consequence of the the first amendment. In fact, I would think that in this day and age access to a car is more important than (say) access to a gun, for exercising civil disobedience in the face of totalitarianism. We ought to have a right to drive for the same reason we have a right to bear arms, it seems to me. So where do states get off still telling us that this is a "privilege" and not a right?
Horses and donkeys, of course, can cross-breed to create mules. I recall from one college class (physical anthropology) a discussion about the fact that, in principle, humans and chimps could also cross-breed, though of course the offspring would (like a mule) be sterile. As discussed here: http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=152885 2&lastnode_id=1694132 the number of chromosomes don't necessarily need to be the same, as long as the chromosomes are "homologous" and the male has the fewer number of chromosomes. So in theory we could make a human chimera via simple cross-breeding.
From the "everything2.com" article referenced above:
"liger = male lion + female tiger tigon or tiglon = male tiger + female lion
mule = male donkey + female horse hinny = male horse + female donkey (jenny)
zorse = zebra + horse zonkey or zebrass = zebra + donkey (ass) cama = camel + llama catalo or beefalo = buffalo + cattle yakalo = yak + buffalo wholphin = whale + dolphin (specifically a false killer whale and a bottlenose dolphin)
Toast of Botswana = goat + sheep Obviously this deserves some clarification. While a sheep can be impregnated by a goat, the kid/lamb is always stillborn... except in one case in the early 1990s. This animal was nicknamed the Toast of Botswana. Since it was the only one ever known to have lived, no other name has been given to a goat/sheep combination."
Consistent, ongoing good healthcare requires a strong economic infrastructure. You don't get a strong economic infrastructure via a one-shot injection of funds. As another poster already pointed out, it's the difference between giving a man some fish and teaching a man to fish. In the long run, you make the people of the third world healthier by helping them develop a strong economy, not by sending them a shipload of medicine.
The Linux community has ALREADY "matched this generosity." Rather than charge money in exchange for software and then give some small fraction of that money back as charitable donations, the Linux community lets people keep all their money in the first place. That's more efficient, and I think a lot more generous, than charging for the software in the first place.
Free software is also going to help the third world develop more quickly than it would under a purely proprietary model, so there's an extra kicker that'll help the next generation too, not just this generation. "Teach a man to fish..." and all that, ya' know?
EA was Disney/Microsoft/Coors/SCO/Dominos-evil LONG before this. Am I the only person who remembers the way EA copy protection would cause the read-heads on Commodore 64 floppy disks to go out of alignment? What kind of sick bastards implement a DRM that causes HARDWARE damage???
Slashdot Mirror
This is a good point. A friend of mine says that you know you've done "eBusiness" not just when you've put stuff online, but when you've changed who has the power. For example, before online car shopping, car dealers had all the power: they knew how much any specific new or used car was really worth on the market, but as a consumer you had no easy way to come up with that same information. eBusiness changed that: consumers now have that same power. Currently we can see that eBusiness is finally "happening" in the movies and music business, not because movies and music are available online, but because power is shifting away from the "middle men".
Maybe a similar argument applies to "open content". For any particular medium of expression, we can tell when "open content" has finally "happened" not by when stuff becomes available online, but by when "who has the power" has shifted.
"There is still a finite set of bandwidth available." Clarification: saying that there is a shortage of radio spectrum is like saying there is a shortage of colors. Both are infinite. Colors become finite only when you restrict yourself to a discrete color-space, like a box of Crayola crayons. Radio spectrum becomes finite only when you chop it into big discrete chunks, like radio stations. Reference, for example, http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interes ting-people/199507/msg00023.html, as well as numerous other discussions along the same lines. Radio bands are as big as they are only because early 20th century vacuum tube technology required them to be. Modern microlectronics could allow modern radio bands to be however "skinny" we like.
No wait, there's nothing wrong with that. You can use the crime statistics and still be against crime.
So why are we outraged by this?
I propose we use the term Jimux.
Backward references are always better than forward references. That's why in my FORTRAN days I often argued that we could replace GOTO statements very easily if we simply added a COMEFROM statement to the language instead:
.LT. 4.0) COME FROM 10
10 MOL = 42
DO 20 I = ID+1, X
X = H * 0.5
SUM = SUM + F(X)
20 CONTINUE
IF (SUM
See? Backward references are much clearer!
I had some mod points briefly, but they disappeared before I could use them. Conjecture: something's amiss with the duration of awarded mod points. We're being given points, but they're disappearing before we can use them.
The Rumsfeld Doctrine on space already promotes its militarization and has now for a while. It's not surprising that U.S. Space Command would agree with the U.S. Secretary of Defense.
? print
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_11/Krepon.asp
Apple's PCs never got a strong hold in the business market, but once upon it's most powerful machine did:
From Wikipedia: "The Apple LaserWriter was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market. Combined with GUI-based programs like Adobe PageMaker on the Macintosh, it is generally considered to have sparked the Desktop publishing (DTP) revolution in the mid-1980s.
Unlike models from HP, which had been introduced a few months earlier and used their proprietary PCL printing language, the LaserWriter included the PostScript page description language which allowed for far more complex graphics, high-resolution bitmap graphics, outline fonts, and generally much better-looking output.
The use of PostScript comes at a cost. Unlike PCL and other early printer control languages, PostScript is a complete programming language and requires a complete computer to run it. In the case of the LaserWriter this was a Motorola 68000 CPU running at 12MHz, making it the fastest machine in Apple's lineup, and the most expensive at $6,995 when it was introduced in late 1985."
"There's a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the code and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a mess. And here is the interesting observation: they are probably wrong. The reason that they think the old code is a mess is because of a cardinal, fundamental law of programming:
0 69.html
It's harder to read code than to write it."
From Joel on Software
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000
Always comment.
It's spelled Northrop Grumman.
For almost two years I have been using a Kyocera 7135 Smartphone from Verizon (it runs PalmOS), and I use it to browse the web all the time...but it is rough. Not because of the phone per se; it is because of all the bloated websites. Here's when I usually use my smartphone:
- when I'm on the subway (DC Metro)
- when I'm waiting in an airport
- when I'm waiting for my girlfriend to get ready to go out
- when I'm waiting for Chinese take-out to be ready
- when I'm waiting for somebody to meet me in a restaurant
- when I'm bored in a meeting (sad but true)
In other words, there are LOTS of occasions when I find it useful to be able to browse the Web on my handheld. I primarily use two browsers: EudoraWeb (which just delivers text) and "Web" (came with the cellphone, and delivers text and graphics). Neither browser supports advanced features such as Java, for example.
Websites I often try to visit include Slashdot, Ars Technica, Groklaw, eBay, Amazon, Moviefone, Yahoo Maps or Mapquest, Travelocity, various white pages (i.e., for telephone number lookups), Wikipedia, Google, and various news and airline (flight status) sites. In some cases these sites also have custom clients, or thin/text-only versions of their content, and that does help. But in general, most of these sites are barely tolerable or entirely unworkable on my Smartphone.
For instance, I'll read Slashdot in EudoraWeb, and it takes a long time to scroll through all the header text to get to the stories.
I believe that in the future more people, like me, will want to browse the web via their handhelds -- for all kinds of purposes (like the ones I listed above) and in call kinds of situations (like the ones I listed above). I think the sooner Website authors learn to accomodate handheld clients, the better.
As long as they watch old movies, even young whipper-snappers should know that floppy disks used to be considered very expensive. After all, floppies were the penalty that Anthony Michael Hall had to pay if he couldn't get Molly Ringwald's panties in the John Hughes' film, "Sixteen Candles".
"I mean, not many girls in contemporary American society today would give their underwear to help a geek like me."
Q: How come the British don't make computers?
A: They haven't figured out how to make them leak oil.
A 0.500 batting average might be good in the creative world; a writer that churns out really great stuff half the time is probably a really good writer. But the executive producer position is basically a "CEO" of a business, in this case a business that we call "the Star Trek franchise" -- with UPN basically a holding company for many such businesses. When your job is running a business, a batting average of 0.500 is pretty bad.
I don't know why they're doing this, but I've tended to agree with others and wonder if:
(a) SCO started this because they thought they could get IBM to buy them, making all of the SCO executives rich, but then
(b) when IBM clearly signalled it wasn't going to fall for that old trick, SCO had to keep making a strong public appearance of a credible case in order to avoid getting sued -- or worse, SCO executives jailed by the SEC for some form of stock fraud. I.e., if they lose to IBM in a fair trial the executives can claim they honestly thought they had a case. If they simply give up and admit they never had a case, then what kind of legal attacks from shareholders or the SEC might they they open themselves up to? At this point, mayby Darl is just trying to avoid personal liability and an assault on his own personal assets.
As I recall, to get a product put on the GSA schedule in the first place (for purchase by government customers), the vendor has to offer their "best commercial price" to the GSA. So it's not surprising that that GSA/DOD price is low. Collectively, the Federal government is buying in bulk after all.
s /9039-1.html and search on "best commercial price".
(Old) reference: http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/9_17/new
I suspect the diference is a combination of
a) lack of body language when using a cellphone
b) latency in the cellphone audio (which is significant -- try calling your home phone on your cellphone and talk to yourself, you'll see what I mean)
c) lower volume + static, requiring that you pay attention to the cellphone audio more carefully
The three factors add up. Talking on a cellphone requires paying close attention to the cellphone. Like I said previously: so much so that we actually slow even WALKING when we talk on a cellphone (just watch somebody on a sidewalk sometime).
Have you ever noticed that when somebody is walking down the sidewalk, if they start talking on their cellphone their walk slows, or they even stop and stand during the cellphone conversation?
If we can't even -walk- and talk on cellphones, why would anybody think we could -drive- and talk on cellphones? Just our walking behavior alone tells us that there's something inherently distracting about talking on a cellphone.
My suggestion was serious, but I think you're being purposely obtuse...maybe with the intent of irony? Of course a hypothetical "right to drive" wouldn't apply to people who create a public hazard by driving, any more than the right to bear arms applies now to citizens for whom gun ownership constitutes a public hazard. Likewise you also know that a gun in the wrong hands can kill 60 school children just as easily as a car in the wrong hands...and you also know that all guns are not "handguns"...so I assume all those reasons you cited were intentional strawmen.
The reason why "taxis and other public transportation" wouldn't work, of course, is that under a totalitarian regime public transportation is controlled BY the totalitarian regime. "In Soviet Russia, they don't bus you to the political demonstrations..." to paraphrase a slashdot meme. The notion that chatrooms are a credible threat to totalitarianism is an amusing conceit however, I will grant you that!
I've been thinking about "the right to free assembly" lately. Once upon a time, when people lived within horse-riding distance of their meeting houses, it was possible to exercise this right without any technological support, but nowadays it would be almost impossible to exercise this right without access to, for example, a car. And yet states still consider driving a "privilege" rather than a "right." It seems to me that in this day and age, with access to a car essentially a prerequisite for free assembly, American's ought to have a "right" to drive, protected as a consequence of the the first amendment. In fact, I would think that in this day and age access to a car is more important than (say) access to a gun, for exercising civil disobedience in the face of totalitarianism. We ought to have a right to drive for the same reason we have a right to bear arms, it seems to me. So where do states get off still telling us that this is a "privilege" and not a right?
Horses and donkeys, of course, can cross-breed to create mules. I recall from one college class (physical anthropology) a discussion about the fact that, in principle, humans and chimps could also cross-breed, though of course the offspring would (like a mule) be sterile. As discussed here: http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=152885 2&lastnode_id=1694132 the number of chromosomes don't necessarily need to be the same, as long as the chromosomes are "homologous" and the male has the fewer number of chromosomes. So in theory we could make a human chimera via simple cross-breeding.
From the "everything2.com" article referenced above:
"liger = male lion + female tiger
tigon or tiglon = male tiger + female lion
mule = male donkey + female horse
hinny = male horse + female donkey (jenny)
zorse = zebra + horse
zonkey or zebrass = zebra + donkey (ass)
cama = camel + llama
catalo or beefalo = buffalo + cattle
yakalo = yak + buffalo
wholphin = whale + dolphin (specifically a false killer whale and a bottlenose dolphin)
Toast of Botswana = goat + sheep
Obviously this deserves some clarification. While a sheep can be impregnated by a goat, the kid/lamb is always stillborn... except in one case in the early 1990s. This animal was nicknamed the Toast of Botswana. Since it was the only one ever known to have lived, no other name has been given to a goat/sheep combination."
I don't know. You set the bar pretty high.
Consistent, ongoing good healthcare requires a strong economic infrastructure. You don't get a strong economic infrastructure via a one-shot injection of funds. As another poster already pointed out, it's the difference between giving a man some fish and teaching a man to fish. In the long run, you make the people of the third world healthier by helping them develop a strong economy, not by sending them a shipload of medicine.
The Linux community has ALREADY "matched this generosity." Rather than charge money in exchange for software and then give some small fraction of that money back as charitable donations, the Linux community lets people keep all their money in the first place. That's more efficient, and I think a lot more generous, than charging for the software in the first place.
Free software is also going to help the third world develop more quickly than it would under a purely proprietary model, so there's an extra kicker that'll help the next generation too, not just this generation. "Teach a man to fish..." and all that, ya' know?
EA was Disney/Microsoft/Coors/SCO/Dominos-evil LONG before this. Am I the only person who remembers the way EA copy protection would cause the read-heads on Commodore 64 floppy disks to go out of alignment? What kind of sick bastards implement a DRM that causes HARDWARE damage???