There's been an amazing amount of controversial instances of voter fraud this election. From broken machines in New York, to poll closing in Missouri, to absentee ballot stuffing all over the country. I'd say this probably has a lot to do with the fact that we no longer have several competing organizations working on election results- we now only have one. But Geez America- this election has looked more like a Third World/South American election than a First World one.
One of my favorite parts of these suppsedly fraudulent voting situations was when they held the polls open for longer in Missouri. Apparently there were many people standing in line, so a judge said they could keep them open. I guess I might be the only one who doesn't see the problem here. I could see the argument made that possibly many people didn't go to the polls because they thought they were closed when in fact they weren't. But, isn't the point of the election to see which candidate the people want? I guess I may just be naive, but I think its a great thing that they left the polls open, no matter if the electors in the state went to someone else because of it!!
But to say that your speech is not protected simply because X person didn't know it was *YOU* that said it is absolutely absurd.
This is not the point at hand here. What happened was that someone posted potentially slanderous comments about someone which had a real world outcome. The head of the company wanted to hold someone responsible, but the posts were anonymous, thus they could not find them. They didn't decide to prosecute because this was someone in particular; rather, they wanted to prosecute on the principal of the matter.
And of course, truly anonymous speakers may obviously speak with impunity.
While you missed it above, this is the issue at hand. Anonymous speakers are allowed to do whatever they want with no consequences, which is not a right given to us. These people who posted anonymously were allowed to do something for which they would otherwise be held accountable. So we come down to the question of whether speach with impunity will be allowed and whether or not people would be held accountable for what they say.
I still don't understand why everyone is harping about violence on TV and video games. They seem to think that these are the root of all evil, and that kids will suddenly play these games and become a violent murderer. If this were the case, then anyone who played Civilization would immediatly become a meglomaniac with goals of ruling the world (well, don't we all?). A correlation of violent media and violent culture does not prove that the cause of the violent culture is the media, it just proves that both of them exist at the same time.
Literature, both through film and through video games are not causes of this violence, but rather they are indications of the violent nature of our culture. You will not solve any problems by curbing violence on TV and stuff like that, you will solve it by attacking the root of the problem (which Bush actually touched on, but was too much of a dumbass to realize where he should have gone with it).
The big problem that how children are brought up and what values are given to them. If you are worried that your children have values that are rather skewed, then you have yourself to blame. Either your values are so screwed up that your children could not help but run away from them, or you did not do a proper job of bringing your children up with the values you wished them to have. I realize that I'm treading on thin ice here, but I'm going forward anyway. If you want your children to behave in a certain way, and hold certain things valuable and push others away, you have to instill these thoughts in them (that is a bad word, but I can't think of another one at this point).
If a culture would instill the values that it wants in a child, then it doesn't matter how many violent movies or video games they play, they really won't change all that much. While you can make the argument that everytime you see something violent on TV your character will be affected in some way, I can tell you that most likely that amount is so insignificant that it really doesn't matter.
There are two real possible ways to look at what happened here. Either Google put in special clauses in their code to bump up Yahoo's stats, or Yahoo adapted to the new technology to increase its scores in the search engine's data.
It would be quite simple for them to adjust their code in order to give Yahoo a leg up. All they would have to do is put in a simple if statement that would basically say "if(siteis(yahoo)) score++;" This isn't necessarily what happened, but it is quite possible.
On the other side, you must also remember that Yahoo basically is a site of lists. This is what they do, and they probably do it rather well since they've been doing it for so long -- I must admit that I don't use them all that often. When they looked at the Google data, they were probably able to update their lists to become more usefull, thus people started linking to them again, giving them more hits, they move up in the Google ratings... and this cycle continues ad infinitum.
Personally, i would say that the second case is probably the most likely one. Since they were looking for different search engine technology they were probably looking at Google and what it spat back, they then used that to stock up their lists to be better and then we have that funny little cycle I noted above. Overall, I would say there is absolutely nothing to worry about, Google isn't bumping up Yahoo's stats, Yahoo is looking at how Google works and is using the data to increase their sites value.
Some of the wording in this case makes me think that they want to be able to claim ownership of any information stream. In this case, any content provider would be able to stop people from recording any part of it, unless they pay royalties of some sort to the content provider. While this may sound a bit innocent (though not entirely), there are some eery ideas that could come of this.
Think for a minute if someone like @home were to say that you could not record any of the data stream that was routed through them to you. You would not be able to save any files from the internet, even ones sent to you through email!!! Admittedly this is a very far fetched idea, but it is one that could be possible if this line of reasoning is brought to its logical conclusion.
OK, in the wake of this decision that everyone is obviously upset with, I figured I would throw something else into the fray here. With this recent ruling, we have found out that it is now illegal to even link to a site with illegal information (or at least information which is the property of big corporations who have alot of money and interests to protect). This is a very interesting ruling and sets quite the precedent, which could come into play very soon.
The questioning over links to illegal material is not a new one. The biggest example that I can think of here would be the Napster cases. They are effectively in trouble because they are providing links to illegally copied material. Not only has Napster gotten in trouble for this now, but 2600 has as well. I think we are starting to see a trend here.
Not only is it now illegal to carry the illegal information in the Unites States, but it is illegal to link to said illegal information. An interesting implication of this would be banner ads. What do you do when a child is using the computer and "subjected" to all the porn that they innevitably are (note the dripping of sarcasm). If this porn is provided through a banner add, that page has effectively become illegal. Who is to blame for this if the banner is supplied dynamically, the provider or the page owner?
Also, does anybody know how this works in physical print? What is the punishment for containing information on obtaining illegal information? Can you get in trouble if you write a letter to the editor which contains directions to a cache of kiddie porn? Where is this line drawn?
Helix is doing two great things from what I can tell here. The first, and one that most people will see, is that they are producing a product (or at least helping produce a product) that is doing good for the whole community, or for any computer user actually -- assuming they will eventually use the product, or indirectly through competition. Even though Gnome isn't completely their baby, they are doing alot work for it.
The second thing that I see them doing, which is perhaps more important, is offering another example of the open source buisiness model. They are producing something open source and giving it away for free, yet they have a model for making money, which attracts investors. If they succeed this does nothing but give credibility to open source as a viable option for buisinesses and start ups. If they fail, this could have some repercusions, but then again, its not going to hurt open sources look to the buisiness world.
I'm starting to notice a new strategy (well, its not THAT new) in the software industry. If you have a product which really isn't bringing any revenue in, just open source it and claim it as PR.
This isn't a bad thing, its just kind of funny to note. Now on an interesting note, how easy is it for someone to look into the code of the compiler and get helpful ideas and hints to incorporate into their own compiler? What I mean is, will this move help out gcc in any way?
Well it's a sad day. Now we're going to have to pay royalties for music that has already been purchased and is being used within fair use guidelines. Shit.
This is not what this means. The reason that mp3.com got in trouble was that they were giving you their copy of the music without paying royalties to the record companies.
Here is the rational. Any two rips of a track on a CD will produce different mp3's due to changes in variables beyond our control (unless somehow you find a way to control everything). In this way, the court is able to see an mp3 much like a copy of an old LP onto tape, each copy is a bit different.
Thus, when mp3.com makes a rip, they have in effect converted the music into another format (this is legal). However, they then give this legal copy away to people who have "proof" that they own the CD already (this is illegal as it is not in fair use to give away a fair use copy to someone else).
The best analogy I can give to this is that of a radio station. They convert the music they have purchased and convert it to another form, then pass it out over the radio waves. However, they can't do this for free, they must pay a fee to the record companies for the music they play, because they have given their "fair use" copies out for free (even to some people who own copies of the music).
This is why other places which offer to store mp3's which you rip aren't getting in trouble, because they are offering you a way to store and play your own fair use copies. So mp3.com was not letting you play music within your fair use guidelines and that is why they got in trouble. This is a case that I personally think was decided correctly, in a legal sense. I think its kinda screwed up that this doesn't work, but hey, the law hasn't had time to catch up with the new ideas yet.
Though technology may be a contributing factor to the problems of our democracy, I don't think it deserves half the credit that Katz gives it. Katz seems to think that the reason that the political parties are able to get away with conventions that are no longer what they used to be has everything to do with TV and nothing to do with the apathetic masses of America who do nothing about it
Think about it, if people would get off their collective lazy asses and vote, there would not be this problem. Instead, people prefer to stay in, watch a bit of TV, maybe go out to a movie, rather than vote and then complain about it for the next year or so, telling everyone about how so-and-so is a dumbass and shouldn't be allowed out of his house, much less hold political power -- yet they continue to not vote and not do anything about the problem.
If Americans as a whole would go out and vote (even if their decision is half-assed and not totally thought out), half of this problem would go away. The other half will have to wait until Americans actually think before they vote (but I'm not sure that happens in any democracy, or has ever happened period)... once both of these things happen, then and only then will the problem of our quasi-Democracy go away.
OK, I must just be dumb or out of it, or something along that line. But, why do they call it wireless fiber? It doesn't make sense, a fiber is a solid object, a "wire" if you will. Wireless would imply that the "wire" does not exist. Why not just come up with a fun buzzword that actually makes sense?!?
Besides the obvious Big Brother aspect of this technology, I can see some fun little bells and whistles that could come out of this and be rather entertaining, if not worthwhile. For instance, right now we have the ability to put still pictures behind our terminals and overlay the text on top of it, why not have something where you are running the TV in the back of your terminal while you type away in the front, that way when you want to break a tad, you just shift your focus to the background rather than the foreground.
Imagine the productivity problems that would ensue at work. You've technically got your terminal screen up, but in actuality you're watching TV!!!:-)
As a physician, I'd just like to point out that your comment on Viagra ('drugs that have no real use') betrays your ignorance of what this drug is for. Erectile dysfunction affects a shitload of people - probably 30 x10^6 in the US - and previously was treated with injections to the penis or vacuum pumps.
While Viagra may be a great step above other options as far as erectile dysfunction goes, I still don't see its actual "use." I realize that erectile dysfunciton affects a shitload of people, and I'm happy that they have a way around it now. I just don't see the use in a shitload of research dollars going towards Viagra when it could be going towards something that saves lives.
To answer your question, I would much rather have a pill to get an erection, however this is a major instance in which you must wonder about the "value" of what you are doing. For the amount of money required for one person to get it up and have sex, wouldn't it be better to take that money and give someone a meal?!? I mean come on, let's be reasonable here.
As so many people have pointed out, the big problem here is that country A is trying to stop someone in country B from doing something which can be seen in country A (and is illegal there) but which is competely legal to do in country B (yes, this is very obvious). Now, the obvious problem here is that the only way country A can get the person to stop doing what they are doing is to go to country B and move to stop them indirectly, which is very long, drawn out and not worth their time.
Their solution? Find a way to make it law abiding in every country. I don't see this is a positive way of doing things, as the arguments get way to convoluted and you get countries backing up all over themselves trying to keep the others happy, much more uneeded diplomacy in my opinion (and the world tends to suck at this anyway, so why make them do more).
I see two possible ways of this working out:
(1) Have the internet stay the way it is, ruled by some random anarchic principles which stay true to its roots, but countries won't like because they can't maintain control of it.
(2) Have some international body preside over the internet, making some rules and arbitrating between countries over what can and can't be done (perhaps ICANN, maybe the UN can make its own little subcomittee, then again, the world court)
I have noticed this trend myself in my academic institution. We happen to be a big 10 school and its very obvious which departments are in vogue and getting the massive funding, as suddenly new buildings are appearing on campus specifically for them. These programs are usually the ones that are capable of producing patents that Katz makes references to.
I can actually think of a recent settlement where my university ended up getting $300 million in patent money due to it from a pharacutical company. You can't tell me that the president of the University doesn't look at things like that when he is planning what is "best" for the University and the taxpayers that fund a good portion of it.
I think that pharmaceutical (I know I've spelled that wrong a couple of times now) companies are one of the biggest problems in this. They have realized the amount of money they can make on drugs that have no real use, but can make a crapload of money (i.e. Viagra). This sort of thing is pushing research in directions it should not go, people are starting to look for the new hot IPO of the research world (albiet, it doesn't happen quite like it does in the financial world, but you know what I mean).
While i sound all bitter here, I personally can't think of much you can do to stop this sort of thing. I mean, you could slap the people on the wrist and say, "bad researcher, you were thinking of money and patents instead of that boring stuff that may end up helping out quite a bit." You could also implement something that says companies can't give money for this sort of research, but that would be dumb, because some money does end up being spent on worthwhile causes (and if fact, most of it does, its just that the other ones are getting alot more attention these days).
I would personally like to see a system where academe is kept seperate by a large brick wall from the corporate world so that it does not get "infected" by the money bug, for I beleive that academia, which contains those realms of pure research and the arts, is one of the last romantic ideals that is left on this planet (along witch teachers).
My personal opinion is that maybe you could have a "general fund tax" type of donation system. If a company wants to help fund the research of a certain project, the company donates X amount of dollars. Say 75% of that money goes to the project they want to work on, and %25 goes into a general fund where other projects could be funded (decided upon by some independent group). This would provide a way to pay for the glamorous research and allow the other research to be funded as well.
From reading most of the posts on this story you would think its horrible that companies are actually starting to produce versions of their software for linux. Admittedly we have open source versions of this software, but it is anything but perfect (and it only uses one of the protocols allowed by AIM).
Personally, I would prefer to use a program such as Everybuddy which uses all of the protocols, but overall I would say this is a step in the right direction that AOL is starting to acknowledge that Linux is a viable platform for development. This leads me to another question.... does anyone know what they used for development (what widget set)? I'm quite curious whether they just produced a Java version (which seems to be very popular among IM programs), used a Wine style development that Corel uses, or actually did some Linux programming.
Even if the studios end up on the losing side, they just go play a couple rounds of golf and laugh about it over drinks. The defendants, on the other hand, will be stuck with hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Well, there are more facets of this case than just the monetary value alone. As far as the legal fees go, I have to agree that the legal fees are pocket change for the studios whereas the EFF is most likely straining its resources to be able to pull this off.
However, there is much more at stake here than just legal fees, and that is legal precedent. If the EFF wins in this case, the studios (and many other people) will lose out in potential profits and the EFF will have made a massive step forward in our rights to reverse engineering and fair use (something which is abused both by consumers and by the corporations in my humble opinion) -- and I suppose we could throw in free speech as well.
What we need are huge solar panels in space and wireless transmission of power down here to juice the stuff that eats a bit more than the websites..
This is a perfect idea!!! Then, once you have these satellites and the proper base facilities to harness this power, you are able to produce so much energy that you can buy your way out of almost any problem and you will finally be free to crush Yang and his infernal Hive!!!!
They're couting shipments of Linux, which totally misses out on all of the downloads.
This brings up another question. How does one really count the number of Linux users? I mean, you can't just say its the number of people who have purchased box versions because we all know that many people (maybe even most people) actually just download their copies.
Perhaps add up the number of downloads and the number of purchases? Well, the problem we have there is figuring out the number of people who actually downloaded their copy, installed it, and actually kept it. I know I've downloaded a distro a few times and never used it... or sometimes I just peaced it together. Thus we can't really count the number of downloads. (I'm begining to feel like Vezzini in Princess Bride here)
I suppose you could poll web page hits, but then you have all sorts of other problems with demographics and the like. What the correct answer to this is, I don't know, but its a very interesting question to pose.
So I don't think that the article was thoroughly worded to get the idea accross. I think I'm missing why centralization is "new" (think british empire, or just rome).
Well, I agree that there are some problems with the use of the "central" idea. I think the big difference comes when you introduce a centralized distribution system along with central production.
Centralized Distribution...
In the old days, someone would make a product in a central location (which is still done), however, the ability of the trasportation and communication infrastructure was so much weaker than it is today, that the centralized companies were not able to bear nearly as much force on their distributors as they are now.
Then combine a very centralized production system with an equally centralized distribution system (like CocaCola and WalMart for isntance) and you get alot more control over the product. Thus, instead of one centralized company dealing with many independent shops, you only have to deal with the centralized management of the place, and the policy is given from there. This is a great amount of control that the producers and industrialists like, because they can pretty much dictate their terms.
Thus, this lack of control that the companies used to have allowed for a distributed nature of commerce. The terms were not dictated in one place and universal everywhere, people could charge what they wanted, they could display things as they wanted, etc, etc.... However, as things started to change and the central companies were able to exert more control, this distributed nature was taken away, and you started to get places that all carried the same damn products and looked the exact same (many different record shops vs. Musicland or Sam Goody.... or lots o'coffe shops vs. Starbucks)... aka, centralized commerce
Drawing parallels between viruses and Napster is a joke - nobody can "infect" you with more files.. you explicitly make yours available to others, and you then in turn download from them. There is no autonomous behavior involved here, it is a collective choice by millions of people each day to share, or not share, their files on the Napster network. Or for that matter, any file over any protocol.
It is like a virus in that it spreads in an almost unchecked manner. A virus spreading throughout an organism (in which it can live) is very close to a file which everyone wants being spread over the internet, except that its working a bit in reverse. Where the virus starts in one place and looks for the next place to go, the file starts in one place and waits for people to find it.
It also fits in the mindset of the people (and perhaps a better fit there). You start out with people of one mindset, then one person gets infected with a new idea. That new idea is spread (through various means) to people who had not had that idea as of yet where the virus/idea multiplies and spreads further. Its a very simple analogy that I'm sure you've heard used many times before.
The use of the word virus unfornatly gives it a bad light, as people don't like diseases usually, so this analogy doesn't convey a good thing like it could, but oh well, nothing is perfect.
Why do you talk about the cost of a blank cd as being part of the issue? For instance, a Redhat Linux CD costs $50 from Redhat. That's a helluva a lot more markup than ever occurs with a single mass produced music CD...
The whole issue about the cost of the CD coming into play is straight out due to the markup. It costs the record companies very little money to stamp out CDs in such mass quantities as it does, thus it should lower the CD price if more are sold. The amount of artwork and other matierials sent with the CD are also very minimal, making the straightout price to produce very low.
RedHat and others, on the other hand, package all sorts of things in their boxes (such as large manuals which have to be printed and bound, and then sometimes stuffed penguin toys which have to be manufactured). On top of this, there is an agreement of support that people are paying for. So, the $50 purchase of the RedHat CD (the actual CD of which costs about the same as a music CD) contains much more than just the CD.
The question that is posed here is whether or not that markup that record companies throw onto their CD's are justified. Admitted, they have to pay all sorts of people to do their promotion and other things, but does it really cost as much as they say it does? Apparently, the states think that the RIAA has been inflating the prices much higher than reasonable to jack up their profits, and has been using antitrust (through price fixing) and bully tactics (through their promotional money), though the bully tactics aren't illegal as far as I know.
Makes no sense to my why people openly advocate stealing music yet cry fould when someone violates their GPL by not releasing source... Get on one side of the fence or the other, please...
Personally, I back you up on this one. If you are going to cry afoul when the GPL is violated, then you should have just as much of a problem when the copyright of music is violated through the use of napster (even though the problem is the big bad and evil record corporations).
Many people have mistaken the use of napster as something for which they have a "right." They give you arguments such as "art is in the free domain" and stuff like that, or "the big bad record companies are exploiting the common user of their music, let us take control of the means of distriubution... listeners of world unite!!!"
The problem with this is that most people spouting this information and philosophy don't understand it and can't argue it if their life depended on it. On one hand they'll be arguing the beauty of unadulterated capitalism then support the free distribution of music to all civilians, not even realizing their arguments. Anyway, I should probably get off of this rant....
I don't see a big deal; These companies decided to outsource their traffic analysis. While the capability surely exists for Coremetrics to track users across websites, a'la Doubleclick, their customers would be terribly pissed.
First of all, I must say that I agree that this has been blown a bit out of proportion, a couple of companies (in their infinite wisdom) forgot to document what was actually going on. The problem here is not the fact that they outsourced their traffic analysis, its the manner in which they did it. Instead of gathering the data themselves and sending to someone to be analyzed (something which I don't think anyone would have a problem with), they had the information sent directly to the 3rd party. This in itself is not a bad thing, however they did not inform the customer of this, thus they have breached the trust between the customer and themselves.
It's always been 'buyer beware'. What is so special about the net that it no longer applies? So the tracking is easier to do, and easier to analyze, and there is more of it, and it is more meaningful; Do you honestly think your bank, the telephone company, and the credit agencies aren't selling your spending habits to marketers?
Again, there is a difference here. Most likely, if you look at the statements that you signed to get your credit card (or the small print on the back of the credit card) you will see something that says the company reserves the right to collect data about your use of the card and it also reserves the right to sell that data to other companies. In this instance it is explicitly stated that this information is being gathered.
However, in this case, customers were not being informed that information was being gathered about them and their spending/surfing habits. While this seems to have just been a mess up in documentation (though there are many conspiracy theories of ToysRus trying to take over the world.... I personally find that very hard to beleive). If the companies had stated somewhere that they were using this company to collect the data, there would have been no uproar.
However, as much as I want MS to get a stern slap in the face for its actions, I hope whatever decision doesn't fuck up MS further than the DOJ suit did.
Well, from what I read in the article, the actions that the EU will take against Microsoft will be tiddlywinks compared to what the DOJ is doing. There is a major difference between slapping someone with a fine (albiet, that fine could be rather large, I would not want to lose 10% of my earnings -- however, even they said that the largest fines in actuality have been approximately %1) and breaking a company into little pieces.
True they're an 'evil, greedy corporation' but considering how entrenched they are in the PC market, it's still not safe to have a major software paradigm shift occur abruptly.
Well in this case the paradigm shift won't be all that abrupt. Let us assume a worst case scenario in which Microsoft ceases to be tomorrow (and there was much rejoicing). This doesn't mean that suddently everyone is going to be forced to change their operating system or the platforms that they are on. Most of the systems that are in place will pretty much stay the same, and software will be created to help companies traverse over to other platforms when they are ready.
The only way a really abrupt change would happen would be if it became illegal to use a Microsoft product (ok this would be the worst case scenario, but even more unlikely than the above example), in which case everyone would have to change tomorrow and there would be mass hysteria. I can see some serious problems happening in this situation, but the chances of that are so remote that you really don't have to worry about it.
Re:Katz writes about things without having 2 clues
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Selfish Society
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You say programming is power. But how much power do you have if the machines you program are owned by corportions?
Get a clue. Katz is right. It does not matter how hard you work or how entitled you believe you are - these corporations can impoverish you if you step outside of the parameters they have set.
I'm sorry to do this, but I just can't resist. WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!!!! TAKE CONTROL OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION!!!
You do have a point though. The problem with that point is the current socio-economic situation in the world. We have been able to step outside the parameters that companies have set up throghout the history of labor as we are in demand, and they needed to make concessions in order to get our abilities. However, I can see these concessions being taken away already in some instances. As time goes by, the concessions that we have been granted will most likely be taken away and we will be back in the situaiton of the normal user, as we are no longer seperate and different, but pretty much a normal worker.
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One of my favorite parts of these suppsedly fraudulent voting situations was when they held the polls open for longer in Missouri. Apparently there were many people standing in line, so a judge said they could keep them open. I guess I might be the only one who doesn't see the problem here. I could see the argument made that possibly many people didn't go to the polls because they thought they were closed when in fact they weren't. But, isn't the point of the election to see which candidate the people want? I guess I may just be naive, but I think its a great thing that they left the polls open, no matter if the electors in the state went to someone else because of it!!
This is not the point at hand here. What happened was that someone posted potentially slanderous comments about someone which had a real world outcome. The head of the company wanted to hold someone responsible, but the posts were anonymous, thus they could not find them. They didn't decide to prosecute because this was someone in particular; rather, they wanted to prosecute on the principal of the matter.
While you missed it above, this is the issue at hand. Anonymous speakers are allowed to do whatever they want with no consequences, which is not a right given to us. These people who posted anonymously were allowed to do something for which they would otherwise be held accountable. So we come down to the question of whether speach with impunity will be allowed and whether or not people would be held accountable for what they say.
I still don't understand why everyone is harping about violence on TV and video games. They seem to think that these are the root of all evil, and that kids will suddenly play these games and become a violent murderer. If this were the case, then anyone who played Civilization would immediatly become a meglomaniac with goals of ruling the world (well, don't we all?). A correlation of violent media and violent culture does not prove that the cause of the violent culture is the media, it just proves that both of them exist at the same time.
Literature, both through film and through video games are not causes of this violence, but rather they are indications of the violent nature of our culture. You will not solve any problems by curbing violence on TV and stuff like that, you will solve it by attacking the root of the problem (which Bush actually touched on, but was too much of a dumbass to realize where he should have gone with it).
The big problem that how children are brought up and what values are given to them. If you are worried that your children have values that are rather skewed, then you have yourself to blame. Either your values are so screwed up that your children could not help but run away from them, or you did not do a proper job of bringing your children up with the values you wished them to have. I realize that I'm treading on thin ice here, but I'm going forward anyway. If you want your children to behave in a certain way, and hold certain things valuable and push others away, you have to instill these thoughts in them (that is a bad word, but I can't think of another one at this point).
If a culture would instill the values that it wants in a child, then it doesn't matter how many violent movies or video games they play, they really won't change all that much. While you can make the argument that everytime you see something violent on TV your character will be affected in some way, I can tell you that most likely that amount is so insignificant that it really doesn't matter.
There are two real possible ways to look at what happened here. Either Google put in special clauses in their code to bump up Yahoo's stats, or Yahoo adapted to the new technology to increase its scores in the search engine's data.
It would be quite simple for them to adjust their code in order to give Yahoo a leg up. All they would have to do is put in a simple if statement that would basically say "if(siteis(yahoo)) score++;" This isn't necessarily what happened, but it is quite possible.
On the other side, you must also remember that Yahoo basically is a site of lists. This is what they do, and they probably do it rather well since they've been doing it for so long -- I must admit that I don't use them all that often. When they looked at the Google data, they were probably able to update their lists to become more usefull, thus people started linking to them again, giving them more hits, they move up in the Google ratings... and this cycle continues ad infinitum.
Personally, i would say that the second case is probably the most likely one. Since they were looking for different search engine technology they were probably looking at Google and what it spat back, they then used that to stock up their lists to be better and then we have that funny little cycle I noted above. Overall, I would say there is absolutely nothing to worry about, Google isn't bumping up Yahoo's stats, Yahoo is looking at how Google works and is using the data to increase their sites value.
Some of the wording in this case makes me think that they want to be able to claim ownership of any information stream. In this case, any content provider would be able to stop people from recording any part of it, unless they pay royalties of some sort to the content provider. While this may sound a bit innocent (though not entirely), there are some eery ideas that could come of this.
Think for a minute if someone like @home were to say that you could not record any of the data stream that was routed through them to you. You would not be able to save any files from the internet, even ones sent to you through email!!! Admittedly this is a very far fetched idea, but it is one that could be possible if this line of reasoning is brought to its logical conclusion.
OK, in the wake of this decision that everyone is obviously upset with, I figured I would throw something else into the fray here. With this recent ruling, we have found out that it is now illegal to even link to a site with illegal information (or at least information which is the property of big corporations who have alot of money and interests to protect). This is a very interesting ruling and sets quite the precedent, which could come into play very soon.
The questioning over links to illegal material is not a new one. The biggest example that I can think of here would be the Napster cases. They are effectively in trouble because they are providing links to illegally copied material. Not only has Napster gotten in trouble for this now, but 2600 has as well. I think we are starting to see a trend here.
Not only is it now illegal to carry the illegal information in the Unites States, but it is illegal to link to said illegal information. An interesting implication of this would be banner ads. What do you do when a child is using the computer and "subjected" to all the porn that they innevitably are (note the dripping of sarcasm). If this porn is provided through a banner add, that page has effectively become illegal. Who is to blame for this if the banner is supplied dynamically, the provider or the page owner?
Also, does anybody know how this works in physical print? What is the punishment for containing information on obtaining illegal information? Can you get in trouble if you write a letter to the editor which contains directions to a cache of kiddie porn? Where is this line drawn?
Helix is doing two great things from what I can tell here. The first, and one that most people will see, is that they are producing a product (or at least helping produce a product) that is doing good for the whole community, or for any computer user actually -- assuming they will eventually use the product, or indirectly through competition. Even though Gnome isn't completely their baby, they are doing alot work for it.
The second thing that I see them doing, which is perhaps more important, is offering another example of the open source buisiness model. They are producing something open source and giving it away for free, yet they have a model for making money, which attracts investors. If they succeed this does nothing but give credibility to open source as a viable option for buisinesses and start ups. If they fail, this could have some repercusions, but then again, its not going to hurt open sources look to the buisiness world.
I'm starting to notice a new strategy (well, its not THAT new) in the software industry. If you have a product which really isn't bringing any revenue in, just open source it and claim it as PR.
This isn't a bad thing, its just kind of funny to note. Now on an interesting note, how easy is it for someone to look into the code of the compiler and get helpful ideas and hints to incorporate into their own compiler? What I mean is, will this move help out gcc in any way?
This is not what this means. The reason that mp3.com got in trouble was that they were giving you their copy of the music without paying royalties to the record companies.
Here is the rational. Any two rips of a track on a CD will produce different mp3's due to changes in variables beyond our control (unless somehow you find a way to control everything). In this way, the court is able to see an mp3 much like a copy of an old LP onto tape, each copy is a bit different.
Thus, when mp3.com makes a rip, they have in effect converted the music into another format (this is legal). However, they then give this legal copy away to people who have "proof" that they own the CD already (this is illegal as it is not in fair use to give away a fair use copy to someone else).
The best analogy I can give to this is that of a radio station. They convert the music they have purchased and convert it to another form, then pass it out over the radio waves. However, they can't do this for free, they must pay a fee to the record companies for the music they play, because they have given their "fair use" copies out for free (even to some people who own copies of the music).
This is why other places which offer to store mp3's which you rip aren't getting in trouble, because they are offering you a way to store and play your own fair use copies. So mp3.com was not letting you play music within your fair use guidelines and that is why they got in trouble. This is a case that I personally think was decided correctly, in a legal sense. I think its kinda screwed up that this doesn't work, but hey, the law hasn't had time to catch up with the new ideas yet.
Though technology may be a contributing factor to the problems of our democracy, I don't think it deserves half the credit that Katz gives it. Katz seems to think that the reason that the political parties are able to get away with conventions that are no longer what they used to be has everything to do with TV and nothing to do with the apathetic masses of America who do nothing about it
Think about it, if people would get off their collective lazy asses and vote, there would not be this problem. Instead, people prefer to stay in, watch a bit of TV, maybe go out to a movie, rather than vote and then complain about it for the next year or so, telling everyone about how so-and-so is a dumbass and shouldn't be allowed out of his house, much less hold political power -- yet they continue to not vote and not do anything about the problem.
If Americans as a whole would go out and vote (even if their decision is half-assed and not totally thought out), half of this problem would go away. The other half will have to wait until Americans actually think before they vote (but I'm not sure that happens in any democracy, or has ever happened period)... once both of these things happen, then and only then will the problem of our quasi-Democracy go away.
OK, I must just be dumb or out of it, or something along that line. But, why do they call it wireless fiber? It doesn't make sense, a fiber is a solid object, a "wire" if you will. Wireless would imply that the "wire" does not exist. Why not just come up with a fun buzzword that actually makes sense?!?
Besides the obvious Big Brother aspect of this technology, I can see some fun little bells and whistles that could come out of this and be rather entertaining, if not worthwhile. For instance, right now we have the ability to put still pictures behind our terminals and overlay the text on top of it, why not have something where you are running the TV in the back of your terminal while you type away in the front, that way when you want to break a tad, you just shift your focus to the background rather than the foreground.
Imagine the productivity problems that would ensue at work. You've technically got your terminal screen up, but in actuality you're watching TV!!! :-)
While Viagra may be a great step above other options as far as erectile dysfunction goes, I still don't see its actual "use." I realize that erectile dysfunciton affects a shitload of people, and I'm happy that they have a way around it now. I just don't see the use in a shitload of research dollars going towards Viagra when it could be going towards something that saves lives.
To answer your question, I would much rather have a pill to get an erection, however this is a major instance in which you must wonder about the "value" of what you are doing. For the amount of money required for one person to get it up and have sex, wouldn't it be better to take that money and give someone a meal?!? I mean come on, let's be reasonable here.
As so many people have pointed out, the big problem here is that country A is trying to stop someone in country B from doing something which can be seen in country A (and is illegal there) but which is competely legal to do in country B (yes, this is very obvious). Now, the obvious problem here is that the only way country A can get the person to stop doing what they are doing is to go to country B and move to stop them indirectly, which is very long, drawn out and not worth their time.
Their solution? Find a way to make it law abiding in every country. I don't see this is a positive way of doing things, as the arguments get way to convoluted and you get countries backing up all over themselves trying to keep the others happy, much more uneeded diplomacy in my opinion (and the world tends to suck at this anyway, so why make them do more).
I see two possible ways of this working out:
I have noticed this trend myself in my academic institution. We happen to be a big 10 school and its very obvious which departments are in vogue and getting the massive funding, as suddenly new buildings are appearing on campus specifically for them. These programs are usually the ones that are capable of producing patents that Katz makes references to.
I can actually think of a recent settlement where my university ended up getting $300 million in patent money due to it from a pharacutical company. You can't tell me that the president of the University doesn't look at things like that when he is planning what is "best" for the University and the taxpayers that fund a good portion of it.
I think that pharmaceutical (I know I've spelled that wrong a couple of times now) companies are one of the biggest problems in this. They have realized the amount of money they can make on drugs that have no real use, but can make a crapload of money (i.e. Viagra). This sort of thing is pushing research in directions it should not go, people are starting to look for the new hot IPO of the research world (albiet, it doesn't happen quite like it does in the financial world, but you know what I mean).
While i sound all bitter here, I personally can't think of much you can do to stop this sort of thing. I mean, you could slap the people on the wrist and say, "bad researcher, you were thinking of money and patents instead of that boring stuff that may end up helping out quite a bit." You could also implement something that says companies can't give money for this sort of research, but that would be dumb, because some money does end up being spent on worthwhile causes (and if fact, most of it does, its just that the other ones are getting alot more attention these days).
I would personally like to see a system where academe is kept seperate by a large brick wall from the corporate world so that it does not get "infected" by the money bug, for I beleive that academia, which contains those realms of pure research and the arts, is one of the last romantic ideals that is left on this planet (along witch teachers).
My personal opinion is that maybe you could have a "general fund tax" type of donation system. If a company wants to help fund the research of a certain project, the company donates X amount of dollars. Say 75% of that money goes to the project they want to work on, and %25 goes into a general fund where other projects could be funded (decided upon by some independent group). This would provide a way to pay for the glamorous research and allow the other research to be funded as well.
From reading most of the posts on this story you would think its horrible that companies are actually starting to produce versions of their software for linux. Admittedly we have open source versions of this software, but it is anything but perfect (and it only uses one of the protocols allowed by AIM).
Personally, I would prefer to use a program such as Everybuddy which uses all of the protocols, but overall I would say this is a step in the right direction that AOL is starting to acknowledge that Linux is a viable platform for development. This leads me to another question.... does anyone know what they used for development (what widget set)? I'm quite curious whether they just produced a Java version (which seems to be very popular among IM programs), used a Wine style development that Corel uses, or actually did some Linux programming.
Well, there are more facets of this case than just the monetary value alone. As far as the legal fees go, I have to agree that the legal fees are pocket change for the studios whereas the EFF is most likely straining its resources to be able to pull this off.
However, there is much more at stake here than just legal fees, and that is legal precedent. If the EFF wins in this case, the studios (and many other people) will lose out in potential profits and the EFF will have made a massive step forward in our rights to reverse engineering and fair use (something which is abused both by consumers and by the corporations in my humble opinion) -- and I suppose we could throw in free speech as well.
This is a perfect idea!!! Then, once you have these satellites and the proper base facilities to harness this power, you are able to produce so much energy that you can buy your way out of almost any problem and you will finally be free to crush Yang and his infernal Hive!!!!
Next step, Hydroponic satellites!!
This brings up another question. How does one really count the number of Linux users? I mean, you can't just say its the number of people who have purchased box versions because we all know that many people (maybe even most people) actually just download their copies.
Perhaps add up the number of downloads and the number of purchases? Well, the problem we have there is figuring out the number of people who actually downloaded their copy, installed it, and actually kept it. I know I've downloaded a distro a few times and never used it... or sometimes I just peaced it together. Thus we can't really count the number of downloads. (I'm begining to feel like Vezzini in Princess Bride here)
I suppose you could poll web page hits, but then you have all sorts of other problems with demographics and the like. What the correct answer to this is, I don't know, but its a very interesting question to pose.
Well, I agree that there are some problems with the use of the "central" idea. I think the big difference comes when you introduce a centralized distribution system along with central production.
Centralized Distribution...
In the old days, someone would make a product in a central location (which is still done), however, the ability of the trasportation and communication infrastructure was so much weaker than it is today, that the centralized companies were not able to bear nearly as much force on their distributors as they are now.
Then combine a very centralized production system with an equally centralized distribution system (like CocaCola and WalMart for isntance) and you get alot more control over the product. Thus, instead of one centralized company dealing with many independent shops, you only have to deal with the centralized management of the place, and the policy is given from there. This is a great amount of control that the producers and industrialists like, because they can pretty much dictate their terms.
Thus, this lack of control that the companies used to have allowed for a distributed nature of commerce. The terms were not dictated in one place and universal everywhere, people could charge what they wanted, they could display things as they wanted, etc, etc.... However, as things started to change and the central companies were able to exert more control, this distributed nature was taken away, and you started to get places that all carried the same damn products and looked the exact same (many different record shops vs. Musicland or Sam Goody.... or lots o'coffe shops vs. Starbucks)... aka, centralized commerce
It is like a virus in that it spreads in an almost unchecked manner. A virus spreading throughout an organism (in which it can live) is very close to a file which everyone wants being spread over the internet, except that its working a bit in reverse. Where the virus starts in one place and looks for the next place to go, the file starts in one place and waits for people to find it.
It also fits in the mindset of the people (and perhaps a better fit there). You start out with people of one mindset, then one person gets infected with a new idea. That new idea is spread (through various means) to people who had not had that idea as of yet where the virus/idea multiplies and spreads further. Its a very simple analogy that I'm sure you've heard used many times before.
The use of the word virus unfornatly gives it a bad light, as people don't like diseases usually, so this analogy doesn't convey a good thing like it could, but oh well, nothing is perfect.
The whole issue about the cost of the CD coming into play is straight out due to the markup. It costs the record companies very little money to stamp out CDs in such mass quantities as it does, thus it should lower the CD price if more are sold. The amount of artwork and other matierials sent with the CD are also very minimal, making the straightout price to produce very low.
RedHat and others, on the other hand, package all sorts of things in their boxes (such as large manuals which have to be printed and bound, and then sometimes stuffed penguin toys which have to be manufactured). On top of this, there is an agreement of support that people are paying for. So, the $50 purchase of the RedHat CD (the actual CD of which costs about the same as a music CD) contains much more than just the CD.
The question that is posed here is whether or not that markup that record companies throw onto their CD's are justified. Admitted, they have to pay all sorts of people to do their promotion and other things, but does it really cost as much as they say it does? Apparently, the states think that the RIAA has been inflating the prices much higher than reasonable to jack up their profits, and has been using antitrust (through price fixing) and bully tactics (through their promotional money), though the bully tactics aren't illegal as far as I know.
Personally, I back you up on this one. If you are going to cry afoul when the GPL is violated, then you should have just as much of a problem when the copyright of music is violated through the use of napster (even though the problem is the big bad and evil record corporations).
Many people have mistaken the use of napster as something for which they have a "right." They give you arguments such as "art is in the free domain" and stuff like that, or "the big bad record companies are exploiting the common user of their music, let us take control of the means of distriubution... listeners of world unite!!!"
The problem with this is that most people spouting this information and philosophy don't understand it and can't argue it if their life depended on it. On one hand they'll be arguing the beauty of unadulterated capitalism then support the free distribution of music to all civilians, not even realizing their arguments. Anyway, I should probably get off of this rant....
First of all, I must say that I agree that this has been blown a bit out of proportion, a couple of companies (in their infinite wisdom) forgot to document what was actually going on. The problem here is not the fact that they outsourced their traffic analysis, its the manner in which they did it. Instead of gathering the data themselves and sending to someone to be analyzed (something which I don't think anyone would have a problem with), they had the information sent directly to the 3rd party. This in itself is not a bad thing, however they did not inform the customer of this, thus they have breached the trust between the customer and themselves.
Again, there is a difference here. Most likely, if you look at the statements that you signed to get your credit card (or the small print on the back of the credit card) you will see something that says the company reserves the right to collect data about your use of the card and it also reserves the right to sell that data to other companies. In this instance it is explicitly stated that this information is being gathered.
However, in this case, customers were not being informed that information was being gathered about them and their spending/surfing habits. While this seems to have just been a mess up in documentation (though there are many conspiracy theories of ToysRus trying to take over the world.... I personally find that very hard to beleive). If the companies had stated somewhere that they were using this company to collect the data, there would have been no uproar.
Well, from what I read in the article, the actions that the EU will take against Microsoft will be tiddlywinks compared to what the DOJ is doing. There is a major difference between slapping someone with a fine (albiet, that fine could be rather large, I would not want to lose 10% of my earnings -- however, even they said that the largest fines in actuality have been approximately %1) and breaking a company into little pieces.
Well in this case the paradigm shift won't be all that abrupt. Let us assume a worst case scenario in which Microsoft ceases to be tomorrow (and there was much rejoicing). This doesn't mean that suddently everyone is going to be forced to change their operating system or the platforms that they are on. Most of the systems that are in place will pretty much stay the same, and software will be created to help companies traverse over to other platforms when they are ready.
The only way a really abrupt change would happen would be if it became illegal to use a Microsoft product (ok this would be the worst case scenario, but even more unlikely than the above example), in which case everyone would have to change tomorrow and there would be mass hysteria. I can see some serious problems happening in this situation, but the chances of that are so remote that you really don't have to worry about it.
I'm sorry to do this, but I just can't resist. WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!!!! TAKE CONTROL OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION!!!
You do have a point though. The problem with that point is the current socio-economic situation in the world. We have been able to step outside the parameters that companies have set up throghout the history of labor as we are in demand, and they needed to make concessions in order to get our abilities. However, I can see these concessions being taken away already in some instances. As time goes by, the concessions that we have been granted will most likely be taken away and we will be back in the situaiton of the normal user, as we are no longer seperate and different, but pretty much a normal worker.