``* Compilations consisting of lists of websites blocked by filtering software applications;
* Literary works, including computer programs and databases, protected by access control mechanisms
that fail to permit access because of malfunction, damage or obsoleteness''
This is great! Since many would consider Windows to be an obsolete technology, DeCSS should be allowable as we have no means of viewing DVDs on non-Windows machines. (No offense to Mac users but I think it's obsolete as well.)
Was anyone else paying attention to the page numbering in the official Copyright Office proclamation? When I see things like ``[[ Page 64574 ]]'' I start thinking very much about how smaller Government might be a very good thing. Any Govt. agency that has the time and resources to issue 64K-page decisions has got way, way too much time on its hands.
Yet another set of commercial ventures predicts the death of something the use of which they can't figure out how they can charge money for.
Oh, and I really like how CNet's ``printer friendly'' version of their pages removes the graphics that are associated with the article but leaves the banner ads. Pathetic.
``The one big thing in performance I did notice however is going from a ATA/33
harddrive to a ATA/100. That was the largest (noticable) performance gain I've seen in a while with
all the MHz floating around, you need a way to feed the silly thing.''
I couldn't agree with you more. Most new PCs are I/O bound. (I sort of ranted about this in another post.) Personally, I'm waiting for the new SCSI cards to come out. The I/O performance should be frightening.
We had a debate where I worked many years ago (late '80s) about how PCs, generally, had crappy overall designs than some of the other systems we were using. The PC folks would crow about how their system was better than our VAXes because it had a faster CPU clock (stupid criterion most would agree). Meanwhile we'd ask the PC bigots why our software ran faster on our slower-clock-rate VAX than it did on their PC. We were careful to write code that could run on either the VAX, PC, or the behemoth IBMs at the central data center. (The IBM's were, by far, the fastest boxes but were so heavily loaded that they were everyone's last choice.) The result of our debate was the conclusion that the VAX (and the IBMs) had a more balanced design and better software. Our in-house benchmarks showed our ``lowly'' VAXen beating the latest Intel boxes; the balanced system was clearly superior for what we needed to do: software development, number crunching, and for most of us, documentation (using TeX). I'd rather have a slightly slower system with software built with a great compiler.
The PC vendors spend much of their efforts putting a very fast processor in a system with fairly pathetic I/O subsystem. For a single user system this seems reasonable. Systems that were designed with multiple users in mind had to take into account the possibility that multiple processes would be performing I/O and you saw features such as elevator seeking in device drivers that are only recently coming into vogue on the PC. I.e., some effort was going into addressing real performance problems instead of merely figuring out how to get the latest, fastest processor into the system.
Software bloat is part of a continuing problem. When your word processor needs more RAM in a single PC than we used to have on all the PCs in all the offices in our department, something's really wrong. Not a new problem, though, and it's not all about unneeded features (although that's a huge problem lately). I once obtained a piece of software from COSMIC which stated that it would need 512KB of memory in order to run. Using the MS FORTRAN compiler this was true. However, we stuck the source out on our old PDP-11 (remember, I'm talking about mid/late '80s) and the compiler was able to generate an executable that ran in under 128KB on a system using I/D space. Since no one was willing to tie up their (or any) PC for the week or so that it would take to run the simulation -- at least not after we ran it the first time -- guess where it wound up being deployed? No code changes were made so, apparently, DEC's F77 compiler could optimize rings around MS's (no surprise to me there). The balanced system running superior software wins again.
I see some strange tradeoffs being made in the PC/Windows area that don't make sense to me: write crappy, inefficient software and throw hardware at the resulting mess in order to get it to run. Now that PCs are being used for multiprocessing and multiple users, the need for quality software is beginning important again.
Hardware-wise, I'll always prefer to do my homework and choose a vendor that addresses all the aspects of the system and bypass the folks that think they're state-of-art by dropping the lastest hot motherboard into a box. Since so many PC vendors change components without notice I've been opting to build my own systems for a long time now. Last year's processor with 256MB of RAM would be preferable to this year's smoker with only 64MB. Before they became nothing but 200-page advertisement collections, the PC rags used to do decent benchmarks that could show the strengths and deficiencies of various vendors systems. You don't see those any more. Pity.
Sorry if I got into rant mode. This is just one of my continuing pet peeves.
--
PS/2?! Heck, didn't PDP-11s do this? I can still remember (barely, though) PDP memory boards with socketed discrete memory chips that included a two/three spare chips so you could replace the bad chips yourself after locating them using an XXDP+ dianostic. I don't recall bad chips bringing down the system but in those days, when a big PDP had 4MB of memory, every little bit counted and the OS worked around it.
I heard somewhere several years ago that Windows got around flaky memory not by marking pages as `bad' but by forcing additional wait states if questionable memory was detected at boot time. Any truth to this?
``a full day's driving on 3 hours of air compression, with dramatically less power consumption''
Um, did they forget about the power needed to compress the air? Unless they've found a way to build air compressors using room-temperature superconductors and friction-free materials, this is still a net loss of energy. We'd of course have to build a lot more power plants which, given the phobia that many people have regarding nukular (which reminds me of a Simpson's episode...) power, would use just as much fossil fuel as we currently do. Probably wouldn't do much about air pollution either except localize it to the power plant (instead of internal combustion engines spreading it around).
Nice try. Perhaps an on-board cold fusion generator could compress the air? Might not work but it'll get you on the news.
``Are computer games any more fun now than they were 10 years ago?''
I felt better about the time I spent (most would say ``wasted'') playing `Zork', `Hitchhiker's Guide...', `Leather... Phobos', or even `Racter', than I do nowadays after a couple of hours of wielding a hyperblaster. Apparently, I get more fun exercising my brain cells or, in the case of `Racter', my funny bone than I do to wearing my finger joints down blasting mutants.
For me anyway, it can be more fun exploring the little known corners of a piece of software than it is shooting things, more fun setting up the system to be able to play the FPS game than to actually play it. (Wonder if anyone else feels that way?)
That doesn't make it right, though. How different, really, is their ``patentable'' process from, say, a product from Oracle that allow people to work on purchase orders which then go through several levels of authorization before being receiving a final approval? Hell, there was a plan to use a commercial product that implemented this particular process that was being considered for purchase in the late 1980's when I worked at Ohio U.
I have to believe that there have been software packages that have done this before and have been around for years. Ask Boeing how they did all their maintenance manuals. I doubt that there was one or two people sitting in a cubicle cranking out 747 maintenance manuals. This is the sort of thing that the heavy users of SGML have been up to for some time now. What ever happened to Datalogics (well, these guys got bought out by someone; I forget who) and companies like that who sold publishing software? They ought to be able shoot quite a few prior art holes in this patent.
``Let the market work. If people don't want to use AOL/TW products, they don't have to - there is competition for both in every market''
In some areas of the U.S., the choice may be to put up with AOL/TW or have no internet access at all (or have to go with slow dial up or more expensive means of getting connected). Why do I suspect that that's a choice you wouldn't want to be forced to make? --
Another huge business merger that will, eventually, prove to be bad for consumers approved by yet another Govt. agency that rolled over on command. Shame the FCC hasn't kept track of how some of these deals have played out before approving this one. Here in Illinois, phone service quality has taken a nosedive since Ameritech gotten absorbed by SBC. AOL and TW have just successfully pulled off another one of a series of these. It's actually pretty much by the (cook)book and goes something like this:
``Here's the plan: Once you announce your mega-merger, there'll be a slew of public hearings that you'll have to put up with. Fear not. During the hearings with the Federal and State regulators, promise them anything that sounds good. Make it look like the government folks are making you give up something. You will get it all back, and more, in the near future anyway. Then, once they approve the deal, you can go back to your original course of action of screwing the sheep^H^H^H^H^Hconsumers while charging them ever increasing rates (these can always be blamed on costs mandated by government).''
It's not enough to clean house and get the career politicians out of Washington, you've got to find a way to get the bureacrats out of there too.
--
Makes you wonder how much internet bandwidth is consumed by the transmission of legal disclaimers...
Isn't it sad that much of one's efforts go toward covering one's ass? I've worked at some places that every piddling little decision had to be documented and cc:'d to the right people. Just in case someone gets their undies in a bunch and goes looking for someone to hang. After a while you figure that only about half your day is spent doing actual productive work. And don't forget the new cover sheet on your TPS report...
``Brought to you by Team SPAM! where we believe: "Information in the noise!"''
That's essentially the idea behind spread spectrum communications right?
IANAL either, but am an American who hopes that some common sense can be applied to questions like this (what a dreamer I am, eh?).
``If you start policing, they may hold you responsible of everything on the board, whereas if you claim it all is the posters responsibility, you are more like a common carrier, and the offended party will have to sue the poster, not the site.''
This is good point (and wasn't it one of the major points that the big ISPs raised against the deservedly ill-fated Internet Decency Act?). Why not prominently display a disclaimer and a graphic that indicates that such-and-such article is a visitor-submitted one? Also, a policy whereby all submittors agree to have such a header attached to their article would, I believe, keep you out of hot water. (But see above...) You might have to take things down on occasion but at least your submittors would know that they can't plagiarize or violate copyright and get away with.
``Still, talking to a lawyer might a good idea''
Yah, sort of like a prostate exam: A good idea but not necessarily enjoyable.
``The other alternative is to have all of the computers in view of the librarian, so those using
the computers can be monitored.''
Oh, yes! That's what librarians are for: watching other people while they surf the internet.
``I'm so sorry. I won't be able to assist in finding the book you're asking about. These kids are surfing the internet and I have to watch them.''
What B.S. Unless the libraries want to hire a dedicated person to do this I can't see the use in making it the library's responsibility to monitor internet access. (And it'd take a damned dedicated person to do that all day -- I can't think of anything more boring.)
Don't any parents raise their own children anymore?
``There are many places parent would never think of abandoning their children for hours on end, but for some reason they feel very comfortable leaving their children at a library, if the parent doesn't like what's in the library, that's their problem -- the parent is smart enough to know that they don't know everything that is in the library so they should be smart enough to come to the conclusion that if there is anything they might not want their children to see, they should be with their children, a lot of parents treat the library as a free babysitting service.
.
.
.
The way libraries currently work is great for everyone except negligent parents.''
In the Chicago area anyway, parents have had their children taken away and placed in foster care by the DCFS (Department of Children and Family Services) for as little as leaving them at home alone while they ran down to the corner store for a few groceries (well, sometimes it was a trip to the local liquor store).
There's not much (IMHO) difference between children at home alone and leaving them at the library. They can get into trouble in both places. The difference with the library is that these idiots think that the librarians are on patrol watching to ensure that the kiddies aren't getting into things they shouldn't. Wonder how attentive these adults are when they're at home with their kids? Are they sure they aren't getting into Daddy's cache of Playboys in the nightstand drawer?
If I were a librarian, there'd be a highly visible sign at the library entrance stating that childrens' access to the Internet accessible computers is to be supervised by their parents. The parents of any little ones found to be surfing without supervision would be receiving a phone call and getting an earful. One wonders what these parents would be doing if their little boy or girl was abducted from the library? (I'd be more worried about that happening than anything they would run across on the Internet.)
--
I understood that the patent actually does expire in around a week so the poster you responded to was correct. The RSA algorithm was indeed released and made public domain early. Perhaps because the patent holders thought there was some PR value in doing so. Who knows...
I can see it now: The MPAA requires that all DVD players incorporate DNA scanning technology. You insert your DVD and the player sniffs the air, waits a little bit, and finally says:
``I'm sorry, Dave. This DVD was purchased by you and only you are authorized to view it. I won't be allowed to enable playing this DVD until Susan and Jimmy leave the room. Of course, Fluffy, your cat, may stay.''
``Olympic officials are fighting counterfeit 'official' Olympic merchandise.''
You are all forgetting that the Olympics are now the intellectual property of whatever well-heeled mucky-mucks are able to bring them to a city. How dare you think that just anyone can draw five circles on a T-shirt and get away with selling it without paying tribute to aforementioned mucky-mucks in the form of a fat licensing fee.
Of course, I can still remember when the Olympic atheletes actually held day jobs and competed for their love of the sport. (Yah, yah, I know, how quaint.) It really is no fun at all to watch the Olympics any more.
I have an LP (Yes! genuine vinyl) by Jan Gabarek (sp?) that is recordings of some wind instruments (accompanyed by JG on sax) that are setup on some Scandanavian seashore and are driven by the winds coming in from offshore. They could, essentially, create music until the Sun goes cold or, if they're made of wood, until they rot away. Personally, I'd rather listen to them than something over the internet (mainly because I'd have to be on the seashore to hear them).
I'd have to agree with you on the Bronowski series (and it really was better than watching Sagan staring in wide-eyed wonder out of his spaceship in Cosmos). I was taking some physics courses at the time AoM was being shown and for some reason the show was popular with just about everyone in the class. Some memorable discussions invariably followed each week's segment.
At one time you could purchase VHS tapes of the series. Well, that was a long time ago. Since PBS cannot see fit to re-air great programs like AoM (they might upset someone who really needs to see another Antique Roadshow) I decided to re-read the book that was written along with the series. Still a recommended read.
I never thought that Broook's Law had anything to do with Motif's lack of acceptance or inability to compete with GNOME and KDE. I always thought it had everything to do with the boneheaded licensing requirements attached to it.
Let's see: I'm a small software developer writing X applications for a new PC-based operating system that's available for a pittance. Do I select a windowing environment that's free like GNOME and, to a slightly less free extent, KDE? Or do I choose one that has a licensing requirement that raises the cost of each development system by about US$1000 per seat? Hmm. That's a tough one. Oh, sure! Let's choose the expensive one! If it costs more it must be better, right?
At least that's the choice that I figure the Motif licensors were hoping everyone would make. If only Linux, GNOME, and KDE had been around about the time I was looking for a UNIX to run on a PC back in the very early '90s... one less UNIX Labs royalty would have been paid.
It's too bad that Motif went this route. By tying themselves to the giant, commercial, and ridiculously expensive vendor-specific UNIX versions, they pretty much ensured that they couldn't be part of the PC UNIX game. And I rather liked Motif. If it hadn't become so closely associated with the big computer vendor's UNIX products, it might have evolved into something a little less, shall we say, ``resource intensive''.
But saying that it didn't succeed in spite of the programming resources that Sun and HP threw at it? No way. It was the costs that were passed on to the consumers and the small developers. It certainly can't compete in a open source development environment. A grand is a pretty steep entrance fee into the bazaar.
``You're wrong. They are on the list. Right after Cucumber Records.''
Sorry. I don't see either of those on the list of labels that VAXman's link pointed to (which was, BTW, to the RIAA site). What list were you reading, I wonder? --
``Nabisco is a trademark of the National Biscut Company, for example.''
Technically, ``Nabisco'' wouldn't be an acronym but a sort of abbreviation. Something like ``FoMoCo'' or ``MoPar''. As for true acronyms... ``DEC'' is/was a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation and I believe ``IBM'' is a trademark of you-know-who.
Slashdot Mirror
This is great! Since many would consider Windows to be an obsolete technology, DeCSS should be allowable as we have no means of viewing DVDs on non-Windows machines. (No offense to Mac users but I think it's obsolete as well.)
Was anyone else paying attention to the page numbering in the official Copyright Office proclamation? When I see things like ``[[ Page 64574 ]]'' I start thinking very much about how smaller Government might be a very good thing. Any Govt. agency that has the time and resources to issue 64K-page decisions has got way, way too much time on its hands.
--
Yet another set of commercial ventures predicts the death of something the use of which they can't figure out how they can charge money for.
Oh, and I really like how CNet's ``printer friendly'' version of their pages removes the graphics that are associated with the article but leaves the banner ads. Pathetic.
--
And I thought I used old systems! :-)
Hell, I can remember when a 1.13 MHz Intel chip would have been considered awesome. How fast was the clock in the Altair again?
--
I couldn't agree with you more. Most new PCs are I/O bound. (I sort of ranted about this in another post.) Personally, I'm waiting for the new SCSI cards to come out. The I/O performance should be frightening.
Cheers...
--
We had a debate where I worked many years ago (late '80s) about how PCs, generally, had crappy overall designs than some of the other systems we were using. The PC folks would crow about how their system was better than our VAXes because it had a faster CPU clock (stupid criterion most would agree). Meanwhile we'd ask the PC bigots why our software ran faster on our slower-clock-rate VAX than it did on their PC. We were careful to write code that could run on either the VAX, PC, or the behemoth IBMs at the central data center. (The IBM's were, by far, the fastest boxes but were so heavily loaded that they were everyone's last choice.) The result of our debate was the conclusion that the VAX (and the IBMs) had a more balanced design and better software. Our in-house benchmarks showed our ``lowly'' VAXen beating the latest Intel boxes; the balanced system was clearly superior for what we needed to do: software development, number crunching, and for most of us, documentation (using TeX). I'd rather have a slightly slower system with software built with a great compiler.
The PC vendors spend much of their efforts putting a very fast processor in a system with fairly pathetic I/O subsystem. For a single user system this seems reasonable. Systems that were designed with multiple users in mind had to take into account the possibility that multiple processes would be performing I/O and you saw features such as elevator seeking in device drivers that are only recently coming into vogue on the PC. I.e., some effort was going into addressing real performance problems instead of merely figuring out how to get the latest, fastest processor into the system.
Software bloat is part of a continuing problem. When your word processor needs more RAM in a single PC than we used to have on all the PCs in all the offices in our department, something's really wrong. Not a new problem, though, and it's not all about unneeded features (although that's a huge problem lately). I once obtained a piece of software from COSMIC which stated that it would need 512KB of memory in order to run. Using the MS FORTRAN compiler this was true. However, we stuck the source out on our old PDP-11 (remember, I'm talking about mid/late '80s) and the compiler was able to generate an executable that ran in under 128KB on a system using I/D space. Since no one was willing to tie up their (or any) PC for the week or so that it would take to run the simulation -- at least not after we ran it the first time -- guess where it wound up being deployed? No code changes were made so, apparently, DEC's F77 compiler could optimize rings around MS's (no surprise to me there). The balanced system running superior software wins again.
I see some strange tradeoffs being made in the PC/Windows area that don't make sense to me: write crappy, inefficient software and throw hardware at the resulting mess in order to get it to run. Now that PCs are being used for multiprocessing and multiple users, the need for quality software is beginning important again.
Hardware-wise, I'll always prefer to do my homework and choose a vendor that addresses all the aspects of the system and bypass the folks that think they're state-of-art by dropping the lastest hot motherboard into a box. Since so many PC vendors change components without notice I've been opting to build my own systems for a long time now. Last year's processor with 256MB of RAM would be preferable to this year's smoker with only 64MB. Before they became nothing but 200-page advertisement collections, the PC rags used to do decent benchmarks that could show the strengths and deficiencies of various vendors systems. You don't see those any more. Pity.
Sorry if I got into rant mode. This is just one of my continuing pet peeves.
--
PS/2?! Heck, didn't PDP-11s do this? I can still remember (barely, though) PDP memory boards with socketed discrete memory chips that included a two/three spare chips so you could replace the bad chips yourself after locating them using an XXDP+ dianostic. I don't recall bad chips bringing down the system but in those days, when a big PDP had 4MB of memory, every little bit counted and the OS worked around it.
I heard somewhere several years ago that Windows got around flaky memory not by marking pages as `bad' but by forcing additional wait states if questionable memory was detected at boot time. Any truth to this?
--
Um, did they forget about the power needed to compress the air? Unless they've found a way to build air compressors using room-temperature superconductors and friction-free materials, this is still a net loss of energy. We'd of course have to build a lot more power plants which, given the phobia that many people have regarding nukular (which reminds me of a Simpson's episode...) power, would use just as much fossil fuel as we currently do. Probably wouldn't do much about air pollution either except localize it to the power plant (instead of internal combustion engines spreading it around).
Nice try. Perhaps an on-board cold fusion generator could compress the air? Might not work but it'll get you on the news.
--
I felt better about the time I spent (most would say ``wasted'') playing `Zork', `Hitchhiker's Guide...', `Leather ... Phobos', or even `Racter', than I do nowadays after a couple of hours of wielding a hyperblaster. Apparently, I get more fun exercising my brain cells or, in the case of `Racter', my funny bone than I do to wearing my finger joints down blasting mutants.
For me anyway, it can be more fun exploring the little known corners of a piece of software than it is shooting things, more fun setting up the system to be able to play the FPS game than to actually play it. (Wonder if anyone else feels that way?)
--
Unless you're a huge investor, the biggest winners in the stock market are the brokers. They win when it goes up; they win when it goes down.
Take a look at the book ``Where Are The Customer's Yachts?, Or, A Good Hard Look At Wall Street''. Or don't. It might make you angry if you think your brokers are on your side.
--
...IMHO is more of a business process patent.
That doesn't make it right, though. How different, really, is their ``patentable'' process from, say, a product from Oracle that allow people to work on purchase orders which then go through several levels of authorization before being receiving a final approval? Hell, there was a plan to use a commercial product that implemented this particular process that was being considered for purchase in the late 1980's when I worked at Ohio U.
I have to believe that there have been software packages that have done this before and have been around for years. Ask Boeing how they did all their maintenance manuals. I doubt that there was one or two people sitting in a cubicle cranking out 747 maintenance manuals. This is the sort of thing that the heavy users of SGML have been up to for some time now. What ever happened to Datalogics (well, these guys got bought out by someone; I forget who) and companies like that who sold publishing software? They ought to be able shoot quite a few prior art holes in this patent.
--
In some areas of the U.S., the choice may be to put up with AOL/TW or have no internet access at all (or have to go with slow dial up or more expensive means of getting connected). Why do I suspect that that's a choice you wouldn't want to be forced to make?
--
Another huge business merger that will, eventually, prove to be bad for consumers approved by yet another Govt. agency that rolled over on command. Shame the FCC hasn't kept track of how some of these deals have played out before approving this one. Here in Illinois, phone service quality has taken a nosedive since Ameritech gotten absorbed by SBC. AOL and TW have just successfully pulled off another one of a series of these. It's actually pretty much by the (cook)book and goes something like this:
It's not enough to clean house and get the career politicians out of Washington, you've got to find a way to get the bureacrats out of there too.
--
Makes you wonder how much internet bandwidth is consumed by the transmission of legal disclaimers...
Isn't it sad that much of one's efforts go toward covering one's ass? I've worked at some places that every piddling little decision had to be documented and cc:'d to the right people. Just in case someone gets their undies in a bunch and goes looking for someone to hang. After a while you figure that only about half your day is spent doing actual productive work. And don't forget the new cover sheet on your TPS report...
That's essentially the idea behind spread spectrum communications right?
Cheers...
--
IANAL either, but am an American who hopes that some common sense can be applied to questions like this (what a dreamer I am, eh?).
This is good point (and wasn't it one of the major points that the big ISPs raised against the deservedly ill-fated Internet Decency Act?). Why not prominently display a disclaimer and a graphic that indicates that such-and-such article is a visitor-submitted one? Also, a policy whereby all submittors agree to have such a header attached to their article would, I believe, keep you out of hot water. (But see above...) You might have to take things down on occasion but at least your submittors would know that they can't plagiarize or violate copyright and get away with.
Yah, sort of like a prostate exam: A good idea but not necessarily enjoyable.
--
Oh, yes! That's what librarians are for: watching other people while they surf the internet.
What B.S. Unless the libraries want to hire a dedicated person to do this I can't see the use in making it the library's responsibility to monitor internet access. (And it'd take a damned dedicated person to do that all day -- I can't think of anything more boring.)
Don't any parents raise their own children anymore?
--
In the Chicago area anyway, parents have had their children taken away and placed in foster care by the DCFS (Department of Children and Family Services) for as little as leaving them at home alone while they ran down to the corner store for a few groceries (well, sometimes it was a trip to the local liquor store).
There's not much (IMHO) difference between children at home alone and leaving them at the library. They can get into trouble in both places. The difference with the library is that these idiots think that the librarians are on patrol watching to ensure that the kiddies aren't getting into things they shouldn't. Wonder how attentive these adults are when they're at home with their kids? Are they sure they aren't getting into Daddy's cache of Playboys in the nightstand drawer?
If I were a librarian, there'd be a highly visible sign at the library entrance stating that childrens' access to the Internet accessible computers is to be supervised by their parents. The parents of any little ones found to be surfing without supervision would be receiving a phone call and getting an earful. One wonders what these parents would be doing if their little boy or girl was abducted from the library? (I'd be more worried about that happening than anything they would run across on the Internet.)
--
I understood that the patent actually does expire in around a week so the poster you responded to was correct. The RSA algorithm was indeed released and made public domain early. Perhaps because the patent holders thought there was some PR value in doing so. Who knows...
Cheers...
--
Heh, heh, heh.
I can see it now: The MPAA requires that all DVD players incorporate DNA scanning technology. You insert your DVD and the player sniffs the air, waits a little bit, and finally says:
--
You are all forgetting that the Olympics are now the intellectual property of whatever well-heeled mucky-mucks are able to bring them to a city. How dare you think that just anyone can draw five circles on a T-shirt and get away with selling it without paying tribute to aforementioned mucky-mucks in the form of a fat licensing fee.
Of course, I can still remember when the Olympic atheletes actually held day jobs and competed for their love of the sport. (Yah, yah, I know, how quaint.) It really is no fun at all to watch the Olympics any more.
--
I have an LP (Yes! genuine vinyl) by Jan Gabarek (sp?) that is recordings of some wind instruments (accompanyed by JG on sax) that are setup on some Scandanavian seashore and are driven by the winds coming in from offshore. They could, essentially, create music until the Sun goes cold or, if they're made of wood, until they rot away. Personally, I'd rather listen to them than something over the internet (mainly because I'd have to be on the seashore to hear them).
--
Gawd that was funny.
If any of you liked that, then you might find this site humorous:
Multiple Regression with Ren & Stimpy
Cheers...
--
I'd have to agree with you on the Bronowski series (and it really was better than watching Sagan staring in wide-eyed wonder out of his spaceship in Cosmos). I was taking some physics courses at the time AoM was being shown and for some reason the show was popular with just about everyone in the class. Some memorable discussions invariably followed each week's segment.
At one time you could purchase VHS tapes of the series. Well, that was a long time ago. Since PBS cannot see fit to re-air great programs like AoM (they might upset someone who really needs to see another Antique Roadshow) I decided to re-read the book that was written along with the series. Still a recommended read.
Cheers...
--
I never thought that Broook's Law had anything to do with Motif's lack of acceptance or inability to compete with GNOME and KDE. I always thought it had everything to do with the boneheaded licensing requirements attached to it.
Let's see: I'm a small software developer writing X applications for a new PC-based operating system that's available for a pittance. Do I select a windowing environment that's free like GNOME and, to a slightly less free extent, KDE? Or do I choose one that has a licensing requirement that raises the cost of each development system by about US$1000 per seat? Hmm. That's a tough one. Oh, sure! Let's choose the expensive one! If it costs more it must be better, right?
At least that's the choice that I figure the Motif licensors were hoping everyone would make. If only Linux, GNOME, and KDE had been around about the time I was looking for a UNIX to run on a PC back in the very early '90s... one less UNIX Labs royalty would have been paid.
It's too bad that Motif went this route. By tying themselves to the giant, commercial, and ridiculously expensive vendor-specific UNIX versions, they pretty much ensured that they couldn't be part of the PC UNIX game. And I rather liked Motif. If it hadn't become so closely associated with the big computer vendor's UNIX products, it might have evolved into something a little less, shall we say, ``resource intensive''.
But saying that it didn't succeed in spite of the programming resources that Sun and HP threw at it? No way. It was the costs that were passed on to the consumers and the small developers. It certainly can't compete in a open source development environment. A grand is a pretty steep entrance fee into the bazaar.
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Sorry. I don't see either of those on the list of labels that VAXman's link pointed to (which was, BTW, to the RIAA site). What list were you reading, I wonder?
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Technically, ``Nabisco'' wouldn't be an acronym but a sort of abbreviation. Something like ``FoMoCo'' or ``MoPar''. As for true acronyms... ``DEC'' is/was a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation and I believe ``IBM'' is a trademark of you-know-who.
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