I have a question relating to the handwriting input for the Pocket PC. I assume that if MS really wanted to lure Palm users to come use the Pocket PC, they would not only offer things that Palm does not, but also offer "transitional" features that are familiar to Palm users to ease their migration to the Pocket PC, much the same way that Microsoft offered Netware connectivity from NT, or Microsoft's failed attempt to hijack AOL Instant Messenger users with their own version of messenger. So why don't they offer software that would recognize graffiti? Or would that be in violation of Some Legal Thing(tm)? Or is it that it would just be too confusing?
I'd say patent laws are still absolutely necessary, because they were there to promote innovation by protecting the inventor's interests - for a limited time.
The spirit of the patent law is that, If there's something useful that someone created, make sure we all get it. But to be sure that it would be shared, make it worth the innovator's while to share it.
But the spirit of corporate litiganous patents is that, we get patents for as many things as we could create, and then get patents for as many things that we could patent that we couldn't create, and then we patent things that our competitors will potentially want to patent, and sit back as we watch them fall into our trap.
Regardless of the influence of lawyers and corporatism, the patent laws are still functioning as they need to, which is, as raised earlier, to promote and encourage innovation so that we can all benefit from such innovation.
Of course, we now have patents that cover fictional inventions that we don't even have the capability to implement yet. But that's ok. Because if it's too far beyond the current capabilities of anyone to make the invention a reality, then it just won't happen, not within the time that the patent covers to protect the so called 'innovator'. In that case, it's just as well for all of us, because now we have the ideas that we can work on (if they are not impossible to implement), and by the time we accomplish them, they'll be royalty free.
Stories like this just reminds me that there's way too many lawyers in this country and way too many lawsuits. It's no wonder they are called sharks. They are all teeth! I mean, seriously, we are constantly dealing with legal issues here at Slashdot, what with MPAA, RIAA, DeCSS, Amazon, PTO, etc., all of these issues having to deal with "intellectual property" and "copyrights". The laws that were originally intended to protect and reward the inventive and creative have all now become instruments of corporatism in the hands of lawyers. I wish we didn't have to deal with all of these things and really only read stuff that is more interesting. My vent.
Thank you very much. I appreciate the in-depth information you have provided. It certainly makes me want to go out and take a good hard look at one of these things. I noticed that you didn't mention stability, which is mentioned as an issue (in the article I submitted that they finally accepted and posted. Oops!). You didn't mention that it crashes often. Maybe the Casio is less crash-prone? Or maybe all these years of using MS products have made all of us more calloused to such things?:)
You mentioned quite a few things that were very useful. Who knew you could run Doom on it? I didn't realize you could use it as a recorder (I guess it's more of a hardware implemented feature. The GameBoy emulator is definitely interesting as well.
For all the bad things anyone could say about it, there's one good thing about WinCE - it is a platform that people could build to. There would be more choices (down the road, hopefully) than the roman numerals of a Palm.
Now, if we could only get Linux, Apache, Universal Remote, and Wireless phone on it (oh, and can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of one of these?)
You are certainly more informed than I am about this. I don't have one of these devices, but would seriously consider them. I saw higher number versions as well, but because this is what they weer "unveiling", I chose what I thought were significant. What I am really interested in, though, more than whether it's MS WinCE or Linux, is how does it compare with other things out there? And more importantly, do you find these applications usable on the handheld devices? How do you think they will fare against Palm? (I'm doing a mini-slashdot interview here).
Yes, Yes. I know. I eliminated the mention of WinCE in this latest version in hopes that they'll post it. In any case though, the fact that they have all those pieces of software (whether they are of good quality or bad quality) is significant. They are trying to hit a number of different markets all at the same time, and that's basically their only weapon against Palm.
FWIW though, Japanese make good appliance-type gadgets, and you can count on them to deliver good quality end-user products (witness the game consoles). Only problem is if some terrorists decide to use a Sharp Zaurus in their Missile Guidance System.
You bring up a good point about preserving books. But I think that we may need to go a little further than merely digitizing all the books and making backups, no matter how good they are.
If you are a little more paranoid (like I am), you may realize that if there were apocalyptic events here on earth, and a large percentage of people were to die off, the Internet is not likely to be around, neither will the equipment that can read digital data (remember the Time Machine?). I think that in addition to digital electronic backup of all of humanity's collective accumulate knowledge, we should also have non-perishable hardcopies created and stored at strategic locations around the world. I don't know what material to use, necessarily. Maybe plastic or something, you know, because it's non-biodegradable.
I apologize for my use of agism. You are right. That was something I debated about for a brief moment. For lack of time (well, you know how it is at Slashdot sometimes), a better example, as well as common sense, I did it anyway. Your point is completely valid. Thank you for pointing it out to me.
Billington's remarks notwithstanding, I think that Slashdot readers are more likely to disagree with what he is saying than, say, some 50+ year old person who's never been on the Internet. Since most of already do so much reading online (probably most, if not all our reading), we as a group are more sensitive to the fallacies in his argument. We as a group, though not physically together, certainly electronically. Look at all the lively discussions that we have, good or bad!
While we understand how obsolete his mindset is in today's information world, we must also understand that the Internet is, after all, a Fairly New Thing(tm) and that there are tons of people who do not have access or just doesn't "get it" yet. Instead of disparaging Mr. Billington some more, I think we should put more effort into convincing people like him that the future of books is online.
Does anybody know if we can get Mr. Billington as a Slashdot interview? Or at least maybe send him our comments (or send Jon Katz with the printouts like he did with the Pinkertons). What do you think?
Well, I'm not going to post what everyone else has posted about all the other comments Mr. Billington has said. But I noticed one thing: Tech Law Journal asked Billington if there is any parallel between hostility to the printing press in the late 15th and early 16th Centuries, and hostility to the Internet today. He stated that there is, but that there is also a significant difference. Billinton explained that some of the hostility to the printing press originated because cheap reproduction made books and pamphlets available to more people. Previously, only kings and an elite few had access to libraries. The printing press made the public library possible. Billington stated that in contrast, public libraries are a "political institution" today. There's one thing wrong with that argument. Since the Library of Congress has such a vast collection, a person who wants to have access to the most information would do best to access the library stacks. But not everyone can afford to go to where the books are - so now, it is not discriminating against those who are not royalty or elites, but against those who simply don't have the funds.
This is an unbelievable arrogance on the part of Mr. Billington, along with all the other foolish remarks he's made. The only thing that he said that made sense is that the priority should be on those items would normally not see the light of day or would be hard to access/find.
This actually brings up another point which I wonder about, and I wish that this was somewhere more people can read it so I can get some answers from more people.
Everyone put in anti-spam stuff in their e-mail address here at slashdot, so obviously, it's because everyone don't want to be spammed, because there must be programs out there that scrape the e-mail addresses from web pages, right?
Well, what's to prevent an unscrupulous person who may work at an ISP or at one of the major exchanges to tap the e-mail messages being relayed? Now, I don't know enough about the way e-mail works in the backend to know if it is possible. But the assumption is, if there's e-mail being sent, then the originator and/or the destination will contain valid e-mail addresses. What's to prevent people who happen to relay all this e-mail traffic from extracting all the valid e-mail addresses within, and pass the e-mail off normally? This is one way for them to get huge quantities of valid e-mail addresses. Has there been anything like this?
Yes, you are correct, that was the main reason why people were complaining - it wastes physical consumable media. e-mail definitely does cost money as well, but, as you point out, so does wasting our time. But because we don't get charged for the call from a telemarketer, than the only thing we are charged with is the time we spend, which, as you point out is difficult to quantify. I think that applies to e-mail too, though. Most of us get free e-mail one way or another. If we pay for online time (do we still do that?), we'll get charged for additional time online. But that should be negligible nowadays (unless of course, if the spam is so overwhelming, which it often is).
But if you raise the issue of first amendment, it brings up a very interesting point. Is a phone call considered free speech? I forget which one of the early forefathers or historically significant figures it was - who said something like "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death to defend your right to say it". I know I haven't gotten it right. But in any case, the point is, you can say whatever you like, and I can't stop you from saying it. But I think I should have a right to not listen to it. Just like all the people who complain about offensive TV and/or radio shows - they could choose not to tune in, but they should have no rights to bar the people broadcasting the message. My phone is very specifically a personal communication device, as is my e-mail address, so I'd believe. I think that I should be entitled to being able to prevent people from using it for their free speech, because I cannot really choose not to "tune in".
Can you see any problems with my argument? Do you know of any legislation that covers what I'm talking about (because I can't think of any myself).
I recall from when I used to work at a fax service bureau company, that unsolicited advertisement through fax is also illegal. One of the things that we used to do to get around it is to send it in the guise of doing a survey or updating our database (whether for us, or for a client that is requesting this service). When the faxes' disguise as a survey is too thin (meaning, it's too obviously an advertisement), we have gotten a few phone calls from people threatening legal action. But certainly, in that case, it is illegal by fax. I wonder what the lawmakers' justifications were for this law and not telemarketing phone calls? I think this was a federal law, so it wasn't limited to states.
I think that all of this ties in with the privacy issue as well. We don't like to have our information hanging out there, with anybody being able to pick up what we bought or did, where we were (online or in the real world) and when. Telemarketers (as far as I know, and or so I would assume) don't just dial sequential blocks of numbers, they usually have a list of numbers that they obtained from somewhere, just to save themselves a little bit more time and money. I know there are systems out there that just does brute-force sequential block dialing, and only connect the telemarketer is someone actually picks up the call, just as in spamming, there must be mailers out there that just tries out all the shorter e-mail name combination of large e-mail domains such as hotmail and yahoo. But I think for the most part, real addresses and real telephone numbers are important to the telemarketers and the people who sell them these lists. And that, to me, seems to be more of a privacy issue than an annoyance issue.
On a side note: How many people have gotten spam that says: If you do not want to receive any further e-mail like this, send mail to...? How many people actually do it? I don't do it because I think that it would just validate my address to them, that there's actually a person who checks his e-mail at this address. What do you think?
Why can't Microsoft do this just because it is a cool thing to do? I personally think it's half because it's cool and half marketing. After all Terraserver was used to show what Microsoft can do with their own software technology. And this is more of the same. At the same time, they can placate the geek factor by doing something geek-ically cool, at the same time, offer it for free to everyone as a public service (sort of) and boost its corporate image and get free (meaning not specifically pay for) marketing for its SQL server out of it. I think if you have lots of money and the ability to do it, why not? Microsoft is certainly in a good position for it.
I want to see more of this kind of stuff from Sun and other large companies of comparable scale.
Look, the current system works well because of its simplcity. As it is, many people already have trouble handling the driving of the car, never mind a richer driving communication experience. There are plenty of people who couldn't even handle stick-shift, how do you expect them to do more?
Besides, everybody is already loaded with all kinds of things to do in the car. For example: - Eating, Drinking - Reading (newspapers, especially a large one like NYT) - Talking on the cell phone. - Putz around maps - Playing around with the new high-tech toys like GPS etc. - Listening the the radio/tape player/cd player, and fiddling with them as well. - Carry on conversations with other passengers. - Putting on makeup or putting on nail polish(I've been in the car of someone who did exactly this, within 10 minutes, and did a nice job, while talking to me and driving 70mph on the highway).
Not to mention, there are plenty of other methods of communicating with other drivers, like using your car's body language, some of which I've done myself:
- Tailgating and headlight flashing (hey you are going too slow, get outta the way! or, your light are not on!) - Leaning toward a lane change (Actually, not usually consciouly, but you can tell if someone wants to cut in front of you this way). - The old arm/hand signals which have fallen into disuse. - Good ol' hand gestures that doesn't involve the middle finger, such as: waving = go ahead; hold hand out=thank you for letting me go ahead; throw your hand up in disgust, etc.
I don't know about you, but I think that there's plenty of communication going on already. As it is, people like to remain relatively anonymous on the road, because you are driving with a bunch of strngers, many of whom can be complete psychotic. Who wants to deal with them? As it is, there's enough road rage and distracting things on the road. We don't need more things to complicate and distract from the act of driving safely.
I wanted to add something to my earlier question: The open source movement was conceived, I'm sure with the same good intent as the patent system. But I'm wondering if people wouldn't abuse it in much the same way that the patent system has been abused to not so much encourage and reward innovation, but as litigation tools and in some ways, prevent innovation by other companies. Isn't it conceivable that the open source movement may fall victim to this kind of exploitation in the hands of commercial interests?
My take on the open source software movement as it stands now is that software companies will embrace open source for software that it sees as 'razors' and develop closed source software as value-added products to be 'razor blades'. I think a lot of companies are also using this relationship to 'embrace' open source and use it as a marketing strategy. Am I wrong? If not, is this troublesome to the open source movement? Is there any fear that the open source movement is open to exploitation by software companies this way?
Legally, the creators of the characters own the characters. But I think in a philosophical way, by 'selling' the characters and the stories to the public for money (or anything else we can imagine), it becomes public domain. The characters become personifications of memes, and carries ramafications in terms of power/leverage over segments of the population, because they now have influence over social-economic-political-and-whatever-else aspects of our society. Without the people, these characters are merely figments in the minds of their creators. Therefore, the characters, philosophically, I believe, belong to the fans. Legally, of course, they should still belong to the creators. After all, it's an incentive for creators to benefit from putting efforts into creating the characters/stories.
Of course, I'm not addressing the fan fiction issue at all.
So now the Air Force is engaging in science fiction writing research. They should and did read a lot of the leading science fiction writers' works and some of the popular (and consequently, quite influential) sci-fi movies to get some good ideas.
But then, the reason for science fiction is to serve pretty much the same purpose as the ones that the Air Force intend - to extrapolate from the current state of affairs of the world and pick out possibilities, maybe merging and switching a few of those possibilities, and come up with something that seems plausible. The true outcome, we've learned historically, is never quite exactly as depicted in these fictitious glimpses in the future, but may actually fulfill some of the predicted destinies.
I don't disagree with you, for the most part. I noted that Slashdot is what it is today, because of the guys who run it, but also in large, thankfully, because of the Slashdot readers.
I still believe that, given the kind of stories I've seen in the short amount of time (relatively speaking) I've been a Slashdot reader myself, that Slashdot is pro-Linux, Pro-Open Source and anti-MS. What's wrong with being pro-technically superior software and software philosophy and anti-the-symbol-of-corporatism-and-software-medioc rity-turned-monopoly? Nothing, technically. After all, one is free to have such opinions.
I do believe, though, that given the track record, the Slashdot editorial staff cannot really be counted on for balanced reporting of linux and open source vis-a-vis microsoft, even if they DO manage to be balanced. The evidence, thus far, has been that it has been very much unbalanced, which only leads me to believe that the agenda is very much there.
I have to say though, credits go to Hemos for correcting the story. Now THERE is balanced reporting.
#2 - No. If you remember the article about Source Code being ruled by a judge as being Free Speecch, compiled binaries are NOT considered speech, therefore, the string in the.dll cannot be construed as speech. Ergo, no libel.
Look, this Anti-Microsoft bashing is discrediting Slashdot and Open Source community. Simple as that.
I like Slashdot, let me say this first. I find it informative, insightful, interesting and very often, funny (hey, that's +4!). However I find many things disturbing. From time to time I see the term 'serious journalism' bandied about on Slashdot. I have to state: I don't consider Slashdot serious journalism. I find it a great place to find new and interesting information. I find it a good place to get some really insightful perspectives. But that's really from the Slashdot community. Not from the Slashdot editorial staff. The editorial staff, I think have their own agenda.
Slashdot = Pro-Linux, pro-Open Source, right? Slashdot = Anti-Microsoft. Though it seems to be anti-corporatism, I find that to be less evident.
Many of Slashdot's "celebrities" are Open Source community's big names. It's no secret that Linux and Open Source are the "darlings" of the technology world right now, to some extent. It's also no secret that many of these people have vested interest in companies that base its business on Linux and/or Open Source Software based products.
What I find, then, is that Slashdot's agenda is: 1. Praise Linux, praise Open Source. 2. Get the Linux and Open Source community to all pat each other in the back for being defenders of the free software world. 3. Get rich off of the companies that they have vested interest in.
What this means to me, in a twisted way (I'll admit it's twisted) is that the Community (I'm lumping Slashdot, Linux and Open Source together, rather unfairly too, I know, but I'm doing it anyway) has become an Open Source Microsoft corporations. Think about it. Here are the parallels: 1. Linux = Windows whatever. 2. Open Source Community = Microsoft Developers. 3. Slashdot (and other places) = Microsoft marketing machine.
I'm sure that are many others. But this is what I could think of.
So in a sense, it is distributed (don't we love that word!) corporatism, to some extent. It's a bit of a stretch there, but I think you may see my point. Just because the vested interest is in a bunch of companies doesn't mean that it's not corporatism. The point of corporatism is bottom-line. I don't think that it's so different in the companies that have products based on open-source.
In all fairness, I believe that Open Source has its roots in for-honest-goodness, but I think that the term has now been used for many self-serving people and companies with an agenda to use it as a marketing term.
And in this respect, the largest target for the Community has always been Microsoft. The Community is competing against Microsoft for market share. The Community hides behind "Open Source" as a Good Thing(tm). I find it extremely distasteful the feeding frenzy of every misstep and mishap of Microsoft. I don't love Microsoft, but I find this kind of behavior turns me off to the Community. And I absolutely believe that many are jumping on this bandwagon to bash Microsoft so that the best alternative to Microsoft, Linux and Open Source based products, will win out so that their own vested interest will make them rich. How disillusioning.
Re:No use without teachers who understand computer
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Very much so. College is where you really start to learn to think, while k-12 was all really about learning to communicate with others effectively. All that knowledge, all those classes, really preparing you, loading you with enough background information and terminology so that you can become an effective communicator of the ideas that you begin to need to express when you go to college.
Requiring students to have computers nowadays, thankfully, isn't too bad, because computers have become so cheap. But I agree that requiring students to have a computer seems somewhat wrong. In fact, some may say that the requirement is a bias. It's just another thing that the poor students need to spend money on. The wealthy students, of course, could care less. And isn't that what school computers are for?
I think that people just keep forgetting that computers, for most people, is or should be just a tool to do what they really want to accomplish. For techies, it is a little tougher to see, because techies like to use computers to do - computer stuff! They also happen to use it for other things. Programmers/hackers, etc. definitely fall into this category.
I think that people look at the booming technology/information economy and think, well, look at all those computer people becoming millionaires! It must be really good and important to know and learn about computers! They don't think, wow, these computer things are great. With them, the students and teacher will be able to more effectively communicate. They are thinking that more students should be computer science majors, instead of computer savvy non-computer science majors. I know that this last point is very arguable in that maybe all that educators are tryng to accomplish is to create more computer savvy students, rather than focus on creating more computer specializing students.
But then, my point is, if all we want is computer savvy and not computer specialization, then we could just create computing appliances that doesn't require computer specialization or doesn't require much computer savvy to use.
Quite frankly, I don't think anyone who does not specialize in computers should ever need to know how to use a command line. They should never need to know about hardware or how to troubleshoot anything hardware or software related. They should just know how to do what they need to accomplish, without computer knowledge. Windows is far from this, of course, as it is problematic and is often an enigma to beginners. But it made it much easier to accomplish things than DOS or UNIX or LINUX. Windows made computing accessible, and that, in my book, is far more important than technical superiority of the software behind the OS. It doesn't matter that Linux is better technically. To users, accessibility is important.
If you build your platform to appeal to the broadest possible audience, even if you have to "dumb" it down somewhat, you have done a great thing. Unix and Linux have always been out of reach for the lay person. And the unix/linux gurus have always prided themselves in their technical knowledge that is largely inaccessible to most people. They LIKED stuff that most people don't care to know about, then deride Microsoft for creating Windows, a technically inferior (in their eyes) but a socially (ok, more like market-wise) superior piece of software.
I think that the argument mostly come down to, do you want students to learn computer specialization? Or do you want them to focus on learning, and merely have the tools to facilitate that? If the latter, then you have to make it so that the less they have to learn about computers, the better.
The best tool in the world is one that you never really have to learn how to use, or one that just become such a commonplace thing that it "disappear" or become invisible so that you are no longer aware of it. If students are to really be able to take advantage of computers in education, they should not feel it as any different than textbooks or notebooks.
Gee, how many times and in how many different ways can I say the same thing?!
Slashdot Mirror
I have a question relating to the handwriting input for the Pocket PC. I assume that if MS really wanted to lure Palm users to come use the Pocket PC, they would not only offer things that Palm does not, but also offer "transitional" features that are familiar to Palm users to ease their migration to the Pocket PC, much the same way that Microsoft offered Netware connectivity from NT, or Microsoft's failed attempt to hijack AOL Instant Messenger users with their own version of messenger. So why don't they offer software that would recognize graffiti? Or would that be in violation of Some Legal Thing(tm)? Or is it that it would just be too confusing?
The spirit of the patent law is that, If there's something useful that someone created, make sure we all get it. But to be sure that it would be shared, make it worth the innovator's while to share it.
But the spirit of corporate litiganous patents is that, we get patents for as many things as we could create, and then get patents for as many things that we could patent that we couldn't create, and then we patent things that our competitors will potentially want to patent, and sit back as we watch them fall into our trap.
Regardless of the influence of lawyers and corporatism, the patent laws are still functioning as they need to, which is, as raised earlier, to promote and encourage innovation so that we can all benefit from such innovation.
Of course, we now have patents that cover fictional inventions that we don't even have the capability to implement yet. But that's ok. Because if it's too far beyond the current capabilities of anyone to make the invention a reality, then it just won't happen, not within the time that the patent covers to protect the so called 'innovator'. In that case, it's just as well for all of us, because now we have the ideas that we can work on (if they are not impossible to implement), and by the time we accomplish them, they'll be royalty free.
Stories like this just reminds me that there's way too many lawyers in this country and way too many lawsuits. It's no wonder they are called sharks. They are all teeth! I mean, seriously, we are constantly dealing with legal issues here at Slashdot, what with MPAA, RIAA, DeCSS, Amazon, PTO, etc., all of these issues having to deal with "intellectual property" and "copyrights". The laws that were originally intended to protect and reward the inventive and creative have all now become instruments of corporatism in the hands of lawyers. I wish we didn't have to deal with all of these things and really only read stuff that is more interesting. My vent.
You mentioned quite a few things that were very useful. Who knew you could run Doom on it? I didn't realize you could use it as a recorder (I guess it's more of a hardware implemented feature. The GameBoy emulator is definitely interesting as well.
For all the bad things anyone could say about it, there's one good thing about WinCE - it is a platform that people could build to. There would be more choices (down the road, hopefully) than the roman numerals of a Palm.
Now, if we could only get Linux, Apache, Universal Remote, and Wireless phone on it (oh, and can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of one of these?)
Thanks once again.
Regards.
You are certainly more informed than I am about this. I don't have one of these devices, but would seriously consider them. I saw higher number versions as well, but because this is what they weer "unveiling", I chose what I thought were significant. What I am really interested in, though, more than whether it's MS WinCE or Linux, is how does it compare with other things out there? And more importantly, do you find these applications usable on the handheld devices? How do you think they will fare against Palm? (I'm doing a mini-slashdot interview here).
Yes, Yes. I know. I eliminated the mention of WinCE in this latest version in hopes that they'll post it. In any case though, the fact that they have all those pieces of software (whether they are of good quality or bad quality) is significant. They are trying to hit a number of different markets all at the same time, and that's basically their only weapon against Palm.
Microsoft unveiled the Pocket PC today. Products being available by its partners include: HP Jornada, Compaq iPaq H3600, Casio Cassiopei a E-105 and Symbol PPT 2700. Microsoft's touting it as being better than Palm. Here's a list of features, significant among them: Microsoft Reader (for reading e-books), Windows Media Player (for playing music), Pocket Streets (a map program), Pocket Internet Explorer, and office productivity tools like Outlook, Word, and Excel.
FWIW though, Japanese make good appliance-type gadgets, and you can count on them to deliver good quality end-user products (witness the game consoles). Only problem is if some terrorists decide to use a Sharp Zaurus in their Missile Guidance System.
If you are a little more paranoid (like I am), you may realize that if there were apocalyptic events here on earth, and a large percentage of people were to die off, the Internet is not likely to be around, neither will the equipment that can read digital data (remember the Time Machine?). I think that in addition to digital electronic backup of all of humanity's collective accumulate knowledge, we should also have non-perishable hardcopies created and stored at strategic locations around the world. I don't know what material to use, necessarily. Maybe plastic or something, you know, because it's non-biodegradable.
I apologize for my use of agism. You are right. That was something I debated about for a brief moment. For lack of time (well, you know how it is at Slashdot sometimes), a better example, as well as common sense, I did it anyway. Your point is completely valid. Thank you for pointing it out to me.
While we understand how obsolete his mindset is in today's information world, we must also understand that the Internet is, after all, a Fairly New Thing(tm) and that there are tons of people who do not have access or just doesn't "get it" yet. Instead of disparaging Mr. Billington some more, I think we should put more effort into convincing people like him that the future of books is online.
Does anybody know if we can get Mr. Billington as a Slashdot interview? Or at least maybe send him our comments (or send Jon Katz with the printouts like he did with the Pinkertons). What do you think?
Tech Law Journal asked Billington if there is any parallel between hostility to the printing press in the late 15th and early 16th Centuries, and hostility to the Internet today. He stated that there is, but that there is also a significant difference. Billinton explained that some of the hostility to the printing press originated because cheap reproduction made books and pamphlets available to more people. Previously, only kings and an elite few had access to libraries. The printing press made the public library possible. Billington stated that in contrast, public libraries are a "political institution" today.
There's one thing wrong with that argument. Since the Library of Congress has such a vast collection, a person who wants to have access to the most information would do best to access the library stacks. But not everyone can afford to go to where the books are - so now, it is not discriminating against those who are not royalty or elites, but against those who simply don't have the funds.
This is an unbelievable arrogance on the part of Mr. Billington, along with all the other foolish remarks he's made. The only thing that he said that made sense is that the priority should be on those items would normally not see the light of day or would be hard to access/find.
Everyone put in anti-spam stuff in their e-mail address here at slashdot, so obviously, it's because everyone don't want to be spammed, because there must be programs out there that scrape the e-mail addresses from web pages, right?
Well, what's to prevent an unscrupulous person who may work at an ISP or at one of the major exchanges to tap the e-mail messages being relayed? Now, I don't know enough about the way e-mail works in the backend to know if it is possible. But the assumption is, if there's e-mail being sent, then the originator and/or the destination will contain valid e-mail addresses. What's to prevent people who happen to relay all this e-mail traffic from extracting all the valid e-mail addresses within, and pass the e-mail off normally? This is one way for them to get huge quantities of valid e-mail addresses. Has there been anything like this?
But if you raise the issue of first amendment, it brings up a very interesting point. Is a phone call considered free speech? I forget which one of the early forefathers or historically significant figures it was - who said something like "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death to defend your right to say it". I know I haven't gotten it right. But in any case, the point is, you can say whatever you like, and I can't stop you from saying it. But I think I should have a right to not listen to it. Just like all the people who complain about offensive TV and/or radio shows - they could choose not to tune in, but they should have no rights to bar the people broadcasting the message. My phone is very specifically a personal communication device, as is my e-mail address, so I'd believe. I think that I should be entitled to being able to prevent people from using it for their free speech, because I cannot really choose not to "tune in".
Can you see any problems with my argument? Do you know of any legislation that covers what I'm talking about (because I can't think of any myself).
I think that all of this ties in with the privacy issue as well. We don't like to have our information hanging out there, with anybody being able to pick up what we bought or did, where we were (online or in the real world) and when. Telemarketers (as far as I know, and or so I would assume) don't just dial sequential blocks of numbers, they usually have a list of numbers that they obtained from somewhere, just to save themselves a little bit more time and money. I know there are systems out there that just does brute-force sequential block dialing, and only connect the telemarketer is someone actually picks up the call, just as in spamming, there must be mailers out there that just tries out all the shorter e-mail name combination of large e-mail domains such as hotmail and yahoo. But I think for the most part, real addresses and real telephone numbers are important to the telemarketers and the people who sell them these lists. And that, to me, seems to be more of a privacy issue than an annoyance issue.
On a side note: How many people have gotten spam that says: If you do not want to receive any further e-mail like this, send mail to...? How many people actually do it? I don't do it because I think that it would just validate my address to them, that there's actually a person who checks his e-mail at this address. What do you think?
I want to see more of this kind of stuff from Sun and other large companies of comparable scale.
Besides, everybody is already loaded with all kinds of things to do in the car. For example: - Eating, Drinking
- Reading (newspapers, especially a large one like NYT)
- Talking on the cell phone.
- Putz around maps
- Playing around with the new high-tech toys like GPS etc.
- Listening the the radio/tape player/cd player, and fiddling with them as well.
- Carry on conversations with other passengers.
- Putting on makeup or putting on nail polish(I've been in the car of someone who did exactly this, within 10 minutes, and did a nice job, while talking to me and driving 70mph on the highway).
Not to mention, there are plenty of other methods of communicating with other drivers, like using your car's body language, some of which I've done myself:
- Tailgating and headlight flashing (hey you are going too slow, get outta the way! or, your light are not on!)
- Leaning toward a lane change (Actually, not usually consciouly, but you can tell if someone wants to cut in front of you this way).
- The old arm/hand signals which have fallen into disuse.
- Good ol' hand gestures that doesn't involve the middle finger, such as: waving = go ahead; hold hand out=thank you for letting me go ahead; throw your hand up in disgust, etc.
I don't know about you, but I think that there's plenty of communication going on already. As it is, people like to remain relatively anonymous on the road, because you are driving with a bunch of strngers, many of whom can be complete psychotic. Who wants to deal with them? As it is, there's enough road rage and distracting things on the road. We don't need more things to complicate and distract from the act of driving safely.
I wanted to add something to my earlier question: The open source movement was conceived, I'm sure with the same good intent as the patent system. But I'm wondering if people wouldn't abuse it in much the same way that the patent system has been abused to not so much encourage and reward innovation, but as litigation tools and in some ways, prevent innovation by other companies. Isn't it conceivable that the open source movement may fall victim to this kind of exploitation in the hands of commercial interests?
My take on the open source software movement as it stands now is that software companies will embrace open source for software that it sees as 'razors' and develop closed source software as value-added products to be 'razor blades'. I think a lot of companies are also using this relationship to 'embrace' open source and use it as a marketing strategy. Am I wrong? If not, is this troublesome to the open source movement? Is there any fear that the open source movement is open to exploitation by software companies this way?
Of course, I'm not addressing the fan fiction issue at all.
But then, the reason for science fiction is to serve pretty much the same purpose as the ones that the Air Force intend - to extrapolate from the current state of affairs of the world and pick out possibilities, maybe merging and switching a few of those possibilities, and come up with something that seems plausible. The true outcome, we've learned historically, is never quite exactly as depicted in these fictitious glimpses in the future, but may actually fulfill some of the predicted destinies.
I still believe that, given the kind of stories I've seen in the short amount of time (relatively speaking) I've been a Slashdot reader myself, that Slashdot is pro-Linux, Pro-Open Source and anti-MS. What's wrong with being pro-technically superior software and software philosophy and anti-the-symbol-of-corporatism-and-software-medioc rity-turned-monopoly? Nothing, technically. After all, one is free to have such opinions.
I do believe, though, that given the track record, the Slashdot editorial staff cannot really be counted on for balanced reporting of linux and open source vis-a-vis microsoft, even if they DO manage to be balanced. The evidence, thus far, has been that it has been very much unbalanced, which only leads me to believe that the agenda is very much there.
I have to say though, credits go to Hemos for correcting the story. Now THERE is balanced reporting.
#2 - No. If you remember the article about Source Code being ruled by a judge as being Free Speecch, compiled binaries are NOT considered speech, therefore, the string in the .dll cannot be construed as speech. Ergo, no libel.
I like Slashdot, let me say this first. I find it informative, insightful, interesting and very often, funny (hey, that's +4!). However I find many things disturbing. From time to time I see the term 'serious journalism' bandied about on Slashdot. I have to state: I don't consider Slashdot serious journalism. I find it a great place to find new and interesting information. I find it a good place to get some really insightful perspectives. But that's really from the Slashdot community. Not from the Slashdot editorial staff. The editorial staff, I think have their own agenda.
Slashdot = Pro-Linux, pro-Open Source, right? Slashdot = Anti-Microsoft. Though it seems to be anti-corporatism, I find that to be less evident.
Many of Slashdot's "celebrities" are Open Source community's big names. It's no secret that Linux and Open Source are the "darlings" of the technology world right now, to some extent. It's also no secret that many of these people have vested interest in companies that base its business on Linux and/or Open Source Software based products.
What I find, then, is that Slashdot's agenda is: 1. Praise Linux, praise Open Source. 2. Get the Linux and Open Source community to all pat each other in the back for being defenders of the free software world. 3. Get rich off of the companies that they have vested interest in.
What this means to me, in a twisted way (I'll admit it's twisted) is that the Community (I'm lumping Slashdot, Linux and Open Source together, rather unfairly too, I know, but I'm doing it anyway) has become an Open Source Microsoft corporations. Think about it. Here are the parallels:
1. Linux = Windows whatever.
2. Open Source Community = Microsoft Developers.
3. Slashdot (and other places) = Microsoft marketing machine.
I'm sure that are many others. But this is what I could think of.
So in a sense, it is distributed (don't we love that word!) corporatism, to some extent. It's a bit of a stretch there, but I think you may see my point. Just because the vested interest is in a bunch of companies doesn't mean that it's not corporatism. The point of corporatism is bottom-line. I don't think that it's so different in the companies that have products based on open-source.
In all fairness, I believe that Open Source has its roots in for-honest-goodness, but I think that the term has now been used for many self-serving people and companies with an agenda to use it as a marketing term.
And in this respect, the largest target for the Community has always been Microsoft. The Community is competing against Microsoft for market share. The Community hides behind "Open Source" as a Good Thing(tm). I find it extremely distasteful the feeding frenzy of every misstep and mishap of Microsoft. I don't love Microsoft, but I find this kind of behavior turns me off to the Community. And I absolutely believe that many are jumping on this bandwagon to bash Microsoft so that the best alternative to Microsoft, Linux and Open Source based products, will win out so that their own vested interest will make them rich. How disillusioning.
Requiring students to have computers nowadays, thankfully, isn't too bad, because computers have become so cheap. But I agree that requiring students to have a computer seems somewhat wrong. In fact, some may say that the requirement is a bias. It's just another thing that the poor students need to spend money on. The wealthy students, of course, could care less. And isn't that what school computers are for?
I think that people just keep forgetting that computers, for most people, is or should be just a tool to do what they really want to accomplish. For techies, it is a little tougher to see, because techies like to use computers to do - computer stuff! They also happen to use it for other things. Programmers/hackers, etc. definitely fall into this category.
I think that people look at the booming technology/information economy and think, well, look at all those computer people becoming millionaires! It must be really good and important to know and learn about computers! They don't think, wow, these computer things are great. With them, the students and teacher will be able to more effectively communicate. They are thinking that more students should be computer science majors, instead of computer savvy non-computer science majors. I know that this last point is very arguable in that maybe all that educators are tryng to accomplish is to create more computer savvy students, rather than focus on creating more computer specializing students.
But then, my point is, if all we want is computer savvy and not computer specialization, then we could just create computing appliances that doesn't require computer specialization or doesn't require much computer savvy to use.
Quite frankly, I don't think anyone who does not specialize in computers should ever need to know how to use a command line. They should never need to know about hardware or how to troubleshoot anything hardware or software related. They should just know how to do what they need to accomplish, without computer knowledge. Windows is far from this, of course, as it is problematic and is often an enigma to beginners. But it made it much easier to accomplish things than DOS or UNIX or LINUX. Windows made computing accessible, and that, in my book, is far more important than technical superiority of the software behind the OS. It doesn't matter that Linux is better technically. To users, accessibility is important.
If you build your platform to appeal to the broadest possible audience, even if you have to "dumb" it down somewhat, you have done a great thing. Unix and Linux have always been out of reach for the lay person. And the unix/linux gurus have always prided themselves in their technical knowledge that is largely inaccessible to most people. They LIKED stuff that most people don't care to know about, then deride Microsoft for creating Windows, a technically inferior (in their eyes) but a socially (ok, more like market-wise) superior piece of software.
I think that the argument mostly come down to, do you want students to learn computer specialization? Or do you want them to focus on learning, and merely have the tools to facilitate that? If the latter, then you have to make it so that the less they have to learn about computers, the better.
The best tool in the world is one that you never really have to learn how to use, or one that just become such a commonplace thing that it "disappear" or become invisible so that you are no longer aware of it. If students are to really be able to take advantage of computers in education, they should not feel it as any different than textbooks or notebooks.
Gee, how many times and in how many different ways can I say the same thing?!