I think it takes away one of the biggest advantages closed-source OSs have over open source ones. If linux and FreeBSD arent working as well with the new chips as Windows it suggests there is something wrong with the open source model itself. Compare with something like SMP where Windows had already finished supporting it when OS OSs were just getting started.
I like it, napster really had no choice but shut down the offending accounts, but instead of simply turning off the accounts they give 300,000 users the chance to put up their hands and say "sue me". If just one of them can prove they were not trading copyrighted material then napster is justified in not doing a blanket ban on everything that looks like it is copyrighted.
Up to now, what companies would have access to these documents at this stage? And apart from signing non-disclosure agreements, what would you have to do to get them?
What I suggested was basically a tit-for-tat thing on what is really an unrelated issue. I dont think that the price of music is a big issue in why people download mp3s. A racketeering charge aims closer to what irritates me so much about what the RIAA are trying.
Do you honestly expect me to believe you never copied a song off the radio or taped a film off TV, (Im not sure about the legality of this now, but it definitely used ot be illegal). Just because something is law, doesnt make it right. Laws change. What is happening here is the people who made money out of old technology are trying to hold back the tide and stop new technology being used to full advantage. The fact that the law has to be changed to allow this is irrelevant. Artists will still get paid, somehow. Maybe the pay will be distributed a little more fairly than before is all.
From what I remember when Amiga were talking about using a QNX kernel it doesnt use virtual memory. The fact the web site says it can be launched from any file-system would tend to support that. Anyone see that as a problem? I think it isnt, it probably helps a lot in keeping the system real-time, and well written programs shouldnt be too badly affected.
Oh, and I like the icon you chose for QNX. Maybe the padlock should be open though.
Yeah, youre probably right that it would just increase the stranglehold of large corporations over patents, but thats why I included something about some sort of non-commercial patent, maybe a better idea would be a non-exclusive patent (which I guess is a contradiction in terms). The reason behind the idea was to make it less worthwhile to patent every little thing like every possible use of a cookie, or any bit of a gene we havent found a use for yet. Only really useful ideas would be patented. Actually I think the idea of a patent tax which came up in another comment looked good, maybe something along the lines of an enforced royalty where you must allow others to use your patent for a reasonable fee. With that the patents should be based more on who had the idea in the first place, not on who submitted the patent first, or who owns/employs the idea monger. But I think that was how patents were intended, in the first place.
Does anyone know how much a patent costs? As far as I know, here in Ireland there is a charge of 100 pounds a year to hold a patent, to discourage people to get a patent and sitting on it, stopping others making the same invention. Id imagine that this price comes from way back, when 100 pound a year might discourage that sort of action.
How about a more significant cost for commercial patents, say 1 million pounds, while some sort of non-commercial patent is free (with suitable definition for commercial and non-commercial). This would stop it being worthwhile for patenting ideas that dont directly make money, allowing anyone to use them.
Or is this directly against what we (the open-source movement) are about.
Wasnt there a submission about this on slashdot about two weeks ago? (sorry, cant be bothered to search for it.)I know Ive seen it mentioned before somewhere like this. Actually I think youre too hard on the poor engine, the conversation did seem to make sense to a point, there seems to be more than just keyword matching going on (or else they tried the test about twenty times and published the funny one).
It has often been pointed out that copyright theft is not really the same as theft, because the owner does not lose use of the property. In fact the reverse is true, the law tries to take use of certain ideas (or programs, or music) away from others. That wont make sense to some people, but take for example two groups working on a similar project (mapping human genes say (this will become more relevant, honest)). Whoever finishes first gets exclusive rights to the new knowledge, and the other groups work has been taken from them (at least legally speaking).
This argument applies less to computers (except for American patents) and less again to music, but I think it still has some validity. Anyway my point is that ideas are not the same as physical property, and the law should recognise this.
As for paying creators, up to now the method seems to be along the lines of artficially high costs for production and distribution of material, to replace the missing payment for the actual work of creation. The affect of this is people do the production and distribution at a more realistic proce (piracy) and the loser is the artist. The solution is to actually for creators to create, not paying for a CD, or paying to play a song. Creators will get paid somehow, because people do want music, computer programs, science whatever, and they will pay for it if thats the only way to get it.
Any ideas who the article is targetted at? Doesnt seem technical enough for techies.. maybe a bit too technical for general consumption. Managers perhaps?
Came up.. ok. Was resolved, I didnt see any resolution or conclusion. In fact I didnt see any disagreement or discussion. Just pages and pages of people agreeing with each other. Maybe at this stage there are enough people reading that we'll get more than one opinion.
I wonder how much of an affect on the stockmarkets a highly rated comment on a widely read message board like this could have? Over the weekend as well? Barely noticable Im sure, but I dont doubt that even the smallest affect could be taken advantage of.
My guess is its for set top boxes(pay per view television, internet etc), wasnt DVD cracked because of some unencrypted link in the chain? I doubt its for desk-top computers, unless they are being used as a set top box, surely its easier to tap into the signal from the screen itself than through a few feet of cable. I dont know of a situation where the screen is far from the machine doing the displaying.
...you deserve to get paid so much more simply because you think on the job?
Obviously you enjoy what you're doing or you wouldnt be thinking about it when you get home. I havent had the good luck to work that sort of a job yet, but I do know that the work I have done (warehouse work, office work gradually moving towards programming) the less I got paid the more difficult and less enjoyable the work. As for hours, pretty much the same in both, most people have to work 60-80 hours weeks at times, though in the less paid jobs people were much more careful about getting their overtime.
I heard about this. I understood at the time that it was illegal to explain the mistake in UK courts, because it would just confuse the jurors. The only article I can find about it now, here says its only discouraged.
I wonder is this the cause or affect? My wild guess is that it is for other reasons unknown that women havent gotten involved in programming and thats why the community has always been obsessed with "religious wars".
On the other hand, as far as I know programming was sometimes seen as a woman's job, at least at first, sort of a natural progression of typist (ok, Im too young to know what Im talking about here, but its just a vague impression I get, and I know there were some women involved in computers fifty years ago). It could be that men simply make better geeks, perhaps they are happier with the very stark right/wrong working/not-working nature of computers. Where was it I read that one of the most attractive things about computers is when it doesnt do what you want, you know its because of a mistake youve made, not because it doesnt like you, or it doesnt feel like it or something? Anyway, I definitely think that its these pointless arguments where the male dominance in the geek-world is most apparent, and I make no apologies for generalising.
On the freshmeat article I think the phrase female "alpha geeks" is quite amusing, since I assume it originally comes from the alpha-male in chimps. As for how to produce female geeks, I think producing geeks is impossible (and many would say it should be discouraged), someone either gains a fascination with computers or they dont, all I think can be done is to give kids the opportunity to learn if they want to.
As far as I see, games programmers on PCs arent pushing the envelopes on the equipment they have, because there is always something better to support. I think when console programmers work on the exact same system for some time they will find what works best for it, maybe even get the hardware to do a few tricks that the designers hadnt planned on. It may or may not compare well with the very latest hardware being used badly (programmers rush through support for a new card just so they can say they did it) but at least it doesnt mean changing hardware every few months just to see a new game as it was intended.
Also intersting to note - Yahoo are currently being sued themselves over patent violation, Wired have the article.
The other patent (one electronic shopping cart instead of lots as I understand) looks almost as bad. Maybe Yahoo are planning to use their new patent as part of their defense (anything can be patented, so patents are meaningless)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and I liked the mention of Microsoft-owned message boards, but I get the impression they would have no problem censoring anything they dont like.
Feel free to correct the blind assumptions.
I like it, napster really had no choice but shut down the offending accounts, but instead of simply turning off the accounts they give 300,000 users the chance to put up their hands and say "sue me". If just one of them can prove they were not trading copyrighted material then napster is justified in not doing a blanket ban on everything that looks like it is copyrighted.
Up to now, what companies would have access to these documents at this stage? And apart from signing non-disclosure agreements, what would you have to do to get them?
What I suggested was basically a tit-for-tat thing on what is really an unrelated issue. I dont think that the price of music is a big issue in why people download mp3s. A racketeering charge aims closer to what irritates me so much about what the RIAA are trying.
In Elite your rating starts at harmless, and eventually gets to mastly harmless too. Who is making a tribute to who?
Do you honestly expect me to believe you never copied a song off the radio or taped a film off TV, (Im not sure about the legality of this now, but it definitely used ot be illegal). Just because something is law, doesnt make it right. Laws change. What is happening here is the people who made money out of old technology are trying to hold back the tide and stop new technology being used to full advantage. The fact that the law has to be changed to allow this is irrelevant. Artists will still get paid, somehow. Maybe the pay will be distributed a little more fairly than before is all.
So, has anyone tried a suit against the record industry, (or some random represantative of them) accusing them of price fixing?
Oops. Thats the sort of question I could get wrong on an exam, even though I know exactly what I mean. I was talking about page swapping.
Oh, and I like the icon you chose for QNX. Maybe the padlock should be open though.
Yeah, youre probably right that it would just increase the stranglehold of large corporations over patents, but thats why I included something about some sort of non-commercial patent, maybe a better idea would be a non-exclusive patent (which I guess is a contradiction in terms). The reason behind the idea was to make it less worthwhile to patent every little thing like every possible use of a cookie, or any bit of a gene we havent found a use for yet. Only really useful ideas would be patented. Actually I think the idea of a patent tax which came up in another comment looked good, maybe something along the lines of an enforced royalty where you must allow others to use your patent for a reasonable fee. With that the patents should be based more on who had the idea in the first place, not on who submitted the patent first, or who owns/employs the idea monger. But I think that was how patents were intended, in the first place.
How about a more significant cost for commercial patents, say 1 million pounds, while some sort of non-commercial patent is free (with suitable definition for commercial and non-commercial). This would stop it being worthwhile for patenting ideas that dont directly make money, allowing anyone to use them.
Or is this directly against what we (the open-source movement) are about.
Wasnt there a submission about this on slashdot about two weeks ago? (sorry, cant be bothered to search for it.)I know Ive seen it mentioned before somewhere like this. Actually I think youre too hard on the poor engine, the conversation did seem to make sense to a point, there seems to be more than just keyword matching going on (or else they tried the test about twenty times and published the funny one).
This argument applies less to computers (except for American patents) and less again to music, but I think it still has some validity. Anyway my point is that ideas are not the same as physical property, and the law should recognise this.
As for paying creators, up to now the method seems to be along the lines of artficially high costs for production and distribution of material, to replace the missing payment for the actual work of creation. The affect of this is people do the production and distribution at a more realistic proce (piracy) and the loser is the artist. The solution is to actually for creators to create, not paying for a CD, or paying to play a song. Creators will get paid somehow, because people do want music, computer programs, science whatever, and they will pay for it if thats the only way to get it.
Any ideas who the article is targetted at? Doesnt seem technical enough for techies.. maybe a bit too technical for general consumption. Managers perhaps?
Came up.. ok. Was resolved, I didnt see any resolution or conclusion. In fact I didnt see any disagreement or discussion. Just pages and pages of people agreeing with each other. Maybe at this stage there are enough people reading that we'll get more than one opinion.
I wonder how much of an affect on the stockmarkets a highly rated comment on a widely read message board like this could have? Over the weekend as well? Barely noticable Im sure, but I dont doubt that even the smallest affect could be taken advantage of.
My guess is its for set top boxes(pay per view television, internet etc), wasnt DVD cracked because of some unencrypted link in the chain? I doubt its for desk-top computers, unless they are being used as a set top box, surely its easier to tap into the signal from the screen itself than through a few feet of cable. I dont know of a situation where the screen is far from the machine doing the displaying.
Obviously you enjoy what you're doing or you wouldnt be thinking about it when you get home. I havent had the good luck to work that sort of a job yet, but I do know that the work I have done (warehouse work, office work gradually moving towards programming) the less I got paid the more difficult and less enjoyable the work. As for hours, pretty much the same in both, most people have to work 60-80 hours weeks at times, though in the less paid jobs people were much more careful about getting their overtime.
I heard about this. I understood at the time that it was illegal to explain the mistake in UK courts, because it would just confuse the jurors. The only article I can find about it now, here says its only discouraged.
But beer wants to be free.
I wonder is this the cause or affect? My wild guess is that it is for other reasons unknown that women havent gotten involved in programming and thats why the community has always been obsessed with "religious wars".
On the other hand, as far as I know programming was sometimes seen as a woman's job, at least at first, sort of a natural progression of typist (ok, Im too young to know what Im talking about here, but its just a vague impression I get, and I know there were some women involved in computers fifty years ago). It could be that men simply make better geeks, perhaps they are happier with the very stark right/wrong working/not-working nature of computers. Where was it I read that one of the most attractive things about computers is when it doesnt do what you want, you know its because of a mistake youve made, not because it doesnt like you, or it doesnt feel like it or something? Anyway, I definitely think that its these pointless arguments where the male dominance in the geek-world is most apparent, and I make no apologies for generalising.
On the freshmeat article I think the phrase female "alpha geeks" is quite amusing, since I assume it originally comes from the alpha-male in chimps. As for how to produce female geeks, I think producing geeks is impossible (and many would say it should be discouraged), someone either gains a fascination with computers or they dont, all I think can be done is to give kids the opportunity to learn if they want to.
Id give them more than a couple of months.
As far as I see, games programmers on PCs arent pushing the envelopes on the equipment they have, because there is always something better to support. I think when console programmers work on the exact same system for some time they will find what works best for it, maybe even get the hardware to do a few tricks that the designers hadnt planned on. It may or may not compare well with the very latest hardware being used badly (programmers rush through support for a new card just so they can say they did it) but at least it doesnt mean changing hardware every few months just to see a new game as it was intended.
No, I think satellites telling cops where we are is the only reasonable argument against this idea.
The other patent (one electronic shopping cart instead of lots as I understand) looks almost as bad. Maybe Yahoo are planning to use their new patent as part of their defense (anything can be patented, so patents are meaningless)