I don't really think the people trapped in the towers when they collapsed were thinking -- oh my, what a blow to my ego! And I support the military action currently underway (but not this bill, mind you) not because it makes me feel good, but because the safety and peace of some 3 billion people on 4 continents, including me and my kids, depends on America being able to defend itself and its allies.
It's fine to oppose this bill (I do) and to be disturbed by the US hand in the situation in the Middle East (I am), but I've had about enough of the attitudes that we're to blame, and that we have no right to defend ourselves. That's just crap.
Attacking people for what they believe is not fair at all, but attacking them for what they DO is exactly fair. They didn't just believe in murdering thousands of Americans, they did it.
Well, although the writer makes an indirect implication that isn't quite accurate, yes, there's news you've missed -- namely this article.
An interesting thing about this discovery, if I'm reading it correctly, is it could be a good indicator of the universe's age. It correlates two different facts:
the spectra of the stars suggest that they are _uniformly_ extremely young. This makes it likely that they were all formed when the universe was very young.
the red shift of the cluster indicates it's 13.6 billion light-years away.
So, it's a sighting of an "event" that could only have happened in the early universe, and since the light from the event took 13.6 billion years to get here, it means the universe is just over 13.6 billion years old.
Now, mind you, this is not enough evidence to be certain about that leap, the "red shift" fact has a wide margin of error (since the constancy of Hubble's constant is now in question) and there may be situations where a cluster like this could occur in the universe much later than its early epoch, but it could reduce the wide gap in universe age measurements.
Yet another reason to prefer the term Free Software:-)
Seriously, though, I think the innovation of free software is that it takes what had been hoarded as property (finished, marketable products) and makes it as free as basic research.
Of course, maybe that's because, in software, one can apparently take something with the quality of bad undergraduate research and sell it...
Hear, hear. And to expand further, telling politicians to "please stay away, you don't know what you're doing" is to imply that they can't understand these issues, as if they aren't really about power, liberty, fairness, privacy, and freedom. It also sends the message that "we're just fine out here by ourselves" which, judging by the predatory actions of MS, Disney, RIAA, etc., isn't true at all -- we are the little guy, and we need help.
You make it sound like Slashdotters are a bunch of parasites that just suck up bandwidth and disk space while never clicking through any ads because we've junkbuster'ed them.
It looks like the applicable law, but it seems to specifically exempt software and music from sublease rights, in 109.b.1.A:
...unless authorized by.. the owner of copyright in a computer program.., neither the owner of.. nor any person in possession of a particular copy of a computer program.. may, for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage, dispose of, or authorize the disposal of, the possession of that.. computer program.. by rental, lease, or lending, or by any other act or practice in the nature of rental, lease, or lending.
Does that negate resale rights as well?
Also, it appears this paragraph was a later revision. Anyone know when?
I find the whole discussion somewhat mooted by the fact the proprietary software companies push upgrades fast enough to make old versions of the software almost valueless. I suppose it could matter to those who pay the MS tax, and don't want to pursue a refund.
Although, for my money, the above provision is wrong, and I'd like to see right of resale maintained for all copyrighted work if only to maintain the original, limited, intent of the law.
Yes the Palestinians have suffered horribly and long, and yes Isreal and the US bear some responsibility. But Yasser Arafat has for the past thirty years been screwing his own people to feed his delusions of grandeur.
Any useful leader would long ago have turned away from terrorism, and toward realistic efforts for peace. Arafat has been the singular roadblock to this. EVERY President since Nixon has made overtures toward peace, and terrorism has got in the way every time. And I have no illusions that it was anyone but Arafat who at least condoned and at most ordered the attacks.
And now, the US will be justified, and will get permission from all neighboring Arab states (if they ask), to occupy the West Bank themselves. I hope Dubya decides to do so. An occupation that helps reestablish lawfulness and normalcy, a la post WWII occupations of Germany and Japan, is the best possible course at this point.
Of course, given that Ashcroft, the guy who lost to the dead guy, has apparently decided that Microsoft isn't worthy of punishment, I can't fault the voters on that one...
Finally, Dr. Seuss on-topic
on
What is 'IT'?
·
· Score: 2
I was waiting for someone to say this. Two Dr.Suess references have been floating in my head since reading this: "moss-covered, three-handled, family grudunza" and "a thneed's a fine something that everyone needs!"
I hope that IT is less imaginary or at least less destructive:-)
Won't matter unless it's fast.
on
What is 'IT'?
·
· Score: 2
The reason that cars congest cities is not that everyone lives in the city and drives, it's that everyone lives a half-hour commute from the city and drives in. And as the towns a half-hour out become crowded and overbuilt and old, we build bigger, badder freeways to establish new towns farther away that are still a half-hour commute away, resulting in more congestion, more buildup, more freeways, more miles driven, etc.
So, as long as this trend continues, it will all be about speed. You need to keep going faster to keep moving farther away from the problems (crime, pollution, poor schools, lower property values) of those living closer in. It's no accident (ahem) that the 55 mph limit was lifted in the US, as people try to live farther away from central cities, but still want to get there in the same time. Same thing for road rage, "tier 1 suburbs" decaying, sprawl, etc.
So, until something reverses this trend, say, light industries built in autonomous small towns, accompanied by small-scale power plants and made possible by information technology and shattered corporations (all of this is starting to happen, BTW), a clean personal transport won't matter.
Unless, of course, you're suggesting these things can "dock" in bigger vehicles that go 100mph (trains?), and/or have rollbars and harnesses.
All that said, I'd love to own one, if it's what you describe, which it pretty much has to be.
I had a high-school teacher describe Occam's Razor as "it has to make a difference to be a difference", which strictly isn't the meaning, but that phrase is a logical consequence of "invent nothing unnecessary to the explanation."
You see, you can test the Occam-ness of theory A versus simpler theory B by asking: does the added complexity change anything? Does it explain more? Does it predict more? Does it encompass some theory C that previously appeared unrelated? If the answers are no, then theory A is assumed as inferior to theory B.
Not that theory A will necessarily turn out to be wrong. One could read between the lines of some early explanations of light and find people theorizing wave-particle duality, but until quantum theory, such a duality theory would have lost out in not providing additional explanation for light's behavior beyond the theory that light was strictly a wave.
I think I've got an answer to many of the problems: the micropayments get served by governments, which skim off a fraction as taxes.
I know what you're thinking -- Big Brother. But, if an open protocol could be devised that anonymized the payer, and only concerned itself with making sure it got hold of the payment on one end, and securely remitted on the other end, it could actually be an effective digital cash.
As to *which* government would serve payments, why the government in charge wherever the server was located, which would also set the tax rate.
As for exchange rates, I imagine you could invent a net-cash-only currency that the server on each end would convert to and from the local currency.
So, poof, there go all sorts of practical/political hurdles. Now if I could just think of how to do this technologically...
Since it looks like we all seem to disagree with his conclusions, let's beat on a few of the author's premises/assumptions:
"Either governments or corporations will regulate information, take your pick": did he ever consider the possibility that they be used to balance against each other? See the next item:
"The Progressive reforms at the turn of the 1900's were a prior example of this sort of regulation, where "parental" government can protect us against greedy corporate interests": wrong, these reforms did not work by protecting us from railroads, oil, electricity, or medicine, but rather by ensuring the rights of the people and using the power of the government as a balance against said greedy corporations by providing specific limits on their power (anti-trust), specific requirements for MORE disclosure (labelling), and only direct regulation on specific, provable, directly harmful actions (unsafe working conditions, unsafe food and drugs, child labor, etc.) He also conveniently leaves out that these reforms were hand-in-hand with reforms limiting the power of abusive municipal governments (civil service reforms, graft reforms, etc.) The Progressive reforms limited power of both government and corporations, not thoughts and expressions.
"The FCC has more power because broadcast is a more powerful medium": wrong, the FCC was created as a recognition that the necessarily small number of broadcasters would have government-sponsored power over the public airwaves. Because any idiot can publish a web page, that concern over a limited number of voices is not borne on the internet.
But hiding under it all are real concerns that the internet is just another medium for pumping ads at us, but with more potential for us to be ensnared. And the answer to that? Regulate the corporations, not the content! Make sure that common carriers carry every provider's content on an equal basis; make sure that content providers have to subject their "information" to becoming part of the public culture -- for use, for inspiration, for criticism, for accountability. The useful information will always thrive when given an equal status, access, and audience to the useless.
Yes, information can be powerful. That's exactly why we should never cede our rights to exchange it to any institution, corporate or government.
Sorry I don't have an answer to your question, but assuming users do this frequently, here's a question: are they only cheating themselves?
Sure, these companies get software for nothing, and can keep all the benefits of that initial version for themselves, but think about what happens as the software evolves: the cheaters spend money to get that extra feature or fix, then by keeping it to themselves, they have a choice to make every time the public version gets upgraded: keep their own version, integrate their code, or go with the clean, new version.
If they keep their own version, they have to forgo, integrate, or reimplement every feature the community invented. So they spent on their stuff, but either had to spend more to keep it, or end up with fewer features;
If they integrate their code, they have to spend money to get that integration, and they also face the same choice when the next upgrade comes along;
If they go with the clean version, they set aside the initial investment in their own features and fixes, and maybe they don't get the benefit of those features anymore.
But if they had not cheated, every patch of theirs that became part of the public version would still be available to them, with no additional cost, and they would get, for free, the benefit of the rest of the community's patches.
This is the inevitability of open source: not sharing information decreases its use value. It only is more valuable as a secret if you sell it, but then that value lasts only as long as no-one else out-thinks your secret.
RTFA (the Wired article) before you go defending this twerp's right to scam people.
What we should be holding him up as is an example that hiding ludicrous terms in the fine print doesn't make them legal. And I'm not just talking about the prices here. Fortunately, Minnesota (where PageCreators is based) has a fine set of consumer protection laws that might help here, if it's their jurisdiction. Mebbe if one of the victims was from Minnesota, the attorney general's office might be able to help. Anyone?
Do any known observations include phenomena that can only be attributed to singularities, as opposed to just really, really dense objects?
E.g. Hawking radiation, as theorized, would seem to require an event horizon, but would it look any different than radiation from accreting matter? If so, have these differences been observed?
Just to inform, there was a state (not U.S.) senate race in western Wisconsin that had millions poured into it, since the candidates were on opposite sides of the drive to build the Brewers (I think?) a new stadium.
Your overall point is correct, that average people can't afford to hold office. But what's more important is that even your average millionaire can't afford to campaign without significant outside help.
Isn't that a bit like saying: "I'd never buy a PC for both spreadsheets and word processing, you couldn't possibly get them both right"?
Isn't all-in-one supposed to be the great big promise of digital entertainment? Outside of the bits that turn digital to analog: screen, speakers, amp, etc. there's no reason that the hardware needs to be any different for all of these formats.
If that capability has been thwarted, shouldn't we view that as the usual shenanigans of those who'd like us to buy another copy of the same media for every player?
You may be right about what the real options in the market are, but don't make it a self-fulfilling prophecy by refusing to consider all-in-one.
Ironically, it seems that the CDC now has exactly the ammunition it needs to prove your point in court.
To be a little more subtle than your point, however, they would say that controlling who broadcasts is necessary, but that the current concentration of broadcasting rights thwarts free speech. And they'd be right.
It seems to me that it was an attempt to provide an outlet for community radio, so there would be less need (or at least less of an excuse) for firing off transmissions willy-nilly.
Well, it seems you learn something new every day... NPR apparently helped toss FUD at this bill. I wonder if they feel their government subsidies might be threatened by competing community radio.
And I've always been a huge fan of NPR and PBS subsidies...hmmmm. Mebbe it's time to put pen to paper and let them know they've turned off at least one loyal listener.
I'd have modded you up, but hey, welcome to Slashdot...
Although you take your time getting there, your central point explains most of the reliability problems with real software: there are no boundaries imposed on what you can do, other than your own discipline to make it leaner, meaner, and more elegant.
In fact, the "Great Shame" that software languishes while hardware improves is no surprise at all. The only thing that better hardware does for software is remove the limits to what we might try to get away with.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't really think the people trapped in the towers when they collapsed were thinking -- oh my, what a blow to my ego! And I support the military action currently underway (but not this bill, mind you) not because it makes me feel good, but because the safety and peace of some 3 billion people on 4 continents, including me and my kids, depends on America being able to defend itself and its allies.
It's fine to oppose this bill (I do) and to be disturbed by the US hand in the situation in the Middle East (I am), but I've had about enough of the attitudes that we're to blame, and that we have no right to defend ourselves. That's just crap.
Attacking people for what they believe is not fair at all, but attacking them for what they DO is exactly fair. They didn't just believe in murdering thousands of Americans, they did it.
Well, although the writer makes an indirect implication that isn't quite accurate, yes, there's news you've missed -- namely this article.
An interesting thing about this discovery, if I'm reading it correctly, is it could be a good indicator of the universe's age. It correlates two different facts:
the spectra of the stars suggest that they are _uniformly_ extremely young. This makes it likely that they were all formed when the universe was very young.
the red shift of the cluster indicates it's 13.6 billion light-years away.
So, it's a sighting of an "event" that could only have happened in the early universe, and since the light from the event took 13.6 billion years to get here, it means the universe is just over 13.6 billion years old.
Now, mind you, this is not enough evidence to be certain about that leap, the "red shift" fact has a wide margin of error (since the constancy of Hubble's constant is now in question) and there may be situations where a cluster like this could occur in the universe much later than its early epoch, but it could reduce the wide gap in universe age measurements.
Yet another reason to prefer the term Free Software :-)
Seriously, though, I think the innovation of free software is that it takes what had been hoarded as property (finished, marketable products) and makes it as free as basic research.
Of course, maybe that's because, in software, one can apparently take something with the quality of bad undergraduate research and sell it...
Hear, hear. And to expand further, telling politicians to "please stay away, you don't know what you're doing" is to imply that they can't understand these issues, as if they aren't really about power, liberty, fairness, privacy, and freedom. It also sends the message that "we're just fine out here by ourselves" which, judging by the predatory actions of MS, Disney, RIAA, etc., isn't true at all -- we are the little guy, and we need help.
You make it sound like Slashdotters are a bunch of parasites that just suck up bandwidth and disk space while never clicking through any ads because we've junkbuster'ed them.
Oh, wait...
It looks like the applicable law, but it seems to specifically exempt software and music from sublease rights, in 109.b.1.A:
.. the owner of copyright in a computer program .., neither the owner of .. nor any person in possession of a particular copy of a computer program .. may, for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage, dispose of, or authorize the disposal of, the possession of that .. computer program .. by rental, lease, or lending, or by any other act or practice in the nature of rental, lease, or lending.
...unless authorized by
Does that negate resale rights as well?
Also, it appears this paragraph was a later revision. Anyone know when?
I find the whole discussion somewhat mooted by the fact the proprietary software companies push upgrades fast enough to make old versions of the software almost valueless. I suppose it could matter to those who pay the MS tax, and don't want to pursue a refund.
Although, for my money, the above provision is wrong, and I'd like to see right of resale maintained for all copyrighted work if only to maintain the original, limited, intent of the law.
If your software had a butt to scratch, it would...
BULLSHIT!
Yes the Palestinians have suffered horribly and long, and yes Isreal and the US bear some responsibility. But Yasser Arafat has for the past thirty years been screwing his own people to feed his delusions of grandeur.
Any useful leader would long ago have turned away from terrorism, and toward realistic efforts for peace. Arafat has been the singular roadblock to this. EVERY President since Nixon has made overtures toward peace, and terrorism has got in the way every time. And I have no illusions that it was anyone but Arafat who at least condoned and at most ordered the attacks.
And now, the US will be justified, and will get permission from all neighboring Arab states (if they ask), to occupy the West Bank themselves. I hope Dubya decides to do so. An occupation that helps reestablish lawfulness and normalcy, a la post WWII occupations of Germany and Japan, is the best possible course at this point.
Of course, given that Ashcroft, the guy who lost to the dead guy, has apparently decided that Microsoft isn't worthy of punishment, I can't fault the voters on that one...
I was waiting for someone to say this. Two Dr.Suess references have been floating in my head since reading this: "moss-covered, three-handled, family grudunza" and "a thneed's a fine something that everyone needs!"
:-)
I hope that IT is less imaginary or at least less destructive
The reason that cars congest cities is not that everyone lives in the city and drives, it's that everyone lives a half-hour commute from the city and drives in. And as the towns a half-hour out become crowded and overbuilt and old, we build bigger, badder freeways to establish new towns farther away that are still a half-hour commute away, resulting in more congestion, more buildup, more freeways, more miles driven, etc.
So, as long as this trend continues, it will all be about speed. You need to keep going faster to keep moving farther away from the problems (crime, pollution, poor schools, lower property values) of those living closer in. It's no accident (ahem) that the 55 mph limit was lifted in the US, as people try to live farther away from central cities, but still want to get there in the same time. Same thing for road rage, "tier 1 suburbs" decaying, sprawl, etc.
So, until something reverses this trend, say, light industries built in autonomous small towns, accompanied by small-scale power plants and made possible by information technology and shattered corporations (all of this is starting to happen, BTW), a clean personal transport won't matter.
Unless, of course, you're suggesting these things can "dock" in bigger vehicles that go 100mph (trains?), and/or have rollbars and harnesses.
All that said, I'd love to own one, if it's what you describe, which it pretty much has to be.
I had a high-school teacher describe Occam's Razor as "it has to make a difference to be a difference", which strictly isn't the meaning, but that phrase is a logical consequence of "invent nothing unnecessary to the explanation."
You see, you can test the Occam-ness of theory A versus simpler theory B by asking: does the added complexity change anything? Does it explain more? Does it predict more? Does it encompass some theory C that previously appeared unrelated? If the answers are no, then theory A is assumed as inferior to theory B.
Not that theory A will necessarily turn out to be wrong. One could read between the lines of some early explanations of light and find people theorizing wave-particle duality, but until quantum theory, such a duality theory would have lost out in not providing additional explanation for light's behavior beyond the theory that light was strictly a wave.
I think I've got an answer to many of the problems: the micropayments get served by governments, which skim off a fraction as taxes.
I know what you're thinking -- Big Brother. But, if an open protocol could be devised that anonymized the payer, and only concerned itself with making sure it got hold of the payment on one end, and securely remitted on the other end, it could actually be an effective digital cash.
As to *which* government would serve payments, why the government in charge wherever the server was located, which would also set the tax rate.
As for exchange rates, I imagine you could invent a net-cash-only currency that the server on each end would convert to and from the local currency.
So, poof, there go all sorts of practical/political hurdles. Now if I could just think of how to do this technologically...
Since it looks like we all seem to disagree with his conclusions, let's beat on a few of the author's premises/assumptions:
"Either governments or corporations will regulate information, take your pick": did he ever consider the possibility that they be used to balance against each other? See the next item:
"The Progressive reforms at the turn of the 1900's were a prior example of this sort of regulation, where "parental" government can protect us against greedy corporate interests": wrong, these reforms did not work by protecting us from railroads, oil, electricity, or medicine, but rather by ensuring the rights of the people and using the power of the government as a balance against said greedy corporations by providing specific limits on their power (anti-trust), specific requirements for MORE disclosure (labelling), and only direct regulation on specific, provable, directly harmful actions (unsafe working conditions, unsafe food and drugs, child labor, etc.) He also conveniently leaves out that these reforms were hand-in-hand with reforms limiting the power of abusive municipal governments (civil service reforms, graft reforms, etc.) The Progressive reforms limited power of both government and corporations, not thoughts and expressions.
"The FCC has more power because broadcast is a more powerful medium": wrong, the FCC was created as a recognition that the necessarily small number of broadcasters would have government-sponsored power over the public airwaves. Because any idiot can publish a web page, that concern over a limited number of voices is not borne on the internet.
But hiding under it all are real concerns that the internet is just another medium for pumping ads at us, but with more potential for us to be ensnared. And the answer to that? Regulate the corporations, not the content! Make sure that common carriers carry every provider's content on an equal basis; make sure that content providers have to subject their "information" to becoming part of the public culture -- for use, for inspiration, for criticism, for accountability. The useful information will always thrive when given an equal status, access, and audience to the useless.
Yes, information can be powerful. That's exactly why we should never cede our rights to exchange it to any institution, corporate or government.
Sorry I don't have an answer to your question, but assuming users do this frequently, here's a question: are they only cheating themselves?
Sure, these companies get software for nothing, and can keep all the benefits of that initial version for themselves, but think about what happens as the software evolves: the cheaters spend money to get that extra feature or fix, then by keeping it to themselves, they have a choice to make every time the public version gets upgraded: keep their own version, integrate their code, or go with the clean, new version.
If they keep their own version, they have to forgo, integrate, or reimplement every feature the community invented. So they spent on their stuff, but either had to spend more to keep it, or end up with fewer features;
If they integrate their code, they have to spend money to get that integration, and they also face the same choice when the next upgrade comes along;
If they go with the clean version, they set aside the initial investment in their own features and fixes, and maybe they don't get the benefit of those features anymore.
But if they had not cheated, every patch of theirs that became part of the public version would still be available to them, with no additional cost, and they would get, for free, the benefit of the rest of the community's patches.
This is the inevitability of open source: not sharing information decreases its use value. It only is more valuable as a secret if you sell it, but then that value lasts only as long as no-one else out-thinks your secret.
"Hey, don't forget us left-wing lunatics too."
:-)
He was correctly assuming that we're part of the 70% insightful
RTFA (the Wired article) before you go defending this twerp's right to scam people.
What we should be holding him up as is an example that hiding ludicrous terms in the fine print doesn't make them legal. And I'm not just talking about the prices here. Fortunately, Minnesota (where PageCreators is based) has a fine set of consumer protection laws that might help here, if it's their jurisdiction. Mebbe if one of the victims was from Minnesota, the attorney general's office might be able to help. Anyone?
Do any known observations include phenomena that can only be attributed to singularities, as opposed to just really, really dense objects?
E.g. Hawking radiation, as theorized, would seem to require an event horizon, but would it look any different than radiation from accreting matter? If so, have these differences been observed?
Just to inform, there was a state (not U.S.) senate race in western Wisconsin that had millions poured into it, since the candidates were on opposite sides of the drive to build the Brewers (I think?) a new stadium.
Your overall point is correct, that average people can't afford to hold office. But what's more important is that even your average millionaire can't afford to campaign without significant outside help.
Isn't that a bit like saying: "I'd never buy a PC for both spreadsheets and word processing, you couldn't possibly get them both right"?
Isn't all-in-one supposed to be the great big promise of digital entertainment? Outside of the bits that turn digital to analog: screen, speakers, amp, etc. there's no reason that the hardware needs to be any different for all of these formats.
If that capability has been thwarted, shouldn't we view that as the usual shenanigans of those who'd like us to buy another copy of the same media for every player?
You may be right about what the real options in the market are, but don't make it a self-fulfilling prophecy by refusing to consider all-in-one.
Ironically, it seems that the CDC now has exactly the ammunition it needs to prove your point in court.
To be a little more subtle than your point, however, they would say that controlling who broadcasts is necessary, but that the current concentration of broadcasting rights thwarts free speech. And they'd be right.
It seems to me that it was an attempt to provide an outlet for community radio, so there would be less need (or at least less of an excuse) for firing off transmissions willy-nilly.
Well, it seems you learn something new every day... NPR apparently helped toss FUD at this bill. I wonder if they feel their government subsidies might be threatened by competing community radio.
And I've always been a huge fan of NPR and PBS subsidies...hmmmm. Mebbe it's time to put pen to paper and let them know they've turned off at least one loyal listener.
I'd have modded you up, but hey, welcome to Slashdot...
Although you take your time getting there, your central point explains most of the reliability problems with real software: there are no boundaries imposed on what you can do, other than your own discipline to make it leaner, meaner, and more elegant.
In fact, the "Great Shame" that software languishes while hardware improves is no surprise at all. The only thing that better hardware does for software is remove the limits to what we might try to get away with.
Both you and your pro-GUI respondents are entirely correct.
When one wishes to converse/command, one talks or writes.
When one wishes to wield a tool, one grabs it and manipulates it.
What is the right way to use a computer? I don't know, but I bet it involves each of them at different times.