The software writers can't be held wholly responsible. They can't (and shouldn't) force users to keep active on patches.
The way I see it, people have a similar responsibility with their computers as they do with their cars. They are obligated to keep it in proper working order so that it does not become a virus vector, in the same way that I am obligated to maintain my car so that pieces don't fall off while I'm driving, so that my brakes and indicators are in working order, and am licensed so that I'm reasonably assured of not causing an accident.
Actually, it'd be really cool if someone came up with an inspection routine for PCs like they have for cars -- a system of "attacks" run on a particular IP address that your system has to successfully defend in order to be certified as reasonably secure.
There are significant differences between the US and UK laws, then. In the US, a pool is considered an "attractive nuisance" and failure to take measures to prevent idiots wandering in and drowning can make you liable for civil damages.
In terms of the car, simply leaving it unlocked does not allow its use -- leaving the keys in it is closer, and may expose you to charges of negligence, especially if you routinely do this.
But anyway, there's only so far an analogy should be stretched, so I'll leave it at that;)
I just leave my front door open
on
Safe and Insecure?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
and people wander in and out. So, it's not my fault that there are 12-year olds drinking 40s on the front porch. No way is it my fault someone's selling crack in the living room, or that someone drowned in the pool.
Ultimately, if you knowingly leave your computer open to mask your own poor behavior, you won't get off, you'll just get busted for all of it, and then get busted for knowingly providing a venue for this.
Re:Less Newton, more Leibniz
on
The Confusion
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, but at the same time, the small amount of Newton we get in this book is so much more satisfying. We get a good insight into his real character and he gets set up for his role in the next book. The first book, written so much from Waterhouse's point of view, painted Newton somewhat poorly and mysteriously.
Instead of missing that knock out punch Koolio could deliver you, and all your friends, beer all night long. You have this luxury 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Find a human to do that.
That's precisely why my dad had kids. That, and his TV didn't have a remote control.
You'd be surprised. Did you know that the Bass Fishing Channel is one of the most popular on cable? Similarly, my relatives are astounded that Cartoon Network has any viewers over the age of ten.
Examine your cable company's channel schemes sometime, particularly the "extended" package. Most of the channels there were selected because they are highly valued by some small segment of the population who would otherwise be happy with basic cable. (Which I personally find pure evil. I may be happy with the concept of bundling, but the practice of it often leaves much to be desired!)
You were still allowed to consider books that you didn't think you'd be interested in. You could always flip through it while deciding whether to buy it. Nobody came up to you and said, "You've really only liked books from these two shelves. I'll give you a discount on the books you do buy if you let me lock the rest of the store so you can't look through those books anymore," which is a better analogy to my argument.
First off, nobody's saying you should be forced to watch channels you don't want. The question is whether you should be "forced" to allow them to be available, unobtrusively, just in case you or someone in your family changes their mind. There's a big difference.
And no, forcing someone to have CNN on their channel lineup doesn't make society better. But rewarding them for leaving it off certainly makes society worse. In all the examples you mentioned, culture is opt-out -- the books and social groups are all available to you at any time. If you decide not to make use of them, you gain nothing and lose nothing but the opportunity. Fine.
But allowing people to select their input streams AND incentivizing them to select as few streams as possible, you're rewarding those who choose to be narrow-minded. I just don't think that's appropriate.
In any case, the argument I keep seeing is that a la carte will be cheaper than bundled cable, and I just don't believe that. The same forces that push cable bundle prices up today will push a la carte prices up tomorrow -- greed and mismanagement. The difference is that at least with bundling, those minority channels will continue to exist and serve their viewership, and be available to everyone else, should they decide to broaden their horizons. I'd even bet that the bundled cable will prove to have been cheaper for 90% of the audience than a la carte.
The current "system" is not fine, no. It's run badly, by corrupt people. But the channel selection schemes are indeed fine, thanks.
OK, I see your point; Mine was simply a rant ready to go;)
Your last point, though, is fascinating. "I wish TV was free" is not something anywould would have dreamed of saying thirty years ago -- TV *was* free, all the channels were broadcast, and if you had a good enough antenna, then your only cost was the TV itself and the electricity bill.
The funny thing is, free TV is dying, in the face of competition from cable and satellite. It's bizarre, but most of it is that the free stations have extra costs from broadcasting, and have only the advertising costs, no cable fees.
If channel X is geared toward a majority group, and is not popular, fine. But the definition of "minority" involves there not being very many of them. That means that a channel popular with a minority (and let's face it, geeks are a minority) is going to be considered "unpopular" and probably axed. The cost of the programming does not go up -- but nor does it go down, and in order to support the channel, whose expense is orthogonal to its viewership, then that smaller number of viewers would bear an increased share of the burden, simply by virtue of being a minority with minority interests.
In the US, our society has repeatedly made the decision that a little extra expense and annoyance is worth it for the sake of maintaining diversity and protecting the rights and comfort of minority groups. Cable bundling is not only just about the least of those expenses, it is the one that you and your friends are most likely to benefit from.
The essence of bundling is that you pay for what you want, and happen to get things you don't. Fine, you don't use those things. In that sense, a bundle is very much like a CD, where you may only like one or two songs, but have to buy the whole CD to get them. Or like a magazine, where you may only want a couple articles, but must buy the whole volume. Or like a DVD... ok, maybe not like a DVD.
The point is that they put twelve songs on a CD, knowing that many people will buy it for one or two -- but also knowing that quite a few people will like other songs on the CD, and enjoy them. You can say that you're unfairly subsidizing those people who like track 4 if you don't, I suppose, since the CD is slightly more pricey for having recorded and engineered the track. (Indeed, some people are getting very antsy about their desire for a la carte CDs)
Think of it this way. The nature of paying for television channels is that you generally only use one part of it at a time. You may pay for ten channels, but can only watch one of them -- this is true whether you're paying for a bundle or a la carte. The core nature of pay television is that you are heavily subsidizing a lot of use that you cannot possibly partake of yourself. You're asleep eight hours a day, you're at work at least that long. But you're still paying for all those channels while your television's off. You're still paying for the N-1 channels you're not watching when it's on.
The question is whether it's ok to charge marginally more for giving you the same amount of use -- but even so you're gaining something in the form of potential use, in those channels that every once in a blue moon show a movie you like or a documentary you'd find interesting.
First off, the economic argument, which has been made a million times. If people can get their popular channels alone, then most of the homes in America will get ESPN, Fox News and the Bass Fishing channel. Channels like Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi, etc. will just crash and burn.
It's a basic positive feedback loop. 100 people are given a la carte cable. Only 12 of them pick channel X, while 60 of them pick channel Y. Channel X is going to be more expensive. Of those 12, certain of them are going to decide that it's just not worth the extra expense -- after all, channels like Y are good enough, and less expensive. X gets more expensive. In fact, it gets too expensive for some people, who decide to forgo it in favor of watching it at a friend's house, or just renting the DVDs of their favorite shows. Furthermore, as X gets more expensive, fewer and fewer people will be willing to pick it up just to try it out, and parents aren't going to be willing to pick it up for their kids. It might spread by word of mouth, but with very few eyeballs watching, there will be very few mouths talking...
Which leads to the social point, which is more compelling with news channels, but applies elsewhere. There is something wrong with telling people that they can elect to not have the option of seeing information they don't think they'll be interested in, and save money in the deal. Right now, if my parents got this a la carte deal, they'd get Fox News and drop CNN. The trouble is, while they don't admit it, they do occasionally flip to CNN just out of idle curiosity, to see if maybe Fox isn't being so straight about things.
If you reward people for reducing their information diet, you're going to wind up with a whole lot of people who just don't understand why anyone thinks differently than they do. You'll wind up with a whole lot of people who never satiate a vague interest in history or science or cooking that might otherwise grow. You'll wind up with a bunch of people who think it's really odd that adults watch cartoons...
I'd prefer to stay with the bundling, thanks. People may not take advantage of the opportunity to broaden their horizons, but we sure as hell shouldn't be rewarding those who choose to keep theirs narrow.
It's easy to give a geek gifts. ThinkGeek.com alone should satisfy you there. For V's Day, you might want to look for something you'd both enjoy, so that his immediate response isn't "Must go off and use new gadget alone!" Two-player videogames you're willing to play with him, DVDs you'll both like, that kind of thing. Stuff like books or single-player video games can wait until his birthday.
At some point any organization, let alone one devoted to the news, must be responsible for what it chooses to publish on its site. Such a deplorable lack of discretion in running such an amazingly defamatory article does indeed open the BBC to criticism.
My guess would be that the prudent scientist would wait until after it finishes blooming and collect the DNA samples then. I can't account for the sinuses of the guy in the picture.
If they're taking an approach based on observation and experimentation, then it was already a science before this. Numbers and measurements do not make a practice a science. If that's all it took, phrenology and numerology would be science.
I'm more familiar with Microsoft's behavior than you are with English, judging from your post. I'm fully aware that they have used their money and marketing power to make computers less useful as tools than they could be.
However, I lose NOTHING when good software is written by anyone, nothing whatsoever. I may not necessarily gain, but I cannot lose. On the other hand, I lose time and energy arguing with idiotic ACs, with no possible benefit, so I'm going to stop now.
But the quality of their software is entirely in the realm of fair competition, which is what we've been saying all along -- that the marketing doesn't matter, only the software. If that's the case, then computer users can only benefit from real, honest improvements to Windows. It cannot detract from our accomplishments, only keep us on our toes.
No, I don't mean Microsoft, I mean all the posts I've read here so far.
We have nothing to fear from the world's largest software maker paying attention to the needs and wants of the Linux community. Really. Honestly. We've loathed them for years because their software sucks -- why not help them do it better? If your answer is that they *can't* do it better, then fine. But that's not my answer. I can think of a number of things that I'd like them to do. I'll still use Linux, but I'm hopeful that those times I'm obligated to use Windows won't be as painful.
Or are you too afraid that Microsoft can beat Linux after all?
Because they are alleging that these things have been improperly revealed to the public already. This removed the code's trade secret status, irrevocably. All they would have left is copyright on the code, which is irrelevent of whether the public has seen it or not.
If they do in fact have code which is protected by copyright, then they have nothing to fear. Copyright still protects things that have been seen by the public -- it's called publication. It seems to me that the only reason copyright exists in the first place is to encourage people to publish their works by allowing them to still own a work once it is in the open.
If, on the other hand, SCO believes that it's control over the code is only based on its status as a trade secret, then they have no recourse against the Linux community, only (theoretically) IBM. Keeping any infringing code secret wouldn't help.
It seems to me that there are only a few possible reasons that SCO wants to keep all this secret, which are unrelated to their stated reasons:
1) They need Linux to continue infringing as long as possible. My guess is that the length of infringement, which will stop 24 hours or so after public disclosure, will directly affect any increase the damages paid by IBM.
2) They want to catch IBM in a contempt of court charge. If the code is sealed by the court, and it becomes suddenly removed before being made public, then SCO can say that IBM leaked information, and so is in contempt of the secrecy order. This makes IBM look very bad, and gives SCO a strong argument that IBM has clearly shown itself to be untrustworthy with information. It's an interesting gambit, relying on the fact that the information will need to be widely available within IBM for its defense, and bets that at least one of those people will spill the beans.
3) They have no idea who actually contributed the code in question. If they open it up to the public, there's always the possibility that some expert in the field will stand up and say, "No, I wrote that code, not IBM, and I have never seen SCO's code". Opening the code suddenly gives IBM a very large army of people who will study and scour the code SCO releases to find any evidence in IBM's favor whatsoever. With it secret, the burden is entirely on IBM, and so the process will take longer and evidence may be missed. This also plays into #2 above.
4) There is no code. SCO's allegations have been a delicate web of half-truths and bravado, exposure of which will mean certain death to the company. It will lose its case, it will not be purchased, and its lawyers will not be paid.
Yeah, but in thirty years most of the 'cook from scratch' generation will be dead or sucking food through a straw. The only people left will be the 'packaged food is better' generation plus a few holdouts.
Slashdot Mirror
Ever heard of radiation poisoning?
Besides, several nuclear fuel materials are poisonous in their own right.
The software writers can't be held wholly responsible. They can't (and shouldn't) force users to keep active on patches.
The way I see it, people have a similar responsibility with their computers as they do with their cars. They are obligated to keep it in proper working order so that it does not become a virus vector, in the same way that I am obligated to maintain my car so that pieces don't fall off while I'm driving, so that my brakes and indicators are in working order, and am licensed so that I'm reasonably assured of not causing an accident.
Actually, it'd be really cool if someone came up with an inspection routine for PCs like they have for cars -- a system of "attacks" run on a particular IP address that your system has to successfully defend in order to be certified as reasonably secure.
There are significant differences between the US and UK laws, then. In the US, a pool is considered an "attractive nuisance" and failure to take measures to prevent idiots wandering in and drowning can make you liable for civil damages.
;)
In terms of the car, simply leaving it unlocked does not allow its use -- leaving the keys in it is closer, and may expose you to charges of negligence, especially if you routinely do this.
But anyway, there's only so far an analogy should be stretched, so I'll leave it at that
and people wander in and out. So, it's not my fault that there are 12-year olds drinking 40s on the front porch. No way is it my fault someone's selling crack in the living room, or that someone drowned in the pool.
Ultimately, if you knowingly leave your computer open to mask your own poor behavior, you won't get off, you'll just get busted for all of it, and then get busted for knowingly providing a venue for this.
Yeah, but at the same time, the small amount of Newton we get in this book is so much more satisfying. We get a good insight into his real character and he gets set up for his role in the next book. The first book, written so much from Waterhouse's point of view, painted Newton somewhat poorly and mysteriously.
Instead of missing that knock out punch Koolio could deliver you, and all your friends, beer all night long. You have this luxury 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Find a human to do that.
That's precisely why my dad had kids. That, and his TV didn't have a remote control.
You'd be surprised. Did you know that the Bass Fishing Channel is one of the most popular on cable? Similarly, my relatives are astounded that Cartoon Network has any viewers over the age of ten.
Examine your cable company's channel schemes sometime, particularly the "extended" package. Most of the channels there were selected because they are highly valued by some small segment of the population who would otherwise be happy with basic cable. (Which I personally find pure evil. I may be happy with the concept of bundling, but the practice of it often leaves much to be desired!)
You were still allowed to consider books that you didn't think you'd be interested in. You could always flip through it while deciding whether to buy it. Nobody came up to you and said, "You've really only liked books from these two shelves. I'll give you a discount on the books you do buy if you let me lock the rest of the store so you can't look through those books anymore," which is a better analogy to my argument.
First off, nobody's saying you should be forced to watch channels you don't want. The question is whether you should be "forced" to allow them to be available, unobtrusively, just in case you or someone in your family changes their mind. There's a big difference.
And no, forcing someone to have CNN on their channel lineup doesn't make society better. But rewarding them for leaving it off certainly makes society worse. In all the examples you mentioned, culture is opt-out -- the books and social groups are all available to you at any time. If you decide not to make use of them, you gain nothing and lose nothing but the opportunity. Fine.
But allowing people to select their input streams AND incentivizing them to select as few streams as possible, you're rewarding those who choose to be narrow-minded. I just don't think that's appropriate.
In any case, the argument I keep seeing is that a la carte will be cheaper than bundled cable, and I just don't believe that. The same forces that push cable bundle prices up today will push a la carte prices up tomorrow -- greed and mismanagement. The difference is that at least with bundling, those minority channels will continue to exist and serve their viewership, and be available to everyone else, should they decide to broaden their horizons. I'd even bet that the bundled cable will prove to have been cheaper for 90% of the audience than a la carte.
The current "system" is not fine, no. It's run badly, by corrupt people. But the channel selection schemes are indeed fine, thanks.
OK, I see your point; Mine was simply a rant ready to go ;)
Your last point, though, is fascinating. "I wish TV was free" is not something anywould would have dreamed of saying thirty years ago -- TV *was* free, all the channels were broadcast, and if you had a good enough antenna, then your only cost was the TV itself and the electricity bill.
The funny thing is, free TV is dying, in the face of competition from cable and satellite. It's bizarre, but most of it is that the free stations have extra costs from broadcasting, and have only the advertising costs, no cable fees.
If channel X is geared toward a majority group, and is not popular, fine. But the definition of "minority" involves there not being very many of them. That means that a channel popular with a minority (and let's face it, geeks are a minority) is going to be considered "unpopular" and probably axed. The cost of the programming does not go up -- but nor does it go down, and in order to support the channel, whose expense is orthogonal to its viewership, then that smaller number of viewers would bear an increased share of the burden, simply by virtue of being a minority with minority interests.
In the US, our society has repeatedly made the decision that a little extra expense and annoyance is worth it for the sake of maintaining diversity and protecting the rights and comfort of minority groups. Cable bundling is not only just about the least of those expenses, it is the one that you and your friends are most likely to benefit from.
The essence of bundling is that you pay for what you want, and happen to get things you don't. Fine, you don't use those things. In that sense, a bundle is very much like a CD, where you may only like one or two songs, but have to buy the whole CD to get them. Or like a magazine, where you may only want a couple articles, but must buy the whole volume. Or like a DVD... ok, maybe not like a DVD.
The point is that they put twelve songs on a CD, knowing that many people will buy it for one or two -- but also knowing that quite a few people will like other songs on the CD, and enjoy them. You can say that you're unfairly subsidizing those people who like track 4 if you don't, I suppose, since the CD is slightly more pricey for having recorded and engineered the track. (Indeed, some people are getting very antsy about their desire for a la carte CDs)
Think of it this way. The nature of paying for television channels is that you generally only use one part of it at a time. You may pay for ten channels, but can only watch one of them -- this is true whether you're paying for a bundle or a la carte. The core nature of pay television is that you are heavily subsidizing a lot of use that you cannot possibly partake of yourself. You're asleep eight hours a day, you're at work at least that long. But you're still paying for all those channels while your television's off. You're still paying for the N-1 channels you're not watching when it's on.
The question is whether it's ok to charge marginally more for giving you the same amount of use -- but even so you're gaining something in the form of potential use, in those channels that every once in a blue moon show a movie you like or a documentary you'd find interesting.
First off, the economic argument, which has been made a million times. If people can get their popular channels alone, then most of the homes in America will get ESPN, Fox News and the Bass Fishing channel. Channels like Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi, etc. will just crash and burn.
It's a basic positive feedback loop. 100 people are given a la carte cable. Only 12 of them pick channel X, while 60 of them pick channel Y. Channel X is going to be more expensive. Of those 12, certain of them are going to decide that it's just not worth the extra expense -- after all, channels like Y are good enough, and less expensive. X gets more expensive. In fact, it gets too expensive for some people, who decide to forgo it in favor of watching it at a friend's house, or just renting the DVDs of their favorite shows. Furthermore, as X gets more expensive, fewer and fewer people will be willing to pick it up just to try it out, and parents aren't going to be willing to pick it up for their kids. It might spread by word of mouth, but with very few eyeballs watching, there will be very few mouths talking...
Which leads to the social point, which is more compelling with news channels, but applies elsewhere. There is something wrong with telling people that they can elect to not have the option of seeing information they don't think they'll be interested in, and save money in the deal. Right now, if my parents got this a la carte deal, they'd get Fox News and drop CNN. The trouble is, while they don't admit it, they do occasionally flip to CNN just out of idle curiosity, to see if maybe Fox isn't being so straight about things.
If you reward people for reducing their information diet, you're going to wind up with a whole lot of people who just don't understand why anyone thinks differently than they do. You'll wind up with a whole lot of people who never satiate a vague interest in history or science or cooking that might otherwise grow. You'll wind up with a bunch of people who think it's really odd that adults watch cartoons...
I'd prefer to stay with the bundling, thanks. People may not take advantage of the opportunity to broaden their horizons, but we sure as hell shouldn't be rewarding those who choose to keep theirs narrow.
No patent for you. You weren't clever enough to think of using it this way.
It's easy to give a geek gifts. ThinkGeek.com alone should satisfy you there. For V's Day, you might want to look for something you'd both enjoy, so that his immediate response isn't "Must go off and use new gadget alone!" Two-player videogames you're willing to play with him, DVDs you'll both like, that kind of thing. Stuff like books or single-player video games can wait until his birthday.
At some point any organization, let alone one devoted to the news, must be responsible for what it chooses to publish on its site. Such a deplorable lack of discretion in running such an amazingly defamatory article does indeed open the BBC to criticism.
My guess would be that the prudent scientist would wait until after it finishes blooming and collect the DNA samples then. I can't account for the sinuses of the guy in the picture.
"It appears, then, that you have succumbed to featuritis."
If they're taking an approach based on observation and experimentation, then it was already a science before this. Numbers and measurements do not make a practice a science. If that's all it took, phrenology and numerology would be science.
I'm more familiar with Microsoft's behavior than you are with English, judging from your post. I'm fully aware that they have used their money and marketing power to make computers less useful as tools than they could be.
However, I lose NOTHING when good software is written by anyone, nothing whatsoever. I may not necessarily gain, but I cannot lose. On the other hand, I lose time and energy arguing with idiotic ACs, with no possible benefit, so I'm going to stop now.
But the quality of their software is entirely in the realm of fair competition, which is what we've been saying all along -- that the marketing doesn't matter, only the software. If that's the case, then computer users can only benefit from real, honest improvements to Windows. It cannot detract from our accomplishments, only keep us on our toes.
No, I don't mean Microsoft, I mean all the posts I've read here so far.
We have nothing to fear from the world's largest software maker paying attention to the needs and wants of the Linux community. Really. Honestly. We've loathed them for years because their software sucks -- why not help them do it better? If your answer is that they *can't* do it better, then fine. But that's not my answer. I can think of a number of things that I'd like them to do. I'll still use Linux, but I'm hopeful that those times I'm obligated to use Windows won't be as painful.
Or are you too afraid that Microsoft can beat Linux after all?
Because they are alleging that these things have been improperly revealed to the public already. This removed the code's trade secret status, irrevocably. All they would have left is copyright on the code, which is irrelevent of whether the public has seen it or not.
If they do in fact have code which is protected by copyright, then they have nothing to fear. Copyright still protects things that have been seen by the public -- it's called publication. It seems to me that the only reason copyright exists in the first place is to encourage people to publish their works by allowing them to still own a work once it is in the open.
If, on the other hand, SCO believes that it's control over the code is only based on its status as a trade secret, then they have no recourse against the Linux community, only (theoretically) IBM. Keeping any infringing code secret wouldn't help.
It seems to me that there are only a few possible reasons that SCO wants to keep all this secret, which are unrelated to their stated reasons:
1) They need Linux to continue infringing as long as possible. My guess is that the length of infringement, which will stop 24 hours or so after public disclosure, will directly affect any increase the damages paid by IBM.
2) They want to catch IBM in a contempt of court charge. If the code is sealed by the court, and it becomes suddenly removed before being made public, then SCO can say that IBM leaked information, and so is in contempt of the secrecy order. This makes IBM look very bad, and gives SCO a strong argument that IBM has clearly shown itself to be untrustworthy with information. It's an interesting gambit, relying on the fact that the information will need to be widely available within IBM for its defense, and bets that at least one of those people will spill the beans.
3) They have no idea who actually contributed the code in question. If they open it up to the public, there's always the possibility that some expert in the field will stand up and say, "No, I wrote that code, not IBM, and I have never seen SCO's code". Opening the code suddenly gives IBM a very large army of people who will study and scour the code SCO releases to find any evidence in IBM's favor whatsoever. With it secret, the burden is entirely on IBM, and so the process will take longer and evidence may be missed. This also plays into #2 above.
4) There is no code. SCO's allegations have been a delicate web of half-truths and bravado, exposure of which will mean certain death to the company. It will lose its case, it will not be purchased, and its lawyers will not be paid.
Yeah, but in thirty years most of the 'cook from scratch' generation will be dead or sucking food through a straw. The only people left will be the 'packaged food is better' generation plus a few holdouts.