I don't think the other responders picked up on your dig against Robinson. Which may be accurate, but not really relevant...Callahan's hasn't introduced new sci-fi concepts since the first book (disclaimer: Haven't read the last few yet) but it does point the reader to the classics.
The problem is that new classics are fewer between. Sure, the old sci-fi was overly optimistic about a lot of things, but it was also often correct. It raised ethical issues about advances before they happened. Perhaps if more people read/wrote good sci-fi, the cloning debate would be about real issues, and not about fears of "another me".
There ARE writers doing this. Vinge, Sterling, even Stephenson, for example. Looking at modern technology and thinking about "what next?". But such writers are rare, and not getting the attention they should. It's far easier for authors (and audiences) to accept some warmed-over superscience as a plot device for a familiar story rather than challenge common assumptions.
Have you considered what daily life will be like in 20 years? Really? Have you thought how it will affect how you interact with other people, how you'll view things like old age, distance, gender, equality, elitism?
The old sci-fi wasn't WOW just because people thought the science could happen, it was because it brought up concepts that people HADN'T thought about, and they were willing to try.
The blame is two-fold: Crap produced, Crap accepted. If you aren't the writer, engage your brain and read the good stuff. Think about it. Spread the word. If you are the writer, well, don't use cheezy sci-fi as a plot vehicle, write something that means something.
I'm not surprised that an MS witness didn't have perfect understanding of a different software paradigm.
I am surprised (pleasantly) that the lawyer recognized and was able to deal with the situation. I mean, sure, I have little doubt that the lawyers have been briefed, but this lawyer:
Had to know that GNOME and KDE existed
Had to know what they were, generally
Had to understand that the answer was wrong
Had to be able to articulate that the answer was wrong, with enough accuracy/confidence to have a witness with Comp Sci experience admit his error
I haven't been wowwed by this trial (I think MS has stiffled the industry, and I think the charges have focused on the wrong elements of MS behavior), but I am pleased to see that the legal staff has assumed an apparently comfortable amount of non-MS technical familiarity. This is a rare bit of good foreshadowing for future technical cases.
it's obvious to anybody who follows the tech news (especially slashdot) that the judicial system is completely blind when it
comes to the true nature of technology and its uses.
While I don't want to disagree that there are a lot of stupid decisions that have been made, have you READ the Microsoft decisions (Findings of Fact)(Appeals court)? Both Jackson and the Appeals Court (using Jackson's analysis) break down technology issues remarkably well.
They may not know it, but they're capable of learning it.
CmdrTaco (I think) specifically said that he attempted to contact a group of people (he didn't specify how many) but was dismally unsuccessful. After that "trial run" he abandoned the effort of contacting people.
A simple mass email to everyone known would ahve been sufficient. The trial run is all well and good for those who were contacted, but that doesn't help anyone else. If I make a simple effort to contact 200 people, and I only get in touch with 1, my effort has been worthwhile. I certainly don't expect great lengths to be taken, but a mass email and/or posting an article on slashdot is a reasonable easy attempt. The success or lack thereof isn't the question. "I didn't try because I wouldn't succeed" didn't work for me as a kid (my parents still made me try) and shouldn't count as a defense now.
Although there may be copyright issues involving a post, when an actor or politician says something in public there's always the possibility that he can be quoted. The same thing applies here.
Okay. Technically, quoters are bound by "Fair Use", which explicitally prevents you from quoting the whole thing. There is a pending case about the Martin Luther King Jr "I have a Dream Speech" and CNN's recordings of it (It has been decided one way, overturned by an appeals court, and continues in appeals).
Thousands already read your post so what's the problem with a few more? If you didn't want your opinion to be heard why voice it in the first place?
I don't know. I didn't make any HellMouth posts. But I believe the posters have a right to make that decision, whether it is logical or not.
Certainly many of them would be impossible to reasonably track down, but from this explanation, it seems NO ATTEMPT was made. If they had posted an article saying "Any of you who posted non-anonymously who DON'T want your comments published, speak up", that would've satisfied me. I'm not worried about people not being paid for their comments, but I think they have the choice to prevent them from being further distributed.
Defining Hate mail as mail containing the word "Hate"? That isn't the "standard" definition. Hate mail (IMHO) is mail that is intentionally cruel or insulting, specifically excluding mail that is peacefully critical.
By Katz's definition, a mail saying: "Hey guys, the book sounds interesting, but I really hate that you used comments without permission. Next time you could ask first" is hate mail. That is a complaint, not hate.
I understand that this book touches some emotional subjects, and that if the Slashdot folks felt they were doing a good thing, they would be hurt by comments to the contrary, and I have no doubt that some people wrote very real hate mail to them about it, but that doesn't mean that they should get self-righteous about it. Slashdotters complain about people who write pro-linux flames and rants, but applaud those who write calm, accurate criticisms of anti-linux stances. We should hold ourselves to the same standard.
This article isn't terribly technical, so I can't be sure, but as I read it, this has one major flaw: If it automatically detects duplicate files and symbolically links them, it will ruin your ability to backup a file by creating a copy of it somewhere.
Symlinks are great, but not ALL duplicate files should become them. If I have file foo.conf, and I back it up to foo.conf.old, but don't change it right away [Or maybe that doesn't matter, if this "feature" is constantly running], their SIS program will symlink foo.conf and foo.conf.old to be the same file. Then when I change foo.conf, and hose my system, I can't restore it by using foo.conf.old, because that file was changed when I changed foo.conf!
Can anyone give more details about how this works?
IANAL (I'm a techie), but my wife (non-techie) is studying to become an IP lawyer. Despite the fact that she is not a techie, she feels it is important to understand any technology she is dealing with, so we often discuss various issues. Sort of over-her-shoulder, I am learning that on the whole, lawyers are not all the twisty liars I took them to be, and most judges are very interested in actual justice.
Patent lawyers are required to have technical degrees (or equivalent). Presumably they understand the technologies. Looking at recent embarassing laws and trials, I think:
Most lawyers are arguing what their bosses want. You can argue the ethics of this either way, but the blame we want to lay has to go elsewhere.
Judges in these case are often the ones that do not understand the technologies, but they will often put forth the effort. Read the first 20 or so pages of Judge Jackson's Findings of Fact to see the mostly solid, valid conclusions he made when he started with little technical knowledge (This was a surprise as well...my wife studies almost exclusively appeals cases. Apparently lower courts don't make interesting decisions very often.)
Most of the bad laws, patents, and enforcements come from Four areas: Politicians seeking votes (CDA), Politicians acting for security agencies (crypto exports, wiretapping, etc), Businesses trying to make money (it's their job), and the Patent Office (who could stop a lot of the businesses, but don't).
The only way to stop each of these is by offering an incentive to do otherwise. The EFF works to stop vote-seekers, Businesses and ACLU (in US) try to stop FBI and open export controls, and Boycott's like Stahlmann's against Amazon are to stop the money-grubbers. Note that the Patent Office has no real incentive to stop. Early on, they refused almost every software patent, and they were taken to court and nailed (I don't recall which case). Since they, they've accepted all sorts of ludicrous patents, because WHAT DO THEY LOSE?
--SwiftOne-- P.S. It's true, MOST people know little about the law, even the educated ones. I like to think I'm a fairly intelligent and educated person, but what I'm seeing my wife study says that the law works fundamentally differently than I thought. Not necessarily more complicated, but different.
Everyone seemsto think that they will have problems with home-users who don't want to install their own OS's. Probably very true. But I doubt that is the audience they are targeting. Large companies (as in, large enough to have an IT department) prefer to keep all their machines running the same versions of OS and software. The 3-4 versions of Windows 95, plus a few of Windows 98, not to mention the gaggle of different MS Office versions over the last few years can wreak havoc on support costs and effort. I see a "blank" computer with single-vendor hardware warranties as having great appeal to these places. They can get a shipment, install their currently-in-use versions of OS and apps, and release them to the end-user. Suddenly the tech people only have to know the bugs, quirks, and patches for this one set of versions. When Upgrade time comes, you can simply take a list of every computer and visit them, and when you are done, you know that everyone is running the same thing. With site licenses for the software, companies can save big $$$ and hassle (which also translates to $$$).
And if a few Linux or *BSD boxes result to run the firewall/web server/email/what-have-you, all the better.
I agree completely. I can't stand RPMs. If I wanted to remain ignorant of what is happening on my system I'd use Windows. I've had several software installs fail with RPMs, when a./configure;make;make install worked just fine. [I haven't used.debs yet, but I'm imagining the basic principles are the same]
However, package managers exist for a reason. (or reasons). What I like:
Version control/tracking
dependancy info [although I've found it often doesn't work, probably because half of my progs are not RPM installed]
Easier on a newbie
What I dislike:
Harder to "see" what's happening
If it doesn't work you are out of luck. (Shades of Windows....)
Can't set compile options.
binaries (usually), so platform dependent
So it seems to me what we really need is a pretty graphical wrapper for./configure;make;make install, for software authors to write said installs for the progs, [Note that except for proprietary progs, almost everyone already is doing this] and to make version and dependency info available. (Perhaps a simple XML database/file as someone mentioned when Slashdot dicussed a uniform config file format) After all, in my mind the power of linux is that it doesn't remove control from the user. As everyone works to not frighten said user with this power, we should make sure we don't interfere with that primary point.
The problem is two-part. We can spend forever debating about why technology hasn't replaced paper yet (although I understand Xerox has a few neat toys on the horizon). A second point to realize though, is that with the boom of information availability we suddenly have more TO print.
Think: Before the internet penetrated the average household/office, what was there on paper? Newspapers, magazines...couldn't print those. Books, same thing.
Now I can read articles from a hundred different newspapers and magazines online. I can go to Project Gutenberg and download some quality literature. Online documentation exists for everything from how to configure X to building my own solarium.
Certainly some of this material doesn't have a convenient technological method of reading. (try carting a laptop to your back porch so you can read the URL on how to build your own deck). But for the most part people are taking the new information and using it in ways that they are used to.
This is why Xerox and everyone is doing their best to come up with something book-like and/or paper-like in nature....because we'll use it because it is mostly what we are used to.
The problem is two-part. We can spend forever debating about why technology hasn't replaced paper yet (although I understand Xerox has a few neat toys on the horizon). A second point to realize though, is that with the boom of information availability we suddenly have more TO print.
Think: Before the internet penetrated the average household/office, what was there on paper? Newspapers, magazines...couldn't print those. Books, same thing.
Now I can read articles from a hundred different newspapers and magazines online. I can go to Project Gutenberg and download some quality literature. Online documentation exists for everything from how to configure X to building my own solarium.
Certainly some of this material doesn't have a convenient technological method of reading. (try carting a laptop to your back porch so you can read the URL on how to build your own deck). But for the most part people are taking the new information and using it in ways that they are used to.
This is why Xerox and everyone is doing their best to come up with something book-like and/or paper-like in nature....because we'll use it because it is mostly what we are used to.
Don't assume the US has them. Most of the larger cities do, but in smaller cities like where I am (in Virginia, USA) cable is promised to be "on the way". In smaller towns and in the boonies, cable isn't even talked about in the five year plans. What the other person was saying about tech support is important...lack of qualified technicians is slowing the process. I don't know what the delay is in the UK, but cable modems are hardly commonly available in the US. (more precisely, being able to DO anything with a cable modem is hardly common).
I haven't been able to moderate either, and it's made me quite curious what is considered "obsessive". Where I work I visit/., LWN, and a few other sites to break up my day and keep up on the news. This may result in 20 visits in an 8 hour period....is this obsessive? Then, over the weekends, I'm lucky if I read it once a day.
It's not that I feel some power-hungry need to control the reception of posts, I'm just curious. To my knowledge, Rob hasn't said what constitutes too many visits, probably to avoid freaks who would visit just that many times to try and increase chances of moderation. Now I'm wondering: how many people have accounts that otherwise qualify but haven't gotten moderation?
Check the time to penetration (marketing term, not mine) for media technologies. TV skyrocketed past radio and telephone...and it's largely suspected to be due to it's babysitting ability. You can plop the kids in front of it, and forget them for a few hours. Turn on, tune in, drop out. Now it's a way of life, and today's parents just raise their kids the way they were raised.
My new TV works with VChip. With a few buttons on the remote, you can require password access to a particular channel or rating, and/or see what rating the current program is.
Funny thing is, if you unplug the TV, it forgets what channels/ratings were locked. Oops. So any enterprising young child need only unplug all the clocks, reset the ratings before the parents return, or nail the circuit breaker to have free reign of the channels and no evidence of guilt. (This is a new JVC TV, for those who are curious).
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think the other responders picked up on your dig against Robinson. Which may be accurate, but not really relevant...Callahan's hasn't introduced new sci-fi concepts since the first book (disclaimer: Haven't read the last few yet) but it does point the reader to the classics.
The problem is that new classics are fewer between. Sure, the old sci-fi was overly optimistic about a lot of things, but it was also often correct. It raised ethical issues about advances before they happened. Perhaps if more people read/wrote good sci-fi, the cloning debate would be about real issues, and not about fears of "another me".
There ARE writers doing this. Vinge, Sterling, even Stephenson, for example. Looking at modern technology and thinking about "what next?". But such writers are rare, and not getting the attention they should. It's far easier for authors (and audiences) to accept some warmed-over superscience as a plot device for a familiar story rather than challenge common assumptions.
Have you considered what daily life will be like in 20 years? Really? Have you thought how it will affect how you interact with other people, how you'll view things like old age, distance, gender, equality, elitism?
The old sci-fi wasn't WOW just because people thought the science could happen, it was because it brought up concepts that people HADN'T thought about, and they were willing to try.
The blame is two-fold: Crap produced, Crap accepted. If you aren't the writer, engage your brain and read the good stuff. Think about it. Spread the word. If you are the writer, well, don't use cheezy sci-fi as a plot vehicle, write something that means something.
I believe it was Abraham Lincoln. I don't have an authoritative source, but random websites agree.
I am surprised (pleasantly) that the lawyer recognized and was able to deal with the situation. I mean, sure, I have little doubt that the lawyers have been briefed, but this lawyer:
- Had to know that GNOME and KDE existed
- Had to know what they were, generally
- Had to understand that the answer was wrong
- Had to be able to articulate that the answer was wrong, with enough accuracy/confidence to have a witness with Comp Sci experience admit his error
I haven't been wowwed by this trial (I think MS has stiffled the industry, and I think the charges have focused on the wrong elements of MS behavior), but I am pleased to see that the legal staff has assumed an apparently comfortable amount of non-MS technical familiarity. This is a rare bit of good foreshadowing for future technical cases.While I don't want to disagree that there are a lot of stupid decisions that have been made, have you READ the Microsoft decisions (Findings of Fact) (Appeals court)? Both Jackson and the Appeals Court (using Jackson's analysis) break down technology issues remarkably well.
They may not know it, but they're capable of learning it.
A simple mass email to everyone known would ahve been sufficient. The trial run is all well and good for those who were contacted, but that doesn't help anyone else. If I make a simple effort to contact 200 people, and I only get in touch with 1, my effort has been worthwhile. I certainly don't expect great lengths to be taken, but a mass email and/or posting an article on slashdot is a reasonable easy attempt. The success or lack thereof isn't the question. "I didn't try because I wouldn't succeed" didn't work for me as a kid (my parents still made me try) and shouldn't count as a defense now.
Okay. Technically, quoters are bound by "Fair Use", which explicitally prevents you from quoting the whole thing. There is a pending case about the Martin Luther King Jr "I have a Dream Speech" and CNN's recordings of it (It has been decided one way, overturned by an appeals court, and continues in appeals).
Thousands already read your post so what's the problem with a few more? If you didn't want your opinion to be heard why voice it in the first place?
I don't know. I didn't make any HellMouth posts. But I believe the posters have a right to make that decision, whether it is logical or not.
Certainly many of them would be impossible to reasonably track down, but from this explanation, it seems NO ATTEMPT was made. If they had posted an article saying "Any of you who posted non-anonymously who DON'T want your comments published, speak up", that would've satisfied me. I'm not worried about people not being paid for their comments, but I think they have the choice to prevent them from being further distributed.
Defining Hate mail as mail containing the word "Hate"? That isn't the "standard" definition. Hate mail (IMHO) is mail that is intentionally cruel or insulting, specifically excluding mail that is peacefully critical.
By Katz's definition, a mail saying: "Hey guys, the book sounds interesting, but I really hate that you used comments without permission. Next time you could ask first" is hate mail. That is a complaint, not hate.
I understand that this book touches some emotional subjects, and that if the Slashdot folks felt they were doing a good thing, they would be hurt by comments to the contrary, and I have no doubt that some people wrote very real hate mail to them about it, but that doesn't mean that they should get self-righteous about it. Slashdotters complain about people who write pro-linux flames and rants, but applaud those who write calm, accurate criticisms of anti-linux stances. We should hold ourselves to the same standard.
This article isn't terribly technical, so I can't be sure, but as I read it, this has one major flaw: If it automatically detects duplicate files and symbolically links them, it will ruin your ability to backup a file by creating a copy of it somewhere.
Symlinks are great, but not ALL duplicate files should become them. If I have file foo.conf, and I back it up to foo.conf.old, but don't change it right away [Or maybe that doesn't matter, if this "feature" is constantly running], their SIS program will symlink foo.conf and foo.conf.old to be the same file. Then when I change foo.conf, and hose my system, I can't restore it by using foo.conf.old, because that file was changed when I changed foo.conf!
Can anyone give more details about how this works?
Patent lawyers are required to have technical degrees (or equivalent). Presumably they understand the technologies. Looking at recent embarassing laws and trials, I think:
--SwiftOne--
P.S. It's true, MOST people know little about the law, even the educated ones. I like to think I'm a fairly intelligent and educated person, but what I'm seeing my wife study says that the law works fundamentally differently than I thought. Not necessarily more complicated, but different.
Everyone seemsto think that they will have problems with home-users who don't want to install their own OS's. Probably very true. But I doubt that is the audience they are targeting. Large companies (as in, large enough to have an IT department) prefer to keep all their machines running the same versions of OS and software. The 3-4 versions of Windows 95, plus a few of Windows 98, not to mention the gaggle of different MS Office versions over the last few years can wreak havoc on support costs and effort. I see a "blank" computer with single-vendor hardware warranties as having great appeal to these places. They can get a shipment, install their currently-in-use versions of OS and apps, and release them to the end-user. Suddenly the tech people only have to know the bugs, quirks, and patches for this one set of versions. When Upgrade time comes, you can simply take a list of every computer and visit them, and when you are done, you know that everyone is running the same thing. With site licenses for the software, companies can save big $$$ and hassle (which also translates to $$$).
And if a few Linux or *BSD boxes result to run the firewall/web server/email/what-have-you, all the better.
However, package managers exist for a reason. (or reasons).
What I like:
- Version control/tracking
- dependancy info [although I've found it often doesn't work, probably because half of my progs are not RPM installed]
- Easier on a newbie
What I dislike:- Harder to "see" what's happening
- If it doesn't work you are out of luck. (Shades of Windows....)
- Can't set compile options.
- binaries (usually), so platform dependent
So it seems to me what we really need is a pretty graphical wrapper forAfter all, in my mind the power of linux is that it doesn't remove control from the user. As everyone works to not frighten said user with this power, we should make sure we don't interfere with that primary point.
The problem is two-part. We can spend forever debating about why technology hasn't replaced paper yet (although I understand Xerox has a few neat toys on the horizon). A second point to realize though, is that with the boom of information availability we suddenly have more TO print.
Think: Before the internet penetrated the average household/office, what was there on paper? Newspapers, magazines...couldn't print those. Books, same thing.
Now I can read articles from a hundred different newspapers and magazines online. I can go to Project Gutenberg and download some quality literature. Online documentation exists for everything from how to configure X to building my own solarium.
Certainly some of this material doesn't have a convenient technological method of reading. (try carting a laptop to your back porch so you can read the URL on how to build your own deck). But for the most part people are taking the new information and using it in ways that they are used to.
This is why Xerox and everyone is doing their best to come up with something book-like and/or paper-like in nature....because we'll use it because it is mostly what we are used to.
The problem is two-part. We can spend forever debating about why technology hasn't replaced paper yet (although I understand Xerox has a few neat toys on the horizon). A second point to realize though, is that with the boom of information availability we suddenly have more TO print.
Think: Before the internet penetrated the average household/office, what was there on paper? Newspapers, magazines...couldn't print those. Books, same thing.
Now I can read articles from a hundred different newspapers and magazines online. I can go to Project Gutenberg and download some quality literature. Online documentation exists for everything from how to configure X to building my own solarium.
Certainly some of this material doesn't have a convenient technological method of reading. (try carting a laptop to your back porch so you can read the URL on how to build your own deck). But for the most part people are taking the new information and using it in ways that they are used to.
This is why Xerox and everyone is doing their best to come up with something book-like and/or paper-like in nature....because we'll use it because it is mostly what we are used to.
Don't assume the US has them. Most of the larger cities do, but in smaller cities like where I am (in Virginia, USA) cable is promised to be "on the way". In smaller towns and in the boonies, cable isn't even talked about in the five year plans. What the other person was saying about tech support is important...lack of qualified technicians is slowing the process. I don't know what the delay is in the UK, but cable modems are hardly commonly available in the US. (more precisely, being able to DO anything with a cable modem is hardly common).
I haven't been able to moderate either, and it's made me quite curious what is considered "obsessive". Where I work I visit /., LWN, and a few other sites to break up my day and keep up on the news. This may result in 20 visits in an 8 hour period....is this obsessive? Then, over the weekends, I'm lucky if I read it once a day.
It's not that I feel some power-hungry need to control the reception of posts, I'm just curious. To my knowledge, Rob hasn't said what constitutes too many visits, probably to avoid freaks who would visit just that many times to try and increase chances of moderation. Now I'm wondering: how many people have accounts that otherwise qualify but haven't gotten moderation?
Check the time to penetration (marketing term, not mine) for media technologies. TV skyrocketed past radio and telephone...and it's largely suspected to be due to it's babysitting ability. You can plop the kids in front of it, and forget them for a few hours. Turn on, tune in, drop out. Now it's a way of life, and today's parents just raise their kids the way they were raised.
My new TV works with VChip. With a few buttons on the remote, you can require password access to a particular channel or rating, and/or see what rating the current program is.
Funny thing is, if you unplug the TV, it forgets what channels/ratings were locked. Oops. So any enterprising young child need only unplug all the clocks, reset the ratings before the parents return, or nail the circuit breaker to have free reign of the channels and no evidence of guilt. (This is a new JVC TV, for those who are curious).