Not openly. Most of them have more than one 'boyfriend'. One is their above-board, no money changing hands boyfriend/husband, and the other is the one that gives them money and they don't tell anyone about.
I agree with your assessment of the article. I disagree with your assessment of the situation. Your assessment largely sounds like a web of rationalization and self-justification. It has about as much hard data behind it as the news report does.
Now I use as and when I feel like it, and that's not a problem. I'd imagine it's the same in Silicon Valley, not the den of burnt out addicts
that they're trying to portray. Sure there are people that are going to fuck up big time, and it's a tragic loss, but these cases are the
minority compared to the huge numbers of people who use regularly without a problem.
As you can probably tell I'm sick of these scare stories taking a complete non-event and trying to turn them into news.
They aren't trying to portray it as a den of burnt out addicts. They're trying to portray it as a place where extreme pressure drives people to drug use in an attempt to cope. Big difference. One isn't credible, one is.
I've seen the kind of stress people go through in those companies. I have friends who work in a few of them. Horrible, I would never move there to work. It doesn't surprise me that people turn to meth to try to give themselves the ability to put in the hours and concentration needed.
But doing that is like having an incredibly high burn rate for your VC money. Someday, your body is going to give out.
I think news of someone dying because they chose a stupid coping mechanism and abused it is news that should be heard. Perhaps not without all the references to the word 'fast' and the subtle implication that stricter drug laws and mandatory testing were somehow a good idea. But it serves as a good warning that some people like you might actually heed.
Actually, it could be argued than an inability to have frank discussions about sex is at the root of this problem too. Read Scientific American from last month or the month previous. Excellent article.
For economic reasons, almost all the women in the cities end up selling sex, but none will admit to it, even to medical personel who promise confidentiality. And the sexual fashion there is a for a form of sex that makes transmission of AIDS even more likely.
As other's have pointd out, MFC is a _horrible_ example of good OO design. Really, it is. I am an OO bigot. I don't write in C anymore because I find its lack of direct OO support constraining. I've written several different frameworks for things that I've used cross application and cross platform. MFC is one of the worst designed frameworks I have ever seen. Not only that, but half the people who code in it code like C++ is a particularily prickly and difficult to use form of VB. *shudder*
Also, those map editing tools and things often are designed to scratch an itch, not for mass consumption. Doom pioneered the idea that random people should have those tools, though some older games (like the ancient Wargame Construction Set) were designed with that idea in mind.
The point is that Cobalt didn't have to do much of the Linux development, and their customers considered the use of Linux to be a big plus since they could alter to taste.
There really isn't much point to Sun moving to Solaris on those boxes. Solaris doesn't offer anything extra, and is likely to drive their price up and close their architecture, which will make them much less attractive. Sun is being horribly stupid because they think Solaris is somehow much better than Linux in all ways.
Threading is evil and almost always more trouble than it's worth. You can usually (not always) get better results out of intelligent event handling or seperate processes than you can get out of threading a single process.
It's a quick fix solution with nasty side effects.
The Harvard article cites the DMCA as a possible means of forcing the University to comply. This is because of the clause making ISPs responsible for copyright violations if they refuse to take them down when notified.
IMHO, reading this clause as requiring Universities to block access to Napster strikes me as clearly being a prior restraint on free speech. Hopefully the first ammendment still means enough for this to be an unconstitutional interpretation.
You are apparently misunderstanding SDMI. SDMI is a watermarking system. Basically, they use a form of steganography to embed an identifying mark in the music to say who originally bought it. This identifying mark is supposed to survive all attempts at copying at a reasonable fidelity, even analog ones.
I would rather see everyone at Bungie leave and form another game company. When you buy a company, you're really buying the attention of the people who work for it. It would be very fitting if the Bungie people told Microsoft that it wasn't worthy of their attention by leaving.
Actually, the real value is not so much in the stories themselves. Almost invariably, when someone posts a stupid story, somebody who knows what they're talking about comes up and corrects them. It's neat actually.
In fact, your post made me realize that my graphics knowledge from 5-6 years ago is horribly out of date, and that I need to read up on it a lot before I say anything about it again.:-)
One problem is that the role of 'technical manager' doesn't really exist in the standard business world. I see very few companies that have technical managers, or, if they do, have ones that are technically competent.
OTOH, I know people who would be technically competent who shy away from any kind of management role because they no longer get to do interesting things to code. They no longer get to make technical contributions.
The Open Source model solves both these problems. I think the problem of good technical managers being incredibly rare is more a failure of the standard business process to find and select such people than it is a lack of capable people.
I just read the book 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar', and I noticed the same problems with the 'Bazaar' model as this author has noted. There was still a central person who made most of the important architectural descisions.
The Open Source model mainly takes advantage of the fact the the net makes wide hierarchies much more manageable. It also reduces a lot of the corporate politics associated with management hierarchies because there are many fewer steps to the top.
I think you are perfectly free to do this. I just won't visit your site.
I like what's here. I want Rob to continue producing it. I actually opted not to kill banner ads for this site for that very reason. I'd even pay a small monthly fee for a no-banner subscription.
I still think you ought to be free to copy it. I wouldn't visit your site, and I don't think most of the people here would either.
The Open Source movement as a whole stands as an extremely strong counterpoint to your argument. And it's not a flash in the pan movement either. It's been building and growing for over 20 years.
Yeah, go ahead, trot out the stupid 'GPL depends on copyright law' argument. Well, the GPL largely exists to prevent people from using copyright law in the manner it was intended. If copyright law didn't exist, most of the GPL wouldn't be needed.
I have come to the conclusion that copyrights and patents (I refuse to use the term 'Intellectual Property') mainly encourage distribution, not creation. If you look at who, by in large, has profited most from them, it's distributers, not creators. If you look at who screams the loudest, it always the distributers, not the creators.
This encouragement isn't needed as much anymore. With the widespread ability to copy practically anything, the economic incentive to distribute isn't as important.
I think creators should have some form of limited control over their work that vanishes over time. I'm not convinced that copyrights and patents are the best form for this control to take. They do, of course, have the ultimate control of choosing whether or not to produce something.
It's the heat superconductor from "The Mote in God's Eye" by Jerry Pournelle.
What you really want to do with these is coat your spaceship with them so you can dump all the heat from the laser your being attacked with into a block of ice in the middle of your ship.:-)
This isn't about artist's rights anymore. This is a war the music industry started against its consumers long ago. The chickens have come home to roost. When the industry is utterly razed to the ground, we can start thinking about what to do instead to ensure artists rights.
I think that copyright is largely dead and gone. It can't be enforced without imposing a police state. The media industries have abused its protections so badly that nobody takes it seriously anymore. They are the ones who broke the social contract first.
Copyright and patent law are not about any 'natural' right. They're about trying to make sure tht people who create things can continue to spend time doing it. That's all they're for. Not some silly notion that something that can be given away without costing the giver anything has any intrinsic value.
Stop trying to keep a stupid and pathetically inadequate system alive, and think of something better. Your insistence on keeping something that no longer works around smacks of dogma, not reason.
Yours is the most well reasoned post I've seen on this issue in a long time. I'm quite impressed.
I use Napster, and here's how I rationalize it...
I've been made to feel like a criminal every time I walk into a CD store, even though before Napster, I hadn't done any of the things the people who make me feel that way considered wrong. My technological choices (no audio DAT players, why?) have been artificiaclly restricted. The people who's work I appreciate have been stomped on and badly treated. The people who want me to pay are busily trying to take away even more of my technological choices, and ever restricting whole classes of technology from ever being researched. Stupid media that I don't want are shoved down my throat with all the art of a vetrinarian trying to make a horse swallow a pill.
Needless to say, I'm pretty angry. Perhaps that's a bit of an understatement. Anything I can do to poke these people in the eye, and remove them from my life, I'll do.
If the artists had PayPal accounts that were completely ungarnished by the music _industry_, I would gladly send some money their way.
If I'm stomping on some current artists rights, tough patooties. They chose to align themselves with a band of thugs in the hopes of financial reward. Let them suffer. When they break ranks with them, I'll be happy to help.
I thought about something like this, but all the farther I got was a simple argument count and then I realized you could flop formatting characters. Your solution would work, but somehow feels vaguely ugly.
I say just don't use printf style format strings at all.:-) But not many people will do that.
It tends to be general style to speak as if I'm totally unsure unless I'm convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt.
The other person's post says whether or not perl's environment variables are tainted. I kinda thought they were.
I'd have to stare at source to know how much of the NLS library it uses. If it uses any of it, it's vulnerable even if environment variables are tainted in the actual running perl code.
Actually, no it doesn't. I have a suspicion the problem doesn't happen in perl for other reasons, but it's taint mode is no help in this case.
If I'm not mistaken, perl uses the stuff in the underlying locale environment variables implicitly, and doesn't carefully check them. If you use environment variables directly in your program, they may be 'tainted' though I'm not sure, but I bet the underlying locale system uses them without checking at all.
One quick and easy solution is to make SUID programs not read any but the default language databases. Kind of a flexibility poor solution though, IMHO.
Another idea is to never use printf and friends to print messages out of formatting databases. Always explicity print out the formatted stuff in a seperate statement from the stuff you're printing out from the database.
I've never liked printf much anyway, but then again, I like C++.:-)
Oh, the Bugtraq link was tons more helpful than the Cnet article.
This is actually also only a problem in the face of setuid programs. I doubt Windows NT has this problem much. *sigh*
Slashdot Mirror
Not openly. Most of them have more than one 'boyfriend'. One is their above-board, no money changing hands boyfriend/husband, and the other is the one that gives them money and they don't tell anyone about.
I agree with your assessment of the article. I disagree with your assessment of the situation. Your assessment largely sounds like a web of rationalization and self-justification. It has about as much hard data behind it as the news report does.
They aren't trying to portray it as a den of burnt out addicts. They're trying to portray it as a place where extreme pressure drives people to drug use in an attempt to cope. Big difference. One isn't credible, one is.
I've seen the kind of stress people go through in those companies. I have friends who work in a few of them. Horrible, I would never move there to work. It doesn't surprise me that people turn to meth to try to give themselves the ability to put in the hours and concentration needed.
But doing that is like having an incredibly high burn rate for your VC money. Someday, your body is going to give out.
I think news of someone dying because they chose a stupid coping mechanism and abused it is news that should be heard. Perhaps not without all the references to the word 'fast' and the subtle implication that stricter drug laws and mandatory testing were somehow a good idea. But it serves as a good warning that some people like you might actually heed.
Actually, it could be argued than an inability to have frank discussions about sex is at the root of this problem too. Read Scientific American from last month or the month previous. Excellent article.
For economic reasons, almost all the women in the cities end up selling sex, but none will admit to it, even to medical personel who promise confidentiality. And the sexual fashion there is a for a form of sex that makes transmission of AIDS even more likely.
As other's have pointd out, MFC is a _horrible_ example of good OO design. Really, it is. I am an OO bigot. I don't write in C anymore because I find its lack of direct OO support constraining. I've written several different frameworks for things that I've used cross application and cross platform. MFC is one of the worst designed frameworks I have ever seen. Not only that, but half the people who code in it code like C++ is a particularily prickly and difficult to use form of VB. *shudder*
Also, those map editing tools and things often are designed to scratch an itch, not for mass consumption. Doom pioneered the idea that random people should have those tools, though some older games (like the ancient Wargame Construction Set) were designed with that idea in mind.
Something's faddishness, though usually closely correlated to its being stupid, is not necessarily always so. :-)
Particularily when it's a fad I happen to be part of. ;-)
The point is that Cobalt didn't have to do much of the Linux development, and their customers considered the use of Linux to be a big plus since they could alter to taste.
There really isn't much point to Sun moving to Solaris on those boxes. Solaris doesn't offer anything extra, and is likely to drive their price up and close their architecture, which will make them much less attractive. Sun is being horribly stupid because they think Solaris is somehow much better than Linux in all ways.
Threading is evil and almost always more trouble than it's worth. You can usually (not always) get better results out of intelligent event handling or seperate processes than you can get out of threading a single process.
It's a quick fix solution with nasty side effects.
The Harvard article cites the DMCA as a possible means of forcing the University to comply. This is because of the clause making ISPs responsible for copyright violations if they refuse to take them down when notified.
IMHO, reading this clause as requiring Universities to block access to Napster strikes me as clearly being a prior restraint on free speech. Hopefully the first ammendment still means enough for this to be an unconstitutional interpretation.
You are apparently misunderstanding SDMI. SDMI is a watermarking system. Basically, they use a form of steganography to embed an identifying mark in the music to say who originally bought it. This identifying mark is supposed to survive all attempts at copying at a reasonable fidelity, even analog ones.
I would rather see everyone at Bungie leave and form another game company. When you buy a company, you're really buying the attention of the people who work for it. It would be very fitting if the Bungie people told Microsoft that it wasn't worthy of their attention by leaving.
Actually, the real value is not so much in the stories themselves. Almost invariably, when someone posts a stupid story, somebody who knows what they're talking about comes up and corrects them. It's neat actually.
In fact, your post made me realize that my graphics knowledge from 5-6 years ago is horribly out of date, and that I need to read up on it a lot before I say anything about it again. :-)
Ooh! Excellent point! In the Open Source world, the leaders and managers are essentially selected by those who elect to work for them.
One problem is that the role of 'technical manager' doesn't really exist in the standard business world. I see very few companies that have technical managers, or, if they do, have ones that are technically competent.
OTOH, I know people who would be technically competent who shy away from any kind of management role because they no longer get to do interesting things to code. They no longer get to make technical contributions.
The Open Source model solves both these problems. I think the problem of good technical managers being incredibly rare is more a failure of the standard business process to find and select such people than it is a lack of capable people.
I just read the book 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar', and I noticed the same problems with the 'Bazaar' model as this author has noted. There was still a central person who made most of the important architectural descisions.
The Open Source model mainly takes advantage of the fact the the net makes wide hierarchies much more manageable. It also reduces a lot of the corporate politics associated with management hierarchies because there are many fewer steps to the top.
I think you are perfectly free to do this. I just won't visit your site.
I like what's here. I want Rob to continue producing it. I actually opted not to kill banner ads for this site for that very reason. I'd even pay a small monthly fee for a no-banner subscription.
I still think you ought to be free to copy it. I wouldn't visit your site, and I don't think most of the people here would either.
The Open Source movement as a whole stands as an extremely strong counterpoint to your argument. And it's not a flash in the pan movement either. It's been building and growing for over 20 years.
Yeah, go ahead, trot out the stupid 'GPL depends on copyright law' argument. Well, the GPL largely exists to prevent people from using copyright law in the manner it was intended. If copyright law didn't exist, most of the GPL wouldn't be needed.
I have come to the conclusion that copyrights and patents (I refuse to use the term 'Intellectual Property') mainly encourage distribution, not creation. If you look at who, by in large, has profited most from them, it's distributers, not creators. If you look at who screams the loudest, it always the distributers, not the creators.
This encouragement isn't needed as much anymore. With the widespread ability to copy practically anything, the economic incentive to distribute isn't as important.
I think creators should have some form of limited control over their work that vanishes over time. I'm not convinced that copyrights and patents are the best form for this control to take. They do, of course, have the ultimate control of choosing whether or not to produce something.
It's the heat superconductor from "The Mote in God's Eye" by Jerry Pournelle.
What you really want to do with these is coat your spaceship with them so you can dump all the heat from the laser your being attacked with into a block of ice in the middle of your ship. :-)
As you notice, I have when I thought the comment wasn't worthwhile.
This isn't about artist's rights anymore. This is a war the music industry started against its consumers long ago. The chickens have come home to roost. When the industry is utterly razed to the ground, we can start thinking about what to do instead to ensure artists rights.
I think that copyright is largely dead and gone. It can't be enforced without imposing a police state. The media industries have abused its protections so badly that nobody takes it seriously anymore. They are the ones who broke the social contract first.
Copyright and patent law are not about any 'natural' right. They're about trying to make sure tht people who create things can continue to spend time doing it. That's all they're for. Not some silly notion that something that can be given away without costing the giver anything has any intrinsic value.
Stop trying to keep a stupid and pathetically inadequate system alive, and think of something better. Your insistence on keeping something that no longer works around smacks of dogma, not reason.
*grin* I've noticed this too. Luckily, I can largely claim clean hands as I avoid almost all forms of pop culture like that plague.
Yours is the most well reasoned post I've seen on this issue in a long time. I'm quite impressed.
I use Napster, and here's how I rationalize it...
I've been made to feel like a criminal every time I walk into a CD store, even though before Napster, I hadn't done any of the things the people who make me feel that way considered wrong. My technological choices (no audio DAT players, why?) have been artificiaclly restricted. The people who's work I appreciate have been stomped on and badly treated. The people who want me to pay are busily trying to take away even more of my technological choices, and ever restricting whole classes of technology from ever being researched. Stupid media that I don't want are shoved down my throat with all the art of a vetrinarian trying to make a horse swallow a pill.
Needless to say, I'm pretty angry. Perhaps that's a bit of an understatement. Anything I can do to poke these people in the eye, and remove them from my life, I'll do.
If the artists had PayPal accounts that were completely ungarnished by the music _industry_, I would gladly send some money their way.
If I'm stomping on some current artists rights, tough patooties. They chose to align themselves with a band of thugs in the hopes of financial reward. Let them suffer. When they break ranks with them, I'll be happy to help.
I thought about something like this, but all the farther I got was a simple argument count and then I realized you could flop formatting characters. Your solution would work, but somehow feels vaguely ugly.
I say just don't use printf style format strings at all. :-) But not many people will do that.
It tends to be general style to speak as if I'm totally unsure unless I'm convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt.
The other person's post says whether or not perl's environment variables are tainted. I kinda thought they were.
I'd have to stare at source to know how much of the NLS library it uses. If it uses any of it, it's vulnerable even if environment variables are tainted in the actual running perl code.
Actually, no it doesn't. I have a suspicion the problem doesn't happen in perl for other reasons, but it's taint mode is no help in this case.
If I'm not mistaken, perl uses the stuff in the underlying locale environment variables implicitly, and doesn't carefully check them. If you use environment variables directly in your program, they may be 'tainted' though I'm not sure, but I bet the underlying locale system uses them without checking at all.
One quick and easy solution is to make SUID programs not read any but the default language databases. Kind of a flexibility poor solution though, IMHO.
Another idea is to never use printf and friends to print messages out of formatting databases. Always explicity print out the formatted stuff in a seperate statement from the stuff you're printing out from the database.
I've never liked printf much anyway, but then again, I like C++. :-)
Oh, the Bugtraq link was tons more helpful than the Cnet article.
This is actually also only a problem in the face of setuid programs. I doubt Windows NT has this problem much. *sigh*