Yup, there are some real problems with the current patent/copyright/trademark and sell everything that isn't actually nailed down trend, but do we really have to act like the end of the world is coming?
Our intellectual property system could use come overhauling to ensure that knowledge isn't lost (see "abandonware") and does become available to society after a reasonable period of time. Patents need to be limited (genes and other "discovered" things), copyrights have to expire, and namespaces have to be limited to account for the way that global society is changing (DNS). None of this is the end of history, or even particularly unique.
Does anyone really think that the pace of scientific and technological change is too slow right now? Is the profit motive not working to drive discovery and implementation forward?
Technology is implementation; it has always been commercial and always will be. Science is discovery and definition; it will probably be commercial too, but out intellectual property laws have to be reformed to ensuer that it is not exclusive. The profit motive for science should be to allow corporations to reach the technology phase where exclusive rights will be granted.
In other words, Research and Development, science and technology. We've probably tilted a bit too far towards granting exclusive rights to scientific descoveries instead of limiting them to technological developments, but that is a problem tht can be fixed, once it is adequetely defined.
As far as I know, copyright is an exclusive right conferring the specific power to prevent others from copying a piece of work. The fact the a copyright holder no longer wishes to provide copies is not an abuse of their right, it is straightforward exercise.
Maybe that shoudl change. Books go out of print, music stops being published, and software that is still useful dies because authors and publishers no longer have an economic interest in providing copies. In all cases, cociety is poorer for the loss.
Maybe copyright should be modified to impose an obligation to provide copies to all who are willing to pay for them. If an author wants to be released from their obligation to provide copies, they must release their copyright.
This is too simplistic, but cay you all see the basic idea?
Sure: the Palm Pilot (or whatever the correct name is now).
I'm not trying to say tha 64 bit systems won't be popular, just that they're a solution to the wrong problem.
32 bit systems solved the address space problems that gave us the hell of the x86 segmented memory model. It was a real problem for all sorts of common programs, and moving to 32 bit was a clean, useful solution. If we had an address space problem again, 64 bit would be a perfect solution. Too bad that for most users, address space just isn't a problem. Or are you actually pushing 4GB memory (real + virtual) on most of your desktops?
The problems we are facing on the desktops now are mostly system-balance problems. Our graphics cards can't keep up with our CPUs. Our memory can't keep up with our CPUs. Even the fastest hard disk is a huge bottleneck, and any data-intensive program spends huge effort and clever cacheing algorithms trying to touch the disk as infrequently as possible. 64 bit doesn't help any of this.
More processors instead of single, faster ones. More independent memory channels. Nonblocking peripheral access instead of busses. I/O controllers that mitigate the penatly for touching storage. These are the innovations that will mean improvements in real system performance.
Sure, 64 bit will be included in the box, but it will be a check-off, not a real win.
If 64 bit processing were actually important for most computing tasks, we'd see a much higher market penetration for current 64 bit platforms. UltraSPARC, Alpha, MIPS and POWER (not PowerPC) are all 64 bit processors backed by 64 bit operating systems, compilers and applications.
For most tasks, 64 bit computing is not an obvious win.
Sure databases and heavy duty scientific computing benefit from the vastly larger address space, but day to day gaming, office tasks, web surfing, mp3 listening and Natalie Portman porn viewing (I had to say it) won't benefit much at all.
Now architectural improvements and (mainly) higher clock rates will mean serious improvements in peak performance, but I think Apple is on the right track with pervasive SMP, which should deliver higher SUSTAINED performance, so that I can do all of the tsaks above at the same time without worrying about spikes in demand for processing power will freeze my game at some crucial point. Of course, MacOS isnt's the ideal SMP platform, but the hardware is on the right track.
I know this is just being peckish, but, what if the license were just under the (transparent) shrink-warp, text side up, so that you COULD read the license before purchase? It could be as simple as a standard license printed on the DVD jacket. Continuing my earlier train of thought, might this remedy one of the most frequently sighted defects of shrink wrap licensing?
If MPAA loses this case on the intellectual property merits, could they change strategy and rely on UCITA to protect themselves? My reasoning is thus:
1. UCITA legitimizes shrinkwrap/clickwrap agreements as enforceable contracts.
2. DVDs are shrink-wrapped.
3. Dvds are software (bits is bits, right?).
Therefore, all MPAA has to do is start including a license agreement with DVD, which you accept by breaking the shrinkwrap, which states that you are voluntarily surrendering your right to use the software on anything other thatn a licensed playback device. Presto! Instant contract. And contract law trumps pretty much everything.
How would we all feel if some foreign company started distributing "GNU software" in the US, assuming that since they had been calling their software GNU in their country for some time they should be able to sell it under that name here, too? I expect we'd feel that they should call it something else, since the GNU name is already taken in the US software market where it has a particular meaning. If they persisted, I daresay a lawsuit might be files to compel them to stop.
So, there is a preexisting product in the German software market called 'SAMBA', and the company that makes it wants to protect it's investment in that name. I think they're right. The SAMBA project should refer to the product be a different name in the German market. Even Anheiser-Busch has to refrain from selling a beer called Budweiser in some markets, because that name was already taken.
There are good reasons for protecting trademarks, and OSS should play by the same rules as everybody else.
I'm not overly fond of SCO UNIX, but I've used UnixWare in a few production situations and think it's a great product with some real technological advantages over OSS unices. In particular, UnixWare has a few "grown up" features that I would love to see open sourced:
1. ACL-based, granular security with roles and auditing. For a secure system, the all-powerful root HAS to go.
2. An SMP implementation that scales.
3. Logical volume management. Win2k (and NetWare, and VMS, and Solaris, and UnixWare, and SCO Unix, etc...) kicks our ass here, as much as it pains me to admit it.
4. VxFS. (OK, so this is licensed from Veritas and can't be opened up, but I can dream.)
Most of these aren't fun or cool to implement, but serious production environments really need them, and commercial Unixes, NetWare, VMS and now Win2K all offer these features.
Actually, this is at least the second go-around for this idea; not just in science fiction, but in real life. Check out the brief on the "Hardiman" project from the '60s:
It seems that it should be fairly obvious that if you don't provide a remote-control interface or connedction, you can't remote control the system. Heck even my loghost has the transmit pin on the NIC cut, which makes it pretty secure.
It seems that in a number of recent cases including DeCSS, etoy/etoys, and now coke.ch, there is a disturbing trend for US courts and companies to assume that US law governs the internet. I understand the the owner of coke.ch lives in the US, but the domain is neither in the.us national domain nor in one of the neutral TLDs. Further, Coca-Cola, Inc. is clearly a multinational corporation, operating in both the US ans Switzerland.
Should this case involving a multinational corporation, a US citizen, and a foreign domain be ajudicated under US law, Swiss law, or international law?
Now, the kicker: if a Swiss citizen had registered coke.us (I know,.us domains aren't available that way, but accept it for the sake of argument.), who should ajudicate the case?
AFAIK, ICANN procedures only apply to.net,.com, and.org TLDs. International law as I am familiar with it in terms of treaties and organizations mainly deals with disputed between nations. All this leaves me with one question:
As a general proposition, who should ajudicated disputes between individuals (which a corporation legally is) operating internationally?
Other than NICs, does 3Com make anything anyone really cares about? Let's look at theis products:
USR Courier Modems: excellent, but an acquisition
Palm Pilot: now spun off, and acquisition to boot
hubs: strictly me-too
switches: low end, me-too
routers: let's just say Cisco doesn't lose sleep
NOS: um, anyone even remember 3Com+share/open?
NICs: OK, these are pretty good. Basically, from its inception, 3Com has ridded the Etehrnet wave for all it is worth. Now that Etehrnet is now largely a commodity market, they are in trouble. Their last few acquisitions failed to revitilize the company and basically have to be spun back off to avoid destroying their value (unless you really believe that USR has fared well under 3Com's ownership, and that Palm is worse off on their own).
Look for good things from the new USR, but forget 3Com, they haven't shown any real direction of innovation for years.
How many of us are sysadmins? Do you have firewalls? Packet filters? Email black lists? HTTP proxies? Yes? So do I.
As of last night, Mattel is off the new as far as I or any of my users are concerned.
It's time to use the tools we have to strike back. How many corporations have cleaned up their email relays du to RBL and ORBS? Most of them, because the threat of losing a chunk of their connectivity is serious and the ability to carry it out has been proven.
We may not be able to fight effectively with lawyers or economic sanctions, but we CAN hurt them. And they can't even complain, since filtering is their business, too.
I am not a lawyer, but I am an admin. Sure, my net is small and my action is a mosquito bite, but if a few majors and/or Universities will follow suit, we can have a real impact.
Fight filters with filters, and may the best man win.
Kinda hits you in an "of course" sort of way doesn't it? Combine the biggest supporter of Linux gaming, the most influential sound card maker, and a truly open license: put them all together and what's not to like?
3D positional audio is actually much cooler than (high performance) 3D graphics in some ways, so I can see this API quickly supplanting vendor- and platform- specific standards.
For one example, in video conferencing it is pretty well accepted that audio quality and continuity is more important than the video. If that audio were 3D positional, so that voices matched up spatially with the position of participants, you could realize a major increase in realism with a minimal bandwidth cost. As video conferencing moves toward multi-vendor, multi-platform H.323, a similiarly multi-vendor, multi-platform 3D positional audio API could be a major BUSINESS win.
Yup; as soon as companies figure out that this API is a money maker, I would expect to see it take off in a big way.
Without commenting on UI design, I'd like to point out the Word Perfect Corporation had the best user feedback loop I've ever seen in any industry: a 1-800 phone number you could call as often as you liked that was answered by knowledgeable person EVERY SINGLE TIME. Frankly, a copy of Word Perfect was worth $495 for that alone. For pure OSS, a the economics of a 1-800 number and staff are probably unworkable, but I think this is an area where packagers and distributers could make some real money. I WANT to buy the $495 copy of Slackware, and so does my mother. I WANT to recieve ONE defined piece of software for my $495 (not 2000 pieces of freeware on 7 CDs). The reason I want this is so that when I have trouble with that one piece of software, I can pick up the phone, call 1-800-GET-HELP and have someone help me. By providing an out-of-band feedback channel, so that users having trouble with thier computer can report that trouble without having to use the computer, a telephone number provides immediate access to help no matter what the problem is. By limiting the software in the box, it becomes reasonable to expect real, in depth support. After all, is it reasonable to expect Red Hat to provide unlimited, toll free tech support for evey piece of software in thier distribution? No. No one company could understand all of that code in depth. If their distribution were OS-only (think NetBSD, not Win2K) could they do it? Yes, I bet they could. How did I get from OSS UI feedback to toll-free tech support? Simple: a distributor, having packaged OSS and accepted $495 for providing support could and should pass transcripts or recordings or trouble ticket data back to the developers. Developers could focus on developing without having to deal with (often stressed and annoying) users, but still have the benefit of feedback on what needs improvement. Users would have someone to listen to them and help them. Distributors could charge much higher per-copy fees and make more money. And of course, with OSS, if certain "features" were generating too many calls and cutting into profits, the distributer could always hire someone to six them. I think Red Hat is on the right track, but they don't charge enough to provide unlimited support, and the provide too much software in the box to provide in-depth support. The bottom line: Charge me more and give me less. My boss, my users, and yeah, my Mom will thank you for it.
Are there really peopel otu there running *nix who don't split up their disks that way? I usually set up a new *nix in one big slice so i can use df to check the actual disk usage and then reinstall with appropriate/,/usr,/var,/tmp,/home and swap slices. AFAIK, this is the classic, correct procedure. I haven't used any of the new Linux installers recently, since I've converted to NetBSD for most of my boxes, but don't they set up the slices automagically now?
There is nothing magical about the existing DNS tree, except that everyone uses it. Why not establish another group of root servers in some country that doesn't give a rat's ass about US trademarks (say...China?) and create whatever TLDs we want. If we all chip in our registration fees that would otherwise go to Network Solutions, I'm sure our new "Open" DNS organization could buy the hardware / bandwith needed. OK, for interoperability, it would have to be set up to forward queries not resolved in the "new" namespace to servers linked to the "old" namespace, but that shouldn't be difficult. Load up a new root cache file and tell ICANN where they can stick their board.
Doesn't everyone still just call them Borland? I don't think I've ever heard anyone actually refer to them as "Inprise". Or at least nobody I'd actually listen to, anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Our intellectual property system could use come overhauling to ensure that knowledge isn't lost (see "abandonware") and does become available to society after a reasonable period of time. Patents need to be limited (genes and other "discovered" things), copyrights have to expire, and namespaces have to be limited to account for the way that global society is changing (DNS). None of this is the end of history, or even particularly unique.
Does anyone really think that the pace of scientific and technological change is too slow right now? Is the profit motive not working to drive discovery and implementation forward?
Technology is implementation; it has always been commercial and always will be. Science is discovery and definition; it will probably be commercial too, but out intellectual property laws have to be reformed to ensuer that it is not exclusive. The profit motive for science should be to allow corporations to reach the technology phase where exclusive rights will be granted.
In other words, Research and Development, science and technology. We've probably tilted a bit too far towards granting exclusive rights to scientific descoveries instead of limiting them to technological developments, but that is a problem tht can be fixed, once it is adequetely defined.
Maybe that shoudl change. Books go out of print, music stops being published, and software that is still useful dies because authors and publishers no longer have an economic interest in providing copies. In all cases, cociety is poorer for the loss.
Maybe copyright should be modified to impose an obligation to provide copies to all who are willing to pay for them. If an author wants to be released from their obligation to provide copies, they must release their copyright.
This is too simplistic, but cay you all see the basic idea?
I'm not trying to say tha 64 bit systems won't be popular, just that they're a solution to the wrong problem.
32 bit systems solved the address space problems that gave us the hell of the x86 segmented memory model. It was a real problem for all sorts of common programs, and moving to 32 bit was a clean, useful solution. If we had an address space problem again, 64 bit would be a perfect solution. Too bad that for most users, address space just isn't a problem. Or are you actually pushing 4GB memory (real + virtual) on most of your desktops?
The problems we are facing on the desktops now are mostly system-balance problems. Our graphics cards can't keep up with our CPUs. Our memory can't keep up with our CPUs. Even the fastest hard disk is a huge bottleneck, and any data-intensive program spends huge effort and clever cacheing algorithms trying to touch the disk as infrequently as possible. 64 bit doesn't help any of this.
More processors instead of single, faster ones. More independent memory channels. Nonblocking peripheral access instead of busses. I/O controllers that mitigate the penatly for touching storage. These are the innovations that will mean improvements in real system performance.
Sure, 64 bit will be included in the box, but it will be a check-off, not a real win.
For most tasks, 64 bit computing is not an obvious win.
Sure databases and heavy duty scientific computing benefit from the vastly larger address space, but day to day gaming, office tasks, web surfing, mp3 listening and Natalie Portman porn viewing (I had to say it) won't benefit much at all.
Now architectural improvements and (mainly) higher clock rates will mean serious improvements in peak performance, but I think Apple is on the right track with pervasive SMP, which should deliver higher SUSTAINED performance, so that I can do all of the tsaks above at the same time without worrying about spikes in demand for processing power will freeze my game at some crucial point. Of course, MacOS isnt's the ideal SMP platform, but the hardware is on the right track.
I know this is just being peckish, but, what if the license were just under the (transparent) shrink-warp, text side up, so that you COULD read the license before purchase? It could be as simple as a standard license printed on the DVD jacket. Continuing my earlier train of thought, might this remedy one of the most frequently sighted defects of shrink wrap licensing?
1. UCITA legitimizes shrinkwrap/clickwrap agreements as enforceable contracts.
2. DVDs are shrink-wrapped.
3. Dvds are software (bits is bits, right?).
Therefore, all MPAA has to do is start including a license agreement with DVD, which you accept by breaking the shrinkwrap, which states that you are voluntarily surrendering your right to use the software on anything other thatn a licensed playback device. Presto! Instant contract. And contract law trumps pretty much everything.
Lawyers, am I right, or just blowing smoke?
So, there is a preexisting product in the German software market called 'SAMBA', and the company that makes it wants to protect it's investment in that name. I think they're right. The SAMBA project should refer to the product be a different name in the German market. Even Anheiser-Busch has to refrain from selling a beer called Budweiser in some markets, because that name was already taken.
There are good reasons for protecting trademarks, and OSS should play by the same rules as everybody else.
1. The user has root/Administrator/SYSTEM privleges.
2. The software can install files wherever it pleases in the filesystem.
3. Everyone has access to the Internet all the time.
4. Documentation is less important than code.
How about having the kids program something non-trivial without making any of the above assumptions?
1. ACL-based, granular security with roles and auditing. For a secure system, the all-powerful root HAS to go.
2. An SMP implementation that scales.
3. Logical volume management. Win2k (and NetWare, and VMS, and Solaris, and UnixWare, and SCO Unix, etc...) kicks our ass here, as much as it pains me to admit it.
4. VxFS. (OK, so this is licensed from Veritas and can't be opened up, but I can dream.)
Most of these aren't fun or cool to implement, but serious production environments really need them, and commercial Unixes, NetWare, VMS and now Win2K all offer these features.
It seems that it should be fairly obvious that if you don't provide a remote-control interface or connedction, you can't remote control the system. Heck even my loghost has the transmit pin on the NIC cut, which makes it pretty secure.
Should this case involving a multinational corporation, a US citizen, and a foreign domain be ajudicated under US law, Swiss law, or international law?
Now, the kicker: if a Swiss citizen had registered coke.us (I know, .us domains aren't available that way, but accept it for the sake of argument.), who should ajudicate the case?
AFAIK, ICANN procedures only apply to .net, .com, and .org TLDs. International law as I am familiar with it in terms of treaties and organizations mainly deals with disputed between nations. All this leaves me with one question:
As a general proposition, who should ajudicated disputes between individuals (which a corporation legally is) operating internationally?
USR Courier Modems: excellent, but an acquisition
Palm Pilot: now spun off, and acquisition to boot
hubs: strictly me-too
switches: low end, me-too
routers: let's just say Cisco doesn't lose sleep
NOS: um, anyone even remember 3Com+share/open?
NICs: OK, these are pretty good. Basically, from its inception, 3Com has ridded the Etehrnet wave for all it is worth. Now that Etehrnet is now largely a commodity market, they are in trouble. Their last few acquisitions failed to revitilize the company and basically have to be spun back off to avoid destroying their value (unless you really believe that USR has fared well under 3Com's ownership, and that Palm is worse off on their own).
Look for good things from the new USR, but forget 3Com, they haven't shown any real direction of innovation for years.
How many of us are sysadmins? Do you have firewalls? Packet filters? Email black lists? HTTP proxies? Yes? So do I.
As of last night, Mattel is off the new as far as I or any of my users are concerned.
It's time to use the tools we have to strike back. How many corporations have cleaned up their email relays du to RBL and ORBS? Most of them, because the threat of losing a chunk of their connectivity is serious and the ability to carry it out has been proven.
We may not be able to fight effectively with lawyers or economic sanctions, but we CAN hurt them. And they can't even complain, since filtering is their business, too.
I am not a lawyer, but I am an admin. Sure, my net is small and my action is a mosquito bite, but if a few majors and/or Universities will follow suit, we can have a real impact.
Fight filters with filters, and may the best man win.
Shouldn't the declaration of Pi day wait until 3-14-15?
3D positional audio is actually much cooler than (high performance) 3D graphics in some ways, so I can see this API quickly supplanting vendor- and platform- specific standards.
For one example, in video conferencing it is pretty well accepted that audio quality and continuity is more important than the video. If that audio were 3D positional, so that voices matched up spatially with the position of participants, you could realize a major increase in realism with a minimal bandwidth cost. As video conferencing moves toward multi-vendor, multi-platform H.323, a similiarly multi-vendor, multi-platform 3D positional audio API could be a major BUSINESS win.
Yup; as soon as companies figure out that this API is a money maker, I would expect to see it take off in a big way.
Without commenting on UI design, I'd like to point out the Word Perfect Corporation had the best user feedback loop I've ever seen in any industry: a 1-800 phone number you could call as often as you liked that was answered by knowledgeable person EVERY SINGLE TIME. Frankly, a copy of Word Perfect was worth $495 for that alone. For pure OSS, a the economics of a 1-800 number and staff are probably unworkable, but I think this is an area where packagers and distributers could make some real money. I WANT to buy the $495 copy of Slackware, and so does my mother. I WANT to recieve ONE defined piece of software for my $495 (not 2000 pieces of freeware on 7 CDs). The reason I want this is so that when I have trouble with that one piece of software, I can pick up the phone, call 1-800-GET-HELP and have someone help me. By providing an out-of-band feedback channel, so that users having trouble with thier computer can report that trouble without having to use the computer, a telephone number provides immediate access to help no matter what the problem is. By limiting the software in the box, it becomes reasonable to expect real, in depth support. After all, is it reasonable to expect Red Hat to provide unlimited, toll free tech support for evey piece of software in thier distribution? No. No one company could understand all of that code in depth. If their distribution were OS-only (think NetBSD, not Win2K) could they do it? Yes, I bet they could. How did I get from OSS UI feedback to toll-free tech support? Simple: a distributor, having packaged OSS and accepted $495 for providing support could and should pass transcripts or recordings or trouble ticket data back to the developers. Developers could focus on developing without having to deal with (often stressed and annoying) users, but still have the benefit of feedback on what needs improvement. Users would have someone to listen to them and help them. Distributors could charge much higher per-copy fees and make more money. And of course, with OSS, if certain "features" were generating too many calls and cutting into profits, the distributer could always hire someone to six them. I think Red Hat is on the right track, but they don't charge enough to provide unlimited support, and the provide too much software in the box to provide in-depth support. The bottom line: Charge me more and give me less. My boss, my users, and yeah, my Mom will thank you for it.
Are there really peopel otu there running *nix who don't split up their disks that way? I usually set up a new *nix in one big slice so i can use df to check the actual disk usage and then reinstall with appropriate /, /usr, /var, /tmp, /home and swap slices. AFAIK, this is the classic, correct procedure. I haven't used any of the new Linux installers recently, since I've converted to NetBSD for most of my boxes, but don't they set up the slices automagically now?
There is nothing magical about the existing DNS tree, except that everyone uses it. Why not establish another group of root servers in some country that doesn't give a rat's ass about US trademarks (say...China?) and create whatever TLDs we want. If we all chip in our registration fees that would otherwise go to Network Solutions, I'm sure our new "Open" DNS organization could buy the hardware / bandwith needed. OK, for interoperability, it would have to be set up to forward queries not resolved in the "new" namespace to servers linked to the "old" namespace, but that shouldn't be difficult. Load up a new root cache file and tell ICANN where they can stick their board.
Doesn't everyone still just call them Borland? I don't think I've ever heard anyone actually refer to them as "Inprise". Or at least nobody I'd actually listen to, anyway.