Except these machines were put in, in the first place, to make getting away with a fake ID much harder. If your card doesn't work, they'll clearly just presume it's a fake unless you're so old that there can't be any question. Thus, you'll not be admitted entry. Now this may not ultimately hold up in the courts when there might be legitimate privacy concerns here, but that doesn't change your lot in the short term.
Why are you asking this question? Why aren't you asking "How exactly is istartedi interesting?". I'll tell you why. It's Because RMS is famous and I'm not.
So is Pamela Anderson. That doesn't make her interesting (well maybe to look at, but that's a different thing all together). Fame != Interesting.
That's enough, but it sort of begs the question "why is he famous?". The answer to that is long and difficult. Some would argue that he isn't famous, and outside the computing community that's true, but only because those outsideers don't realize what an impact the GNU culture has had (for better or worse) on the devices that impact their daily lives.
Ok, I'll bite. How precisely has GNU had an impact on the average person's life? Even if GNU has touched their lifes in some knowable way, that doesn't mean it was instrumental.
In any event, I suspect most of those on slashdot, even the real so-called "geeks", would find this man boring if they had to talk to him for any extended period. The man is driven by some rather simplistic ideas to the exclusion of all else (even that of the core cause which is supposedly promotes). That's NOT interesting.
No matter what you think of the man, he's like a broken record. Whether you think what that record that record is saying the wrong thing or the right thing, it's certainly anything but interesting.
Well, its freedom because I can't do what I want to do with my computer without giving up my freedom.
This a completely nonsense statement. Just because you have the option of giving up your freedom for something you desire does not mean that the software producer is somehow impinging on your freedoms, yet this is precisely what you are implying. You do not have the right to the product of my mind. You are not entitled to my work: past, present, or future. It is mine, not yours. If I am allowed to not create (and I am), then it's only reasonable to allow me to choose the how, when, who, and under what conditions if I choose to do so [especially when such conditions are essential to its creation in the first place]. So to each person that wants my work must agree to pay a fixed amount for it and agree not to share it with others. If my conditions are not acceptible to them, well then they're no poorer then if I am had not created it.
This is like saying, you are allowed freedom of speech, except that, you will not be allowed to work if you exercise your freedom. That's not freedom... That a parody of Freedom!
No, this is not nearly the same. In neither case is using my hardwork a RIGHT for you. It's neither equivalent to freedom of speech (a so-called natural right) nor is it like the "right to work" that some courts have found to be valid and can be said to be necessary for survival. You are perfectly capable of doing without my software and the conditions for its use are quite reasonable and germane to my software. You are simply being asked to make a choice, a choice that is not so different then choosing to pay for a carpenter's handiwork or not get it at all.
In any event, if you wish to claim that you are somehow entitled to do whatever you want with your computer, then with your same reasoning the GPL is absurd on its face as it demands that you share your modifications. Even if the intellectual property framework were torn down, this simply does NOT come along with the package and is quite contrary to even that notion of freedom. Nor does a world free of copy prevention techniques, and so on...
To suggest that the GPL is a rather trivial piece of work is obsurd. Stallman was the only one that wrote a liscence with provisions to prevent hijacking by proprietary technology.
Why? Give me a reason to believe otherwise. It's just a license and a rather simple one at that. It's something that any decent lawyer that is sufficiently aware of the issues could write up in a couple days. Anyways, this presumes that you think the provisions about preventing the so-called "hi-jacking" of source is worthwhile, never mind not counter-productive.
Though you could argue the code for the Linux kernel might be the same under say the BSD or X11 liscence...
I argued precisely that. It makes sense.
theres no doubt Linux would be a shadow of it's former self if it weren't for the GNU project and other GPL software endeavors.
Firstly, you need to make a distinction between works of the GNU Foundation and works that were licensed under the GPL. If you accept the fact that the GPL software is indeed viral in nature, virtually any GPL'd code that makes it into the code base will practically have the effect of spreading itself into other parts. So it's disingenious to assert that GPL software inputs into the project are the same as a contribution by those that need or advocate the position of the GPL.
Secondly, while there may be no doubt that Linux used GNU code and products in the development of Linux, it does not automatically follow that Linux required either GNU code or any contributions of RMS. Would you make similar assertions about projects developed on Microsoft platforms? For instance, "if it weren't for Visual C++, then Photoshop would have never happened or been as good as it is." It's quite ludicrous, you need to evaluate the alternatives and the cost or feasibility of simply developing them from scratch. Don't confuse the GPL's pervasiveness in open source software with GNU's importance. They may be obliged to follow the licenses for using the code, but that doesn't mean they actually owe any further debts to GNU. Just as someone that develops on a Microsoft platform with Microsoft tools and code need follow the licenses and agreements, that doesn't mean they actually owe anything further; at the time of development the developers decided the costs/conditions of using the MS "stuff" was worth the benefits, but that's as far as you can reasonably go with it.
Why should we believe that Linux's success, never mind "freedom", owes to the GPL? Here's a more probable hypothesis for why Linux is under the GPL license:
a) there were a bunch of free tools out there that happened to make life a little easier for the developers and were/happened to be under the GPL.
b) the developers, not much caring for any particular open ideology, decided that it was worth the hassle to go GPL to get those tools.
c) the viral nature of the GPL ensured that it continued to remain under the GPL and not OTHER open licenses. note: This is not the same thing as saying that that the GPL kept it open and/or alive, just that it remained under GPL.
Even if you accept that the GPL played some kind of important role (which is a real stretch if you ask me), it's JUST an idea and a rather trivial piece of work at that. For people that espouse the ideas that "information deserves to be free", it seems rather ironic to believe that you owe some kind of tithe to the person(s) that originated the idea ("obvious")and the text ("trivial") of the GPL. You laugh at patents and copyrights that do more and expect less...
I have, do, and will fail to believe any executive that claims their company is facing great financial hardship, or that they are barely able to make money while he/she is paid millions.
That's because you don't understand some basic financial concepts. As an example, you might make these same claims about a lottery winner. Yet if you do some basic math, you'll see that although one person does indeed win millions, for every one dollar that that person wins, the loosers collectively pay well in excess of a dollar, say, 2 dollars for every dollar that is paid out. In other words, the lottery is a loosing "investment" on the aggregate, by definition. This is why people say the lottery is a tax on the stupid/poor/people that are bad at math. So in this case, just about any reasonable person that can perform basic math understands that this is not desirable.
Now let's go a step further, let's say if, out of a million 1 dollar tickets sold, the lottery actually pays out say 1,000,500 dollars to the winner. In this case we may have a winner on the aggregate, but it's still not viable financially. The reason for this is that the aggregate payout, although positive, is not commensurate with the risk taken. Your effective interest rate on that investment would be just.05%, which sucks. You could invest in much less risky, and even "riskless", investments, e.g., treasury bills, and make a higher interest rate. Although you might shrug it off and gamble for fun if it's a mere 1 dollar commitment, what about a significant sum like, say, your life's savings? Only a moron would invest in that too.
Now with this situation of the drug companies, you're basically just saying that they're profiting. Well OK, that's fine and dandy, but that doesn't mean that people will invest in and of itself. Many of the large drug companies are presently able to make enough profits, relative to their level of risk, to continue attracting investment, but most of the small and medium sized companies don't (because they must essentially put all their eggs in one basket because the costs are too high for them to do any sort of meaningful diversification). The large drug companies happen to be profiting enough on the aggregate to justify continuing investment, but it's close. You can't start eating away at their profits and expect them to continue to exist. The management team's compensation packages may speak for profits, but it's a pittance in comparison to the profits that they earn, and indeed need to earn, and those salaries are essentially a necessary condition for continuing to profit. Like it or not, they're paying what the market demands.
Re:Gene Patents
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Patent Nonsense
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· Score: 3, Interesting
IANAL && IANAG*, that said, I am familiar with the medical devices (and the medtech industry by much association) and other technology industries. Your understanding of the business, legal, and regulatory realities is what causes most of your trouble here.
Firstly, it's common practice in patent law to cast as wide a net as possible (without getting it thrown out entirely) because if you don't someone can come up with a slight modification, but to have it and its application to be essentially the same, and get away with it.
Secondly, the effective strength of a patent is NEVER is strong as it would appear to be to a layman; it's a mere fraction of it. The vast majority of a patent's strength is decided in a court of law and rarely, if ever, comes anything close to what you may think it sounds like.
Thirdly, while these particular genes may be obvious (not my expertise), identifying the significance of them, and getting past the very significant regulatory (e.g., FDA) hurdles, plus the huge marketing cost (which is VERY essential to society, as much as some geeks may deny it. Drugs generally don't sell themselves) is both very expensive, very risky, and takes a long time to ever reach the market (a major issue to anyone familiar with finance).
Fourthy, the medical technology industry is almost too costly to engage in as is, completely ignoring any fault of the companies', because of the factors that I've mentioned above. Reducing the strength and duration of these patents can easily make it financially unviable proposition, because no one in their right mind is going to take the level of risk required if a competitor can get a mostly free ride on their coattails and reduce their profitability.
Fifthly, although it may be arguable that the prior identification of them would constitute prior art as it was concieved of initially, that definition is simply untenable to the development of them in today's society. The point of that phrase was to encourage the taking of risk towards worthwhile pursuits. If it wasn't non-obvious back then, then it wasn't probably didn't require much risk. That's quite different today with these kinds of pursuits as the barriers to entry here are huge. The gene itself may be obvious, but making it into something worthwile is non-obvious AND requires a lot of risk taking.
I suggest that you take into consideration the importance of the so-called "distributions" to Linux's ultimate and hopeful success. Because the Linux system's development is primarily driven by a bunch of hackers doing it part time and for fun, it is very important to have some entity assembling all of these packages, in their various states of disorder, full time as a cohesive body into something that at least resembles an Operating System as thought of by most consumers.
Unfortunately, the community's overwhelming choice of the GPL license leaves little, if any, viable avenues for revenue for those that expend the kind of energy necessary to create the distributions. Furthermore, on the other end, the non-profits entities have shown a lack of ability to produce what the consumers demand. For instance, Debian may be good enough for those in the computing industry, but they're not the ones that really make things come together to the extent that the average consumer needs. As insufficient as these "charity" requests on Mandrake's part are, they may be quite reasonable as a temporary remedy in light of the facts, i.e., the imposition of the GPL on those that provide (some of) the necessary missing pieces, at least if you're a proponent of free software for its own sake.
Although I personally feel that all the distributions are all fundamentally weak and will ultimately prevent Linux from ever gaining substantial footing on the desktop, their importance is nonetheless critical to what little success Linux can hope to enjoy. In lieu of a truely viable alternative, the believers have no other choice. They may allow Mandrake to die, but what about when SuSe, Redhat, and all others that add value cave into these same kind of problems? At its core, they all have the same fundamental problem and it will ultimately catch up to all of them to varying degrees.
Still, I think it's also a mistake to characterize it as Microsoft not caring about that market. At one time, Microsoft fancied getting into financial services, and they cared about defeating Quicken very much -- to the point of just admitting defeat and buying the damn company (which of course was blocked by the FTC).
Well that's typical of Microsoft and not at all unusual. It's cheaper for them to shell out enough cash to woo the company (given their implied or explicit threats) then it is to actually use the monopolistic muscle. That's not to say that it's fair though, just that it's the better, but generally not good, option for the stock holders of the smaller company. Anyways, caring about a particular pursuit and willing to bet the whole ship on it is an entirely different matter.
Well, so did Netscape. The difference is that Netscape got suckier and suckier, while Quicken actually tried to improve their products over time.
That's really not quite right. Netscape may have had market share, in the same sense that a lot of the dotcoms had market share, but they did not have it with a stable and viable revenue model like Intuit did. Anyways, this is besides the point. No matter what Netscape might have had they lost it the moment Microsoft decided to package IE with Windows and spend a gazillion dollars to ensure its success; Quicken simply never faced that (it'd be mighty hard to make a remotely plausible argument for why MS Money needs to be packaged with Windows and it'd never bring them any return on investment.)
Says who? Firstly, Netscape did indeed charge business customers for it. Secondly, there's no reason why you couldn't charge for it, it's just not the way it happened. Netscape was trying to create a demand and they felt that giving it away would be better for them in the long run than charging for it. Microsoft's moves not only made it impossible to charge the corporate users, but they also prevented Netscape from ever charging more consumers (and probably adopting a viable revenue model).
Consumer finance software == potentially can get a cut on some or all electronic transactions.
Consumer finance software != Being the bank. That's not to say that it's impossible to use it to gain leverage, but the fact of the matter is that they're two seperate things and when you combine it with the DoJ it's hardly the path of least resistance.
Yes, it is possible to defeat Microsoft. It's hard, but not impossible.
Quicken, in Microsoft's eyes, was nothing more than an opportunity to make some more money and not even THAT much. Netscape, on the other hand, was percieved by Microsoft as being a direct threat to its core businesses. It was believed at the time that as these services moved online both the operating system (windows) and the applications would become marginalized by Netscape and like web browsers. Thus, Microsoft played by an entirely different rule book. In the case of Quicken, it would only make sense to spend less than the potential size of the market. But in the case of Netscape, there was no price; the application itself was almost besides the point. Thus, Microsoft was willing to loose money hand over fist to takeover that market, because loosing the market meant gambling with Microsoft's whole business.
You simply can't compete against that in the business world. When your competitor is not only playing with a stacked deck but also doesn't care about winning for its own sake, then you have a real problem. As tough as things may be for companies like Quicken, it's just not impossible in that same sense. Besides which, Quicken established themselves very early on, before Microsoft became quite the behemoth that they are today. Try getting the financial community behind you for a novel product/service in ANY business that Microsoft takes seriously -- no matter how good your idea and your positioning is, it's just not going to happen.
I disagree. He's a fanatic in the same sense that Hitler was a fanatic. He may not be zealous enough to be blind to all forms of rational thought, but he nevertheless manages to miss the big picture. If he were really interested in his own personal fortune or that of his country, then he would not have pursued Kuwait and kept on pushing the United States. Saddam wants to rule the Arab world and he's enough of a fanatic to do whatever it takes regardless of the fact that it's a war that he can't win.
What I suggest, as an example, is that the industry, or agents of them, regularly search for their material using the publically acessible interfaces and report any open fileshares containing their material to the offenders' ISPs [This is by no means the only way, but it would be the first way]. This task could be automated quite effectively (and confirmed by humans if need be). It is legal and it respects even the rights of those that are just leaching. In short, it's quite a viable avenue and it would be highly effective.
The relative illegality of uploading versus downloading is besides the point. The uploaders are the critical link and are far fewer in numbers. Given the lack of incentive and lack of risk, as I've described, they would rapidly diminish as more and more of their comrades lose their connectivity [and/or potentially face criminal or civil lawsuits at the higher end of the food chain] due to their habits. Attacking the downloaders, would be much trickier, as they are large in number and have significant incentive to take those kinds of risks themselves. In short, the leachers would be asking the file sharing/uploaders to play Russian Rullette, i.e., to a take a bullet for a complete stranger. Put differently, the industry need only pray on human nature, not every last human.
But, remember that if certain ISPs start to "get in bed" with the various studios and "content providers" and have draconian rules about file-sharing (and let's not forget that they pretty much all say you can be cut-off for illegal activites, including warezing stuff) then there will be competition among ISPs and people will flock to other providers who aren't in league with. And yes, I know quite a few people don't have a choice if they want broadband, but also a lot of people are free to vote with their wallets.
I disagree. The users that have pro-copyright ISPs would have no direct (and organic) incentive to switch. They could leach every bit as well with the pro-copyright ISP (that's using the idea that I propose) as they could with the "free" ISP. Now maybe in theory, if a significant portion of the users could agree to switch, they might improve their collective lot (by way of creating more publically available pirated material), but this takes us back to the same problem of the tragedy of the commons. In other words, unless the individual is somehow compelled to switch and share in order to enjoy others' fruits, it simply won't work. Every individual that does switch, given human nature, will not enjoy any fruits for switching and will likely have to spend time, energy, and money switching (and possibly get a lower quality ISP in the process).
If so few users share today given the cost v benefit, then why should we believe even a fraction of those will switch when we just substantially increase the cost (through risk and/or loss of service) and do nothing substantial (in all likelyhood) to increase their benefit? Furthermore, any ISP that recieves these prolifigate pirating users en masse will simply not make any money on them. That ISP simply cannot sustain themselves on those users (the bandwidth costs and the potential legal costs); either the ISP raises the price (a further disincentive) or loses money for each additional pirate they allow (as individuals or systematically).
I would also assert that the ISPs choice is not Draconian. The ISPs are just effectively penalizing pirates that choose to violate the law [now, of course, those users that pirate the most also tend to be the most attached to their internet connection(s)], the same law that could be used to apply much stricter penalties in a court of law. The main stream public is unlikely to feel much empathy for these guys, especially when they go to such ends (e.g., switching ISPs, hiding, ignoring multiple warnings, etc) to further piracy. It would be one thing if we're talking about some kid hopping on some "magic-like" P2P program for the first time, downloading some warez program for his class, and being prosecuted for it, but this is most emphatically not the case here.
I would further add that these prolific pirates are more likely to switch to more insular means (networks) to provide them with greater benefits (e.g., more proportion recognition by equals rather than anonymous "lamers") and less risk while simultaneously locking out the overwhelming majority. People that go to these ends (and have the technical and intellectual prowess to keep at it) are unlikely to be that dettered as a group, but as long as they keep their goods to themselves, they are not a significant factor to the industry and can be safely written off.
As to the people not sharing stuff problem- you're going to have that whether it's super-illegal (as opposed to merely illegal ordinary!) or not; I'm sure that some new file-sharing network will spring up some day soon that forces you to share (and does check). That service would grow sharply in popularity because there would be more files available. Even now, in edonkey (which shares files even as you are downloading them), I see new files are much more available than older ones, either because people aren't sharing any folder other than their "incoming" one, or because they don't have the space and so are archiving stuff onto cd once it's finished.
Well mandatory sharing that can't or, rather, wouldn't be circumvented might certainly change things, but that's awefully hard to manage in truely decentralized environment without mandating an inefficient and annoying quid pro quo system. I won't say impossible, but the technical hurdles are huge and even then I'd think those more committed and prolific users would just switch to or stay with the lower tech more insular networks of trust amongst like users (e.g., IRC users truely sharing amongst each other).
The change in tactic that I describe may seem a subtle difference than the scenario that most people envision, but I believe that it would be highly effective, just as Napster was highly effective. Napster was highly effective because it made the act of searching and leaching simple and efficient from an individual AND network point of view. Well these acts would largely restore the balance to the point prior to Napster by making any sort of efficient system unfeasible in light of human nature, probable technology limitations, and legal/political/commercial influence. Thanks
Sorry, while technically accurate, it's unrealistic and unfeasible. The problem is that you presume that all the industry can do is merely shut down the daemon, there by allowing others to merely popup in its place. But this is not the case here. All the copyright holders have to do is use their influence more effectively to penalize the people that are sharing the files. The penalty need not be legal at its head (as opposed to its legal origin) to be effective. For instance, if the company strikes up an explicit or implicit deal with the cable modem and DSL companies to shut off the internet access of any individual found sharing pirated material for, say, 1 to 2 months. This would be plenty to deter those people and it would be quite simple to impliment.
What you must remember is that these filesharing services do not offer the sharer anything and, even without any sort of meaningful enforcement today, have significant drawbacks (e.g., lost resources, bandwidth, etc). In other words, the costs exceed the benefits somewhat. This is why we have the so-called "Tragedy of the commons" today on most file sharing services. The leaches far outnumber the sharers. Now when we toss a large helping of risk in there, you'll see this cost vs benefit ratio change significantly for the worse and a mass exodus of sharers. The industry need not be able to reach every last one of them--just enough to raise the level of risk to a sufficiently high level. Nor does every last individual need to change his habits, the combination of the excessive demand and the potential for additional measures (legal, political, and otherwise) is more than sufficient to bring the service to an effective halt.
Well I'm not sure about you, but I was able to stay contact my sister in Manhattan with her via her blackberry the entire day without any noticable delay [I'm not sure what service she's on as her company pays for it.] Both land lines and cell phones in the area were hopelessly jammed when I tried to call. Email also came through for me across the country and oversees, while I experienced spotty coverage, at best, in most of my calls.
This is a silly argument. The software costs the same AND the choices are the same no matter which PC you choose. The same elements that swayed you to buy Windows last time are still going to affect your decision. Now with a car, you might say your car affects the quantity and kind of fuel that you need to purchase, but this is just not the case here. Anyways, the software is not a recurring cost, at least not today.
To be honest I have never understood this logic-- the breakup plans were very bad from a marketplace perspective. Why should we breake one predatory company with two monopolies into two predatory companies with one monopoly each? IMO, this could have drastically harmed Linux and all competitors and created a baby-bell situation (referring to local service, not long-distance). Furthermore, two predatory companies are far more agile than one, and so I would FAR prefer to see Microsoft deemed guilty and only slapped on the wrist than broken up. (That way, further predatory activity could be handled by civil suits which even when unsuccessful have been shown to be effective in most circumstances, as per IBM.) Basically, I feel that we are dealing with the IBM of the early PC market here, not Standard Oil.
The reason why we should breakup the two monopolies into two seperate companies, i.e., applications and OS, is because their relationship is symbiotic. Each goes a long way to strengthen the other monopoly, but provides little to no benefit to the consumers by being one unit. In other words, Windows uses the applications monopoly to bolster its strength and vice versa.
Even completely ignoring the other duanting issues that an alternative OS has in facing MS' dominance on the desktop, MS' powerful applications can effectively stop the OS dead in its tracks. Let's say if Macintosh were to start encroaching on Windows' market share with MacOSX. You can be pretty safe in the assumption that Microsoft's Office package for Mac [not to mention IE] would not be encouraging this. In fact, today's MS would have lot of incentive to ensure that Mac Office is generally inferior. So not only would Macintosh (or some other mythical company) have to develop a competetive alternative (not just a "competitor") or else Macintosh would be competing with a substantial disadvantage. This is a non-trivial problem in this day and age. As mediocre as Office may be when you consider its market share, you're going to have to spend millions of dollars to make it anywhere near as good. And even then, you're going to have to worry about file compatibility with MS Office and the users are going to have to get training to respond to the difference.
Now if MS were split up, it may well be a very different scenario. The Office company would have an incentive to develop an equivalent Office suite (certainly > 5% of such a large market is enough to justify the full porting costs and then some) since they could further expand their marketshare or at least sell NEW Macintosh copies of their software. This, in turn, would at least allow the competition OS(s) to compete in more equal footing.
The situation is not terribly different with Internet Explorer (or Office) on Windows, where application growth is the objective. But I really don't feel like hashing this whole argument out here, just use your head.
The result at the end of the day is that Windows and Office are just good enough to retain their market share. Neither has sufficiently serious competition in their market to spur any real effort into improving the products, despite the fact that they're selling billions of dollars worth of product, more than enough to make vast improvements. Now I don't think there is necessarily room in the market to have any large splits within the OS market, and maybe even applications (e.g., 30/70 split), but I do believe that having credible competitors competing for financially viable portions of the market (say, 10% +) is both feasible and highly desirable in that it would cause MS to be much more responsive to the customers needs. When you combine this fact with the minimal or non-existant downside (I mean what benefit does the unified MS _really_ offer us?), I totally support it.
"When the price of a PC falls below $350, Microsoft will no longer be viable," Raymond said in an interview with ZDNet UK. "The reason is that if you sell something below that price, you can't afford to pay the Microsoft tax and still make money." He said the best illustration of this is the handheld PC market, where Microsoft software powers relatively expensive devices, but has no presence in the lower-end market.
I am sorry, but this reasoning simply does not follow. Even if the hardware were free, it, in and of itself, has no effect on the affordability of the software itself. The customer, if anything, has MORE money to spend on the OS (remember, an OS can save or cost you time and effort). The only way I can possibly see his argument, ignoring his logic or lack thereof, is if the cheapness of PC hardware allows for a fundamental shift in attitudes to PCs and the price of the software (and hence the total price of the system, not the RELATIVE cost) is significant enough to influence this. But this is a stretch and it depends on MS keeping the price static [MS' sales far exceeds their development costs, so MS could slash the prices considerally and they could makeup for a lot of it with the increased sales.]
As for his whole palm vs PC argument, his premise is wrong. Palm and PocketPC have two very different approaches to the market. Palm knows its market is the PDA market, i.e., handling contacts, appointments, and other daily tasks, whereas PocketPC is about being a mini-laptop (which largely attracts the techies and trendy types). Well both the PocketPC OS and the tasks themselves demand a lot more expensive hardware. PocketPC also eats batteries for its intended uses like none other. I'd also argue that Microsoft's vision for PocketPC is fundamentally flawed given the battery limitations, the hardware for the next couple years, and the problems with data entry/input methods and screen size on anything the size of a PDA. The point being is that we have a lot of good reasons to believe the difference in sales has a lot more to do with other issues than just the licensing price difference between the two OSes. For instance, completely ignoring the price of the total costs of either units, I would not want PocketPC if I all I want to do is use the PDA as a PDA (the battery life and other issues are too significant to me).
Well firstly, Microsoft's implimentation of PPTP is insecure, buggy on the client side (and the server side, where their server is used), and has a hard time supporting multiple clients in a NAT environment.
Secondly, a lot of older hardware has little to no support for the GRE protocol that PPTP depends on. Thus many people simply can't use it.
Thirdly, it's virtually impossible to get two people connecting to the same VPN behind the same NAT network on any hardware. The nature of GRE makes it very difficult since it has no concept of port to diffentiate between packets, only source and destination IP. Unfortunately, NAT is very common these days so this really does matter.
Firstly, the original author was referring to the money mentality, not just the growth and dominance of "non-open" software which is quite a different argument indeed.
Secondly, before Bill G. came along, software was really NOT motivated by the ideas that open source espouses today (and likes to claim were espoused at that time). Quite the contrary, most of it was developed by companies for profit to sell or bundle with their own machines. It was about money from the start. The reason it changed from relatively unrestrictive / complimentary / free is because the nature of the industry changed, not because of a real change in mindset. These companies didn't sell the software or protect it as it is today because they simply saw software as a means to sell hardware. In other words, the entire notion of developing software for its own sake really did NOT exist at that time. The nature of the industry allowed for them to do this, or rather, it was more economical to not worry about protecting their intellectual property when the nature of the industry has its own built in protections and when the software was itself relatively trivial.
The point is that you can no more blame (or credit) Bill Gates for this shift than you can for the Moon rising. It was inevitable. As computers became more and more common and accessible and programs became less and less trivial the method for creating, distributing, and protecting the software HAD to change. Bill Gates just had enough wit about him to catch the wave before most others did [My dislike for Bill Gates and Microsoft is for entirely different reasons.]
Firstly, as much as I dislike MS, I hardly see how you can blame MS for this mentality (as you see it).
Secondly, very few universities are indebted to MS. Try backing it up with some facts. I'm certain you'll find that any money MS gives them, in any reasonably arguable form (whether that's free/reduced licensing or what have you), is much less than 1% on average.
Thirdly, you are assuming that anything that is not programming for money == "Open Source." Open source is just one sort of "free" ideology and its not an ideology that everyone happens to agree with. For instance, someone may choose to develop code for a non-profit and/or at a reduced salary since they believe that open source is largely a waste of time. i.e., it's not "all" about the money.
Lastly, the attitude that money is unimportant is generally afforded to the few that have the luxary of not working. Try this when you get out of college and keep it up when you're trying to raise a family, just don't complain to others that it's not fair that you're not making enough money to lead a comfortable life.
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Except these machines were put in, in the first place, to make getting away with a fake ID much harder. If your card doesn't work, they'll clearly just presume it's a fake unless you're so old that there can't be any question. Thus, you'll not be admitted entry. Now this may not ultimately hold up in the courts when there might be legitimate privacy concerns here, but that doesn't change your lot in the short term.
Ok, I'll bite. How precisely has GNU had an impact on the average person's life? Even if GNU has touched their lifes in some knowable way, that doesn't mean it was instrumental.
In any event, I suspect most of those on slashdot, even the real so-called "geeks", would find this man boring if they had to talk to him for any extended period. The man is driven by some rather simplistic ideas to the exclusion of all else (even that of the core cause which is supposedly promotes). That's NOT interesting.
No matter what you think of the man, he's like a broken record. Whether you think what that record that record is saying the wrong thing or the right thing, it's certainly anything but interesting.
No, this is not nearly the same. In neither case is using my hardwork a RIGHT for you. It's neither equivalent to freedom of speech (a so-called natural right) nor is it like the "right to work" that some courts have found to be valid and can be said to be necessary for survival. You are perfectly capable of doing without my software and the conditions for its use are quite reasonable and germane to my software. You are simply being asked to make a choice, a choice that is not so different then choosing to pay for a carpenter's handiwork or not get it at all.
In any event, if you wish to claim that you are somehow entitled to do whatever you want with your computer, then with your same reasoning the GPL is absurd on its face as it demands that you share your modifications. Even if the intellectual property framework were torn down, this simply does NOT come along with the package and is quite contrary to even that notion of freedom. Nor does a world free of copy prevention techniques, and so on...
I argued precisely that. It makes sense.
Firstly, you need to make a distinction between works of the GNU Foundation and works that were licensed under the GPL. If you accept the fact that the GPL software is indeed viral in nature, virtually any GPL'd code that makes it into the code base will practically have the effect of spreading itself into other parts. So it's disingenious to assert that GPL software inputs into the project are the same as a contribution by those that need or advocate the position of the GPL.
Secondly, while there may be no doubt that Linux used GNU code and products in the development of Linux, it does not automatically follow that Linux required either GNU code or any contributions of RMS. Would you make similar assertions about projects developed on Microsoft platforms? For instance, "if it weren't for Visual C++, then Photoshop would have never happened or been as good as it is." It's quite ludicrous, you need to evaluate the alternatives and the cost or feasibility of simply developing them from scratch. Don't confuse the GPL's pervasiveness in open source software with GNU's importance. They may be obliged to follow the licenses for using the code, but that doesn't mean they actually owe any further debts to GNU. Just as someone that develops on a Microsoft platform with Microsoft tools and code need follow the licenses and agreements, that doesn't mean they actually owe anything further; at the time of development the developers decided the costs/conditions of using the MS "stuff" was worth the benefits, but that's as far as you can reasonably go with it.
Why should we believe that Linux's success, never mind "freedom", owes to the GPL? Here's a more probable hypothesis for why Linux is under the GPL license:
a) there were a bunch of free tools out there that happened to make life a little easier for the developers and were/happened to be under the GPL.
b) the developers, not much caring for any particular open ideology, decided that it was worth the hassle to go GPL to get those tools.
c) the viral nature of the GPL ensured that it continued to remain under the GPL and not OTHER open licenses. note: This is not the same thing as saying that that the GPL kept it open and/or alive, just that it remained under GPL.
Even if you accept that the GPL played some kind of important role (which is a real stretch if you ask me), it's JUST an idea and a rather trivial piece of work at that. For people that espouse the ideas that "information deserves to be free", it seems rather ironic to believe that you owe some kind of tithe to the person(s) that originated the idea ("obvious")and the text ("trivial") of the GPL. You laugh at patents and copyrights that do more and expect less...
Now let's go a step further, let's say if, out of a million 1 dollar tickets sold, the lottery actually pays out say 1,000,500 dollars to the winner. In this case we may have a winner on the aggregate, but it's still not viable financially. The reason for this is that the aggregate payout, although positive, is not commensurate with the risk taken. Your effective interest rate on that investment would be just
Now with this situation of the drug companies, you're basically just saying that they're profiting. Well OK, that's fine and dandy, but that doesn't mean that people will invest in and of itself. Many of the large drug companies are presently able to make enough profits, relative to their level of risk, to continue attracting investment, but most of the small and medium sized companies don't (because they must essentially put all their eggs in one basket because the costs are too high for them to do any sort of meaningful diversification). The large drug companies happen to be profiting enough on the aggregate to justify continuing investment, but it's close. You can't start eating away at their profits and expect them to continue to exist. The management team's compensation packages may speak for profits, but it's a pittance in comparison to the profits that they earn, and indeed need to earn, and those salaries are essentially a necessary condition for continuing to profit. Like it or not, they're paying what the market demands.
IANAL && IANAG*, that said, I am familiar with the medical devices (and the medtech industry by much association) and other technology industries. Your understanding of the business, legal, and regulatory realities is what causes most of your trouble here.
Firstly, it's common practice in patent law to cast as wide a net as possible (without getting it thrown out entirely) because if you don't someone can come up with a slight modification, but to have it and its application to be essentially the same, and get away with it.
Secondly, the effective strength of a patent is NEVER is strong as it would appear to be to a layman; it's a mere fraction of it. The vast majority of a patent's strength is decided in a court of law and rarely, if ever, comes anything close to what you may think it sounds like.
Thirdly, while these particular genes may be obvious (not my expertise), identifying the significance of them, and getting past the very significant regulatory (e.g., FDA) hurdles, plus the huge marketing cost (which is VERY essential to society, as much as some geeks may deny it. Drugs generally don't sell themselves) is both very expensive, very risky, and takes a long time to ever reach the market (a major issue to anyone familiar with finance).
Fourthy, the medical technology industry is almost too costly to engage in as is, completely ignoring any fault of the companies', because of the factors that I've mentioned above. Reducing the strength and duration of these patents can easily make it financially unviable proposition, because no one in their right mind is going to take the level of risk required if a competitor can get a mostly free ride on their coattails and reduce their profitability.
Fifthly, although it may be arguable that the prior identification of them would constitute prior art as it was concieved of initially, that definition is simply untenable to the development of them in today's society. The point of that phrase was to encourage the taking of risk towards worthwhile pursuits. If it wasn't non-obvious back then, then it wasn't probably didn't require much risk. That's quite different today with these kinds of pursuits as the barriers to entry here are huge. The gene itself may be obvious, but making it into something worthwile is non-obvious AND requires a lot of risk taking.
I suggest that you take into consideration the importance of the so-called "distributions" to Linux's ultimate and hopeful success. Because the Linux system's development is primarily driven by a bunch of hackers doing it part time and for fun, it is very important to have some entity assembling all of these packages, in their various states of disorder, full time as a cohesive body into something that at least resembles an Operating System as thought of by most consumers.
Unfortunately, the community's overwhelming choice of the GPL license leaves little, if any, viable avenues for revenue for those that expend the kind of energy necessary to create the distributions. Furthermore, on the other end, the non-profits entities have shown a lack of ability to produce what the consumers demand. For instance, Debian may be good enough for those in the computing industry, but they're not the ones that really make things come together to the extent that the average consumer needs. As insufficient as these "charity" requests on Mandrake's part are, they may be quite reasonable as a temporary remedy in light of the facts, i.e., the imposition of the GPL on those that provide (some of) the necessary missing pieces, at least if you're a proponent of free software for its own sake.
Although I personally feel that all the distributions are all fundamentally weak and will ultimately prevent Linux from ever gaining substantial footing on the desktop, their importance is nonetheless critical to what little success Linux can hope to enjoy. In lieu of a truely viable alternative, the believers have no other choice. They may allow Mandrake to die, but what about when SuSe, Redhat, and all others that add value cave into these same kind of problems? At its core, they all have the same fundamental problem and it will ultimately catch up to all of them to varying degrees.
That's really not quite right. Netscape may have had market share, in the same sense that a lot of the dotcoms had market share, but they did not have it with a stable and viable revenue model like Intuit did. Anyways, this is besides the point. No matter what Netscape might have had they lost it the moment Microsoft decided to package IE with Windows and spend a gazillion dollars to ensure its success; Quicken simply never faced that (it'd be mighty hard to make a remotely plausible argument for why MS Money needs to be packaged with Windows and it'd never bring them any return on investment.)
Consumer finance software != Being the bank. That's not to say that it's impossible to use it to gain leverage, but the fact of the matter is that they're two seperate things and when you combine it with the DoJ it's hardly the path of least resistance.
You simply can't compete against that in the business world. When your competitor is not only playing with a stacked deck but also doesn't care about winning for its own sake, then you have a real problem. As tough as things may be for companies like Quicken, it's just not impossible in that same sense. Besides which, Quicken established themselves very early on, before Microsoft became quite the behemoth that they are today. Try getting the financial community behind you for a novel product/service in ANY business that Microsoft takes seriously -- no matter how good your idea and your positioning is, it's just not going to happen.
I disagree. He's a fanatic in the same sense that Hitler was a fanatic. He may not be zealous enough to be blind to all forms of rational thought, but he nevertheless manages to miss the big picture. If he were really interested in his own personal fortune or that of his country, then he would not have pursued Kuwait and kept on pushing the United States. Saddam wants to rule the Arab world and he's enough of a fanatic to do whatever it takes regardless of the fact that it's a war that he can't win.
What I suggest, as an example, is that the industry, or agents of them, regularly search for their material using the publically acessible interfaces and report any open fileshares containing their material to the offenders' ISPs [This is by no means the only way, but it would be the first way]. This task could be automated quite effectively (and confirmed by humans if need be). It is legal and it respects even the rights of those that are just leaching. In short, it's quite a viable avenue and it would be highly effective.
The relative illegality of uploading versus downloading is besides the point. The uploaders are the critical link and are far fewer in numbers. Given the lack of incentive and lack of risk, as I've described, they would rapidly diminish as more and more of their comrades lose their connectivity [and/or potentially face criminal or civil lawsuits at the higher end of the food chain] due to their habits. Attacking the downloaders, would be much trickier, as they are large in number and have significant incentive to take those kinds of risks themselves. In short, the leachers would be asking the file sharing/uploaders to play Russian Rullette, i.e., to a take a bullet for a complete stranger. Put differently, the industry need only pray on human nature, not every last human.
If so few users share today given the cost v benefit, then why should we believe even a fraction of those will switch when we just substantially increase the cost (through risk and/or loss of service) and do nothing substantial (in all likelyhood) to increase their benefit? Furthermore, any ISP that recieves these prolifigate pirating users en masse will simply not make any money on them. That ISP simply cannot sustain themselves on those users (the bandwidth costs and the potential legal costs); either the ISP raises the price (a further disincentive) or loses money for each additional pirate they allow (as individuals or systematically).
I would also assert that the ISPs choice is not Draconian. The ISPs are just effectively penalizing pirates that choose to violate the law [now, of course, those users that pirate the most also tend to be the most attached to their internet connection(s)], the same law that could be used to apply much stricter penalties in a court of law. The main stream public is unlikely to feel much empathy for these guys, especially when they go to such ends (e.g., switching ISPs, hiding, ignoring multiple warnings, etc) to further piracy. It would be one thing if we're talking about some kid hopping on some "magic-like" P2P program for the first time, downloading some warez program for his class, and being prosecuted for it, but this is most emphatically not the case here.
I would further add that these prolific pirates are more likely to switch to more insular means (networks) to provide them with greater benefits (e.g., more proportion recognition by equals rather than anonymous "lamers") and less risk while simultaneously locking out the overwhelming majority. People that go to these ends (and have the technical and intellectual prowess to keep at it) are unlikely to be that dettered as a group, but as long as they keep their goods to themselves, they are not a significant factor to the industry and can be safely written off.
Well mandatory sharing that can't or, rather, wouldn't be circumvented might certainly change things, but that's awefully hard to manage in truely decentralized environment without mandating an inefficient and annoying quid pro quo system. I won't say impossible, but the technical hurdles are huge and even then I'd think those more committed and prolific users would just switch to or stay with the lower tech more insular networks of trust amongst like users (e.g., IRC users truely sharing amongst each other).
The change in tactic that I describe may seem a subtle difference than the scenario that most people envision, but I believe that it would be highly effective, just as Napster was highly effective. Napster was highly effective because it made the act of searching and leaching simple and efficient from an individual AND network point of view. Well these acts would largely restore the balance to the point prior to Napster by making any sort of efficient system unfeasible in light of human nature, probable technology limitations, and legal/political/commercial influence. Thanks
Sorry, while technically accurate, it's unrealistic and unfeasible. The problem is that you presume that all the industry can do is merely shut down the daemon, there by allowing others to merely popup in its place. But this is not the case here. All the copyright holders have to do is use their influence more effectively to penalize the people that are sharing the files. The penalty need not be legal at its head (as opposed to its legal origin) to be effective. For instance, if the company strikes up an explicit or implicit deal with the cable modem and DSL companies to shut off the internet access of any individual found sharing pirated material for, say, 1 to 2 months. This would be plenty to deter those people and it would be quite simple to impliment.
What you must remember is that these filesharing services do not offer the sharer anything and, even without any sort of meaningful enforcement today, have significant drawbacks (e.g., lost resources, bandwidth, etc). In other words, the costs exceed the benefits somewhat. This is why we have the so-called "Tragedy of the commons" today on most file sharing services. The leaches far outnumber the sharers. Now when we toss a large helping of risk in there, you'll see this cost vs benefit ratio change significantly for the worse and a mass exodus of sharers. The industry need not be able to reach every last one of them--just enough to raise the level of risk to a sufficiently high level. Nor does every last individual need to change his habits, the combination of the excessive demand and the potential for additional measures (legal, political, and otherwise) is more than sufficient to bring the service to an effective halt.
Well I'm not sure about you, but I was able to stay contact my sister in Manhattan with her via her blackberry the entire day without any noticable delay [I'm not sure what service she's on as her company pays for it.] Both land lines and cell phones in the area were hopelessly jammed when I tried to call. Email also came through for me across the country and oversees, while I experienced spotty coverage, at best, in most of my calls.
This is a silly argument. The software costs the same AND the choices are the same no matter which PC you choose. The same elements that swayed you to buy Windows last time are still going to affect your decision. Now with a car, you might say your car affects the quantity and kind of fuel that you need to purchase, but this is just not the case here. Anyways, the software is not a recurring cost, at least not today.
Even completely ignoring the other duanting issues that an alternative OS has in facing MS' dominance on the desktop, MS' powerful applications can effectively stop the OS dead in its tracks. Let's say if Macintosh were to start encroaching on Windows' market share with MacOSX. You can be pretty safe in the assumption that Microsoft's Office package for Mac [not to mention IE] would not be encouraging this. In fact, today's MS would have lot of incentive to ensure that Mac Office is generally inferior. So not only would Macintosh (or some other mythical company) have to develop a competetive alternative (not just a "competitor") or else Macintosh would be competing with a substantial disadvantage. This is a non-trivial problem in this day and age. As mediocre as Office may be when you consider its market share, you're going to have to spend millions of dollars to make it anywhere near as good. And even then, you're going to have to worry about file compatibility with MS Office and the users are going to have to get training to respond to the difference.
Now if MS were split up, it may well be a very different scenario. The Office company would have an incentive to develop an equivalent Office suite (certainly > 5% of such a large market is enough to justify the full porting costs and then some) since they could further expand their marketshare or at least sell NEW Macintosh copies of their software. This, in turn, would at least allow the competition OS(s) to compete in more equal footing.
The situation is not terribly different with Internet Explorer (or Office) on Windows, where application growth is the objective. But I really don't feel like hashing this whole argument out here, just use your head.
The result at the end of the day is that Windows and Office are just good enough to retain their market share. Neither has sufficiently serious competition in their market to spur any real effort into improving the products, despite the fact that they're selling billions of dollars worth of product, more than enough to make vast improvements. Now I don't think there is necessarily room in the market to have any large splits within the OS market, and maybe even applications (e.g., 30/70 split), but I do believe that having credible competitors competing for financially viable portions of the market (say, 10% +) is both feasible and highly desirable in that it would cause MS to be much more responsive to the customers needs. When you combine this fact with the minimal or non-existant downside (I mean what benefit does the unified MS _really_ offer us?), I totally support it.
As for his whole palm vs PC argument, his premise is wrong. Palm and PocketPC have two very different approaches to the market. Palm knows its market is the PDA market, i.e., handling contacts, appointments, and other daily tasks, whereas PocketPC is about being a mini-laptop (which largely attracts the techies and trendy types). Well both the PocketPC OS and the tasks themselves demand a lot more expensive hardware. PocketPC also eats batteries for its intended uses like none other. I'd also argue that Microsoft's vision for PocketPC is fundamentally flawed given the battery limitations, the hardware for the next couple years, and the problems with data entry/input methods and screen size on anything the size of a PDA. The point being is that we have a lot of good reasons to believe the difference in sales has a lot more to do with other issues than just the licensing price difference between the two OSes. For instance, completely ignoring the price of the total costs of either units, I would not want PocketPC if I all I want to do is use the PDA as a PDA (the battery life and other issues are too significant to me).
Well firstly, Microsoft's implimentation of PPTP is insecure, buggy on the client side (and the server side, where their server is used), and has a hard time supporting multiple clients in a NAT environment.
Secondly, a lot of older hardware has little to no support for the GRE protocol that PPTP depends on. Thus many people simply can't use it.
Thirdly, it's virtually impossible to get two people connecting to the same VPN behind the same NAT network on any hardware. The nature of GRE makes it very difficult since it has no concept of port to diffentiate between packets, only source and destination IP. Unfortunately, NAT is very common these days so this really does matter.
Firstly, the original author was referring to the money mentality, not just the growth and dominance of "non-open" software which is quite a different argument indeed.
Secondly, before Bill G. came along, software was really NOT motivated by the ideas that open source espouses today (and likes to claim were espoused at that time). Quite the contrary, most of it was developed by companies for profit to sell or bundle with their own machines. It was about money from the start. The reason it changed from relatively unrestrictive / complimentary / free is because the nature of the industry changed, not because of a real change in mindset. These companies didn't sell the software or protect it as it is today because they simply saw software as a means to sell hardware. In other words, the entire notion of developing software for its own sake really did NOT exist at that time. The nature of the industry allowed for them to do this, or rather, it was more economical to not worry about protecting their intellectual property when the nature of the industry has its own built in protections and when the software was itself relatively trivial.
The point is that you can no more blame (or credit) Bill Gates for this shift than you can for the Moon rising. It was inevitable. As computers became more and more common and accessible and programs became less and less trivial the method for creating, distributing, and protecting the software HAD to change. Bill Gates just had enough wit about him to catch the wave before most others did [My dislike for Bill Gates and Microsoft is for entirely different reasons.]
Firstly, as much as I dislike MS, I hardly see how you can blame MS for this mentality (as you see it).
Secondly, very few universities are indebted to MS. Try backing it up with some facts. I'm certain you'll find that any money MS gives them, in any reasonably arguable form (whether that's free/reduced licensing or what have you), is much less than 1% on average.
Thirdly, you are assuming that anything that is not programming for money == "Open Source." Open source is just one sort of "free" ideology and its not an ideology that everyone happens to agree with. For instance, someone may choose to develop code for a non-profit and/or at a reduced salary since they believe that open source is largely a waste of time. i.e., it's not "all" about the money.
Lastly, the attitude that money is unimportant is generally afforded to the few that have the luxary of not working. Try this when you get out of college and keep it up when you're trying to raise a family, just don't complain to others that it's not fair that you're not making enough money to lead a comfortable life.
That's a shame. They used to be one of the best sports stores in the seattle area for skiing equipment and such. Small world though, heh
No clue, I moved out of Seattle about 10 years ago and haven't been to Northgate in any of my visits.