You might be able to survive, but being able to thrive by any means, means that you need a lot than mere intelligence and modest understanding. Even if your possess all those skills, greater society creates these things for you at such a level of efficiency that you simply take for granted how much effort they would take to create on your lonesome or with a small group of people. Such conveniences, are as a rule, created by large and developed societies, not by small groups of so-called geniuses. Even people 200 and 300 years before, who were far more acquainted with the land, could not just be set down somewhere and make a healthy existence. There are numerous examples of failings like this throughout history.
What separates the men from the boys is experience. I don't care what you say, but merely passing, or even graduating with honors, from any program does not somehow magically confer you the powers of deep understanding. Nor is it true that just because a person is self-taught, that the person cannot have a deep understanding of the subject matter. There simply is no replacement for hard work with the relevant material. I'll readily conceed that taking a particular program can _help_, but it's neither necessary nor is it a guarantee of understanding.
Empirically speaking, I've known people with top grades from the best programs in the country who can't hack their way out of paper bag (or perform other technical tasks). I've also known people that are largely self-taught, but are more capable and committed. There are also numerous counter-examples. Rather than enumerating each and every one, let me just say that you're overgeneralizing. I think your problem is that you confuse the entry level VB-type programmer for all self-taught programmers. This is simply a mistake. That programmer simply has never been exposed to anything more advanced than a couple simple subjects in limited scope. But if the programmer has covered more advanced subjects and written effective code for it, he WILL know his stuff.
If I, as an employer, had my choice between hiring a self-educated programmer with 10 years experience developing operating systems and compilers or a wet behind the ears programmer from any school in the country, everything else bring equal, I'd take the experienced one in a minute. What's more, I suggest to you that virtually any technology that is new and innovative is LARGELY focused around self-education (this is particularly true in engineering). In fact, one of the things that you should have learned in school (but didn't necessarily recieve) is not just about how computers work, but how to teach yourself, how to learn, how to think, discipline, etc.
Well there seems to be a lot of vagueness in terms of defining P2P and lack of clarity in examining it, especially from those who hype it. I am well aware of most applications of it and more traditional applications. However, when someone hypes P2P as being a new and earth shattering thing, they're invariably refering to Napster-like technologies. This VC certainly is.
When it comes to Napster-style applications (insofar as they are "new"), I have very specific doubts, please refer to my reply to one of the other replies to my comments, if you want to hear them. As for the vague notion of P2P that is hyped, I find they're almost always: old applications with buzzwords attached, ill-concieved ideas, or simply undefined.
Let me just briefly hit some of your bullets:
Decentralized -- no single point of failure (in true P2P, things like Napster have a central server that can fail, but Gnutella doesn't)
Well I'd argue with GNutella, every point IS a point of failure, not just a potential one. Where are the practical and feasible applications of a truely decentralized application of this nature?
Distributed -- don't have lots of people all hitting the same resource at the same time.
So what? With bandwidth costs dropping, why bother with such a hokey structure? If repositories like Tucows, mp3.com, various mirrors, and many others can survive, what is the need for it?
More information -- the contributions of each person are added to the network, not just some central server
Again, this sounds great in theory, but what does this mean in reality? First, that same information can be added to a central server, so the argument is largely an economic one. Second, do we really want "information" from people? The simple and brutal fact of the matter is that most people are not artists, are not terribly intelligent, etc, thus I question the value of a decentralized system. There is a large need for filters, to pickout things out value and to reduce the S/N ratio. Centralized techniques take to this much better...
More storage space -- probably Exabytes or Petabytes of storage space available on a large P2P network. Try getting that in one box:)
Again, costs are plummeting. What's more, even though the total amount of storage space may be greater on a widely distributed network, is the value greater (or less)? In other words, how much of the data is going to be redundant? Generally, most of it. How much of the data is going to be of sufficient quality? Very little.
In short, I have lots of questions and doubts, and so many P2P pundits are full of hot air, vague notions, and fuzzy thinking.
I don't think so. I view SETI@home et. al and IMing as simply outside of the scope of the hype. The SETI@Home-type efforts are really not commercialized or something that the average consumer is interested int. And instant messaging is an old concept that has been around for ages. Either way, it's not part of the hype. The hype of focused around Napster-type technologies and/or GNUtella-type technologies, which presumably bring a lot of people _new_ things that they desire.
As for slashdot, that's simply ridiculous. Slashdot is no more P2P than any public forum. The only thing that is P2P about it is that the users, the clients, are generating content, but the same can be said for any number of database applications. It's still the same old client-server technology.
P2P reduces the bandwidth that any one site must have available.
This is true in a way. However, it must be qualified. First, does it _really_ matter? Yes, bandwidth costs money, but if it is properly located and the scale is sufficiently large (which Napster et.al definetely are) it is quite cheap. The bandwidth demand also scales with consumer demand, hence there are generally ways of getting corresponding revenue to pay those costs. (i.e., banner ads, nominal fees, various marketing, promotion, etc.) Witness the success of servives like Tucows, Cdrom, and various mirroring services. They serve out gigabytes per day of relatively obscure stuff, certainly the same could be done with the more condensed demand for popular music (not just "pop", but anything that is popular enough to be signed up with a label and be listened to-- as opposed the thousands of random sharewhare programs and such). Second, Napster's databases are not all that cheap, they are an additional cost that cannot be ignored. Third, the cost of bandwidth is just one element amongst many. One of the biggest problems with Napster, and especially with more P2P oriented services, is that the searching process can be awefully cumbersome, finding the optimal server is often tough, finding quality mp3s is tough, and many other similar issues. If piracy were legitimate, centralized servers could easily solve all of these concerns.
If Napster had to serve all those MP3s it'd never have gotten big.
Then how do you explain the success of centralized techniques that serve up equally large files? If Napster is such an efficient model, why is it that this model is pretty much exclusively confined piracy? From an economic standpoint, you would fully expect the legit methods to flood the so-called P2P technology. It's not as if Napster's technology is that tough to master.
P2P makes sense, but only in a case where there are many things being downloaded and any given user will have some of them.
I really don't think it does, with current applications at least, except in the case of this kind of piracy. Though I've covered this argument above, let me add one other point. Napster is not about cheaper costs on the aggregate, the only way you _might_ say the costs are cheaper is if you count the offsetting of costs to third parties as being nothing. In other words, Napster benefits because a lot of the sharing individuals are on high bandwidth connections and do not have to pay an amount commensurate with the amount of bandwidth they consume. But this does not mean in any way that it is more efficient, just that at present time, the way things are currently configured, it sorta works. The load of the inter and intra-nets are increased relative to highly centralized methods, particularly relative to smart mirroring, hierarchical distribution, and Akamia-like technologies. Rather than downloading one or two hops off of mae-east (in the highly centralized example), you pull from some schmoes college dorm, who could be anywhere in the United States (or worse, the world). That is many more hops, less direct, and does not benefit from the economies of scale. It also depends on the "good will" (if you could call it that) of the file sharer, which I believe might well be limited to ignorance, a certain temporary sense of "community" in the piracy community, and other similar issues.
I'd also like to add that Napster, ethics and law aside, has the benefit of ignoring the issue of value creation and payment, because they're simply not responsible for having to collect or generate revenues. In other words, it's easy not to have banner ads, forms, or what have you, not just because of the different cost structure of Napster's overall bandwidth cost, but because they're not generating these songs that people find of value, nor are they supporting the generation of this value. In essence, it's an artificial, and ultimately temporary, situation. Various parties are paying for Napster's actual costs, a lot of it doesn't have to do with economy of bandwidth and/or storage at all. If Napster were put in the situation of having to actual create value, some of actual revenue creation would be a given. Once that is in place, it is hard to argue that centralized servers' tacking on of nominal bandwidth costs is much of an issue, especially when taken in light of the benefits that more traditional,client-server, technology is capable of bestowing on the user.
Well I'm not terribly into astronomy, so I don't follow sattelite launches much. I have no idea why launching from a submarine would be desirable, so yes, I find it curious. Maybe because there simply are more ICBMs that are available to the public in subs than on land (if any), but everything else being equal, it seems to me, that costs should be lower on land than from a submarine.
The hype around P2P is valid," said Larry Cheng, an associate at venture capital firm Battery Ventures. "It's changing the nature of Internet computing."
Ok guys, I conceed, all the hype around P2P is absolutely valid, not! Sheesh, it was also VCs that pitched eToys.com, ePets.com, Amazon, and many others as being worth billions. Earnings? What do we need earnings for?
Anyone remember when "push" technology was going to be the next big thing? I predict P2P is going to go the same way as push went, mostly out the window with a lot of money chasing after it. Can anyone actually tell me the benefits of P2P, over and above client-server, in actual and real world applications? Sure, we have GNUtella, Napster (sortof), and countless others, but these all basically just exist because piracy is illegal and it's P2Pishness helps skirt the law.
Now I'm not saying that P2P has absolutely no uses, but until someone comes up with a substantial and legitimate use, I see absolutely no reason to believe the hype.
Indeed. You can't say the Unabomber killed anyone, they might have spontaneously exploded even without his bombs being there.
Here we have pretty strong evidence that this is not the case, billions of humans that have never spontaneously exploded. It may not be a perfect expirement, but there is no rational reason to suspect that only his victims (or might he call them penpals?) would have this magical property to them. Likewise, we also have firm evidence that shows he constructed bombs, that his victims were the victims of bombs, etc. Very strong evidence for bombing and no evidence for spontaneous combustion, bad example.
However, you *can* measure correlations. If CD sales go up in the presence of Napster, that's pretty strong evidence Napster isn't destroying the music industry.
Sure, we can measure correlations all day long, but just because we *can* doesn't mean that they're necessarily *evidence* of anything. For instance, I'm certain I can document an inverse correlation between the consumption of icecream and hypothermia. However, this certainly doesn't mean that icecream makes you safer from hypothermia. Nor does it mean that eating icecream is not contributory to hypothermia, as there can be large and PRESENTLY overwhelming influences, such as 90 degree days.
If CD sales go up in the presence of Napster, this could very well be because of the introduction of hit songs and a strong economy (both which were true), despite a strong negative influence (i.e., Napster). What's more, you should remember that Napster was just getting started throughout much of the year, so even if you *know* Napster was harmful, it doesn't mean that it would show up. Nor does it mean that Napster and the precedents that it sets are incapable of doing traumatic damage to the recording industry, especially given the fact that Napster is growing, recordable mediums are becoming cheap and common place, mp3 devices are coming into its own, broadband is coming about, and future technology. There is no reason why other companies (or Napster itself) could not use the legal precedents set while flying high (or low, depending on your point of view) on new technology that delivers better than CD quality mp3s (or like format) to their users on mere whim (with no effort or skill required) in a format that they can actually use on the road, in their car, in their homes, or while exercising.
An apt analogy to the Napster "proof" would be like Henry Ford declaring that his cars do not contribute to global warming because the earth dropped.005 degrees in temperature in the first year or two that he introduced his cars, then going to the logical extreme (which many have gone to with Napster) and saying that cars will never ever be a threat, no matter how many, what type, etc.
That sounds pretty reasonable, until you consider the gigantic and growing p2p piracy system known as the usenet. The advantage of the usenet over the web is the same as napster over client-server systems: by distributing the load among all the participating sites, the aggregate storage and bandwidth available is tremendously larger than any individual pirate could ever contribute. Sure, a big company could buy a lot of bandwidth, but pirates don't have access to those resources.
The Usenet is very hairy, but if copyright were abolished, I don't think it would go away. Same for p2p systems like Napster.
Sorry, but I think you're mistaken. First, Usenet is really not Peer to Peer. In fact, it's less Peer to Peer than virtually every other method of obtaining pirated goods (i.e., IRC, because of DCC and such). I simply don't see what you're referring to there. Second, Usenet is not that efficient the way it's currently configured, many admins have problems with the wasted bandwidth. [The only argument that you might be able to make is that is offsets the actual costs to 3rd parties, but that's hardly an argument for legitimacy]. Third, Usenet's piracy elements are largely the same as Napster's, insofar as its ability to cloud issues of liability. That is why it appears to succeed at piracy, because it is less affected by law than more centralized designs where the admins must conciously put files in place. Lastly, your conclusions simply do not follow from your statements.
You imply that usenet is good because pirates cannot afford or bring the necessary resources to the table. Well obviously, but then it should also follow that when pirates are no longer considered pirates, that the vast demand for a legal product would result in many companies seeking to meet that demand with better alternatives. Think about it for a minute.
When you want to download a piece of shareware/freeware/open source software/whatever, where do you go? Usenet? Napster et. al? Or one of the many centralized and maintained servers? Look at the success of sites like Tucows, Cdrom.com, etc. Why would anyone want to put up with all the inadequacies of either Napster or Usenet when they can save time and effort by downloading a verifiable copy of software (or music/videos) from a legitimate source? What's more, empirically speaking, if Usenet and the like are so efficient, why aren't there any substantial and legitimate downloads on them? In almost every case, the traditional client server method is preferred. Lately we're seeing technologies such as Akamia (sic?) that do a good job of distributing highly demanded downloads across the internet in an efficient and speedy manner, even more reason not to use P2p.
I just don't buy it. I can't say that P2P will never have a use, but most of the hyped software that supposedly employs it is either silly or illegal--hardly proof of its worth. Also, let me head off an argument that you might make, sometimes we do find certain legitimate downloads are more available using P2P-type systems (because the servers are at excess capacity), but there are generally rare and brief. They tend to happen when demand scales so rapidly that the distributors do not have time to scale. It may be true that some P2P systems do not have this problem, because as demand goes up, so does the replication in a suffiently corresponding amount. But whenever there is a sustained or predictable demand for something, there is almost always a financial incentive to meet the demand (i.e., grow). Once that has happened, P2P is relatively worthless. In other words, on the aggregate, P2P does not hold up against the more established and beter monied methods.
In my opinion, one need look no further than where and how the monied and legitimate downloads are occuring. It's capitalism in action. It may not be perfect, but it's generally quite efficient. Even when the reasons for the state of things is not immediately apparent, there are often underlying issues that reveal themselves when you re-examine them. The piracy community does not fully enjoy the benefits of capitalism (nor should it). Because it is illegal to pirate goods, it's damn hard to setup a central server and cover your costs (never mind make money). Because legal goods fully enjoy capitalism, they tend to use the more efficient methods (e.g., servers). When there are legitimate and substantial uses for P2P in its current form, then you might say that there is proof that it's worthwhile, but until then it's just a theory.
Monopoly generally means that only one company, distinct entity, or individual controls an industry. RIAA is an organization that is comprised of a handful of companies, to represent their common interests. These common interests needn't have anything to do with furthering their control of the industry; they can, and do, have something to do with preventing things like piracy, regulation, legislation, etc. The existence of RIAA and the fact their their companies control 90% of the industry does not, in and of itself, mean they are are a monopoly. Now if RIAA was some sort of conspiracy, where they routinely conspired to fix prices and keep competition out, the most you might call them is an oligopoly.
In any event, if you call RIAA a monopoly, then you should definetely call any number of unions monopolies too, especially because they explicitly set out to exercise control over any number of industries and services. In other words, it's quite common place for an industry to be 95% unionized. They often use these controls to fix wages and prices. Even though each person is distinct, the union, the entity, controls 95% of the industry in question. So by your definition, this is a monopoly.
I agree. I've been saying that for a long time. The only aspect of P2P that is worth mentioning in Napster's case, is in the way it clouds the issue of liability for both Napster and the sharers, ethics aside. Put simply, if we were to do away with copyright tomorrow, music "sharing" (piracy) services would surely revert back to client-server architecture, as it's a more efficient, more reliable, easier to use, and easier to maintain design.
Of course, I still have doubts about the long term success of mp3.com and like ventures, but those same arguments would apply every bit as much to Napster-like technologies. I believe people over-emphasize the "distribution" elements of the music industry. In other words, there is a lot more than merely recording and distributing music, the only issues that mp3.com (and its user) seems to pay substantial attention to. Even if we assume the music on mp3.com is of equal or greater quality to what is popular today, there is still a large void between the independent artists of today and the masses that popular music draws on. Marketing and promotion is how the artist crosses the void between obscurity (having to work a day job) and popularity (doing it full time), unfortunately, both cost a lot of money to do at the required levels. The only way the artist and/or the industry can recoup their costs is by making a hit, that sells millions of records. Not every record that is marketed (ignoring the other costs) is going to be a hit, only a percentage of them can be. In short, what results is the need for capital that is willing to be risked and know-how. Today, this comprises the much reviled industry that RIAA represents.
Whether distribution is online or on land is practically irrelevant to the industry (ignoring the potential for piracy), as it's a relatively small percentage of their costs. Everything else being equal, if a client-server technology were to replace the retail stores that sell today, their costs would certainly drop. However, those costs are just a small fraction. Air time would still need to be bought. Promotion would still be necesary. Is it possible that a few of the players might change? Sure. But their fundamental nature would be much the same. The people that take the brunt of the risk, the labels, would still have to demand the lionshare of the profits. In short, the most artists will only see a slice of what they sell. There is life.
I see slashdot as a place for casual arguments and conversation (hence the use of colloquial language) . My spending time worrying about my grammar or proof reading would simply be time poorly spent. Because the vast majority of slashdot users couldn't give a hoot and because my occasional typos, grammar slipups, and use of colloquial language rarely interferes with the average users ability or acceptance of my writings, I simply see no substantial benefit to putting the time in.
You confuse laziness with economy of time and energy. I am not lazy, this is demonstratively true, because my schedules allow me very little, if any, free time. Laziness implies that I am so irrational, as to be unwilling to exert energy when I would be better served by expending it; it does not imply that one should spent countless energy for no good reason. Grammatically, I am not lazy. When it serves my purposes, I will use proper English. I do not see a convincing argument for using it. I challenge you to give me one.
We humans do not expend energy merely because we can. When we humans expend calories, or work, it is because we have a reason. When you work, you work for any number of reasons. Some common reasons are: money, pleasure, honor, purpose, ennoblement, respect, and so on. Likewise, we humans do not exercise just because we can, we exercise because it makes us healthier or gives us enjoyment. The point is that if a person is to do something, that person needs to be conferred some benefit that is greater than the cost.
Give me a benefit that, I must agree, exceeds the additional time it would take me to care about the technical aspects of my writing (the cost), and you might call my lazy with certainty. To head you off, no, I would not say that mildly annoying 2 out of however many thousands of slashdot users is a compelling argument. The very fact that Jon Katz and others can make sport out of butchering the English language, while still maintaining slashdot's size is clear and convincing evidence that most users do not care enough to provide a significant reason.
In further explication, we all appear to largely share the same view point. The only issue, as I see it, is one of semantics. When he mentions the "nominal 'free thinking radical'", the only thing that I assume he is necessarily conveying is an image of appearances, not thought process. It says little to nothing about how one ACTUALLY thinks in my opinion. In other words, he is not saying that one can be free thinking and conformist at the same time. Thus, your contradiction made little sense to me.
The "approach" issue appears to be another argument entirely, not relevant to that one statement.
Its and it's are not interchangable words. What's more, the misuse of such a common word annoys me and others. Clearly if you care about grammar and are incapable of using the correct word, you're either irrational or suffered from a poor education.
Word to the wise, those in glass houses should not throw stones. Especially when you've got about 50 of them for me to target;)
First, I really put very little thought into writing proper English on slashdot. I don't proof read for it here. The only thing I care about is whether or not I'm conveying my message clearly. When the grammar is so poor as to make that difficult, then I care.
Second, you, and the vast majority of other users, know exactly what I meant.
Third, irregardless is a word, albeit a colloqial and not entirely accepted word. Please refer to Merriam-Webster's dictionary if you do not believe me. That is, incidentally, a little more than just "any" online dictionary, even if it is not quite OED. If you're reading slashdot, you're clearly more than willing and capable of reading broken english, never mind broken thought processes.
Fourth, I am more than capable of writing proper english when I so desire.
Fifth, if you're going to be a grammar nazi, please do yourself a favor and learn to spell grammar properly. Otherwise, the egg ends up on your face, not on your victim's face. Your comment is riddled with other flaws too. For instance, "meant" is the past participle and past tense of "mean", it simply does not fit in that sentence of yours.
I don't get what you don't get. They are LOSING money hand over fist. Now maybe they only lost a wee bit more than they anticipate, but companies simply cannot keep on losing money. In other words, the accuracy of these _public_ predictionals are not necessarily terribly relevant, there are other more important factors that you're ignoring. Such as, they also predicted that they're not going to be profitable till October 2002, 9 months later than what they first declared. This means that they may very well run out of cash before that point. The situation might well demand that they cut staff to even survive. What's more, they're predicting that their revenues may actually fall.
First, the traditional work environment does allow for lay offs. Layoffs are expected whenever the numbers are not working out, especially when their are negative cash flows. In fact, most shareholders would consider management remiss in their duty if they did not.
Second, VA Linux is not profitable and they have negative cash flows. Put bluntly, the shareholders money is paying for virtually all of the employees salaries. Irregardless of how much cash or assets they currently have on hand, they are finite. They depend on the shareholder, if they neglect them they will die.
Third, unions cannot stop this from happening. These kinds of cuts are not about mere profitability, it's about survival.
Fourth, the IT industry needs unions like it needs a bullet in the head. Unions have been shown to slow companies down, reduce customer service, innovation, etc. time and time again. Although there are a few rare exceptions, these are mostly with neutered unions, in very friendly environments.
Not true. From all *appearances* they can be considered just as conformist, but that would only be taking outside circumstances into account. Internally, the reasoning process itself is non conformist. It's a different approach, not necessarily a different appearance.
Umm, I disagree. First, you misread what the original poster said. Nominal "free-thinking radicals" can be just as conformist.... The key word is can. A person can dress differently then 90% of society, but be even more of a conformist with his 10% minority. Just because a person dresses a certain way doesn't mean you can necessarily make an assuption one way or the other.
You, on the other hand, appear to be asserting that their appearance necessarily implies that they are less conformist than the rest of society. For instance, you say "Internally, the reasoning process itself is non conformist". Perhaps you mean to say "can be non conformist". In any event, your words are simply wrong.
It's been my experience that a large number of these rebellious-types are some of the least intellectually flexible, most conformist (within their little niches) of the lot. Just as a "normal" member of a society can be indoctrinated by propaganda and tradition, so can the "rebels". What often makes them worse, in my opinion, is that the so-called rebels have so little to cling to, that they grasp violently for what little they do have, their own group, which is that much smaller and less capable of broadening its horizons.
Almost all of which have a culture of authoritarianism. Though they may not live by a schedule, discipline is most certainly instilled in them in spades.
Art is art in the eye of the beholder. Art is certainly very subjective, but just because art is subjective does not mean that anything can fly under the banner of subjectivity, free from any morality. I do agree with the previous poster, insofar as I agree that there are a large number of hacks out there today, that cater more to what is regarded as being "modern", then what either THEY (in my opinion) or the greater PUBLIC (well established) care about. I question the legitimacy of a group of select people that, at worst, appeal just to themselves and, at best, to a select group of so-called artistic elites.
Even if all of these so-called artists actually _believe_ in what they do, if being an artist is just about pleasing oneself, then what makes the artist any more noble than the guy that literally jerks off all day long? Or the rich playboy? Or what have you...
This is not to say that I, or any other individual, can sit back and declare decisively what is and what is not art. Rather, it is a legitimate question, designed to make those self-described "artists" question themselves.
Yeah, totally agree. The combination of the relative smallness of the feature set, combined with better design and better documentation (i love the way how 99% of all the documentation that you need is contained in one easy to search pdf) makes it a joy to work with, at least once you've fully experienced the "joys" of writing similar event driven GUI apps under windowsXX.
And nor does the average user, and therein lies the rub. As long as the interests behind RIAA are smarter than the vast majority of users (they are) you can be quite sure that RIAA will stop rappant piracy. You can say "But but there's always ", normally it's ftp, usenet, etc? The simple fact of the matter that most users don't have the time, the energy, or the intelligence to figure them out. The only reason that piracy has been as popular as it has been is because Napster lowered the bar suffiently low, it brought fast and easy piracy within the reach of a few keystrokes and mouse clicks.
Slashdot Mirror
You might be able to survive, but being able to thrive by any means, means that you need a lot than mere intelligence and modest understanding. Even if your possess all those skills, greater society creates these things for you at such a level of efficiency that you simply take for granted how much effort they would take to create on your lonesome or with a small group of people. Such conveniences, are as a rule, created by large and developed societies, not by small groups of so-called geniuses. Even people 200 and 300 years before, who were far more acquainted with the land, could not just be set down somewhere and make a healthy existence. There are numerous examples of failings like this throughout history.
What separates the men from the boys is experience. I don't care what you say, but merely passing, or even graduating with honors, from any program does not somehow magically confer you the powers of deep understanding. Nor is it true that just because a person is self-taught, that the person cannot have a deep understanding of the subject matter. There simply is no replacement for hard work with the relevant material. I'll readily conceed that taking a particular program can _help_, but it's neither necessary nor is it a guarantee of understanding.
Empirically speaking, I've known people with top grades from the best programs in the country who can't hack their way out of paper bag (or perform other technical tasks). I've also known people that are largely self-taught, but are more capable and committed. There are also numerous counter-examples. Rather than enumerating each and every one, let me just say that you're overgeneralizing. I think your problem is that you confuse the entry level VB-type programmer for all self-taught programmers. This is simply a mistake. That programmer simply has never been exposed to anything more advanced than a couple simple subjects in limited scope. But if the programmer has covered more advanced subjects and written effective code for it, he WILL know his stuff.
If I, as an employer, had my choice between hiring a self-educated programmer with 10 years experience developing operating systems and compilers or a wet behind the ears programmer from any school in the country, everything else bring equal, I'd take the experienced one in a minute. What's more, I suggest to you that virtually any technology that is new and innovative is LARGELY focused around self-education (this is particularly true in engineering). In fact, one of the things that you should have learned in school (but didn't necessarily recieve) is not just about how computers work, but how to teach yourself, how to learn, how to think, discipline, etc.
When it comes to Napster-style applications (insofar as they are "new"), I have very specific doubts, please refer to my reply to one of the other replies to my comments, if you want to hear them. As for the vague notion of P2P that is hyped, I find they're almost always: old applications with buzzwords attached, ill-concieved ideas, or simply undefined.
Let me just briefly hit some of your bullets:
Well I'd argue with GNutella, every point IS a point of failure, not just a potential one. Where are the practical and feasible applications of a truely decentralized application of this nature?
So what? With bandwidth costs dropping, why bother with such a hokey structure? If repositories like Tucows, mp3.com, various mirrors, and many others can survive, what is the need for it?
Again, this sounds great in theory, but what does this mean in reality? First, that same information can be added to a central server, so the argument is largely an economic one. Second, do we really want "information" from people? The simple and brutal fact of the matter is that most people are not artists, are not terribly intelligent, etc, thus I question the value of a decentralized system. There is a large need for filters, to pickout things out value and to reduce the S/N ratio. Centralized techniques take to this much better...
Again, costs are plummeting. What's more, even though the total amount of storage space may be greater on a widely distributed network, is the value greater (or less)? In other words, how much of the data is going to be redundant? Generally, most of it. How much of the data is going to be of sufficient quality? Very little.
In short, I have lots of questions and doubts, and so many P2P pundits are full of hot air, vague notions, and fuzzy thinking.
I don't think so. I view SETI@home et. al and IMing as simply outside of the scope of the hype. The SETI@Home-type efforts are really not commercialized or something that the average consumer is interested int. And instant messaging is an old concept that has been around for ages. Either way, it's not part of the hype. The hype of focused around Napster-type technologies and/or GNUtella-type technologies, which presumably bring a lot of people _new_ things that they desire.
As for slashdot, that's simply ridiculous. Slashdot is no more P2P than any public forum. The only thing that is P2P about it is that the users, the clients, are generating content, but the same can be said for any number of database applications. It's still the same old client-server technology.
Then how do you explain the success of centralized techniques that serve up equally large files? If Napster is such an efficient model, why is it that this model is pretty much exclusively confined piracy? From an economic standpoint, you would fully expect the legit methods to flood the so-called P2P technology. It's not as if Napster's technology is that tough to master.
I really don't think it does, with current applications at least, except in the case of this kind of piracy. Though I've covered this argument above, let me add one other point. Napster is not about cheaper costs on the aggregate, the only way you _might_ say the costs are cheaper is if you count the offsetting of costs to third parties as being nothing. In other words, Napster benefits because a lot of the sharing individuals are on high bandwidth connections and do not have to pay an amount commensurate with the amount of bandwidth they consume. But this does not mean in any way that it is more efficient, just that at present time, the way things are currently configured, it sorta works. The load of the inter and intra-nets are increased relative to highly centralized methods, particularly relative to smart mirroring, hierarchical distribution, and Akamia-like technologies. Rather than downloading one or two hops off of mae-east (in the highly centralized example), you pull from some schmoes college dorm, who could be anywhere in the United States (or worse, the world). That is many more hops, less direct, and does not benefit from the economies of scale. It also depends on the "good will" (if you could call it that) of the file sharer, which I believe might well be limited to ignorance, a certain temporary sense of "community" in the piracy community, and other similar issues.
I'd also like to add that Napster, ethics and law aside, has the benefit of ignoring the issue of value creation and payment, because they're simply not responsible for having to collect or generate revenues. In other words, it's easy not to have banner ads, forms, or what have you, not just because of the different cost structure of Napster's overall bandwidth cost, but because they're not generating these songs that people find of value, nor are they supporting the generation of this value. In essence, it's an artificial, and ultimately temporary, situation. Various parties are paying for Napster's actual costs, a lot of it doesn't have to do with economy of bandwidth and/or storage at all. If Napster were put in the situation of having to actual create value, some of actual revenue creation would be a given. Once that is in place, it is hard to argue that centralized servers' tacking on of nominal bandwidth costs is much of an issue, especially when taken in light of the benefits that more traditional,client-server, technology is capable of bestowing on the user.
Well I'm not terribly into astronomy, so I don't follow sattelite launches much. I have no idea why launching from a submarine would be desirable, so yes, I find it curious. Maybe because there simply are more ICBMs that are available to the public in subs than on land (if any), but everything else being equal, it seems to me, that costs should be lower on land than from a submarine.
Anyone remember when "push" technology was going to be the next big thing? I predict P2P is going to go the same way as push went, mostly out the window with a lot of money chasing after it. Can anyone actually tell me the benefits of P2P, over and above client-server, in actual and real world applications? Sure, we have GNUtella, Napster (sortof), and countless others, but these all basically just exist because piracy is illegal and it's P2Pishness helps skirt the law.
Now I'm not saying that P2P has absolutely no uses, but until someone comes up with a substantial and legitimate use, I see absolutely no reason to believe the hype.
Sure, we can measure correlations all day long, but just because we *can* doesn't mean that they're necessarily *evidence* of anything. For instance, I'm certain I can document an inverse correlation between the consumption of icecream and hypothermia. However, this certainly doesn't mean that icecream makes you safer from hypothermia. Nor does it mean that eating icecream is not contributory to hypothermia, as there can be large and PRESENTLY overwhelming influences, such as 90 degree days.
If CD sales go up in the presence of Napster, this could very well be because of the introduction of hit songs and a strong economy (both which were true), despite a strong negative influence (i.e., Napster). What's more, you should remember that Napster was just getting started throughout much of the year, so even if you *know* Napster was harmful, it doesn't mean that it would show up. Nor does it mean that Napster and the precedents that it sets are incapable of doing traumatic damage to the recording industry, especially given the fact that Napster is growing, recordable mediums are becoming cheap and common place, mp3 devices are coming into its own, broadband is coming about, and future technology. There is no reason why other companies (or Napster itself) could not use the legal precedents set while flying high (or low, depending on your point of view) on new technology that delivers better than CD quality mp3s (or like format) to their users on mere whim (with no effort or skill required) in a format that they can actually use on the road, in their car, in their homes, or while exercising.
An apt analogy to the Napster "proof" would be like Henry Ford declaring that his cars do not contribute to global warming because the earth dropped
You imply that usenet is good because pirates cannot afford or bring the necessary resources to the table. Well obviously, but then it should also follow that when pirates are no longer considered pirates, that the vast demand for a legal product would result in many companies seeking to meet that demand with better alternatives. Think about it for a minute.
When you want to download a piece of shareware/freeware/open source software/whatever, where do you go? Usenet? Napster et. al? Or one of the many centralized and maintained servers? Look at the success of sites like Tucows, Cdrom.com, etc. Why would anyone want to put up with all the inadequacies of either Napster or Usenet when they can save time and effort by downloading a verifiable copy of software (or music/videos) from a legitimate source? What's more, empirically speaking, if Usenet and the like are so efficient, why aren't there any substantial and legitimate downloads on them? In almost every case, the traditional client server method is preferred. Lately we're seeing technologies such as Akamia (sic?) that do a good job of distributing highly demanded downloads across the internet in an efficient and speedy manner, even more reason not to use P2p.
I just don't buy it. I can't say that P2P will never have a use, but most of the hyped software that supposedly employs it is either silly or illegal--hardly proof of its worth. Also, let me head off an argument that you might make, sometimes we do find certain legitimate downloads are more available using P2P-type systems (because the servers are at excess capacity), but there are generally rare and brief. They tend to happen when demand scales so rapidly that the distributors do not have time to scale. It may be true that some P2P systems do not have this problem, because as demand goes up, so does the replication in a suffiently corresponding amount. But whenever there is a sustained or predictable demand for something, there is almost always a financial incentive to meet the demand (i.e., grow). Once that has happened, P2P is relatively worthless. In other words, on the aggregate, P2P does not hold up against the more established and beter monied methods.
In my opinion, one need look no further than where and how the monied and legitimate downloads are occuring. It's capitalism in action. It may not be perfect, but it's generally quite efficient. Even when the reasons for the state of things is not immediately apparent, there are often underlying issues that reveal themselves when you re-examine them. The piracy community does not fully enjoy the benefits of capitalism (nor should it). Because it is illegal to pirate goods, it's damn hard to setup a central server and cover your costs (never mind make money). Because legal goods fully enjoy capitalism, they tend to use the more efficient methods (e.g., servers). When there are legitimate and substantial uses for P2P in its current form, then you might say that there is proof that it's worthwhile, but until then it's just a theory.
Monopoly generally means that only one company, distinct entity, or individual controls an industry. RIAA is an organization that is comprised of a handful of companies, to represent their common interests. These common interests needn't have anything to do with furthering their control of the industry; they can, and do, have something to do with preventing things like piracy, regulation, legislation, etc. The existence of RIAA and the fact their their companies control 90% of the industry does not, in and of itself, mean they are are a monopoly. Now if RIAA was some sort of conspiracy, where they routinely conspired to fix prices and keep competition out, the most you might call them is an oligopoly.
In any event, if you call RIAA a monopoly, then you should definetely call any number of unions monopolies too, especially because they explicitly set out to exercise control over any number of industries and services. In other words, it's quite common place for an industry to be 95% unionized. They often use these controls to fix wages and prices. Even though each person is distinct, the union, the entity, controls 95% of the industry in question. So by your definition, this is a monopoly.
I agree. I've been saying that for a long time. The only aspect of P2P that is worth mentioning in Napster's case, is in the way it clouds the issue of liability for both Napster and the sharers, ethics aside. Put simply, if we were to do away with copyright tomorrow, music "sharing" (piracy) services would surely revert back to client-server architecture, as it's a more efficient, more reliable, easier to use, and easier to maintain design.
Of course, I still have doubts about the long term success of mp3.com and like ventures, but those same arguments would apply every bit as much to Napster-like technologies. I believe people over-emphasize the "distribution" elements of the music industry. In other words, there is a lot more than merely recording and distributing music, the only issues that mp3.com (and its user) seems to pay substantial attention to. Even if we assume the music on mp3.com is of equal or greater quality to what is popular today, there is still a large void between the independent artists of today and the masses that popular music draws on. Marketing and promotion is how the artist crosses the void between obscurity (having to work a day job) and popularity (doing it full time), unfortunately, both cost a lot of money to do at the required levels. The only way the artist and/or the industry can recoup their costs is by making a hit, that sells millions of records. Not every record that is marketed (ignoring the other costs) is going to be a hit, only a percentage of them can be. In short, what results is the need for capital that is willing to be risked and know-how. Today, this comprises the much reviled industry that RIAA represents.
Whether distribution is online or on land is practically irrelevant to the industry (ignoring the potential for piracy), as it's a relatively small percentage of their costs. Everything else being equal, if a client-server technology were to replace the retail stores that sell today, their costs would certainly drop. However, those costs are just a small fraction. Air time would still need to be bought. Promotion would still be necesary. Is it possible that a few of the players might change? Sure. But their fundamental nature would be much the same. The people that take the brunt of the risk, the labels, would still have to demand the lionshare of the profits. In short, the most artists will only see a slice of what they sell. There is life.
had to say it. ;)
Yeah, sometimes employees must be LITERALLY sacrificed for the greater good. MMMMmmmmm, Leg stew. ;)
I see slashdot as a place for casual arguments and conversation (hence the use of colloquial language) . My spending time worrying about my grammar or proof reading would simply be time poorly spent. Because the vast majority of slashdot users couldn't give a hoot and because my occasional typos, grammar slipups, and use of colloquial language rarely interferes with the average users ability or acceptance of my writings, I simply see no substantial benefit to putting the time in.
You confuse laziness with economy of time and energy. I am not lazy, this is demonstratively true, because my schedules allow me very little, if any, free time. Laziness implies that I am so irrational, as to be unwilling to exert energy when I would be better served by expending it; it does not imply that one should spent countless energy for no good reason. Grammatically, I am not lazy. When it serves my purposes, I will use proper English. I do not see a convincing argument for using it. I challenge you to give me one.
We humans do not expend energy merely because we can. When we humans expend calories, or work, it is because we have a reason. When you work, you work for any number of reasons. Some common reasons are: money, pleasure, honor, purpose, ennoblement, respect, and so on. Likewise, we humans do not exercise just because we can, we exercise because it makes us healthier or gives us enjoyment. The point is that if a person is to do something, that person needs to be conferred some benefit that is greater than the cost.
Give me a benefit that, I must agree, exceeds the additional time it would take me to care about the technical aspects of my writing (the cost), and you might call my lazy with certainty. To head you off, no, I would not say that mildly annoying 2 out of however many thousands of slashdot users is a compelling argument. The very fact that Jon Katz and others can make sport out of butchering the English language, while still maintaining slashdot's size is clear and convincing evidence that most users do not care enough to provide a significant reason.
In further explication, we all appear to largely share the same view point. The only issue, as I see it, is one of semantics. When he mentions the "nominal 'free thinking radical'", the only thing that I assume he is necessarily conveying is an image of appearances, not thought process. It says little to nothing about how one ACTUALLY thinks in my opinion. In other words, he is not saying that one can be free thinking and conformist at the same time. Thus, your contradiction made little sense to me.
The "approach" issue appears to be another argument entirely, not relevant to that one statement.
Its and it's are not interchangable words. What's more, the misuse of such a common word annoys me and others. Clearly if you care about grammar and are incapable of using the correct word, you're either irrational or suffered from a poor education.
;)
Word to the wise, those in glass houses should not throw stones. Especially when you've got about 50 of them for me to target
First, I really put very little thought into writing proper English on slashdot. I don't proof read for it here. The only thing I care about is whether or not I'm conveying my message clearly. When the grammar is so poor as to make that difficult, then I care.
Second, you, and the vast majority of other users, know exactly what I meant.
Third, irregardless is a word, albeit a colloqial and not entirely accepted word. Please refer to Merriam-Webster's dictionary if you do not believe me. That is, incidentally, a little more than just "any" online dictionary, even if it is not quite OED. If you're reading slashdot, you're clearly more than willing and capable of reading broken english, never mind broken thought processes.
Fourth, I am more than capable of writing proper english when I so desire.
Fifth, if you're going to be a grammar nazi, please do yourself a favor and learn to spell grammar properly. Otherwise, the egg ends up on your face, not on your victim's face. Your comment is riddled with other flaws too. For instance, "meant" is the past participle and past tense of "mean", it simply does not fit in that sentence of yours.
QED
I don't get what you don't get. They are LOSING money hand over fist. Now maybe they only lost a wee bit more than they anticipate, but companies simply cannot keep on losing money. In other words, the accuracy of these _public_ predictionals are not necessarily terribly relevant, there are other more important factors that you're ignoring. Such as, they also predicted that they're not going to be profitable till October 2002, 9 months later than what they first declared. This means that they may very well run out of cash before that point. The situation might well demand that they cut staff to even survive. What's more, they're predicting that their revenues may actually fall.
/me manually puts bullet in head.
First, the traditional work environment does allow for lay offs. Layoffs are expected whenever the numbers are not working out, especially when their are negative cash flows. In fact, most shareholders would consider management remiss in their duty if they did not.
Second, VA Linux is not profitable and they have negative cash flows. Put bluntly, the shareholders money is paying for virtually all of the employees salaries. Irregardless of how much cash or assets they currently have on hand, they are finite. They depend on the shareholder, if they neglect them they will die.
Third, unions cannot stop this from happening. These kinds of cuts are not about mere profitability, it's about survival.
Fourth, the IT industry needs unions like it needs a bullet in the head. Unions have been shown to slow companies down, reduce customer service, innovation, etc. time and time again. Although there are a few rare exceptions, these are mostly with neutered unions, in very friendly environments.
You, on the other hand, appear to be asserting that their appearance necessarily implies that they are less conformist than the rest of society. For instance, you say "Internally, the reasoning process itself is non conformist". Perhaps you mean to say "can be non conformist". In any event, your words are simply wrong.
It's been my experience that a large number of these rebellious-types are some of the least intellectually flexible, most conformist (within their little niches) of the lot. Just as a "normal" member of a society can be indoctrinated by propaganda and tradition, so can the "rebels". What often makes them worse, in my opinion, is that the so-called rebels have so little to cling to, that they grasp violently for what little they do have, their own group, which is that much smaller and less capable of broadening its horizons.
Almost all of which have a culture of authoritarianism. Though they may not live by a schedule, discipline is most certainly instilled in them in spades.
Art is art in the eye of the beholder. Art is certainly very subjective, but just because art is subjective does not mean that anything can fly under the banner of subjectivity, free from any morality. I do agree with the previous poster, insofar as I agree that there are a large number of hacks out there today, that cater more to what is regarded as being "modern", then what either THEY (in my opinion) or the greater PUBLIC (well established) care about. I question the legitimacy of a group of select people that, at worst, appeal just to themselves and, at best, to a select group of so-called artistic elites.
Even if all of these so-called artists actually _believe_ in what they do, if being an artist is just about pleasing oneself, then what makes the artist any more noble than the guy that literally jerks off all day long? Or the rich playboy? Or what have you...
This is not to say that I, or any other individual, can sit back and declare decisively what is and what is not art. Rather, it is a legitimate question, designed to make those self-described "artists" question themselves.
Yeah, totally agree. The combination of the relative smallness of the feature set, combined with better design and better documentation (i love the way how 99% of all the documentation that you need is contained in one easy to search pdf) makes it a joy to work with, at least once you've fully experienced the "joys" of writing similar event driven GUI apps under windowsXX.
And nor does the average user, and therein lies the rub. As long as the interests behind RIAA are smarter than the vast majority of users (they are) you can be quite sure that RIAA will stop rappant piracy. You can say "But but there's always ", normally it's ftp, usenet, etc? The simple fact of the matter that most users don't have the time, the energy, or the intelligence to figure them out. The only reason that piracy has been as popular as it has been is because Napster lowered the bar suffiently low, it brought fast and easy piracy within the reach of a few keystrokes and mouse clicks.