Once Sun's source code is out there (but not free to use), Sun will be able to claim that an independent implementation of a Sun feature is a ripoff of Sun's source. That is, Sun's release of source code could contaminate everyone and make an independent, parallel "clean room" implementation impossible.
Worst case, Sun could gain standing to sue Linux distributors and the Free Software Foundation merely by finding something in a GPL'd product that is similar to Sun's version. Even an unwinnable suit could do great damage.
PLEASE READ John Schulien's second point in his long post above (jms). Thank you, sir, for the enlightening essay.
I thought of this contamination problem, but before posting I read through the earlier comments to see if I had been anticipated. Sure enough, one of our fellow Slashdotters has nailed it perfectly.
I can still remember what we had to recite every day in sixth grade Spanish class:
Prometo lealtad a la bandera de los Estados Unidos de America, y al la republica que ella representa, una nacion, baja Dios, con libertad y justicia para todos.
Glory and Failure: The Difference Engines of Johann Muller, Charles Babbage, and Georg and Edvard Scheutz (History of Computing) by Michael Lindgren, Craig G. McKay (translator) (1990)
Atanasoff: Forgotten Father of the Computer by Clark R. Mollenhoff
The First Electronic Computer: The Atanasoff Story by Alice R. & Arthur W. Burks (1989)
Before the Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand and the Industry They Created, 1885-1956 by James W. Cortada (1993)
Building IBM: Shaping an Industry and Its Technology by Emerson W. Pugh (1995)
Computer: A History of the Information Machine by Martin Campbell-Kelly & Wm. Aspray (1997)
The Computer Comes of Age by Rene Moreau (1986)
The Computer from Pascal to Von Neumann by Herman H. Goldstine (reprinted 1993)
John Von Neuman and the Origins of Modern Computing by William Aspray (1991)
Engines of the Mind: The Evolution of the Computer from Mainframes to Microprocessors by Joel N. Shurkin (1996)
ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer by Scott McCartney (1999)
From Memex to Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the Mind's Machines by James M. Nyce, Paul Kahn (eds.) & Vannevar Bush (1992)
Great Men and Women of Computing by Donald D. Spencer (2nd ed. 1999)
A History of Computing Technology by Michael R. Williams (2nd ed. 1997)
A History of Modern Computing by Paul E. Ceruzzi (1998)
History of Personal Workstations by Adele Goldberg (ed.) (1988)
History of Scientific Computing by Stephen G. Nash (ed.) (1990)
Leo: The Incredible Story of the World's First Business Computer by David Caminer (ed.) (1997)
Makin' Numbers: Howark Aiken and the Computer by I. Bernard Cohen (ed.) (1999)
Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists by Cathy A. Lazere, Dennis Elliott Shasha (1998)
Remembering the Future: Interviews From Personal Computing World by Wendy M. Grossman (1997)
The Timetable of Computers: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in the History of Computers by Donald D. Spencer (2nd ed. 1999)
Transforming Computer Technology: Information Processing for the Pentagon 1962-1986 by Arthur L. Nordberg, Judy E. O'Neill, & Kerry Freedman (1996)
Turing and the Computer: The Big Idea by Paul Strathem (1999)
When Computers Went to Sea: The Digitization of the United States Navy by David L. Boslaugh (1999)
Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron's Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer by Betty A. Toole (ed.) (1998)
A.M. Turing's ACE Report of 1946 and Other Papers (Charles Babbage Institute Reprint Series for the History of Computing, Vol. 10) by Alan Turing, et al. (1986)
A Bibliographic Guide to the History of Computing, Computers, and the Information Processing Industry by James W. Cortada (1990)
A Bibliographic Guide to Computer Applications, 1950-1990 by James W. Cortada (1996)
Business Builders in Computers by Nathan Aeseng (1999)
Looks like they've been swallowed up by the notoriously Linux-unfriendly Creative Labs.
I just looked for the Ensoniq card at Shopper.com and it came up as Creative Labs Ensoniq Audio PCI sound card. Three places have it in stock for $15 or less.
Checked the Ensoniq.com site and they "are now the OEM business unit of Creative Labs"..."we will continue to provide web based support to those end customers who purchased Ensoniq soundcards directly from Ensoniq. (at least for the next few months until Creative's customer service department is trained on the product)."
The site has Windows drivers for the "Ensoniq Audio PCI card", and a warning that they won't work with the "Creative Labs Ensoniq Audio PCI card".
Thanks for that link to the interview with Carl Sassenrath, the designer of the Amiga OS. You made my day, DBMandrake.
The Amiga hardware and system software were thoughtfully designed and powerful, but the quality didn't stop there. You could get books that explained everything in detail- down to the schematics and subroutines. What a difference from the "Ignorance Is Cool" culture of the Mac!
About 15 years ago I read about a commercial satellite-launching company that wanted to provide the initial acceleration through buoyancy. They proposed to extend the rocket shell below the engines and drop the rocket (upright) 100 meters down into the ocean (near the equator). To launch, they would blow air into this bottom chamber and FLOAT the rocket to the surface. When it emerged, the bottom tube would be jettisoned and the engines ignited.
"Medication" is more interesting. I am a student of propaganda and I have noticed that through the 90's, there has been a segregation movement going on here. The term "drug" has been shunned by the medical industry; replaced by "medication".
"Drug" is becoming ghettoized to mean "illegal drug". Furthermore, instead of referring to a specific illegal drug, the tendency now is to conflate narcotics, stimulants, and cannabis into the generic term of opprobrium, "drugs".
This category error serves the promoters of the War on Drugs by hyping up the problem. Instead of a few thousand users of heroin and speed, and 20 million cannabis smokers, you now have 20 million "drug users". This helps sell the budget ($17 billion this year in the U.S.).
Funny you should mention Shakespeare, dilettante. A couple days ago I saw a guy touting his new book on a talk show, and he was a REAL dilettante. I recognized him from his frequent appearances during the Reagan administration, which he served as head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He used to come on TV and say that Congress should support our policy, because it was a good policy, it was a strong policy, we've worked very hard on this policy, all loyal Americans support this policy, etc. He would appear at congressional hearings and go on like this. Total contentless airhead. His name is Kenneth Adelman. Had a batchelor's degree in religion. No apparent qualifications for the job except loyalty to the chief. Evidently a consummate political asskisser, he was one of those antigovernment ideologues brought in from left field (uh- right field) to take charge of a government department and keep it from doing anything. He was a regular on the talk show circuit, and all he ever said was that you just don't understand it; Father Knows Best. I started to notice him because of this flabbergasting arrogance. I used to think they should change the name to Arms Control Dismemberment Agency, because their motto was 'all the arms money can buy'.
Well, now this guy thinks that was a mistake. Now the Reaganites brag about Reagan's decision to pursue an arms limitation treaty with Gorbachev. Of course, this was a complete repudiation of their position and their dire warnings about the Evil Empire. Now Reagan's greatest legacy consists of embracing the advice of their enemies, the liberals. Just like Rosanna Rosannadanna: "...oops, never mind".
Well, Kenneth Adelman's a new book is called something like _Management Lessons from Shakespeare_. He said he's always been a fan; again no professional qualifications, but WTF.
Should Shakespeare afficianodos take up arms against this endorsement?
Reading through the comments is mostly a thankless task, but what keeps me going is the chance to find the rare, well-stated insight that nourishes my curiosity and understanding.
Tonight, buried under yet another spasm of narcissism from ESR, and the rush to weigh in for or against him, rcade here has posed a penetrating question:
"How essential to the open exchange of knowledge is the notion that none of the participants are getting rich off the exchange?"
This deserves thinking about. Contributing to free software projects under the GPL is altruistic, yet it simultaneously serves one's pragmatic self-interest (not reinventing the wheel, etc.). So we find self-respecting Libertarians opposing it because they smell the altruism, and other self-respecting Libertarians praising it because they are free to just take whatever they need.
Resentment arises when we ignore contrary aspects of the situation, and instead try to defend an oversimplified, one-dimensional conception.
Thus the ironies. Free-marketeer Raymond writes "C & B" to explain our all-for-one, one-for-all operating system project to the capitalists (who don't get it), then gets testy when the socialistic aspect is pointed out. I think his essays have been valuable contributions, but I doubt that he would admit that they are classic propaganda and are intended to function as such.
This is why Bezroukov's use of the terms "vulgar Raymondism" and "vulgar Marxism" were guaranteed to get ESR's goat. Raymond and his groupies reacted predictably to the "Marxism" part, because their point-and-click political simplemindedness fails to understand that the term "vulgar Marxism" refers not to Marxism itself, but to ignorant charicatures of it. It is just such ignorant charicatures of free software that Raymond has worked to correct.
ESR's counterblast, and most of the comments, seek to divert us from the core of Bezroukov's essay, which is the analogy between free software development and academic scientific research.
Notice the different strategies: "C & B" sets up oversimplified, polarized extremes and advocates one against the other.
Bezroukov takes several aspects of the two phenomena and condsiders how they are alike and how they differ.
(First I have to say that the very high sensitivity/crudity ratio of the comments on this controversial topic today make me very proud of the Slashdot community).
Michael Specter wrote an extensive profile of Singer, entitled "The Dangerous Philosopher" in the September 6, 1999 issue of _The New Yorker_, which ends:
'The Peter Singer who has just moved to America is not the unyielding radical who wrote "Animal Liberation" twenty-five years ago. In a sad fulfillment of Ann McDonald's wish, [she is an advocate for the disabled and a friend of Singer] Singer has been dealt a bitter dose of real life. His mother, Cora, who was once an intellectually active and vibrant woman, has fallen ill with Alzheimer's disease. She no longer recognizes Singer or his sister or any of her grandchildren. She is in a state that Helga Kuhse, who is her medical executor as well as her son's closest academic collaborator, described to me as one in which sho would clearly not want to live any longer:"She always said,'When I can't tie my shoes and I can't read, I don't want to be here.' Those were her criteria, physical and mental. And she knew what she was saying- she was a doctor. We don't have active euthanasia in this country, but she certainly would not want drugs to treat an infection or anything else that could prolong her life."
'Singer would never kill his mother, even if he thought it was what she wanted. He told me that he believes in Jack Kevorkian's attempts to help people die, but he also said that such a system works only when a patient is still able to express her wishes. Cora Singer never had that chance; like so many others, she slipped too quickly into the vague region between life and death.
'When Singer's mother became too ill to live alone, Singer and his sister hired a team of home health-care aides to look after her. Singer's Mother has lost her ability to reason, to be a person, as he defines the term. So I asked him how a man who has written that we ought to do what is morally right without regard to proximity or family relationships could possibly spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on private care for his mother. He replied that it was "probably not he best use you could make of my money. That is true. But it does provide employment for a number of people whgo find something worthwhile in what they're doing."
'This is a noble sentiment, but it hardly fits with Peter Singer's rules for living an ethical life. He once told me that he has no respect for people who donate funds for research on breast cancer or heart disease in the hope that it might indirectly save them or members of their family from illness, since they could be using that money to save the lives of the poor. ("That is not charity," he said. "It's self-interest.") Singer has responded to his mother's illness in the way most caring people would. The irony is that his humane actions clash so profoundly with the chords of his utilitarian ethic.
'That doesn't surprise Bernard Williams. [another philosopher; a critic of Singer] "You can't make these calculations and comparisons in real life. It's bluff," Williams told me. "One of the reasons his approach is so popular is that it reduces all moral puzzlement to a formula. You remove puzzlement and doubt and conflict of values, and it's in the scientific spirit. People seem to think it will all add up, but it never does, because humans never do."
'Singer may be learning that. We were sitting in his living room one day, and the trolley traffic was noisy on the street outside his window. Singer has spent his career trying to lay down rules for human behavior which are divorced from emotion and intuition. His is a world that makes no provision for private aides to look after addled, dying old women. Yet he can't help himself. "I think this has made me see how the issues of someone with these kinds of problems are really difficult," he said quietly. "Perhaps it is more difficult than I thought before, because it is different when it is your mother."'
Jeez, I come this discussion a day late, and after almost 200 comments, nobody has yet mentioned the Maltron keyboard. Read all about it at:
http://www.teleprint.com/keyboard/history.html
Lillian G. Malt was apparently as obsessed with improving the plight of the typist as was August Dvorak. Her first paper at the above site, dated 1977, points out that Dvorak's attempt to maximize "contralateral keying" (going from one hand to another on successive letters), while faster on mechanical typewriters, is not the optimal strategy on computer keyboards. She did extensive error analysis for two-letter combinations, taking into account their frequency of occurrence.
"The Maltron letter layout has three important objectives. First, to place the most frequently used characters on the home keys, that is, on the keys directly under the fingers and thumbs to minimize finger travel and stretchover the keyboard. Second, to arrange all letters so that known keying errors and language confusions would be avoided. With such an arrangement it was expected that the most frequent error patterns observed on both Sholes (Querty) and Dvorak (simplified) would be aided. Third, where possible, after allowing for the two objectives already stated, to allow for lateral keying, both adjacent and spaced".
Malt adjusted her key layout so that the fewest errors occurred with the most frequent letters. For example, on the Querty layout, most errors involved "E"; on Dvorak's layout, "O" and "I"; and on Malt's, "C". She considered substitutions, omissions, transpositions, insertions, and other types of errors.
The Maltron layout:
Q P Y C B V M U Z L A N I S F D T H O R , ? J G ' _ W K - X
Beyond the matter of key layout, her physical design puts the keys in a concave arrangement to nearly equalize finger travel, and separates the halves of the keyboard to keep the arms and hands in line.
Finally, since the Querty vs. Dvorak comparison here was brought up to support a bogus economic argument on behalf of M$, let me throw some economic jargon back at the propagandists: They cite only data on typing speed. Repetetive stress injury to them is an "externality" to be ignored, just as their ilk urged us to ignore air pollution from cars and trucks. In the larger M$ picture, frequent crashes, non-interoperability, and restrictive contracts are "externalities". If we ignore them (and only commies and liberals would fail to ignore them), then M$'s market dominance seems more reasonable and the "free market" seems to be operating quite nicely, thank you, with no need to change the status quo.
Similarly, in their treatment of software prices, our M$ toadies cite the lowering of prices as proof that the "free market" operates. J.K.Galbraith pointed out that already in the early fifties, his colleague Joseph Schumpeter (no liberal) was noting that corporations often failed to maximize profits. Why? To achieve deeper market penetration. The corporation that can afford to keep selling below cost can eventually destroy its competitors. Joe Sixpack might not realize this, but the ECONOMIST who pushes these lassaiz-faire oversimplications is not ignorant-- he is dishonest.
1)...when software is distributed without source code, especially if it was never patented or copyrighted. This leaves little that the examiner can systematically search, except prior patents.
2)...when over-general patents have been issued, which can then be argued to include almost anything related to the topic. I'm thinking of some of the howlers cited on/. this past year, like the "system to distribute information consisting of a remotely located storage means, a communication channel connected thereto, and a filing means by which particular stored records can be specifically selected for transmission from the storage means through the communication channel to the user". Such a patent would never stand up in court, but still acts as an impediment to others because of the cost of litigation to get it invalidated. (Wait- with a sufficiently clueless judge, it might just be upheld).
3)...if the software was part of a hardware patent, filed under some obscure category related to the purpose of the overall invention. (In the past, algorithms were patentable only as part of a hardware device). How could the examiner find such imbedded software unless he/she fortuitously stumbled across it?
The purpose and justification of the patent system is to promote technological progress by showing everyone how things work. The modern practice of issuing over-general patents, and patents for which prior art exists, but is impossible to cite, is just a way to paralyze technical innovation through bogus lawsuits and the threat of them. The patent system was never intended to get your foot in the courthouse door with a nuisance suit. With hardware inventions, it's much easier to see what's out there as prior art. In the case of software, it's often impossible for even the most diligent examiner to find the information on prior art that he/she needs to make a correct ruling on a patent. (Not to mention the overworked, underinformed examiner, or the examiner nibbling away toward a law degree, for whom a backlog of questionable patents requiring subsequent litigation guarantees future employment and is thus not a bad thing). It's a PERVERSION of the patent system to issue sloppy patents, and thus pass the buck, as a matter of routine, to the courts.
Re:Anyone bought something from Clubcomputer.com?
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I ordered a Palm IIIx there for $268.94 on May 23 and it arrived in a month. Earlier I ordered a Hitachi 753 19" monitor for $562.26 (free shipping) and it finally came after 2-1/2 months. They sent me a modem, ethernet card, and CD drive in a week. ClubComputer is cheap, but has the most aggravating website anywhere (runs on "Object Builder"- anybody know what that is?). Most of their stock can't be found via the search function on the page; you have to download page after page of lists (SLOW). The fastest way to see if they have something is to check shopper.com or killerapp.com. Assembling a new computer, I saved a lot at Club, but it was annoying. They can't tell you when something will ship. They're not a rip-off outfit, but they're not ready for prime time, either. At the end of the $1-one month intro. period you can sign up for a year for $20.
Harvard Smoothies = Valuable Anti-FUD Commandos
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The Power of Openness
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I admit that I, too, was turned off by this interloper inviting himself to jump to the head of the line as spokesman for the Free Software community. But I think Bollier and his fellow Smoothies have something worthwhile to offer, and we shouldn't slam the door on them.
Consider how many people think that since Bill Gates is the richest, ipso facto he's the smartest. Consider how politicians have less time to learn about the world as they spend more time trolling for money. This is not exactly a level playing field for the contest between free and proprietary software. Just as Gates was late to wake up to the possibilities of the internet, he is only now waking up to the possibilitiies of buying political power and (through philanthropy) public goodwill. And he's likely to be more successful at that than at commandeering the internet. Wouldn't it be wise for us to cultivate some countervailing power?
These Harvard Smoothies are more thoughtful than your typical Ultra-Suit captain of industry. Microsoft is not the first monopoly they've dealt with. Professor Lessig did a lot of work with the government's prosecutors to get them up to speed for the current antitrust case. As every Slashdot-reading tech-head knows, non-programmers just don't appreciate how much one needs to know to write good code. But it's easy for US to underestimate what's required to successfully battle the efforts of the corporate powers to lock-in their profitable third-rate technology. The main weapons of our non-scientific allies are LANGUAGE and STRATEGY. They may appear simple, but in fact expertise is important:
EXAMPLE: Despite all the repitition, has Bill Gates pursuaded YOU that Microsoft is a the major source of innovation in software?
EXAMPLE: Does the phrase "Open Source" assure us that our contributions to some project will not be usurped by some proprietary entity?
EXAMPLE: Does something about Richard Stallman sometimes distract people from his message about freedom?
EXAMPLE: Does a "free market" guarantee that you're free to buy quality stuff?
EXAMPLE: Is there anything worse than "government regulation"?
Now think about Brollier's manifesto. He describes himself as a journalist. What other journalist has done this much homework about the Free Software movement? True, the writing gets narcissisticly postmodern in a few places, but it's clear that this H20 group already has lots of clues. The academic computer science departments are swamps heavily infected by Unix; H20 sees how Microsoft is using donations to drain the swamps. H20 is thinking about ways to financially support free software projects. If the various lawsuits against Microsoft gain sufficient momentum that Gates fears a stock price devaluation, he might have some more spasms of philanthropy. This think tank probably has some better ideas than giving NT to schools as a tax write-off. And the abandoned-program orphanage could help a lot of people.
We're naive if we think that Big Business will operate in our interests if only the government stay out of the way. Their lobbyists are virtuosi. Look how the cable TV industry got its prices deregulated, yet they still haven't installed fiber optics. Look at the insurance industry. Look at the medical-industrial complex. We need effective lobbying on our side. (There are occasional successes. For example, the unlikely Senate team of Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch kept the vitamin supplement manufacturers largely free from oppressive FDA regulation pushed by the pharmaceutical industry).
The software part of the Free Software movement operates robustly with its process of anarchic evolution. No think tank can throw that off-course. But it's pure libertarian fantasy to think that unrestrained corporate oligopolies will give us what we need. We need contervailing power; and that includes the government; and the government, too, can be used against us (e.g.: CDA) if we don't deploy the best available expertise, both in lobbying and public relations. This H20 thing means Linus- and RMS-quality lawyers and propagandists working for us, not against us. How often do you see that? As for me, I think it's about time!
LSD was invented by Hofman, in Switzerland, in the 1940s.
Did Compaq Convey Be's Code to the Gates of Hell?
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It gets worse. I think it was on the CNN business news last night that I saw a spokesman for Be say that he was concerned that Compaq might have violated their NDA and shown some of Be's code to Microshaft. (I know; the people who disagree with the idea of intellectual property will think this is OK).
Congratulations to Burlington Coat for breaking away from helpless dependency on Those Who Know What You Need Better Than You Do.
But it's not only the management who benefit. This escape from software secrecy makes it possible for employees who take an interest in computers to start learning what goes on under the hood, and maybe even suggesting improvements. Under the M$ regime, such curiosity only results in frustration. I can imagine Linux providing someone in a dull job with a here-and-now chance to start learning something valuable and have it appreciated and rewarded on the spot. Linux is good for everybody.
Slashdot Mirror
It looks to me like that's a resistance heater wrapped around the evaporator/CPU assembly. Brute force; inefficient; but it would stay dry.
Once Sun's source code is out there (but not free to use), Sun will be able to claim that an independent implementation of a Sun feature is a ripoff of Sun's source. That is, Sun's release of source code could contaminate everyone and make an independent, parallel "clean room" implementation impossible.
Worst case, Sun could gain standing to sue Linux distributors and the Free Software Foundation merely by finding something in a GPL'd product that is similar to Sun's version. Even an unwinnable suit could do great damage.
PLEASE READ John Schulien's second point in his long post above (jms). Thank you, sir, for the enlightening essay.
I thought of this contamination problem, but before posting I read through the earlier comments to see if I had been anticipated. Sure enough, one of our fellow Slashdotters has nailed it perfectly.
I can still remember what we had to recite every day in sixth grade Spanish class:
Prometo lealtad a la bandera de los Estados Unidos de America, y al la republica que ella representa, una nacion, baja Dios, con libertad y justicia para todos.
The Computer- My Life
by Konrad Zuse (1993, translation of 2nd ed., Springer-Verlag, 1986)
Glory and Failure: The Difference Engines of Johann Muller, Charles Babbage, and Georg and Edvard Scheutz (History of Computing)
by Michael Lindgren, Craig G. McKay (translator) (1990)
Atanasoff: Forgotten Father of the Computer
by Clark R. Mollenhoff
The First Electronic Computer: The Atanasoff Story
by Alice R. & Arthur W. Burks (1989)
Before the Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand and the Industry They Created, 1885-1956
by James W. Cortada (1993)
Building IBM: Shaping an Industry and Its Technology
by Emerson W. Pugh (1995)
Computer: A History of the Information Machine
by Martin Campbell-Kelly & Wm. Aspray (1997)
The Computer Comes of Age
by Rene Moreau (1986)
The Computer from Pascal to Von Neumann
by Herman H. Goldstine (reprinted 1993)
John Von Neuman and the Origins of Modern Computing
by William Aspray (1991)
Engines of the Mind: The Evolution of the Computer from Mainframes to Microprocessors
by Joel N. Shurkin (1996)
ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer
by Scott McCartney (1999)
From Memex to Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the Mind's Machines
by James M. Nyce, Paul Kahn (eds.) & Vannevar Bush (1992)
Great Men and Women of Computing
by Donald D. Spencer (2nd ed. 1999)
A History of Computing Technology
by Michael R. Williams (2nd ed. 1997)
A History of Modern Computing
by Paul E. Ceruzzi (1998)
History of Personal Workstations
by Adele Goldberg (ed.) (1988)
History of Scientific Computing
by Stephen G. Nash (ed.) (1990)
Leo: The Incredible Story of the World's First Business Computer
by David Caminer (ed.) (1997)
Makin' Numbers: Howark Aiken and the Computer
by I. Bernard Cohen (ed.) (1999)
Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists
by Cathy A. Lazere, Dennis Elliott Shasha (1998)
Remembering the Future: Interviews From Personal Computing World
by Wendy M. Grossman (1997)
The Timetable of Computers: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in the History of Computers
by Donald D. Spencer (2nd ed. 1999)
Transforming Computer Technology: Information Processing for the Pentagon 1962-1986
by Arthur L. Nordberg, Judy E. O'Neill, & Kerry Freedman (1996)
Turing and the Computer: The Big Idea
by Paul Strathem (1999)
When Computers Went to Sea: The Digitization of the United States Navy
by David L. Boslaugh (1999)
Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron's Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer
by Betty A. Toole (ed.) (1998)
A.M. Turing's ACE Report of 1946 and Other Papers (Charles Babbage Institute Reprint Series for the History of Computing, Vol. 10)
by Alan Turing, et al. (1986)
A Bibliographic Guide to the History of Computing, Computers, and the Information Processing Industry
by James W. Cortada (1990)
A Bibliographic Guide to Computer Applications, 1950-1990
by James W. Cortada (1996)
Business Builders in Computers
by Nathan Aeseng (1999)
Looks like they've been swallowed up by the notoriously Linux-unfriendly Creative Labs.
I just looked for the Ensoniq card at Shopper.com and it came up as Creative Labs Ensoniq Audio PCI sound card. Three places have it in stock for $15 or less.
Checked the Ensoniq.com site and they "are now the OEM business unit of Creative Labs"..."we will continue to provide web based support to those end customers who purchased Ensoniq soundcards directly from Ensoniq. (at least for the next few months until Creative's customer service department is trained on the product)."
The site has Windows drivers for the "Ensoniq Audio PCI card", and a warning that they won't work with the "Creative Labs Ensoniq Audio PCI card".
Thanks for that link to the interview with Carl Sassenrath, the designer of the Amiga OS. You made my day, DBMandrake.
The Amiga hardware and system software were thoughtfully designed and powerful, but the quality didn't stop there. You could get books that explained everything in detail- down to the schematics and subroutines. What a difference from the "Ignorance Is Cool" culture of the Mac!
Here's that interview again:
http://technetcast.ddj.com/tnc_981120.html
About 15 years ago I read about a commercial satellite-launching company that wanted to provide the initial acceleration through buoyancy. They proposed to extend the rocket shell below the engines and drop the rocket (upright) 100 meters down into the ocean (near the equator). To launch, they would blow air into this bottom chamber and FLOAT the rocket to the surface. When it emerged, the bottom tube would be jettisoned and the engines ignited.
"Administrate" is merely illiterate and pompous.
"Medication" is more interesting. I am a student of propaganda and I have noticed that through the 90's, there has been a segregation movement going on here. The term "drug" has been shunned by the medical industry; replaced by "medication".
"Drug" is becoming ghettoized to mean "illegal drug". Furthermore, instead of referring to a specific illegal drug, the tendency now is to conflate narcotics, stimulants, and cannabis into the generic term of opprobrium, "drugs".
This category error serves the promoters of the War on Drugs by hyping up the problem. Instead of a few thousand users of heroin and speed, and 20 million cannabis smokers, you now have 20 million "drug users". This helps sell the budget ($17 billion this year in the U.S.).
Funny you should mention Shakespeare, dilettante. A couple days ago I saw a guy touting his new book on a talk show, and he was a REAL dilettante. I recognized him from his frequent appearances during the Reagan administration, which he served as head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He used to come on TV and say that Congress should support our policy, because it was a good policy, it was a strong policy, we've worked very hard on this policy, all loyal Americans support this policy, etc. He would appear at congressional hearings and go on like this. Total contentless airhead. His name is Kenneth Adelman. Had a batchelor's degree in religion. No apparent qualifications for the job except loyalty to the chief. Evidently a consummate political asskisser, he was one of those antigovernment ideologues brought in from left field (uh- right field) to take charge of a government department and keep it from doing anything. He was a regular on the talk show circuit, and all he ever said was that you just don't understand it; Father Knows Best. I started to notice him because of this flabbergasting arrogance. I used to think they should change the name to Arms Control Dismemberment Agency, because their motto was 'all the arms money can buy'.
Well, now this guy thinks that was a mistake. Now the Reaganites brag about Reagan's decision to pursue an arms limitation treaty with Gorbachev. Of course, this was a complete repudiation of their position and their dire warnings about the Evil Empire. Now Reagan's greatest legacy consists of embracing the advice of their enemies, the liberals. Just like Rosanna Rosannadanna: "...oops, never mind".
Well, Kenneth Adelman's a new book is called something like _Management Lessons from Shakespeare_. He said he's always been a fan; again no professional qualifications, but WTF.
Should Shakespeare afficianodos take up arms against this endorsement?
Reading through the comments is mostly a thankless task, but what keeps me going is the chance to find the rare, well-stated insight that nourishes my curiosity and understanding.
Tonight, buried under yet another spasm of narcissism from ESR, and the rush to weigh in for or against him, rcade here has posed a penetrating question:
"How essential to the open exchange of knowledge is the notion that none of the participants are getting rich off the exchange?"
This deserves thinking about. Contributing to free software projects under the GPL is altruistic, yet it simultaneously serves one's pragmatic self-interest (not reinventing the wheel, etc.). So we find self-respecting Libertarians opposing it because they smell the altruism, and other self-respecting Libertarians praising it because they are free to just take whatever they need.
Resentment arises when we ignore contrary aspects of the situation, and instead try to defend an oversimplified, one-dimensional conception.
Thus the ironies. Free-marketeer Raymond writes "C & B" to explain our all-for-one, one-for-all operating system project to the capitalists (who don't get it), then gets testy when the socialistic aspect is pointed out. I think his essays have been valuable contributions, but I doubt that he would admit that they are classic propaganda and are intended to function as such.
This is why Bezroukov's use of the terms "vulgar Raymondism" and "vulgar Marxism" were guaranteed to get ESR's goat. Raymond and his groupies reacted predictably to the "Marxism" part, because their point-and-click political simplemindedness fails to understand that the term "vulgar Marxism" refers not to Marxism itself, but to ignorant charicatures of it. It is just such ignorant charicatures of free software that Raymond has worked to correct.
ESR's counterblast, and most of the comments, seek to divert us from the core of Bezroukov's essay, which is the analogy between free software development and academic scientific research.
Notice the different strategies: "C & B" sets up oversimplified, polarized extremes and advocates one against the other.
Bezroukov takes several aspects of the two phenomena and condsiders how they are alike and how they differ.
Propaganda vs. inquiry.
For a review of research on the QUERTY and DVORAK keyboards, and the more recent improved design by Lillian G. Malt, see:
http://www.teleprint.com/keyboard/history.html
(First I have to say that the very high sensitivity/crudity ratio of the comments on this controversial topic today make me very proud of the Slashdot community).
Michael Specter wrote an extensive profile of Singer, entitled "The Dangerous Philosopher" in the September 6, 1999 issue of _The New Yorker_, which ends:
'The Peter Singer who has just moved to America is not the unyielding radical who wrote "Animal Liberation" twenty-five years ago. In a sad fulfillment of Ann McDonald's wish, [she is an advocate for the disabled and a friend of Singer] Singer has been dealt a bitter dose of real life. His mother, Cora, who was once an intellectually active and vibrant woman, has fallen ill with Alzheimer's disease. She no longer recognizes Singer or his sister or any of her grandchildren. She is in a state that Helga Kuhse, who is her medical executor as well as her son's closest academic collaborator, described to me as one in which sho would clearly not want to live any longer:"She always said,'When I can't tie my shoes and I can't read, I don't want to be here.' Those were her criteria, physical and mental. And she knew what she was saying- she was a doctor. We don't have active euthanasia in this country, but she certainly would not want drugs to treat an infection or anything else that could prolong her life."
'Singer would never kill his mother, even if he thought it was what she wanted. He told me that he believes in Jack Kevorkian's attempts to help people die, but he also said that such a system works only when a patient is still able to express her wishes. Cora Singer never had that chance; like so many others, she slipped too quickly into the vague region between life and death.
'When Singer's mother became too ill to live alone, Singer and his sister hired a team of home health-care aides to look after her. Singer's Mother has lost her ability to reason, to be a person, as he defines the term. So I asked him how a man who has written that we ought to do what is morally right without regard to proximity or family relationships could possibly spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on private care for his mother. He replied that it was "probably not he best use you could make of my money. That is true. But it does provide employment for a number of people whgo find something worthwhile in what they're doing."
'This is a noble sentiment, but it hardly fits with Peter Singer's rules for living an ethical life. He once told me that he has no respect for people who donate funds for research on breast cancer or heart disease in the hope that it might indirectly save them or members of their family from illness, since they could be using that money to save the lives of the poor. ("That is not charity," he said. "It's self-interest.") Singer has responded to his mother's illness in the way most caring people would. The irony is that his humane actions clash so profoundly with the chords of his utilitarian ethic.
'That doesn't surprise Bernard Williams. [another philosopher; a critic of Singer] "You can't make these calculations and comparisons in real life. It's bluff," Williams told me. "One of the reasons his approach is so popular is that it reduces all moral puzzlement to a formula. You remove puzzlement and doubt and conflict of values, and it's in the scientific spirit. People seem to think it will all add up, but it never does, because humans never do."
'Singer may be learning that. We were sitting in his living room one day, and the trolley traffic was noisy on the street outside his window. Singer has spent his career trying to lay down rules for human behavior which are divorced from emotion and intuition. His is a world that makes no provision for private aides to look after addled, dying old women. Yet he can't help himself. "I think this has made me see how the issues of someone with these kinds of problems are really difficult," he said quietly. "Perhaps it is more difficult than I thought before, because it is different when it is your mother."'
Jeez, I come this discussion a day late, and after almost 200 comments, nobody has yet mentioned the Maltron keyboard. Read all about it at:
http://www.teleprint.com/keyboard/history.html
Lillian G. Malt was apparently as obsessed with improving the plight of the typist as was August Dvorak. Her first paper at the above site, dated 1977, points out that Dvorak's attempt to maximize "contralateral keying" (going from one hand to another on successive letters), while faster on mechanical typewriters, is not the optimal strategy on computer keyboards. She did extensive error analysis for two-letter combinations, taking into account their frequency of occurrence.
"The Maltron letter layout has three important objectives. First, to place the most frequently used characters on the home keys, that is, on the keys directly under the fingers and thumbs to minimize finger travel and stretchover the keyboard. Second, to arrange all letters so that known keying errors and language confusions would be avoided. With such an arrangement it was expected that the most frequent error patterns observed on both Sholes (Querty) and Dvorak (simplified) would be aided. Third, where possible, after allowing for the two objectives already stated, to allow for lateral keying, both adjacent and spaced".
Malt adjusted her key layout so that the fewest errors occurred with the most frequent letters. For example, on the Querty layout, most errors involved "E"; on Dvorak's layout, "O" and "I"; and on Malt's, "C". She considered substitutions, omissions, transpositions, insertions, and other types of errors.
The Maltron layout:
Q P Y C B V M U Z L
A N I S F D T H O R
, ? J G ' _ W K - X
Beyond the matter of key layout, her physical design puts the keys in a concave arrangement to nearly equalize finger travel, and separates the halves of the keyboard to keep the arms and hands in line.
Finally, since the Querty vs. Dvorak comparison here was brought up to support a bogus economic argument on behalf of M$, let me throw some economic jargon back at the propagandists: They cite only data on typing speed. Repetetive stress injury to them is an "externality" to be ignored, just as their ilk urged us to ignore air pollution from cars and trucks. In the larger M$ picture, frequent crashes, non-interoperability, and restrictive contracts are "externalities". If we ignore them (and only commies and liberals would fail to ignore them), then M$'s market dominance seems more reasonable and the "free market" seems to be operating quite nicely, thank you, with no need to change the status quo.
Similarly, in their treatment of software prices, our M$ toadies cite the lowering of prices as proof that the "free market" operates. J.K.Galbraith pointed out that already in the early fifties, his colleague Joseph Schumpeter (no liberal) was noting that corporations often failed to maximize profits. Why? To achieve deeper market penetration. The corporation that can afford to keep selling below cost can eventually destroy its competitors. Joe Sixpack might not realize this, but the ECONOMIST who pushes these lassaiz-faire oversimplications is not ignorant-- he is dishonest.
1) ...when software is distributed without source code, especially if it was never patented or copyrighted. This leaves little that the examiner can systematically search, except prior patents.
...when over-general patents have been issued, which can then be argued to include almost anything related to the topic. I'm thinking of some of the howlers cited on /. this past year, like the "system to distribute information consisting of a remotely located storage means, a communication channel connected thereto, and a filing means by which particular stored records can be specifically selected for transmission from the storage means through the communication channel to the user". Such a patent would never stand up in court, but still acts as an impediment to others because of the cost of litigation to get it invalidated. (Wait- with a sufficiently clueless judge, it might just be upheld).
...if the software was part of a hardware patent, filed under some obscure category related to the purpose of the overall invention. (In the past, algorithms were patentable only as part of a hardware device). How could the examiner find such imbedded software unless he/she fortuitously stumbled across it?
2)
3)
The purpose and justification of the patent system is to promote technological progress by showing everyone how things work. The modern practice of issuing over-general patents, and patents for which prior art exists, but is impossible to cite, is just a way to paralyze technical innovation through bogus lawsuits and the threat of them. The patent system was never intended to get your foot in the courthouse door with a nuisance suit. With hardware inventions, it's much easier to see what's out there as prior art. In the case of software, it's often impossible for even the most diligent examiner to find the information on prior art that he/she needs to make a correct ruling on a patent. (Not to mention the overworked, underinformed examiner, or the examiner nibbling away toward a law degree, for whom a backlog of questionable patents requiring subsequent litigation guarantees future employment and is thus not a bad thing). It's a PERVERSION of the patent system to issue sloppy patents, and thus pass the buck, as a matter of routine, to the courts.
I ordered a Palm IIIx there for $268.94 on May 23 and it arrived in a month. Earlier I ordered a Hitachi 753 19" monitor for $562.26 (free shipping) and it finally came after 2-1/2 months. They sent me a modem, ethernet card, and CD drive in a week.
ClubComputer is cheap, but has the most aggravating website anywhere (runs on "Object Builder"- anybody know what that is?). Most of their stock can't be found via the search function on the page; you have to download page after page of lists (SLOW). The fastest way to see if they have something is to check shopper.com or killerapp.com. Assembling a new computer, I saved a lot at Club, but it was annoying. They can't tell you when something will ship. They're not a rip-off outfit, but they're not ready for prime time, either. At the end of the $1-one month intro. period you can sign up for a year for $20.
I admit that I, too, was turned off by this interloper inviting himself to jump to the head of the line as spokesman for the Free Software community. But I think Bollier and his fellow Smoothies have something worthwhile to offer, and we shouldn't slam the door on them.
Consider how many people think that since Bill Gates is the richest, ipso facto he's the smartest. Consider how politicians have less time to learn about the world as they spend more time trolling for money. This is not exactly a level playing field for the contest between free and proprietary software. Just as Gates was late to wake up to the possibilities of the internet, he is only now waking up to the possibilitiies of buying political power and (through philanthropy) public goodwill. And he's likely to be more successful at that than at commandeering the internet. Wouldn't it be wise for us to cultivate some countervailing power?
These Harvard Smoothies are more thoughtful than your typical Ultra-Suit captain of industry. Microsoft is not the first monopoly they've dealt with. Professor Lessig did a lot of work with the government's prosecutors to get them up to speed for the current antitrust case. As every Slashdot-reading tech-head knows, non-programmers just don't appreciate how much one needs to know to write good code. But it's easy for US to underestimate what's required to successfully battle the efforts of the corporate powers to lock-in their profitable third-rate technology. The main weapons of our non-scientific allies are LANGUAGE and STRATEGY. They may appear simple, but in fact expertise is important:
EXAMPLE: Despite all the repitition, has Bill Gates pursuaded YOU that Microsoft is a the major source of innovation in software?
EXAMPLE: Does the phrase "Open Source" assure us that our contributions to some project will not be usurped by some proprietary entity?
EXAMPLE: Does something about Richard Stallman sometimes distract people from his message about freedom?
EXAMPLE: Does a "free market" guarantee that you're free to buy quality stuff?
EXAMPLE: Is there anything worse than "government regulation"?
Now think about Brollier's manifesto. He describes himself as a journalist. What other journalist has done this much homework about the Free Software movement? True, the writing gets narcissisticly postmodern in a few places, but it's clear that this H20 group already has lots of clues. The academic computer science departments are swamps heavily infected by Unix; H20 sees how Microsoft is using donations to drain the swamps. H20 is thinking about ways to financially support free software projects. If the various lawsuits against Microsoft gain sufficient momentum that Gates fears a stock price devaluation, he might have some more spasms of philanthropy. This think tank probably has some better ideas than giving NT to schools as a tax write-off. And the abandoned-program orphanage could help a lot of people.
We're naive if we think that Big Business will operate in our interests if only the government stay out of the way. Their lobbyists are virtuosi. Look how the cable TV industry got its prices deregulated, yet they still haven't installed fiber optics. Look at the insurance industry. Look at the medical-industrial complex. We need effective lobbying on our side. (There are occasional successes. For example, the unlikely Senate team of Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch kept the vitamin supplement manufacturers largely free from oppressive FDA regulation pushed by the pharmaceutical industry).
The software part of the Free Software movement operates robustly with its process of anarchic evolution. No think tank can throw that off-course. But it's pure libertarian fantasy to think that unrestrained corporate oligopolies will give us what we need. We need contervailing power; and that includes the government; and the government, too, can be used against us (e.g.: CDA) if we don't deploy the best available expertise, both in lobbying and public relations. This H20 thing means Linus- and RMS-quality lawyers and propagandists working for us, not against us. How often do you see that? As for me, I think it's about time!
LSD was invented by Hofman, in Switzerland, in the 1940s.
It gets worse. I think it was on the CNN business news last night that I saw a spokesman for Be say that he was concerned that Compaq might have violated their NDA and shown some of Be's code to Microshaft. (I know; the people who disagree with the idea of intellectual property will think this is OK).
Congratulations to Burlington Coat for breaking away from helpless dependency on Those Who Know What You Need Better Than You Do.
But it's not only the management who benefit. This escape from software secrecy makes it possible for employees who take an interest in computers to start learning what goes on under the hood, and maybe even suggesting improvements. Under the M$ regime, such curiosity only results in frustration. I can imagine Linux providing someone in a dull job with a here-and-now chance to start learning something valuable and have it appreciated and rewarded on the spot. Linux is good for everybody.