All this really is about is the carrot and the stick. If you take the carrot (Purchase their Volume License package for richer schools only!), then you don't have to worry about them whacking you with the stick! (The big bad BSA --Ooooh.)
People give all kinds of things to schools in all sorts of conditions. Microsoft is trying to get control of this process for their own profit at the expense of others (again)!
Microsoft loves control of this process for obvious reasons. There are licenses to be sold, and Linux or other free alternatives to be denied. If they call the ground rules, winning the fight is a lot easier.
For things like donated hardware, control of the process should be with those handling the stuff period. After all they are doing the work, they should be able to enjoy the reward. If this stuff is so valuable why not set up a few M$ Recycling centers?
There are lots of creative ways to use computers if you combine energetic students a net connection and a supply of hardware. Who knows what they will build? I for one am curious to see what it might be.
Following the advice in this "guide" (read nicely spun veiled threat!) they will be building exactly what Microsoft wants them to. Licensed profitable for Microsoft PCs. God forbid that these young bright childeren figure out what they could make that old hardware do with say BSD or Linux.
The whole thing is kind of silly really if you think about it some more. The schools do all the work, M$ does nothing yet makes more over time than the machines are worth with the volume contract. (Good for M$, but bad in general for the school.)
They do their readers a disservice by not mentioning the free alternatives avaliable. It is not just about their licenses, it is about free alternatives too. A school that reads this document probably has or is considering the volume license. By including that "legal requirement" (Which I seriously doubt is any sort of requirement at all) they marginalize free alternatives.
What scares them the most is that combination of bright students and the net connection. For the cost of the internet access, they can make all that hardware do good things. Kind of like that volume license without all the hassle. Since most schools are trying to spend a little as they can this option would seem attractive --provided they are aware of it.
Notice how this "guide" is structured to lead the user away from open alternatives and toward the pay per compute program.
This could use a response of sorts from the FSF or EFF pointing out the alternatives. You can bet that the educational resellers mentioned at the bottom are not going to be doing it. After all, they have a number to meet each quarter to get their MicroPerk of the month or whatever...
We have the way out is just a big ad for UNISYS big iron. It also asks for personal information right up front. All they are hosting is their paid for reports. The rest of the content is at the UNISYS page. (Old news.)
The way in site is fast clean and friendly. Nothing is asked yet everything is given. Very open and honest compared to the definite marketing business feel of the other site.
Both sites share the same structure. This is fine for now, but probably should change as suggestions come in. Don't want to look like followers now do we?
Personally I would drag some dirt out of the closet about UNISYS and their use of the LZW patent. Clear simple and honest.
I liked it because it was different
on
April Fools Wrap Up
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Disabling anonymous posts was kind of interesting actually. (It had better just be one day though!) Wonder how many new accounts were created today vs other days?
The whole thing was different this year. In the past there have been a few mixed in with the regular news, but today nothing but crap. If the plan is to do this every year then it is the beginning of something lame. If the plan is to do something different each year then the whole thing is the beginning of something interesting to look forward to.
I did wonder about what I was missing when I realized that every story was going to be a joke, but then realized that perhaps I should take a day and just miss out! Probably got more work done today than usual. Hmmm...
My favorite was the change in ad policy. Actually was pissed for a moment until I realized what day it was.
The editors should post a best of the clueless collection for comment. After the load of crap today, I'll bet they have some pretty good and totally useless rants to show off.
Your condition is a problem in that the image presented to your retnia will be distored, but your lens muscles can adapt quite a ways from the norms.
I had some vision problems a while back. Was developing astigmatism. Went for glasses, and the doctor basically told me that if I used the glasses, I would quickly become dependant on them.
His solution was simple once he learned what I was doing most of the time. Subject my eyes to a variety of visual problems each day. Focusing near medium and far often during the day. This has worked well for me in that after a few months, the problems went away.
So it can't hurt in your case, and might help you retain lens flexibility and muscle development that will enable you to see well as your condition develops.
This goes to show that there still is plenty of fun left on the net.
Looks like he just plugs in a HDD and goes. Wonder if he has had any trouble with it slipping? Drive is external to the blob making it a little more delicate than pictured. (Still cool though.)
Still he gets plenty of credit from me just for the creative effort if nothing else.
I am in this situation. To date I have done little regarding GPL code (some though), but do work on projects that further my own interests. Some of these have potential, others are just for fun.
The only paperwork related to my employment was the standard proof of eligibility documents that are part of any basic employment process. So there are no contracts at all.
Until I read this, I assumed that there was nothing to worry about. Since the whole issue is undefined, can that be twisted around to my disadvantage? Should I worry or am I lucky?
Just more fuel for those wanting to actually write letters.
Copy, mix, paste. (Hmm.. Kind of like Rip, Mix Burn huh?)
I am writing you today to urge you to seriously consider supporting the development of a consumer technology bill of rights. One such effort can be found here: http://www.digitalconsumer.org
Until now, our nation has employed a careful balance between the rights granted to copyright holders and those granted to citizens making use of protected content. These rights have enabled those who create and distribute content to generate wealth while allowing content to eventually pass into public domain in order to fuel future content creation.
Fair use also plays an important part in this balance. Today citizens who legally obtain content are free to use it in most non noncommercial ways such as time shifting, space shifting, and archive creation and use. These uses provide good value to consumers today. Fair use also permits many adademic uses of works that may or may not be endorsed by the creators, but are vital to the growth of our culture and society in general.
The efforts today to reduce the volume of content returned today to the public domain will reduce the quality and creative character of future content without any real benefit to society other than increased profits for the content creators. This is not what copyright was intended to do.
I am also concerned over the many efforts to eliminate or sharply constrain the scope of Fair Use. A reduction in Fair Use will have negative long term effects on our ability to understand the nature and worth of technology put forth in the future. These reductions will also come at our expense without any real benefit to society in general other than increased profits for the content creators.
The digital consumer today is under represented compared to the technology and content creators. The rapid pace of technology today makes it difficult for most of us to be reasonably informed about the technology that has a growing influence on our day to day lives. Through history, invention has changed our world in remarkable ways. We live now in a time where invention is again changing how our world works. Protecting the economic interests of a few large corporations now is just as wrong as it has been in the past.
Given the relative youth of digital technology and our limited understanding of its long term effects on society today, efforts such as the Consumer Technology Bill of Rights seek to establish a foundation upon which technology and content creators can innovate fairly while preserving every citizens essential freedoms in the process. Maintaining the checks and balances necessary for fair and just growth is a must and efforts such as the Consumer Technology Bill of rights represent a much needed vehicle to properly balance technology growth in the future.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I value it.
Well... You should really get an account. Past that, talentless HTML is better than talentless Flash.
Lots of other pesky useability issues as well. Most HTML can be navigated even with a text browser like LYNX. Flash does not share the same attributes.
So if one lacks talent, others are going to find it hard to navigate the site. If that site is HTML, they will have an easier time than if it were Flash.
You are right. There is plenty of room for both kinds of software.
I see it this way. The more people that use a particular type of software, the more reason there is to provide open source versions of it. Common basic things like Office software, browsers, and similar things need open source alternatives. For most people we already have done the development work and need few new features. Why pay again for what we have now. This is why M$ is afraid of Open Source. They know that it will break their software as a service model. And it should in most cases.
Open Standards takes care of the rest. Users should not allow companies to take ownership of their data through their closed file formats.
Open Standards are at the core of the whole M$ issue right now. The use of them would force them to compete on quality and value, which they can't.
Should we be building our web with closed standards? Macromedia owns flash. Once the usage rises, whats to say they continue to do good things with it?
The built in widgets are nice, (hope they are cross-platform) how much does it cost to develop and maintain vs what we have now?
How many really bad flash sites have you run into? I bump into a lot of them. Flash makes some things easy, but does nothing to hide lack of talent.
Sure students are going to be turned off by M$ actions. I'll bet a high percentage of them are turned off already just because M$ has already happened. Why work on the established order when you can be working on something new?
Getting back to the schools, I see a different problem. Working on M$ stuff brings dollars to the school. OSS projects don't.
So I say the students will become interested only to find that the school is not...
Re:Apple is more like a systems company.
on
Photoshop for OS X
·
· Score: 2
Yep.
That is worth a lot to most people. This combined with the built in Apple software makes for a very nice machine with little hassle.
My next machine will be an Apple for sure. The hardware I have worked with has been fun, (SGI, PC Linux/win32) but OS X is looking better every day.
Apple is more like a systems company.
on
Photoshop for OS X
·
· Score: 2
What Apple has that the PC world does not is holistic system design.
Since they produce the hardware, OS and key applications they have the ability to provide a well thought out user experience.
Slowly people are beginning to understand that this approach makes a lot of sense.
Apple is like SUN or SGI only they don't target big systems. They do small ones. Machines sold by all three of these companies have value long after they should when performing tasks the machines were designed for. Why?
Because the machine was designed to get the job done right!
PC machines are general purpose. This was an advantage earlier because it was cheaper. Now that more of the high end functionality is cheaper, Apple can come in and make a very nice machine at a price most people can afford.
So really they are a systems company. Their value is in the whole solution, not the cheap combining of parts.
Started another thread here because I did not want to go off topic on the other one.
The free communication aspect of./ is what makes it great. Making people pay, even a little will seriously reduce that inflow of ideas and comment. Some here say that would be a good thing, but I do not.
Collecting, filtering and presenting that content in different ways would be worth paying for.
Mod perks so long as they make sense would be worth it also. Might also help with the S/N ratio of the site for the paying folks.
Slashdot e-mail! Why not?
Pay for cool user names, otherwise you get semi good ones.
PDF and Cell Phone compatable digests of threads. This one gets into trouble because./ claims all posts are the property of the owners. I would not mind extending the right to re-publish to Andover if I got back something of value in return.
Take a look over at arstechnica. They are trying some interesting things to keep the site free.
Basically what they have done is package some of their content and index it in a way that is worth some money each year.
The casual browser can still stop by and catch the news or discussion, but the interested user can subscribe and get nicely made PDF's of various articles and other things.
So much of what./ is happens to be discussion, but maybe there could be more... Anyway something to think about before just throwing up the ads while hoping readers can deal with them.
I find it hard to believe that all the brains concentrated on this site a couple times a day that we cannot come up with something worth paying for.
It has been said that IRIX really depends on some features of the MIPS design and that a port would involve a remake of many of the real-time and graphical features.
Though I agree IRIX with more CPU umph behind it would only be a good thing.
They use MIPS and are struggling with CPU speed compared to Intel. The current 600 Mhz core is in the new Fuel workstation. Be nice to see the 1Ghz version even nicer to get a new generation.
Slashdot Mirror
All this really is about is the carrot and the stick. If you take the carrot (Purchase their Volume License package for richer schools only!), then you don't have to worry about them whacking you with the stick! (The big bad BSA --Ooooh.)
People give all kinds of things to schools in all sorts of conditions. Microsoft is trying to get control of this process for their own profit at the expense of others (again)!
Microsoft loves control of this process for obvious reasons. There are licenses to be sold, and Linux or other free alternatives to be denied. If they call the ground rules, winning the fight is a lot easier.
For things like donated hardware, control of the process should be with those handling the stuff period. After all they are doing the work, they should be able to enjoy the reward. If this stuff is so valuable why not set up a few M$ Recycling centers?
There are lots of creative ways to use computers if you combine energetic students a net connection and a supply of hardware. Who knows what they will build? I for one am curious to see what it might be.
Following the advice in this "guide" (read nicely spun veiled threat!) they will be building exactly what Microsoft wants them to. Licensed profitable for Microsoft PCs. God forbid that these young bright childeren figure out what they could make that old hardware do with say BSD or Linux.
The whole thing is kind of silly really if you think about it some more. The schools do all the work, M$ does nothing yet makes more over time than the machines are worth with the volume contract. (Good for M$, but bad in general for the school.)
They do their readers a disservice by not mentioning the free alternatives avaliable. It is not just about their licenses, it is about free alternatives too. A school that reads this document probably has or is considering the volume license. By including that "legal requirement" (Which I seriously doubt is any sort of requirement at all) they marginalize free alternatives.
What scares them the most is that combination of bright students and the net connection. For the cost of the internet access, they can make all that hardware do good things. Kind of like that volume license without all the hassle. Since most schools are trying to spend a little as they can this option would seem attractive --provided they are aware of it.
Notice how this "guide" is structured to lead the user away from open alternatives and toward the pay per compute program.
This could use a response of sorts from the FSF or EFF pointing out the alternatives. You can bet that the educational resellers mentioned at the bottom are not going to be doing it. After all, they have a number to meet each quarter to get their MicroPerk of the month or whatever...
We have the way out is just a big ad for UNISYS big iron. It also asks for personal information right up front. All they are hosting is their paid for reports. The rest of the content is at the UNISYS page. (Old news.)
The way in site is fast clean and friendly. Nothing is asked yet everything is given. Very open and honest compared to the definite marketing business feel of the other site.
Both sites share the same structure. This is fine for now, but probably should change as suggestions come in. Don't want to look like followers now do we?
Personally I would drag some dirt out of the closet about UNISYS and their use of the LZW patent. Clear simple and honest.
Disabling anonymous posts was kind of interesting actually. (It had better just be one day though!) Wonder how many new accounts were created today vs other days?
The whole thing was different this year. In the past there have been a few mixed in with the regular news, but today nothing but crap. If the plan is to do this every year then it is the beginning of something lame. If the plan is to do something different each year then the whole thing is the beginning of something interesting to look forward to.
I did wonder about what I was missing when I realized that every story was going to be a joke, but then realized that perhaps I should take a day and just miss out! Probably got more work done today than usual. Hmmm...
My favorite was the change in ad policy. Actually was pissed for a moment until I realized what day it was.
The editors should post a best of the clueless collection for comment. After the load of crap today, I'll bet they have some pretty good and totally useless rants to show off.
Your condition is a problem in that the image presented to your retnia will be distored, but your lens muscles can adapt quite a ways from the norms.
I had some vision problems a while back. Was developing astigmatism. Went for glasses, and the doctor basically told me that if I used the glasses, I would quickly become dependant on them.
His solution was simple once he learned what I was doing most of the time. Subject my eyes to a variety of visual problems each day. Focusing near medium and far often during the day. This has worked well for me in that after a few months, the problems went away.
So it can't hurt in your case, and might help you retain lens flexibility and muscle development that will enable you to see well as your condition develops.
Just went back and looked. You are right! Totally precarious at the least! He should have used a little more foam.
Still creative though, just not practical at all. But that probably was his point.
This goes to show that there still is plenty of fun left on the net.
Looks like he just plugs in a HDD and goes. Wonder if he has had any trouble with it slipping? Drive is external to the blob making it a little more delicate than pictured. (Still cool though.)
Still he gets plenty of credit from me just for the creative effort if nothing else.
Bizarre...
The problem with computers is not that they do exactly as they are told, it is that they have been lied to before you get them!
Anyway just liked your sig...
So the message is HTML, and contains a web bug to track the opening of the mail.
So what if someone has their preview pane turned on. The bug gets triggered, but they are not there.
What happens to the burden of proof in this case? Does it remain with entity doing the serving, or does it fall on the the entity being served?
I am in this situation. To date I have done little regarding GPL code (some though), but do work on projects that further my own interests. Some of these have potential, others are just for fun.
The only paperwork related to my employment was the standard proof of eligibility documents that are part of any basic employment process. So there are no contracts at all.
Until I read this, I assumed that there was nothing to worry about. Since the whole issue is undefined, can that be twisted around to my disadvantage? Should I worry or am I lucky?
I totally agree. We need another innovation right now.
3D could use some work. Very few applications and displays make good use of it.
Rather than leave, they could have found someone there wanting to get paid a little to play the games...
Perhaps a better statement was made by packing up the consoles though it would have been fun to keep them there with "employees" playing them.
Annoying but true. Maybe the mainstream coverage will get people thinking about just what a license is and what is should be.
Just more fuel for those wanting to actually write letters.
Copy, mix, paste. (Hmm.. Kind of like Rip, Mix Burn huh?)
I am writing you today to urge you to seriously consider supporting the development of a consumer technology bill of rights. One such effort can be found here: http://www.digitalconsumer.org
Until now, our nation has employed a careful balance between the rights granted to copyright holders and those granted to citizens making use of protected content. These rights have enabled those who create and distribute content to generate wealth while allowing content to eventually pass into public domain in order to fuel future content creation.
Fair use also plays an important part in this balance. Today citizens who legally obtain content are free to use it in most non noncommercial ways such as time shifting, space shifting, and archive creation and use. These uses provide good value to consumers today. Fair use also permits many adademic uses of works that may or may not be endorsed by the creators, but are vital to the growth of our culture and society in general.
The efforts today to reduce the volume of content returned today to the public domain will reduce the quality and creative character of future content without any real benefit to society other than increased profits for the content creators. This is not what copyright was intended to do.
I am also concerned over the many efforts to eliminate or sharply constrain the scope of Fair Use. A reduction in Fair Use will have negative long term effects on our ability to understand the nature and worth of technology put forth in the future. These reductions will also come at our expense without any real benefit to society in general other than increased profits for the content creators.
The digital consumer today is under represented compared to the technology and content creators. The rapid pace of technology today makes it difficult for most of us to be reasonably informed about the technology that has a growing influence on our day to day lives. Through history, invention has changed our world in remarkable ways. We live now in a time where invention is again changing how our world works. Protecting the economic interests of a few large corporations now is just as wrong as it has been in the past.
Given the relative youth of digital technology and our limited understanding of its long term effects on society today, efforts such as the Consumer Technology Bill of Rights seek to establish a foundation upon which technology and content creators can innovate fairly while preserving every citizens essential freedoms in the process. Maintaining the checks and balances necessary for fair and just growth is a must and efforts such as the Consumer Technology Bill of rights represent a much needed vehicle to properly balance technology growth in the future.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I value it.
Well... You should really get an account. Past that, talentless HTML is better than talentless Flash.
Lots of other pesky useability issues as well. Most HTML can be navigated even with a text browser like LYNX. Flash does not share the same attributes.
So if one lacks talent, others are going to find it hard to navigate the site. If that site is HTML, they will have an easier time than if it were Flash.
You are right. There is plenty of room for both kinds of software.
I see it this way. The more people that use a particular type of software, the more reason there is to provide open source versions of it. Common basic things like Office software, browsers, and similar things need open source alternatives. For most people we already have done the development work and need few new features. Why pay again for what we have now. This is why M$ is afraid of Open Source. They know that it will break their software as a service model. And it should in most cases.
Open Standards takes care of the rest. Users should not allow companies to take ownership of their data through their closed file formats.
Open Standards are at the core of the whole M$ issue right now. The use of them would force them to compete on quality and value, which they can't.
Should we be building our web with closed standards? Macromedia owns flash. Once the usage rises, whats to say they continue to do good things with it?
The built in widgets are nice, (hope they are cross-platform) how much does it cost to develop and maintain vs what we have now?
How many really bad flash sites have you run into? I bump into a lot of them. Flash makes some things easy, but does nothing to hide lack of talent.
Don't misread my other post. I am totally in support of OSS stuff.
The dollars come from M$, think kickback.
The pressure will come when M$ provides a nice school lab in exchange for preferential treatment during courseware development and promotion.
There are dollars in OSS, but there are more dollars in M$.
Sure students are going to be turned off by M$ actions. I'll bet a high percentage of them are turned off already just because M$ has already happened. Why work on the established order when you can be working on something new?
Getting back to the schools, I see a different problem. Working on M$ stuff brings dollars to the school. OSS projects don't.
So I say the students will become interested only to find that the school is not...
Yep.
That is worth a lot to most people. This combined with the built in Apple software makes for a very nice machine with little hassle.
My next machine will be an Apple for sure. The hardware I have worked with has been fun, (SGI, PC Linux/win32) but OS X is looking better every day.
What Apple has that the PC world does not is holistic system design.
Since they produce the hardware, OS and key applications they have the ability to provide a well thought out user experience.
Slowly people are beginning to understand that this approach makes a lot of sense.
Apple is like SUN or SGI only they don't target big systems. They do small ones. Machines sold by all three of these companies have value long after they should when performing tasks the machines were designed for. Why?
Because the machine was designed to get the job done right!
PC machines are general purpose. This was an advantage earlier because it was cheaper. Now that more of the high end functionality is cheaper, Apple can come in and make a very nice machine at a price most people can afford.
So really they are a systems company. Their value is in the whole solution, not the cheap combining of parts.
Started another thread here because I did not want to go off topic on the other one.
./ is what makes it great. Making people pay, even a little will seriously reduce that inflow of ideas and comment. Some here say that would be a good thing, but I do not.
./ claims all posts are the property of the owners. I would not mind extending the right to re-publish to Andover if I got back something of value in return.
The free communication aspect of
Collecting, filtering and presenting that content in different ways would be worth paying for.
Mod perks so long as they make sense would be worth it also. Might also help with the S/N ratio of the site for the paying folks.
Slashdot e-mail! Why not?
Pay for cool user names, otherwise you get semi good ones.
PDF and Cell Phone compatable digests of threads. This one gets into trouble because
Others?
This should be a front page discussion topic.
Take a look over at arstechnica. They are trying some interesting things to keep the site free.
./ is happens to be discussion, but maybe there could be more... Anyway something to think about before just throwing up the ads while hoping readers can deal with them.
Basically what they have done is package some of their content and index it in a way that is worth some money each year.
The casual browser can still stop by and catch the news or discussion, but the interested user can subscribe and get nicely made PDF's of various articles and other things.
So much of what
I find it hard to believe that all the brains concentrated on this site a couple times a day that we cannot come up with something worth paying for.
Whadda think?
It has been said that IRIX really depends on some features of the MIPS design and that a port would involve a remake of many of the real-time and graphical features.
Though I agree IRIX with more CPU umph behind it would only be a good thing.
They use MIPS and are struggling with CPU speed compared to Intel. The current 600 Mhz core is in the new Fuel workstation. Be nice to see the 1Ghz version even nicer to get a new generation.
R20K maybe?
Their ad ranking methods make sense are affordable and do not get in the way of the real search.
Kudos to them for keeping their values while allowing a decent business model to evolve.