If it gets past the DMCA, I'm sure the "clean" movies crowd (CleanCut Cinemas and MyCleanFlicks to name a few) will love this. There was an excellent article in the New York Times Online (free subscription required, blah-de-blah) last Thursday discussing such things.
It seems like what's being lost in this analysis is that any project you're going to launch into space has to be done safely and properly... or your cost-managed investment amounts to naught.
It's all well and good to insist that NASA manage to a budget and a schedule; however, to hold these as the two highest priorities as they attempt to coordinate something no one has ever tried before is ludicrous.
I'm probably out of date, but I thought that was collab.net's and SourceXchange's purpose: bring together people who want code and have money with people who can make code and want money.
I'd think that it'd be easy to make the RFP there, then send a note to the developers/project mailing list steering them towards it.
Perhaps it's too pat an observation, but you handle it the same way you'd handle a real-life fraud: report it to the proper authorities (which you've done), hammer on them to do something about it (which I suspect you're doing), and hire a lawyer for a civil claim if merited.
IANAL, but I'd bet that Ebay would sit up and listen if they were contacted by one.
Just a fact worthy of note: trademark must be rigorously defended partly due to its lifespan -- forever. Copyright is less maintenance heavy because it eventually expires.* --j * in theory, and the Walt Disney Company's meddling notwithstanding
There's a nationally-sponsored event that's been going for about three years called NetDay in which you can volunteer to help wire your community schools either with a donation of time, supplies, or money. Check it out.
There's been so much hype over Y2K issues that the less-informed public is just as likely to panic over a minor disturbance as not. Of course the government is reviewing declaration and deployment scenarios; to not do so would be grossly negligent. This doesn't mean that they're planning to use martial law; it means that they're being sure that they can if it's necessary. Capische?
I find it amusing to hear so many people concerned over a power that has been available to US Presidents for decades. I'm betting that, should disaster or panic strike in their area, these same people will complain that martial law wasn't declared fast enough or enacted efficiently enough.
--j, who only tries to please some of the people some of the time
In my parlance, a geek is someone who is deeply interested in a particular subject and, because of that interest, knows a lot about it. Conversely, a nerd is someone who geeks on one subject to the exclusion of all else (such as social skills, personal hygeine, etc.)
I'm really several geeks in one. I'm a computer geek , to be sure; I'm also an art geek who enjoys an afternoon at a gallery or museum every bit as much as a late night spent hacking code. I'm a movie geek, which seems a given as I work in the film industry. I'm a process geek, which is to say that I really enjoy looking closely at the way in which a thing is done and figuring out how to do it better/faster/easier. I'm a people geek, a hiking geek, a perl geek, and a knowledge geek... and I could go on for days.
Maybe, rather than fighting the geek image, we need to redefine what the public thinks of when they hear "geek."
And FWIW, I've got the "biting the heads off chickens" definition of geek on my personal business card...right above the more useful definition; it's funny as hell and not the least bit insulting to me. And I don't think Linux should be kept out of the hands of Joe User...I'm working to put it there. =]
It was, indeed, a well considered essay. However, I'm forced to disagree on a number of points.
Why assume greed? Money hasn't been the motivator so far; why assume that once someone's thrown some cash into a bucket that this event is going to transform the community? It seems more likely that teams of college kids will band together to make enough money for a party/trip/whatever, or that LUG programming SIGs will look to this as a way to earn funding for the group. Some programmers may have a go at making this pay the bills; perhaps it will work. I don't think we're all going to drop what we're doing and become bounty coders.
What about peer review? Both sourceXchange and CoSource have made peer review an integral part of the process -- and a bar that must be cleared before getting paid. I don't think that it would make good business sense for them to lower that bar any further than the project sponsor(s) want it to be set.
Inspired Annoyance If people were already getting interested, there'd be no need for a bounty; in effect, these companies are saying, "We'll pay more if someone can do something which would benefit us in a timeframe we can accept." This doesn't mean that spare-time hackers like myself will flock to it because it's a paid project -- you might well find that the money convinces someone who was already a bit interested in the project's aims to rearrange their priorities in order to get paid to scratch their itch.
It's Still Open Source! My final, and strongest, point: no matter what, the end result is open source. If you think the code's sloppy, pitch in and fix it; if there's not enough art in the crafted code, show them what Michaelangelo could have done with a keyboard. You've got the choice...and in the meantime, we've got the code.
I'd probably ramble more, but I've got to go to work. You get the idea.
Whether it will work within their business model remains to be seen. Might be fun to see them delve into some other aspects of the technology: how about a distributed processing net with a node in each store location? That cool effects shot in your favorite movie might have rendered using spare cycles on Burger King's network of office computers.
Yes, but if you remove speed and reliable availability from the Internet for the masses of Foonia, you've reduced the available resource...which is what embargo is all about.
Why pour tons of money to put up some big hunk of metal in the guy's image? Why not set up a scholarship fund or something?
Excellent idea! I've used Apple's feedback page to recommend that they consider setting up the website mentioned in the BBC story to collect money for both purposes:
A BBC story I reached by way of Slashdot indicates that you are considering setting up a secure website to allow for credit card donations towards a statue of Alan Turing. I would urge you to do this, and I would also urge that any monies collected in excess of those needed go to sponsor a scholarship in his name. As Guy Kawasaki would say, "Right thing. Right way."
Even if it only helped on kid a year go to college, it would be a lot more useful than a statue.
Don't denigrate the usefulness of a statue. If artfully executed, the statue might add to its surroundings simply by being there. By simply existing, it may pique the curiosity of a passerby; they might stop, read the plaque, and learn something of the world they didn't know before.
Sounds good, Rob. I imagine that you've wrestled with the "Moderate vs. Participate" aspect of this one for a while; while I'm not firmly convinced that I agree with you, I'll give it a ride for a while.
ObSuckup: Thanks for all the work you do on/. It's become a vital resource for me (and thousands of others, I'm sure =) in fishing the information out of the data stream.
Im just curious what laws were broken by this "virus"? I mean at best it is an invasion of privacy insofar as it reads your address books w/ out your permission, but what kind of charge is that.
It doesn't just read your address books, it sends mail as you to other people without your consent. That's easily illegal for performing unauthorized actions on computers not owned nor controlled by you; it's probably also prosecutable as fraud.
It was handy once, and will be handy to catch abject imbeciles, but the MS GUID (and the Pentium III digital serial number) won't be of any help to catching the moderately intelligent criminals. They'll skate around it somehow (I can think of two ways right now) and we'll still pay the viral price.
My mother-in-law, a woman in her 50s who's firmly turned-on to the digital age but remains innocent of all but the most basic knowledge regarding computer security issues, is an easy target for these virii. She's still a digital toddler; she trusts all the digital adults out there and doesn't know that some of the misguided ones are out to hurt her. She's got some top-flight viral protection on her machine, but that only helps for the known virii.
In the end, it comes down to education. As much as I hate it, I get to shatter her innocent enjoyment of computing and show her a bit of the darker side; she'll be wiser for it, I know, but watching her take such joy in the medium that I've grown inured to was quite pleasurable to me -- like hearing a five-year-old laugh at a silly joke you heard ages ago and chuckling to yourself, knowing how much more pleasure is ahead.
Thanks, VicodinES, for dragging her into your world.
ESR makes the statement that we must change our method of communication; we must soften the hard edges and make nice with those who would represent us as well as with those who would scrutinize us.
Must we?
This uncovers an interesting question: how much of our identity is tied up in how we communicate? How much of who we are -- the geeks who hack code because it's fun and make it free because it's right -- is the free-for-all, raucous, often rancorous debates that rage for days, weeks, and months on our mailing lists?
This sort of debate used to make me very uncomfortable. I cringed when someone was on the receiving end of a lambasting. Then I noticed some things:
There's always someone flaming
You can't please everyone; most of the time you can barely please anyone but yourself. If someone can prove me wrong on this, I'm going to start looking for a star in the East.
Those who flame too often marginalize themselves
There are people out there who seem to be stuck in either hysterical or condescending mode; often they're stuck in both. Most of the time they get earplay/eyeplay for a while until folks tire of hearing them panic or condescend; from then on, the flamer becomes background noise.
This is a smaller version of what Mr. Raymond is concerned about: nobody likes an unreasonable, unreasoning fanatic. Eric's concerned that the Linux/GNU/Open Source/Free Software community as a whole will marginalize itself because it is not presenting a comfortingly united front to the corporate world. He's right; we aren't and by refusing to do so, we do run that risk in their eyes.
I don't know that it worries me much. The world is looking at us because we've got a good thing going...wouldn't changing the way it works risk changing what we've got?
Things still proceed, mostly
Despite the bickering, whining, hate mail, and other assorted namecalling, code still gets written, projects still progress and improve. As Archimedes said, "And yet, it moves."
What does this mean? I don't know. It appears to me to mean that despite being overwhelmingly short of resources and despite facing active resistance from within, we get things done. Not bad. =]
One other noteworthy bit: all of the above goes on in the Corporate halls, too; anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. The difference? We don't get to see them argue...and we don't get to tell them when they're wrong until they've already committed to a course of action.
As I started this essay, I intended to leave the question open because I didn't think I had an opinion; as you can see, I didn't, because I found I do. If you want to represent this community, do it with dignity and don't be ashamed that we're different -- it's that very difference which has gotten us so very far in so short a time.
Hmmm. Let's see here: Compuserve introduces a graphic standard (GIF) and lets everyone use it for years; they then impose a $1-per-software-application license fee, arousing the ire of computer users and software developers worldwide by having the nerve to charge for something that was free all along.
(incidentally, this event also dooms the GIF format and sees JPEG take over as the dominant compressed image format on the web)
And now we're upset because Apple is being up-front about their desire to recover R&D funds? Please. You can't have your cake and Edith, too.;p
Slashdot Mirror
If it gets past the DMCA, I'm sure the "clean" movies crowd (CleanCut Cinemas and MyCleanFlicks to name a few) will love this. There was an excellent article in the New York Times Online (free subscription required, blah-de-blah) last Thursday discussing such things.
Like all cool things, really scary too.
--j
It seems like what's being lost in this analysis is that any project you're going to launch into space has to be done safely and properly ... or your cost-managed investment amounts to naught.
It's all well and good to insist that NASA manage to a budget and a schedule; however, to hold these as the two highest priorities as they attempt to coordinate something no one has ever tried before is ludicrous.
--j, insomniac at large.
I'm probably out of date, but I thought that was collab.net's and SourceXchange's purpose: bring together people who want code and have money with people who can make code and want money.
I'd think that it'd be easy to make the RFP there, then send a note to the developers/project mailing list steering them towards it.
No?
--j
Perhaps it's too pat an observation, but you handle it the same way you'd handle a real-life fraud: report it to the proper authorities (which you've done), hammer on them to do something about it (which I suspect you're doing), and hire a lawyer for a civil claim if merited.
IANAL, but I'd bet that Ebay would sit up and listen if they were contacted by one.
--j
Just a fact worthy of note: trademark must be rigorously defended partly due to its lifespan -- forever. Copyright is less maintenance heavy because it eventually expires.* --j * in theory, and the Walt Disney Company's meddling notwithstanding
There's a nationally-sponsored event that's been going for about three years called NetDay in which you can volunteer to help wire your community schools either with a donation of time, supplies, or money. Check it out.
--j
Wake up!
There's been so much hype over Y2K issues that the less-informed public is just as likely to panic over a minor disturbance as not. Of course the government is reviewing declaration and deployment scenarios; to not do so would be grossly negligent. This doesn't mean that they're planning to use martial law; it means that they're being sure that they can if it's necessary. Capische?
I find it amusing to hear so many people concerned over a power that has been available to US Presidents for decades. I'm betting that, should disaster or panic strike in their area, these same people will complain that martial law wasn't declared fast enough or enacted efficiently enough.
--j, who only tries to please some of the people some of the time
I'm a geek.
In my parlance, a geek is someone who is deeply interested in a particular subject and, because of that interest, knows a lot about it. Conversely, a nerd is someone who geeks on one subject to the exclusion of all else (such as social skills, personal hygeine, etc.)
I'm really several geeks in one. I'm a computer geek , to be sure; I'm also an art geek who enjoys an afternoon at a gallery or museum every bit as much as a late night spent hacking code. I'm a movie geek, which seems a given as I work in the film industry. I'm a process geek, which is to say that I really enjoy looking closely at the way in which a thing is done and figuring out how to do it better/faster/easier. I'm a people geek, a hiking geek, a perl geek, and a knowledge geek... and I could go on for days.
Maybe, rather than fighting the geek image, we need to redefine what the public thinks of when they hear "geek."
And FWIW, I've got the "biting the heads off chickens" definition of geek on my personal business card...right above the more useful definition; it's funny as hell and not the least bit insulting to me. And I don't think Linux should be kept out of the hands of Joe User...I'm working to put it there. =]
--j, your friendly neighborhood geek
And here's the same info (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/990 611/ca_3dfx_fi_1.html) on Yahoo! if you don't like giving M$ another hit to which they can point and say, "See, people read our site!"
--j, an admitted anti-Microsoft bigot
It was, indeed, a well considered essay. However, I'm forced to disagree on a number of points.
Why assume greed?
Money hasn't been the motivator so far; why assume that once someone's thrown some cash into a bucket that this event is going to transform the community? It seems more likely that teams of college kids will band together to make enough money for a party/trip/whatever, or that LUG programming SIGs will look to this as a way to earn funding for the group. Some programmers may have a go at making this pay the bills; perhaps it will work. I don't think we're all going to drop what we're doing and become bounty coders.
What about peer review?
Both sourceXchange and CoSource have made peer review an integral part of the process -- and a bar that must be cleared before getting paid. I don't think that it would make good business sense for them to lower that bar any further than the project sponsor(s) want it to be set.
Inspired Annoyance
If people were already getting interested, there'd be no need for a bounty; in effect, these companies are saying, "We'll pay more if someone can do something which would benefit us in a timeframe we can accept." This doesn't mean that spare-time hackers like myself will flock to it because it's a paid project -- you might well find that the money convinces someone who was already a bit interested in the project's aims to rearrange their priorities in order to get paid to scratch their itch.
It's Still Open Source!
My final, and strongest, point: no matter what, the end result is open source. If you think the code's sloppy, pitch in and fix it; if there's not enough art in the crafted code, show them what Michaelangelo could have done with a keyboard. You've got the choice...and in the meantime, we've got the code.
I'd probably ramble more, but I've got to go to work. You get the idea.
--j
...a snowball tender in Hell.
atw asks:
How many times did you use the Net for only 10-15 minutes?
Umm...all the time? I read Slashdot in ten-to-fifteen minute bursts all day long. I ordered tickets to Star Wars this morning in about five minutes. I bought a book last week in less than three minutes.
Whether it will work within their business model remains to be seen. Might be fun to see them delve into some other aspects of the technology: how about a distributed processing net with a node in each store location? That cool effects shot in your favorite movie might have rendered using spare cycles on Burger King's network of office computers.
--j, who sees some amusing possibilities
Yes, but if you remove speed and reliable availability from the Internet for the masses of Foonia, you've reduced the available resource...which is what embargo is all about.
He must have burst into flames just after saying that. =]
--j, who wants a framed, autographed copy of that quote.
Excellent idea! I've used Apple's feedback page to recommend that they consider setting up the website mentioned in the BBC story to collect money for both purposes:
Even if it only helped on kid a year go to college, it would be a lot more useful than a statue.
Don't denigrate the usefulness of a statue. If artfully executed, the statue might add to its surroundings simply by being there. By simply existing, it may pique the curiosity of a passerby; they might stop, read the plaque, and learn something of the world they didn't know before.
--j, who believes that knowledge is its own end.
I wanna get my hands on that DNA strand and fix a few bugs.
Yeah, I had to reread it twice, too. =]
Sounds good, Rob. I imagine that you've wrestled with the "Moderate vs. Participate" aspect of this one for a while; while I'm not firmly convinced that I agree with you, I'll give it a ride for a while.
/. It's become a vital resource for me (and thousands of others, I'm sure =) in fishing the information out of the data stream.
ObSuckup: Thanks for all the work you do on
It was handy once, and will be handy to catch abject imbeciles, but the MS GUID (and the Pentium III digital serial number) won't be of any help to catching the moderately intelligent criminals. They'll skate around it somehow (I can think of two ways right now) and we'll still pay the viral price.
My mother-in-law, a woman in her 50s who's firmly turned-on to the digital age but remains innocent of all but the most basic knowledge regarding computer security issues, is an easy target for these virii. She's still a digital toddler; she trusts all the digital adults out there and doesn't know that some of the misguided ones are out to hurt her. She's got some top-flight viral protection on her machine, but that only helps for the known virii.
In the end, it comes down to education. As much as I hate it, I get to shatter her innocent enjoyment of computing and show her a bit of the darker side; she'll be wiser for it, I know, but watching her take such joy in the medium that I've grown inured to was quite pleasurable to me -- like hearing a five-year-old laugh at a silly joke you heard ages ago and chuckling to yourself, knowing how much more pleasure is ahead.
Thanks, VicodinES, for dragging her into your world.
Must we?
This uncovers an interesting question: how much of our identity is tied up in how we communicate? How much of who we are -- the geeks who hack code because it's fun and make it free because it's right -- is the free-for-all, raucous, often rancorous debates that rage for days, weeks, and months on our mailing lists?
This sort of debate used to make me very uncomfortable. I cringed when someone was on the receiving end of a lambasting. Then I noticed some things:
There's always someone flaming Those who flame too often marginalize themselves Things still proceed, mostly What does this mean? I don't know. It appears to me to mean that despite being overwhelmingly short of resources and despite facing active resistance from within, we get things done. Not bad. =]
One other noteworthy bit: all of the above goes on in the Corporate halls, too; anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. The difference? We don't get to see them argue...and we don't get to tell them when they're wrong until they've already committed to a course of action.
As I started this essay, I intended to leave the question open because I didn't think I had an opinion; as you can see, I didn't, because I found I do. If you want to represent this community, do it with dignity and don't be ashamed that we're different -- it's that very difference which has gotten us so very far in so short a time.
Hmmm. Let's see here: Compuserve introduces a graphic standard (GIF) and lets everyone use it for years; they then impose a $1-per-software-application license fee, arousing the ire of computer users and software developers worldwide by having the nerve to charge for something that was free all along.
;p
(incidentally, this event also dooms the GIF format and sees JPEG take over as the dominant compressed image format on the web)
And now we're upset because Apple is being up-front about their desire to recover R&D funds? Please. You can't have your cake and Edith, too.
--j