That's interesting, especially when you consider that the Bush campaign ran IIS. Of course they probably just inherited the contract for the Whitehouse server from the previous admin. It's hosted by Akamai, so it's possible that the administration didn't make any decision about the OS at all.
As for the Queen, well... she traded in her fancy Sparc hardware for x86 boxes and got tired of Linux. So, if you are in that situation and you want something that's nothing like Linux, what do you choose? Windows.
That in itself is interesting--if people dump Sparc hardware for Linux x86 boxes and then sour on the OS, what will they do? Install Windows.
So, once again, commercial *NIX vendors are the biggest losers to Linux, not MS.
I don't know why you are such a pessimist. The corporate system thrives to the extent that it benefits the majority. At this point in time, it has begun to impact the rights of a minority--legitimate hackers and consumers engaging in unusual types of fair use practices (e.g., DVD on Linux). NOTICE: I am not endorsing piracy or black-hatting here. The legitimate hacker and unusual fair-use community is a tiny special interest at this point.
If you are a pessimist because you fear that this minority will continue to be oppressed, then that is understandable. The "fashionable left" that holds itself out as the defenders of their rights has done these people a disservice in a number of ways. Positioning themselves as hostile to the entire system certainly doesn't endear them to most people. Too many people benefit from the status quo. Instead, they should be attacking the ridiculous extremes that are currently finding their way into the law. Most Americans hate extremism be it Left or Right wing. The problem is that too many of these people, Lessig included, are themselves extremists. This is only leading to polarization, which is bad.
If you are a pessimist because you are strongly AIP, then I have little sympathy for you. In most cases, IP law benefits the majority and does not harm the rights of the minority. Too many people on/. are under the impression that the creation of a technical or artistic work conveys rights to people who have nothing to do with the creation. This leads to the falacy that you can somehow oppress people simply by creating an artistic or technical work and not giving it to them.
If you are a pessimist because you fear that IP extremism will eventually oppress most users to an unbearable extent, I believe this is unfounded, at least in the US. The American people will only tolerate so much BS, and if it gets to the point where the system is really concentrating power in the hands of a minority, people won't stand for it. You might think that's the case now, but it isn't. The majority of the US is now bought into the system through their 401k, or because they work for a corporation.
I might sound like some communist, but I am most certainly not that. I'm just a simple social democrat, and unfortunately very pessimistic about the eroding political power of "the people".
Just remember, every enemy looks powerful before it's beaten. As for being a social democrat, that can mean so many different things that I'm not going to comment on it.
If corporate personhood is the real problem, why don't they address it? I could sign on to that. After all, why should we cater to the desires of fictitious people?
The AIP movement does not address corporate personhood, neither does it distinguish between corporate and individual IP. Instead, they attack all IP which implies to me that they don't care a single bit about individual IP.
I don't know what you mean about it being "unthinkable" to attack corporate personhood. Has anybody tried? And no, I'm not talking about throwing dumpsters through the front window of your local Starbucks. I'm talking about oh... for example, restricting and ultimately eliminating donations to political parties made on behalf of corporations. After all, corporations aren't real citizens so it makes little sense to afford them full rights as citizens. OTOH, such an approach has ominious implications for freedom of association.
Might I suggest a different course of action? How about common sense. The nice thing about common sense is that it makes... umm.. common sense. Common sense tells us that you can't found a business based on taking somebody else's work (Napster) it also tells us that you can't take away somebody's domain name just because some corporate weenie doesn't like it (*sucks.com). The nice thing about common sense is that it's neither AIP or unduly pro IP. Most people have an inate sense of what copyrights, patents, and trademarks are supposed to do, and what they are not supposed to do. How about bringing judgement back into the judiciary? If we did that, maybe some of these judges would look at some of these cases (Skylarov) and say "egad! They can't do that to this guy" instead of writing 50 page anesthesia documents full of precedent and rigid beurocratic formality. Then again, have any of the people under the gun of unfair IP practices even bothered to ask for a jury trial? Perhaps the elitist crowd who purport to defend these people have sold the public short, as they are wont to do.
Duh. Does this book really tell us anything more than "Lessig hates IP"? If you've been on/. for longer than a few months, you already know that.
Give me one reason why I should buy this book, other than to OCR it, put it on line, and enjoy the delicious irony when Larry's lawyers come calling.
IT Patent Invalidated By Prior Art
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 3, Funny
IT was already invented by Johnny Hart, author of the comic strip BC. The prior art is plainly visible in the upper right hand corner of this picture, has been available for quite some time, and appears regularly in newspapers and online.
The reasoning for this was that if modification were allowed it would dilute the usefulness of the license, as "GPL-derived" licenses might not even be Free Software or Open Source.
I disagree. The MPL is more or less GPL-derived. It's just that they got their lawyers together and made it look "different enough" so that nobody would accuse them of hacking the GPL, and that has not diluted the "usefulness" of the GPL.
Also, there are several other licenses (e.g., Sleepycat) that are GPL-like, but not expressly derived from the GPL.
The copyright restriction on the GPL can't prevent the proliferation of licenses. It just makes it harder for people who might want to use the GPL as a starting point. Their desire to prevent the "GPL brand" from being diluted is understandable. A more fair solution would be to allow unlimited modification of the GPL, as long as you didn't call your license the GPL.
This is one area where I agree with the AIP crowd. Why? Because if we are to carry the analogy of physical property into the IP realm (IMHO, the sanest way to deal with IP sold directly to consumers) we *must* allow resale, including "parting out" the components.
To do otherwise would be like GM saying that you can't put a new engine in your car. I'd say more, but I need to run down to the local warehouse, stock up on OEM Windows, and hit eBay before the warehouse guy realizes.:)
(yes, I know OEM doesn't come with a support contract, I know it's going to be appealed, yada yada yada, lighten up. OK?)
...is to always include a grammatical error, mistake, flawed reasoning, or some other foible in the article. They always include at least one.
Why? Because somebody will always say something about it, and it will generate more page views and hits and stuff, and sometimes they might even get modded up, generating yet more page views and hits and stuff.
Now, you might just think that the editors have no English skills. This might very well be true. I always picture this meeting taking place, where somebody mentions that they need to improve their skills. Then somebody mentions all the page views and hits and stuff.
The real genius here is that not only do they get to be lazy, they actually benefit from the laziness. It's actually a cool hack, and I almost hate to point this out because I might spoil it.
2. continue to invest in idea even though you are losing money.
3. realize that idea loses money, stop investing in idea.
4. stare dumb-struck when some other company that stuck through just a little bit longer actually starts making money.
This is known in MBA school as the "totally out of whack inverse biorythm business strategy" or "the 180 degrees out of phase business strategy". Most MBAs are supposed to learn how to avoid it in the first few weeks.
Amazingly, they are actually still in business with this strategy.
The vast majority of professional programmers (most estimates I've seen have put it at between 90% and 95%) are employed developing custom software
If this is true, then how can proprietary software be a burden to anybody? Why don't companies just write their own OS for internal use?
At any rate, these are figures that people pull out of their posteriors. Even if accurate, they ignore the issue of the relative importance of the work being performed. Also, being a minority doesn't make something less important. Far less than 1% of the people in your state are elected officials, but what if we decided to restrict their civil liberties?
These statistics are most often bandied about by people trying to get others to ignore the rights of proprietary software developers by placing them in a minority. If this kind of logic were applied to racial minorities, the person who did so would be justifiably blasted. Yet applying this logic to a professional minority seems to be socially acceptable. Why?
I see your point. I guess you have to compare the size of a CSM+LEM to the size of Shuttle+LEM. I was thinking that most of the energy was expended simply getting into low Earth orbit, and that once you were there it wasn't that bad to reach escape velocity. I mean, they are already going 18,000mph and escape is 25,000 so it didn't seem that bad. Where do you get your 5 Saturn figure though? I'd be interested in seeing some equations.
It would take *5* Saturn V's to boost *1* shuttle into Lunar orbit
That's totally not what I had in mind. I was thinking of launching the shuttle with an empty bay and a skeleton crew. The lander and the fuel would come either from one big (separate) launch, or perhaps part of an "emergency supply" attached to the ISS.
How hard would it be to retrofit a Space Shuttle for a Lunar mission? Could the cargo bay hold an Apollo-style LEM and enough fuel for the mission? Perhaps the shuttle could rendezvous with some kind of booster, although I imagine you'd have to EVA to bolt them together. Really, I don't care how they do it, it would just be really cool to see the Shuttle in Lunar orbit, with a lander coming out of the cargo bay.
If the Chinese are serious about this, they should swallow their pride and establish rescue plans with the US and Russia. Even if we can't fit a lander in the cargo bay, we might still be able to rescue them from Lunar orbit.
It seems like this whole business might actually be done best by combining Russian and US technology. Use the US lander technology, and the Russian disposable rockets to launch fuel modules into low orbit. Link up with the fuel module and away you go! Come to think of it, why bother just using it to rescue the Chinese? Why not just go there ourselves? Oh wait... there's not much reason to go, and establishing a permanent presence would be EXPENSIVE.
So, unless the Chinese find something really valuable to mine up there, I don't see the rationale for a permanent presence at this time. Then again, maybe they know how to make rockets really cheaply, but based on my experience with cheap metal products made in China, I wouldn't want to ride one.
If there is stuff to mine up there, we should send robot mining units. Why risk people for such a prosaic activity?
When you fill in A=1, B=100 and C=2 you see that this is a case where the equation does not hold. This is a counterexample, so therefore the original arguments made by Pythagoras are invalid.:)
By simply substituting items into ESR's statement, you are ignoring the context within which the statement was made and the nature of the items to which ESR was referring.
I hope all those people who whine about how the US dominates "everything" are paying attention. The US always comes up short on these cool little gadgets that the Japanese invent. Remember the PS-2 shortage last year?
In the short run the Somali immigrants will be hurt, but in the long run they are better off getting rid of Hawallas and getting a real banking system. If this encourages them to do that, it will, in the long run, be seen as one of the best things we could do for them. Why? Because the Hawalla charges ridiculous cuts just for transferring the money. It's somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 to as much as 15% according to an article I read in the Washington Post.
This is really ironic when you consider that they are always getting on the case of the "Jewish conspirators" for charging "usery".
These hawallas are "check cashing" fronts that bilk their own people, and they get what they deserve.
Your retort only makes sense if you swallow the idea that "proprietary software"=="slavery".
My definition of slavery is compulsion to work without wages. Where in the current IP scheme does slavery occur? Nobody is compelled to purchase Windows, much less work on it without pay. MSFT's employees earn handsome wages. The only thing that even comes close to slavery is graduate students being compelled to work on Free Software to complete a thesis, and not receiving minimum wage from corporations in return.
"Either open source is a net win for both producers and consumers on pure self-interest grounds or it is not. If it is, you cannot lose; if it is not you cannot (and should not) win."
Re:One important factor
on
Mapping Gravity
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The possibilty of the Indian government permitting foreign launch stations on their soil would be counterproductive, and therefore out of the question.
Huh? Probably they aren't going to let Pakistan launch there, but launch fees from the US, Japan, perhaps China and a few other space-faring nations could certainly provide a welcome source of revenue. How would it be counter-productive? If anything I would think the other nations would be reluctant since the Indians are likely to require inspection of the rocket and payload.
Well, at least it's not splashback. I hate when that happens. I mean, unless the bowl was flushed with alcohol, you never know what you might catch from that. Therefore, I propose the government mandate that all public toilets for #2 use should have at least a 6 foot drop to the water line. Sure some little kid might fall in and drown, but at least I won't have to deal with splashback.
Slashdot Mirror
That's interesting, especially when you consider that the Bush campaign ran IIS. Of course they probably just inherited the contract for the Whitehouse server from the previous admin. It's hosted by Akamai, so it's possible that the administration didn't make any decision about the OS at all.
As for the Queen, well... she traded in her fancy Sparc hardware for x86 boxes and got tired of Linux. So, if you are in that situation and you want something that's nothing like Linux, what do you choose? Windows.
That in itself is interesting--if people dump Sparc hardware for Linux x86 boxes and then sour on the OS, what will they do? Install Windows.
So, once again, commercial *NIX vendors are the biggest losers to Linux, not MS.
I don't know why you are such a pessimist. The corporate system thrives to the extent that it benefits the majority. At this point in time, it has begun to impact the rights of a minority--legitimate hackers and consumers engaging in unusual types of fair use practices (e.g., DVD on Linux). NOTICE: I am not endorsing piracy or black-hatting here. The legitimate hacker and unusual fair-use community is a tiny special interest at this point.
If you are a pessimist because you fear that this minority will continue to be oppressed, then that is understandable. The "fashionable left" that holds itself out as the defenders of their rights has done these people a disservice in a number of ways. Positioning themselves as hostile to the entire system certainly doesn't endear them to most people. Too many people benefit from the status quo. Instead, they should be attacking the ridiculous extremes that are currently finding their way into the law. Most Americans hate extremism be it Left or Right wing. The problem is that too many of these people, Lessig included, are themselves extremists. This is only leading to polarization, which is bad.
If you are a pessimist because you are strongly AIP, then I have little sympathy for you. In most cases, IP law benefits the majority and does not harm the rights of the minority. Too many people on /. are under the impression that the creation of a technical or artistic work conveys rights to people who have nothing to do with the creation. This leads to the falacy that you can somehow oppress people simply by creating an artistic or technical work and not giving it to them.
If you are a pessimist because you fear that IP extremism will eventually oppress most users to an unbearable extent, I believe this is unfounded, at least in the US. The American people will only tolerate so much BS, and if it gets to the point where the system is really concentrating power in the hands of a minority, people won't stand for it. You might think that's the case now, but it isn't. The majority of the US is now bought into the system through their 401k, or because they work for a corporation.
I might sound like some communist, but I am most certainly not that. I'm just a simple social democrat, and unfortunately very pessimistic about the eroding political power of "the people".
Just remember, every enemy looks powerful before it's beaten. As for being a social democrat, that can mean so many different things that I'm not going to comment on it.
Dear Rev'd. King,
Do you have any idea what kind of revolution it would take to eliminate Jim Crow?
If corporate personhood is the real problem, why don't they address it? I could sign on to that. After all, why should we cater to the desires of fictitious people?
The AIP movement does not address corporate personhood, neither does it distinguish between corporate and individual IP. Instead, they attack all IP which implies to me that they don't care a single bit about individual IP.
I don't know what you mean about it being "unthinkable" to attack corporate personhood. Has anybody tried? And no, I'm not talking about throwing dumpsters through the front window of your local Starbucks. I'm talking about oh... for example, restricting and ultimately eliminating donations to political parties made on behalf of corporations. After all, corporations aren't real citizens so it makes little sense to afford them full rights as citizens. OTOH, such an approach has ominious implications for freedom of association.
Might I suggest a different course of action? How about common sense. The nice thing about common sense is that it makes... umm.. common sense. Common sense tells us that you can't found a business based on taking somebody else's work (Napster) it also tells us that you can't take away somebody's domain name just because some corporate weenie doesn't like it (*sucks.com). The nice thing about common sense is that it's neither AIP or unduly pro IP. Most people have an inate sense of what copyrights, patents, and trademarks are supposed to do, and what they are not supposed to do. How about bringing judgement back into the judiciary? If we did that, maybe some of these judges would look at some of these cases (Skylarov) and say "egad! They can't do that to this guy" instead of writing 50 page anesthesia documents full of precedent and rigid beurocratic formality. Then again, have any of the people under the gun of unfair IP practices even bothered to ask for a jury trial? Perhaps the elitist crowd who purport to defend these people have sold the public short, as they are wont to do.
lessig loves the balance between protection
Either Lessig is related to Bob Dole, or you are an imposter. :)
Duh. Does this book really tell us anything more than "Lessig hates IP"? If you've been on /. for longer than a few months, you already know that.
Give me one reason why I should buy this book, other than to OCR it, put it on line, and enjoy the delicious irony when Larry's lawyers come calling.
IT was already invented by Johnny Hart, author of the comic strip BC. The prior art is plainly visible in the upper right hand corner of this picture, has been available for quite some time, and appears regularly in newspapers and online.
I Floccinaucinihilipilificate the word Floccinaucinihilipilification.
The reasoning for this was that if modification were allowed it would dilute the usefulness of the license, as "GPL-derived" licenses might not even be Free Software or Open Source.
I disagree. The MPL is more or less GPL-derived. It's just that they got their lawyers together and made it look "different enough" so that nobody would accuse them of hacking the GPL, and that has not diluted the "usefulness" of the GPL.
Also, there are several other licenses (e.g., Sleepycat) that are GPL-like, but not expressly derived from the GPL.
The copyright restriction on the GPL can't prevent the proliferation of licenses. It just makes it harder for people who might want to use the GPL as a starting point. Their desire to prevent the "GPL brand" from being diluted is understandable. A more fair solution would be to allow unlimited modification of the GPL, as long as you didn't call your license the GPL.
This is one area where I agree with the AIP crowd. Why? Because if we are to carry the analogy of physical property into the IP realm (IMHO, the sanest way to deal with IP sold directly to consumers) we *must* allow resale, including "parting out" the components.
To do otherwise would be like GM saying that you can't put a new engine in your car. I'd say more, but I need to run down to the local warehouse, stock up on OEM Windows, and hit eBay before the warehouse guy realizes. :)
(yes, I know OEM doesn't come with a support contract, I know it's going to be appealed, yada yada yada, lighten up. OK?)
...is to always include a grammatical error, mistake, flawed reasoning, or some other foible in the article. They always include at least one.
Why? Because somebody will always say something about it, and it will generate more page views and hits and stuff, and sometimes they might even get modded up, generating yet more page views and hits and stuff.
Now, you might just think that the editors have no English skills. This might very well be true. I always picture this meeting taking place, where somebody mentions that they need to improve their skills. Then somebody mentions all the page views and hits and stuff.
The real genius here is that not only do they get to be lazy, they actually benefit from the laziness. It's actually a cool hack, and I almost hate to point this out because I might spoil it.
You don't understand VA's business strategy:
1. invest in idea.
2. continue to invest in idea even though you are losing money.
3. realize that idea loses money, stop investing in idea.
4. stare dumb-struck when some other company that stuck through just a little bit longer actually starts making money.
This is known in MBA school as the "totally out of whack inverse biorythm business strategy" or "the 180 degrees out of phase business strategy". Most MBAs are supposed to learn how to avoid it in the first few weeks.
Amazingly, they are actually still in business with this strategy.
The vast majority of professional programmers (most estimates I've seen have put it at between 90% and 95%) are employed developing custom software
If this is true, then how can proprietary software be a burden to anybody? Why don't companies just write their own OS for internal use?
At any rate, these are figures that people pull out of their posteriors. Even if accurate, they ignore the issue of the relative importance of the work being performed. Also, being a minority doesn't make something less important. Far less than 1% of the people in your state are elected officials, but what if we decided to restrict their civil liberties?
These statistics are most often bandied about by people trying to get others to ignore the rights of proprietary software developers by placing them in a minority. If this kind of logic were applied to racial minorities, the person who did so would be justifiably blasted. Yet applying this logic to a professional minority seems to be socially acceptable. Why?
I see your point. I guess you have to compare the size of a CSM+LEM to the size of Shuttle+LEM. I was thinking that most of the energy was expended simply getting into low Earth orbit, and that once you were there it wasn't that bad to reach escape velocity. I mean, they are already going 18,000mph and escape is 25,000 so it didn't seem that bad. Where do you get your 5 Saturn figure though? I'd be interested in seeing some equations.
...should switch to Linux/Apache. That way all they would have to do is remember to keep the patches current... umm... nevermind.
It would take *5* Saturn V's to boost *1* shuttle into Lunar orbit
That's totally not what I had in mind. I was thinking of launching the shuttle with an empty bay and a skeleton crew. The lander and the fuel would come either from one big (separate) launch, or perhaps part of an "emergency supply" attached to the ISS.
How hard would it be to retrofit a Space Shuttle for a Lunar mission? Could the cargo bay hold an Apollo-style LEM and enough fuel for the mission? Perhaps the shuttle could rendezvous with some kind of booster, although I imagine you'd have to EVA to bolt them together. Really, I don't care how they do it, it would just be really cool to see the Shuttle in Lunar orbit, with a lander coming out of the cargo bay.
If the Chinese are serious about this, they should swallow their pride and establish rescue plans with the US and Russia. Even if we can't fit a lander in the cargo bay, we might still be able to rescue them from Lunar orbit.
It seems like this whole business might actually be done best by combining Russian and US technology. Use the US lander technology, and the Russian disposable rockets to launch fuel modules into low orbit. Link up with the fuel module and away you go! Come to think of it, why bother just using it to rescue the Chinese? Why not just go there ourselves? Oh wait... there's not much reason to go, and establishing a permanent presence would be EXPENSIVE.
So, unless the Chinese find something really valuable to mine up there, I don't see the rationale for a permanent presence at this time. Then again, maybe they know how to make rockets really cheaply, but based on my experience with cheap metal products made in China, I wouldn't want to ride one.
If there is stuff to mine up there, we should send robot mining units. Why risk people for such a prosaic activity?
1. Somebody gets ahold of ML and uses it for a DoS on the FBI.
2. FBI requests help from hackers on solving the ML problem.
A*A + B*B = C*C
When you fill in A=1, B=100 and C=2 you see that this is a case where the equation does not hold. This is a counterexample, so therefore the original arguments made by Pythagoras are invalid. :)
By simply substituting items into ESR's statement, you are ignoring the context within which the statement was made and the nature of the items to which ESR was referring.
No release date for the USA yet
I hope all those people who whine about how the US dominates "everything" are paying attention. The US always comes up short on these cool little gadgets that the Japanese invent. Remember the PS-2 shortage last year?
In the short run the Somali immigrants will be hurt, but in the long run they are better off getting rid of Hawallas and getting a real banking system. If this encourages them to do that, it will, in the long run, be seen as one of the best things we could do for them. Why? Because the Hawalla charges ridiculous cuts just for transferring the money. It's somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 to as much as 15% according to an article I read in the Washington Post.
This is really ironic when you consider that they are always getting on the case of the "Jewish conspirators" for charging "usery".
These hawallas are "check cashing" fronts that bilk their own people, and they get what they deserve.
Your retort only makes sense if you swallow the idea that "proprietary software"=="slavery".
My definition of slavery is compulsion to work without wages. Where in the current IP scheme does slavery occur? Nobody is compelled to purchase Windows, much less work on it without pay. MSFT's employees earn handsome wages. The only thing that even comes close to slavery is graduate students being compelled to work on Free Software to complete a thesis, and not receiving minimum wage from corporations in return.
What you have just said was said best by ESR:
"Either open source is a net win for both producers and consumers on pure self-interest grounds or it is not. If it is, you cannot lose; if it is not you cannot (and should not) win."
The possibilty of the Indian government permitting foreign launch stations on their soil would be counterproductive, and therefore out of the question.
Huh? Probably they aren't going to let Pakistan launch there, but launch fees from the US, Japan, perhaps China and a few other space-faring nations could certainly provide a welcome source of revenue. How would it be counter-productive? If anything I would think the other nations would be reluctant since the Indians are likely to require inspection of the rocket and payload.
Well, at least it's not splashback. I hate when that happens. I mean, unless the bowl was flushed with alcohol, you never know what you might catch from that. Therefore, I propose the government mandate that all public toilets for #2 use should have at least a 6 foot drop to the water line. Sure some little kid might fall in and drown, but at least I won't have to deal with splashback.