We'll start with the basic ingrediants, and just keep submitting patches to the recipe until we have an exact duplicate of Coca Cola.
Seriously, has anybody considered it?
Maybe the easiest way would just be to stake out the bottling plants, follow trucks, plant moles, things like that. I mean, if the Rosenburgs can get the secret for the A-bomb, why not Coke? Oh wait... weren't they executed?
Here's a random quote from one of the reviewers, regarding the performance of a CS instructor:
He is one of the worst instructor that I'd have. programing since I was 14 year old and I would love to challenge this guy to program anytime. His knowledges in computer science is very limited and I doubt this guy was major in computer science in his undergraduated program. DO NOT TAKE HIS CLASS because you will better off reading the dietel book than taking this guy class.
Well, if the syntax in this guys programs is anything like the syntax in his English, he should not be so critical. I was ROTFL.
You should re-post this story with the "It's funny. Laugh." logo.
It's not so much the internet theft, it's the potential for property damage and liability.
Sure, these guys did it OK, but if they don't get punished it'll be open season on dorm wiring. Then some idiot fumbling around the wiring will get zapped to death with 120V AC across the temples. The university gets sued for millions.
The guys who install professionally are licensed, bonded, etc.
Did they use plenum grade ethernet cable? What if a fire broke out? Did they mark these cables? After they graduate, who's going to maintain and troubleshoot this system?
No, it isn't rape or murder, but it *is* a crime. If convicted, I'd probably give them $100 find and a misdemeanor blot on their records but that's about it. OTOH, if the punishment is more severe I'll understand why--the university will be trying to set an example. Sometimes you have to do that to maintain discipline.
Once upon a time, hardware mfct. dominated software mfct. And there was all kind of hardware, and IBM had a monopoly, yada, yada, yada...
Then came Microsoft, and the software industry drove the hardware industry. And there was all kinds of software for Windows and MS had a monopoly, and the hardware had to be standardized so it could run Windows.
And now we have Open Source, and MS is trembling, but they ain't stupid. They're getting into the hardware business. MS probably won't dominate the hardware business, but we can expect to see more types of hardware that is customized and can't be hacked/modified.
Guess what, kiddies: Open Source won't save you from proprietary hardware, and all those long nights of kernel hacking will just go towards making sure that the next proprietary network appliance/PC can run all kinds of software right out of the box.
So you'll have the source. So what. It'll be the source for X-box Linux that only runs on the X-box, so what good is it... really?
Bend over and kiss ISA, PCI, overclocked Celerons and The Computer Show and Sale good-bye. You won't be able to build your own PC anymore, and the big corporations will laugh themselves all the way to the bank.
Maybe they were afraid that if they used proprietary hardware, their boxes wouldn't run Windows.
Since the hardware manufacturers can change Linux, they no longer have that worry. The temptation to build proprietary hardware (for whatever purpose) re-enters the picture.
Then you have the source for Linux, but it's only X-box Linux that won't run on anything else. So you've got the source, what good is it?
They're looking for an abstract proof, not a massive crunch. Now if somebody programs d.net to handle random logical arguments, and test those logical arguments for validity, that would be interesting. OTOH, I have a feeling that the number of possible symbolic logical arguments that conclude with an assertion of the Goldbach conjecture is *considerably* larger than a keyspace:) . Also, the program would have to include a knowledge bank containing all the mathematical proofs (which these professors will have at their disposal). This is a clear cut case where the human brain still wins, because the brain can intelligently determine what theorems need to be cited, what papers to look at, what aspects of prior research are important, etc.
An interesting question is: assuming prime numbers are "randomly" distributed, what is the probability that an even number won't be the sum of two odd numbers?
If they are patenting the idea of sending signals through a wormhole, there is prior art: Star Trek Voyager.
There is an episode where Reginald Barkley (back on earth) comes up with a way to create an artificial wormhole, then he briefly opens a channel to Voyager.
I also posted this idea to Slashdot as part of a response to a story about optical "wormholes". So if they are patenting the idea of sending signals (or anything) through a wormhole, it's a bogus patent.
OTOH, if they've found a way to create a real gravity well they've got something. I just hope they don't get careless with it. Hey, what's that tugging on my
...so I should think that the/. anti-censorship cabal would be all opposed to any law that regulates it. What, you say? It costs corporations millions of dollars in lost revenue because of the bandwidth.
But if we argue against spam for costing money that cannot be easily quantified, then we must also do likewise for piracy. But if I oppose piracy then I can't be a/. anti-censorhip wonk. Non sequitur! your facts are uncoordinated!
I am a/. anti-censorship advocate. I am Nomad. I am perfect. analyze. analyzzeee.. errrrorrrrizeee.... BOOM!!!
If you can't prevent copying of intellectual property, and/or you have no ability to revoke ownership rights as granted to others, its hard to assert any real notion of ownership.
This is pretty much the "might makes right" argument. Just because I'm incapable of defending a right, doesn't mean the right doesn't exist.
The only thing that has kept the music/film industry alive is the fact that up until this point, distribution of the intellectual property has required the distribution of physical media (film, cd's) that they control.
But they still have to sign the artists. Nobody holds a gun to these artist's head. Given the choice between playing seedy bars for the rest of their lives, and signing lucrative contracts, most of them take the contract. A better way to destroy this argument is to imagine that the corporations have no cooperation from the artists--then all they have is the power to distribute, but they have nothing to distribute, in other words, they have nothing. The artists still have their art, and they can at least still play in bars. Now, what happens if we take away intellectual property? The artists can still play their art, but the corporations have no reason to sign the artists, because then they can just take their art. The corporations win!!!
Open Source favors corporations the same way. Only large organizations can capture revenues from the economies of scale that arise and allow them to make a profit through advertising, IPOs, deals, support contracts, etc. Many of these revenue streams are not practical for individuals and smaller companies.
With digital technologies bridging the quality gap, pirating will soon become rampant and commonplace, most likely resulting in many companies simply throwing in the towel.
Not just companies. Individuals and truly creative people will become discouraged too.
I had written on these issues quite some time ago, and decided to keep my thoughts to myself, since they were a bit disturbing. However, since the author of the Post article has said many similar things, I thought I would post my thoughts here
Several posters commented about how the people who really want information use proxies/anonymizers. They remarked that if these were shut down, then new addresses propogated. Presumably, they propogated by word of mouth, ie people sending e-mails to their friends and stuff.
Now, if the proxies included encrypted lists of alternates as part of their protocols, then clients could transparently surf the net even when the government blocked a particular proxy. In other words, remodulate the shield frequency. I'm assuming that it wouldn't be too hard to come up with a free client or a hack to Mozilla or something like that, and server software that was designed to cooperate with it.
Network programming is not my forte, so I wouldn't know how to do this, but I'm sure there are plenty of people here who do. Now, if we set up a site for the express purpose of influencing and subverting the Chinese government, it would be interesting to see how the US government. reacted.
Given Al Gore's campaign financing situation, it seems like turnabout would be fair play.
Everyone knows php3 is passe these days. If you aren't using servlets, you're yawnsville.
Everybody knows trying to use the latest technology just because some jerk thinks it's cools is passé. If you aren't using tried and true technology that's proven to work, you're crashville.
As a comparitive case study, might I suggest we look at the beer market?
Until not too long ago, it could be said that a few large corporations controlled most of the beer market. Then something happened in the late 80s or early 90s: People realized they wanted more interesting tastes and variety in their beer. Home brewing soared in popularity; "microbreweries" and brew pubs appeared in greater numbers.
All of this happened without anybody whining about the dominance of the big brewers, and nobody even suggested that all beer recipes should be open-sourced.
So, resistance if not futile... just pointless. If you'd like to discuss this in greater depth, and live in the Washington DC area, feel free to e-mail me--for directions to the local brew pub of my choice. Pointless discussions like this are usually more fun when beer is involved.
You're blowing this just a bit out of proportion. When I was in High School, one of my fellow nerds said, "You wanna take this class, I think it's going to be important. A lot of businesses will be using it.". My response was "no" because I figured that by the time I graduated college and got out into the "real world" any technology I learned in HS would be obsolete, and that I could learn just as much about computing in general (and have more fun) by hacking my C-64. Oh, the class he wanted me to take? It was PL/1. sigh... I remember that like it was yesterday.
Anyhow, the point is that they are learning universally applicable skills, not just specific systems. Who would you rather hire: Someone who knows all the keystrokes for Word, or someone who can sit down in front of any piece of software and become proficient in a couple of weeks.
Nuclear bombs don't kill people. People kill people.
OK, seriously... If we ever get into a situation where we know, say, 4 months from now an asteroid is going to hit the Earth, then one of those big cherry bombs might come in handy.
I just hope we can find the common sense to use them on space rocks, and not on ourselves.
What really matters is that Slashdot got to run a headline that said Hamburgers were going to get free internet access, which sounds very amusing to most Americans. When Americans hear the word hamburger, they think of a ground-beef sandwich. So most of the Americans saw Free Internet Access for Ground Beef Sandwiches and got a good chuckle, whether they knew the German meaning of Hamburger or not.
Haven't you figured it out yet? Slashdot is not mostly about news. It's about entertainment and left-wing propoganda.
OK, so Disney et. al. pay to produce programs, not knowing whether they are going to be popular or not. Then when a program is popular iCrave comes along and rebroadcasts it with their own ads, not having assumed any of the risks involved with producing the program.
In other words, Wah Wah Wah, smallest violin, etc. etc. Mommy, I can't steal for a living, will you wipe my tears?
This was a no brainer ruling in favor of Disney et. al.
Moore's law is approx. 18 months. Therefore, in 15 years, 1000 CPU boxes should be common, assuming that hardware manufacturers immediately switch their tactics from increasing the power of one processor to adding more processors.
As part of the Windows culture, let me elaborate on this. I think a lot of people in the Open Source community are confused about freedom.
The freedom granted by Open Source is irrelevant to most users. This is because most users are not programmers. Giving them the source and allowing the community to modify it would result in non standard versions, confusion, and difficulty in running tech support call centers (due to the proliferation of different versions and configurations).
The exchange of money for binary only actually enhances freedom. Users are liberated from the decision making process involved with deciding how they are going to configure, install, support, what commands to use, what window manager to use, what distro to use, etc. In Windows, there are few apps that could be described as fritterware, a term I've heard used to describe *NIX programs that have an endless variety of configuration and enhancement options.
This argument doesn't necessarily apply to average users only. On my desktop, I've got MS Developer Studio, which allows me to create Windows apps almost totally WYSIWYG, compiles C/C++ and handles all the necessary chores for building Windows applications. I have no desire to view the source for Developer Studio.
If DS breaks so badly that it has to be patched, MS patches it. If I had the source to DS, MS might feel less obligated to patch it. Then I would have to scour Usenet looking for patches, rebuilding DS and testing the rebuild. What a waste of time. I bought DS to build apps, not rebuild DS. I would much rather pay MS $800 for the latest version of DS then spend $5000 worth of my own time tweaking DS (not an unrealistic dollar figure given todays IT salaries). MS actually saves me $4200. That $4200 represents freedom to do a lot of other things.
I knew it was only a matter of time before someone setup up an AC submit bot. Is this a home-brew bot, or is it TribeFlood? Will Slashdot join the ranks of Yahoo!, CNN, and E*Trade soon?
Slashdot Mirror
We'll start with the basic ingrediants, and just keep submitting patches to the recipe until we have an exact duplicate of Coca Cola.
Seriously, has anybody considered it?
Maybe the easiest way would just be to stake out the bottling plants, follow trucks, plant moles, things like that. I mean, if the Rosenburgs can get the secret for the A-bomb, why not Coke? Oh wait... weren't they executed?
Here's a random quote from one of the reviewers, regarding the performance of a CS instructor:
He is one of the worst instructor that I'd have. programing since I was 14 year old and I would love to challenge this guy to program anytime. His knowledges in computer science is very limited and I doubt this guy was major in computer science in his undergraduated program. DO NOT TAKE HIS CLASS because you will better off reading the dietel book than taking this guy class.
Well, if the syntax in this guys programs is anything like the syntax in his English, he should not be so critical. I was ROTFL.
You should re-post this story with the "It's funny. Laugh." logo.
It's not so much the internet theft, it's the potential for property damage and liability.
Sure, these guys did it OK, but if they don't get punished it'll be open season on dorm wiring. Then some idiot fumbling around the wiring will get zapped to death with 120V AC across the temples. The university gets sued for millions.
The guys who install professionally are licensed, bonded, etc.
Did they use plenum grade ethernet cable? What if a fire broke out? Did they mark these cables? After they graduate, who's going to maintain and troubleshoot this system?
No, it isn't rape or murder, but it *is* a crime. If convicted, I'd probably give them $100 find and a misdemeanor blot on their records but that's about it. OTOH, if the punishment is more severe I'll understand why--the university will be trying to set an example. Sometimes you have to do that to maintain discipline.
...had classified ads in the back for these things at least since the 80s. This has to be some kind of record for Slashdot posting old news.
Once upon a time, hardware mfct. dominated software mfct. And there was all kind of hardware, and IBM had a monopoly, yada, yada, yada...
Then came Microsoft, and the software industry drove the hardware industry. And there was all kinds of software for Windows and MS had a monopoly, and the hardware had to be standardized so it could run Windows.
And now we have Open Source, and MS is trembling, but they ain't stupid. They're getting into the hardware business. MS probably won't dominate the hardware business, but we can expect to see more types of hardware that is customized and can't be hacked/modified.
Guess what, kiddies: Open Source won't save you from proprietary hardware, and all those long nights of kernel hacking will just go towards making sure that the next proprietary network appliance/PC can run all kinds of software right out of the box.
So you'll have the source. So what. It'll be the source for X-box Linux that only runs on the X-box, so what good is it... really?
Bend over and kiss ISA, PCI, overclocked Celerons and The Computer Show and Sale good-bye. You won't be able to build your own PC anymore, and the big corporations will laugh themselves all the way to the bank.
Anonymous Coward comments are, in a sense, anonymous webhosting.
Maybe they were afraid that if they used proprietary hardware, their boxes wouldn't run Windows.
Since the hardware manufacturers can change Linux, they no longer have that worry. The temptation to build proprietary hardware (for whatever purpose) re-enters the picture.
Then you have the source for Linux, but it's only X-box Linux that won't run on anything else. So you've got the source, what good is it?
They're looking for an abstract proof, not a massive crunch. Now if somebody programs d.net to handle random logical arguments, and test those logical arguments for validity, that would be interesting. OTOH, I have a feeling that the number of possible symbolic logical arguments that conclude with an assertion of the Goldbach conjecture is *considerably* larger than a keyspace :) . Also, the program would have to include a knowledge bank containing all the mathematical proofs (which these professors will have at their disposal). This is a clear cut case where the human brain still wins, because the brain can intelligently determine what theorems need to be cited, what papers to look at, what aspects of prior research are important, etc.
An interesting question is: assuming prime numbers are "randomly" distributed, what is the probability that an even number won't be the sum of two odd numbers?
Zero.
If they are patenting the idea of sending signals through a wormhole, there is prior art: Star Trek Voyager.
There is an episode where Reginald Barkley (back on earth) comes up with a way to create an artificial wormhole, then he briefly opens a channel to Voyager.
I also posted this idea to Slashdot as part of a response to a story about optical "wormholes". So if they are patenting the idea of sending signals (or anything) through a wormhole, it's a bogus patent.
OTOH, if they've found a way to create a real gravity well they've got something. I just hope they don't get careless with it. Hey, what's that tugging on my
...so I should think that the /. anti-censorship cabal would be all opposed to any law that regulates it. What, you say? It costs corporations millions of dollars in lost revenue because of the bandwidth.
But if we argue against spam for costing money that cannot be easily quantified, then we must also do likewise for piracy. But if I oppose piracy then I can't be a /. anti-censorhip wonk. Non sequitur! your facts are uncoordinated!
I am a /. anti-censorship advocate. I am Nomad. I am perfect. analyze. analyzzeee.. errrrorrrrizeee.... BOOM!!!
If you can't prevent copying of intellectual property, and/or you have no ability to revoke ownership rights as granted to others, its hard to assert any real notion of ownership.
This is pretty much the "might makes right" argument. Just because I'm incapable of defending a right, doesn't mean the right doesn't exist.
The only thing that has kept the music/film industry alive is the fact that up until this point, distribution of the intellectual property has required the distribution of physical media (film, cd's) that they control.
But they still have to sign the artists. Nobody holds a gun to these artist's head. Given the choice between playing seedy bars for the rest of their lives, and signing lucrative contracts, most of them take the contract. A better way to destroy this argument is to imagine that the corporations have no cooperation from the artists--then all they have is the power to distribute, but they have nothing to distribute, in other words, they have nothing. The artists still have their art, and they can at least still play in bars. Now, what happens if we take away intellectual property? The artists can still play their art, but the corporations have no reason to sign the artists, because then they can just take their art. The corporations win!!!
Open Source favors corporations the same way. Only large organizations can capture revenues from the economies of scale that arise and allow them to make a profit through advertising, IPOs, deals, support contracts, etc. Many of these revenue streams are not practical for individuals and smaller companies.
With digital technologies bridging the quality gap, pirating will soon become rampant and commonplace, most likely resulting in many companies simply throwing in the towel.
Not just companies. Individuals and truly creative people will become discouraged too.
I had written on these issues quite some time ago, and decided to keep my thoughts to myself, since they were a bit disturbing. However, since the author of the Post article has said many similar things, I thought I would post my thoughts here
Several posters commented about how the people who really want information use proxies/anonymizers. They remarked that if these were shut down, then new addresses propogated. Presumably, they propogated by word of mouth, ie people sending e-mails to their friends and stuff.
Now, if the proxies included encrypted lists of alternates as part of their protocols, then clients could transparently surf the net even when the government blocked a particular proxy. In other words, remodulate the shield frequency. I'm assuming that it wouldn't be too hard to come up with a free client or a hack to Mozilla or something like that, and server software that was designed to cooperate with it.
Network programming is not my forte, so I wouldn't know how to do this, but I'm sure there are plenty of people here who do. Now, if we set up a site for the express purpose of influencing and subverting the Chinese government, it would be interesting to see how the US government. reacted.
Given Al Gore's campaign financing situation, it seems like turnabout would be fair play.
Everyone knows php3 is passe these days. If you aren't using servlets, you're yawnsville.
Everybody knows trying to use the latest technology just because some jerk thinks it's cools is passé. If you aren't using tried and true technology that's proven to work, you're crashville.
As a comparitive case study, might I suggest we look at the beer market?
Until not too long ago, it could be said that a few large corporations controlled most of the beer market. Then something happened in the late 80s or early 90s: People realized they wanted more interesting tastes and variety in their beer. Home brewing soared in popularity; "microbreweries" and brew pubs appeared in greater numbers.
All of this happened without anybody whining about the dominance of the big brewers, and nobody even suggested that all beer recipes should be open-sourced.
So, resistance if not futile... just pointless. If you'd like to discuss this in greater depth, and live in the Washington DC area, feel free to e-mail me--for directions to the local brew pub of my choice. Pointless discussions like this are usually more fun when beer is involved.
Now this really *pisses* *me* *off*. RIAA thinks it it entitled to assess a fine *upon* *me* because *other* people are pirating.
Now I'm really pissed off. The government keeps taxing me to build jails because other people are murdering.
What? No rocket jumping? The American education system really is going down hill.
You're blowing this just a bit out of proportion. When I was in High School, one of my fellow nerds said, "You wanna take this class, I think it's going to be important. A lot of businesses will be using it.". My response was "no" because I figured that by the time I graduated college and got out into the "real world" any technology I learned in HS would be obsolete, and that I could learn just as much about computing in general (and have more fun) by hacking my C-64. Oh, the class he wanted me to take? It was PL/1. sigh... I remember that like it was yesterday.
Anyhow, the point is that they are learning universally applicable skills, not just specific systems. Who would you rather hire: Someone who knows all the keystrokes for Word, or someone who can sit down in front of any piece of software and become proficient in a couple of weeks.
Nuclear bombs don't kill people. People kill people.
OK, seriously... If we ever get into a situation where we know, say, 4 months from now an asteroid is going to hit the Earth, then one of those big cherry bombs might come in handy.
I just hope we can find the common sense to use them on space rocks, and not on ourselves.
What really matters is that Slashdot got to run a headline that said Hamburgers were going to get free internet access, which sounds very amusing to most Americans. When Americans hear the word hamburger, they think of a ground-beef sandwich. So most of the Americans saw Free Internet Access for Ground Beef Sandwiches and got a good chuckle, whether they knew the German meaning of Hamburger or not.
Haven't you figured it out yet? Slashdot is not mostly about news. It's about entertainment and left-wing propoganda.
OK, so Disney et. al. pay to produce programs, not knowing whether they are going to be popular or not. Then when a program is popular iCrave comes along and rebroadcasts it with their own ads, not having assumed any of the risks involved with producing the program.
In other words, Wah Wah Wah, smallest violin, etc. etc. Mommy, I can't steal for a living, will you wipe my tears?
This was a no brainer ruling in favor of Disney et. al.
1024 = 2^10
Moore's law is approx. 18 months. Therefore, in 15 years, 1000 CPU boxes should be common, assuming that hardware manufacturers immediately switch their tactics from increasing the power of one processor to adding more processors.
As part of the Windows culture, let me elaborate on this. I think a lot of people in the Open Source community are confused about freedom.
The freedom granted by Open Source is irrelevant to most users. This is because most users are not programmers. Giving them the source and allowing the community to modify it would result in non standard versions, confusion, and difficulty in running tech support call centers (due to the proliferation of different versions and configurations).
The exchange of money for binary only actually enhances freedom. Users are liberated from the decision making process involved with deciding how they are going to configure, install, support, what commands to use, what window manager to use, what distro to use, etc. In Windows, there are few apps that could be described as fritterware, a term I've heard used to describe *NIX programs that have an endless variety of configuration and enhancement options.
This argument doesn't necessarily apply to average users only. On my desktop, I've got MS Developer Studio, which allows me to create Windows apps almost totally WYSIWYG, compiles C/C++ and handles all the necessary chores for building Windows applications. I have no desire to view the source for Developer Studio.
If DS breaks so badly that it has to be patched, MS patches it. If I had the source to DS, MS might feel less obligated to patch it. Then I would have to scour Usenet looking for patches, rebuilding DS and testing the rebuild. What a waste of time. I bought DS to build apps, not rebuild DS. I would much rather pay MS $800 for the latest version of DS then spend $5000 worth of my own time tweaking DS (not an unrealistic dollar figure given todays IT salaries). MS actually saves me $4200. That $4200 represents freedom to do a lot of other things.
I knew it was only a matter of time before someone setup up an AC submit bot. Is this a home-brew bot, or is it TribeFlood? Will Slashdot join the ranks of Yahoo!, CNN, and E*Trade soon?