I demand my $6/hour for reading all the articles and posting to Slashdot (even the "1st post!"'s). After all, I contribute to Slashdot getting readership and the readership contributes to the ad revenue...
Consider, for a moment, what www.dmoz.org/ is doing with the open directory project. A small group of people using their life experiance and expertise to help other people find relavant information on the web. Once again, this is done out of kindness for the comunity and not for some kind of return. The ony payment is in the satisfaction of a job well done.
Personally I've been trying for months now to become an editor for dmoz, but my emails go unanswered except for my first one which stated I was already an editor (of course, I'm not).
Although they could have chosen better software like XFree and Gecko, it's nice to know they're using an Actual graphical browser and a good operating system. From what I gather of the device it looks good and cool, but my question is what's the point? Why not just get a computer and a phone?
Frankly, I've always wondered how sites like Google manage to do their processing. Serving ads is ok, but for certain sites like/. there's a lot of backend processing that I just don't think ads can cover. Using people's computers sounds like a good idea, but for it to make any economical sense it probably would have to be pretty cheap.
Needless to say there are some serious security issues here that no doubt won't be properly assessed.
I own an ICQ help website, which because of its content is very popular. Of course, since ICQ is not my product and other people can easily come up with ICQ FAQs of their own, it's hard to claim that it's "my" content. So sites such as this one copy the content rather blatantly and include their own copyright notice at the bottom. Another site I've dealt with copied all the content word-for-word but changed the design. They added in a corner of their front page a little link to my site under "sources".
Giving appropriate credit is one thing, but how much credit should you give? This site obviously didn't give enough, as it was mentioned on Slashdot, so it's really a grey area here.
Wasn't this Jeff Bezos' idea when he and Amazon.com applied for "defensive" patents so that other companies couldn't come in and clobber them? Now we know what happened in that story. What's to stop these antipatents from becoming patents of their own?
It's nice that he apologized (just about unheard of kind of apology for a journalist) and that he posted a response to his website, but why not include it at the beginning of the article? It seems to be a sidebar (which looks enough like regular sidebar crap to be ignored by users) and the article has been just about untouched. Doesn't seem right to me. Nevertheless, still nice he apologized.
Administrative difficulties aside, what's wrong with having.city.state.us for a business which only caters to that city? People are afraid to use them because 1) they don't think the laymen are used to.us, 2) they think that a 4th-level domain lacks quality and 3) they think it's hard to remember. The first and second issues I can't deal with, but would change as people adopt.us. The third I can question however. If I were to live in the US, I'd know my state and my town. Those things I know how to spell, and if more companies were to adopt this scheme, I'd know it like the back of my hand. So that leaves the company name, which since it's local doesn't have to be the overly convoluted.com name because names are not in short supply. Which would you rather have:
slashdot.newyork.ny.us or
newyork-slashdot.org? The difference is only a character or two when you include the down in the domain. The only problem I see here is advertising. They'd have to say the entire domain which could get cumbersome. But at least they'd know how to spell it.
There is one difference between this and rented dwellings. Tennants have rights.
Re:NYT might be believing the hype a little too mu
on
NYT On Open Source
·
· Score: 1
I have to agree. The article mentioned only one problem with OSS that I noted, which was with Mozilla (and righfully so). Then they go ahead and show the other side of that story. I like open source, but shouldn't this be an article with the good and the bad? The bad is excused here, and everything is "open source advocates say..." and no word from the other side of the coin. I would have preferred a more unbiased approach.
Why is everyone so concerned with Linux and Apple competing with each other? Frankly I would like if both could win. If Linux, Apple and Microsoft each had a 25% market share, with (insert your OS here) having the remaining quarter, I would be happy. They'd have to work interechangably, and competition would spark innovation (sorry Bill). Free Software is about Freedom, not destroying Microsoft or having your OS crush the competition.
I greatly respect Apple, and as long as they make a profit off of their computers, they're going to innovate, and they're going to be a competing force in the industry.
Not that it would happen, but if they wanted to, could a directory like Dmoz (which apparently cannot respond to emails from prospective editors) shut out their site from those who would use it freely? What do we have to ensure that something like this won't happen? What about a site that doesn't distribute its content all over, like SourceForge?
The DMCA was created for things like this. You're not buying books, you're buying licenses to read books. It's like a library where you pay. And someone will come up with a way to break the woefully inadequate protection system they have there so people can read the books when they like, and they will be sued, even if they live in some other country. And we will be better off because with rights and freedom, chaos would immediately ensue.
It just so happens this was being discussed on another forum just recently. While Mozilla/Netscape is 15-30 MB, IExplorer is 8MB PER WINDOW. So if you have three windows open, that's already 24MB of memory being taken up. Which would you rather have?
I have a/box for MZ too. And I saw it. And I liked it. And I submitted it. And they posted it. Not bad since there were two previous stories yesterday I had submitted a week and a half in advance.
A domain name could have been considered like a phone number, but with multiple registrars apart from NSI, this kind of ruling can only lead to chaos. With one company controlling phone numbers, they can give and they can take. If domains aren't property and you can do whatever you want with them, does that mean NSI and Register.com can hack each other to death and grab domain names? Again, this has to do with a stolen domain.
Yes, but no. A domain name is included in a URL whereas your address isn't included in your phone number. Frankly, there isn't really any part of the URL that's important other than the domain name at this point.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with your statement entirely. Microsoft has the manpower, and they'll use it on anything they haven't monopolized yet. That's not an evil empire, it's good business. It's unfortunately also why OSS is destined not to rule the world (at least, not yet). As soon as it starts becoming a threat, MS will increase R&D and put out something better, commercial, bug-ridden, and free. Once they've cornered the market again, they'll go back into hiding. It isn't such a bad thing, at least it gets MS to put out better browsers and operating systems, and hopefully with Mozilla and Linux both getting better, MS will either die or be forced to improve. As much as some people hate that company, both are Good Thing(tm)s.
What shocks me is that the URL here was stolen which was the whole point of this case. If I were to go and hijack microsoft.com, would the judge rule in my favor as well? Heck no, because Microsoft is a big company. Network Solutions would yank the domain from under me before I could say "hypocrisy". The little guy once again loses out to the law, and the most important thing to have when it comes to the internet for most companies is now subject to an EULA.
P.S. This is the second story in a day that I submitted well in advance. (2000-08-25 19:08:15 Judge Rules Domains Aren't Property (articles,doj) (rejected)), note that it has a more correct title, since this applies to domain names and NOT URLs.
Aside from the fact that this article is very vague (and no doubt the bill is too) about what exactly it covers, it won't change anything. Companies involved will blame everything on the user and/or other software. If it crashes, they'll say "you installed X program and that screwed it up, so we don't have to fix it", which is perfectly legitimate since programs are at fault a lot of the time. In essence, installing ANYTHING on your computer could void the warranty.
On the other hand, this may just apply to computer hardware (again, the article isn't specific enough - this is FOX), in which case they can simply blame it on the software. I've had things like network cards that work fine in Windows but are still defective. Anything that doesn't work but seems fine is a software problem. Anything that doesn't is wear and tear or the user's fault.
Finally, even if it is hardware, what fits the definition of "computer"? If there's a chip in my TV and it breaks down, does the TV company have to repair it as much as two years later? What about all those internet appliances that are supposed to be a part of our lives already? The only thing the article says is that it has to cost over $10.
Slashdot Mirror
Having an updated BIND is one thing, but we'll still have to wait for them to update GAG to 9.0 - hopefully both will have Gore and Bush support.
I demand my $6/hour for reading all the articles and posting to Slashdot (even the "1st post!"'s). After all, I contribute to Slashdot getting readership and the readership contributes to the ad revenue...
Personally I've been trying for months now to become an editor for dmoz, but my emails go unanswered except for my first one which stated I was already an editor (of course, I'm not).
Apparently it was tested thoroughly to make sure it was Grandmother-compatible. Does that mean all those grandmothers are out of work now?
Although they could have chosen better software like XFree and Gecko, it's nice to know they're using an Actual graphical browser and a good operating system. From what I gather of the device it looks good and cool, but my question is what's the point? Why not just get a computer and a phone?
As much as opening source would be a Good Thing(TM), we look at Seti@Home and I just don't think this can be done in an open-source way.
Needless to say there are some serious security issues here that no doubt won't be properly assessed.
Giving appropriate credit is one thing, but how much credit should you give? This site obviously didn't give enough, as it was mentioned on Slashdot, so it's really a grey area here.
There isn't any mention of Microsoft and Al Gore inventing the internet and TCP/IP from scratch.
Wasn't this Jeff Bezos' idea when he and Amazon.com applied for "defensive" patents so that other companies couldn't come in and clobber them? Now we know what happened in that story. What's to stop these antipatents from becoming patents of their own?
It's nice that he apologized (just about unheard of kind of apology for a journalist) and that he posted a response to his website, but why not include it at the beginning of the article? It seems to be a sidebar (which looks enough like regular sidebar crap to be ignored by users) and the article has been just about untouched. Doesn't seem right to me. Nevertheless, still nice he apologized.
Administrative difficulties aside, what's wrong with having .city.state.us for a business which only caters to that city? People are afraid to use them because 1) they don't think the laymen are used to .us, 2) they think that a 4th-level domain lacks quality and 3) they think it's hard to remember. The first and second issues I can't deal with, but would change as people adopt .us. The third I can question however. If I were to live in the US, I'd know my state and my town. Those things I know how to spell, and if more companies were to adopt this scheme, I'd know it like the back of my hand. So that leaves the company name, which since it's local doesn't have to be the overly convoluted .com name because names are not in short supply. Which would you rather have:
slashdot.newyork.ny.us or
newyork-slashdot.org? The difference is only a character or two when you include the down in the domain. The only problem I see here is advertising. They'd have to say the entire domain which could get cumbersome. But at least they'd know how to spell it.
There is one difference between this and rented dwellings. Tennants have rights.
I have to agree. The article mentioned only one problem with OSS that I noted, which was with Mozilla (and righfully so). Then they go ahead and show the other side of that story. I like open source, but shouldn't this be an article with the good and the bad? The bad is excused here, and everything is "open source advocates say..." and no word from the other side of the coin. I would have preferred a more unbiased approach.
Also, it's a software problem
</FUD>
Why is everyone so concerned with Linux and Apple competing with each other? Frankly I would like if both could win. If Linux, Apple and Microsoft each had a 25% market share, with (insert your OS here) having the remaining quarter, I would be happy. They'd have to work interechangably, and competition would spark innovation (sorry Bill). Free Software is about Freedom, not destroying Microsoft or having your OS crush the competition. I greatly respect Apple, and as long as they make a profit off of their computers, they're going to innovate, and they're going to be a competing force in the industry.
Not that it would happen, but if they wanted to, could a directory like Dmoz (which apparently cannot respond to emails from prospective editors) shut out their site from those who would use it freely? What do we have to ensure that something like this won't happen? What about a site that doesn't distribute its content all over, like SourceForge?
The DMCA was created for things like this. You're not buying books, you're buying licenses to read books. It's like a library where you pay. And someone will come up with a way to break the woefully inadequate protection system they have there so people can read the books when they like, and they will be sued, even if they live in some other country. And we will be better off because with rights and freedom, chaos would immediately ensue.
It just so happens this was being discussed on another forum just recently. While Mozilla/Netscape is 15-30 MB, IExplorer is 8MB PER WINDOW. So if you have three windows open, that's already 24MB of memory being taken up. Which would you rather have?
I have a /box for MZ too. And I saw it. And I liked it. And I submitted it. And they posted it. Not bad since there were two previous stories yesterday I had submitted a week and a half in advance.
A domain name could have been considered like a phone number, but with multiple registrars apart from NSI, this kind of ruling can only lead to chaos. With one company controlling phone numbers, they can give and they can take. If domains aren't property and you can do whatever you want with them, does that mean NSI and Register.com can hack each other to death and grab domain names? Again, this has to do with a stolen domain.
Yes, but no. A domain name is included in a URL whereas your address isn't included in your phone number. Frankly, there isn't really any part of the URL that's important other than the domain name at this point.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with your statement entirely. Microsoft has the manpower, and they'll use it on anything they haven't monopolized yet. That's not an evil empire, it's good business. It's unfortunately also why OSS is destined not to rule the world (at least, not yet). As soon as it starts becoming a threat, MS will increase R&D and put out something better, commercial, bug-ridden, and free. Once they've cornered the market again, they'll go back into hiding. It isn't such a bad thing, at least it gets MS to put out better browsers and operating systems, and hopefully with Mozilla and Linux both getting better, MS will either die or be forced to improve. As much as some people hate that company, both are Good Thing(tm)s.
P.S. This is the second story in a day that I submitted well in advance. (2000-08-25 19:08:15 Judge Rules Domains Aren't Property (articles,doj) (rejected)), note that it has a more correct title, since this applies to domain names and NOT URLs.
On the other hand, this may just apply to computer hardware (again, the article isn't specific enough - this is FOX), in which case they can simply blame it on the software. I've had things like network cards that work fine in Windows but are still defective. Anything that doesn't work but seems fine is a software problem. Anything that doesn't is wear and tear or the user's fault.
Finally, even if it is hardware, what fits the definition of "computer"? If there's a chip in my TV and it breaks down, does the TV company have to repair it as much as two years later? What about all those internet appliances that are supposed to be a part of our lives already? The only thing the article says is that it has to cost over $10.