The article mentions that online reviews and word of mouth are reducing the effectiveness of advertising. Advertising is what the compnay *wants* you to know about their products. Of course, a really gutsy, ethical company wants you to know the truth about their products, and enjoys the enhanced word of mouth the Internet provides, because perhaps they can save some money on advertising.
There have already been reports about gag orders over product criticism. I wonder when the alarm bells began ringing in the advertising industry, and how their response will develop. (Astroturfing Slashdot?)
While most of the workplace that I'm aware of would never *require* their employees to don some sort of brain-boost helmet to do their jobs, their is something more insidious at work.
Some of the 'most successful' workers are those who focus their lives on the job, with less regard to families or a life outside work. The company didn't tell them, "have no life!" but they simply get more work done than those who do, and benefit accrodingly.
So even if the company doesn't tell its workers that, "It's time to don your coding caps," *some* workers will don them, anyway. Some workers on the borderline will don them because they feel they must, and others will refuse. Then when the next business downturn comes, see who's still around.
...is that in an older, more brutish time, think hundred-thousand-plus years ago we needed excess 'design capacity' so that we could survive long enough to become parents and grandparents, and still have 'adequate capacity' by then.
We talk today about many brain-sapping things, often nutritional problems that especially affect young children. One simple one is vitamin deficincies that today we solve simply with long-distance transportation. No such solution then but to get the diverse diet in the warm half of the year, and do the best you can in the cold half.
As for grandparents, one theory I heard was that parents who survived to be grandparents then helped with the grandchildren, giving the next generation a competitive advantage over those without grandparents in the household. (either more kids, or more prosperous to enhance competitive advantage of existing kids) As older people would be more in declining years, a higher start at birth leaves them more functional later.
Really, the meat of the SCO case revolves around the whole "derivative works" issue, and how sweeping the ownership/control claims they can make under such a contract.
If SCO wins, who things this will be the end of it? Who thinks it will stop with SCO?
How about another term in everyone else's contracts, claiming "derivative works" rights, including but not limited to Microsoft. Why bother arm-twisting and acquisitions to prevent OS/2 (past) or Linux ports? Now using correct license terms, you can make ISV's works "derivative" and simply make such things illegal.
Anyone want to bet against this, if SCO were to win?
But you can tunnel tcp over udp quite readily, and you can encrypt udp streams, as well. That's why I mentioned OpenVPN - they go into this stuff in better detail than I can. Apparently an OpenVPN author was involved in IPSec development, has beefs with several parts of it, and improvements in OpenVPN. (Of course beefs and improvements may be a matter of opinion, but his writing looks reasonably sound.
I thought about that after posting. Ideally you'd want to block the connection, not the port. I guess this is already standard fare for "dynamic firewalls," just not for this application.
After all, UDP tunnels are frequently better, since tcp-over-tcp can introduce odd timing effects. Run Google against "OpenVPN" for some pretty decent explanations of this and security issues. SSH tunnels are merely secure and easy, not necessarily the best.
But if dubya wins in 2004, the call to repeal the 22nd Ammendment (Presidential term limits) will start the day after. There were Reagan I fans who were starting to rumble about repealing it.
If that happens, we may need to wait a bit for anyone in the US to take action about MS's actions.
Isn't the extra security of IPV6 a disadvantage for folks like the RIAA, MPAA, and DOHS who want to know what we're saying and what files we're moving? It appears that DOD wants IPV6 for its own usage and security. But for general deployment, I suspect most governments and commercial sectors will want the Internet to stay IPV4, so they can 'keep on top of' the general populace.
Perhaps what this means is that once one would have expect the Internet to be IPV6, and a bunch of legacy islands floating in it. Instead, I suspect we're migrating toward a bunch of IPV6 islands floating in an Internet of IPV4. Big Boys (like DOD) will have IPSEC tunnels through the IPV4 connecting their pieces of IPV6.
So we still don't have an answer to IPV4 address space.
Maybe we'll get lucky, and I'll get surprised by general deployment of IPV6.
You're making the assumption that the Chinese will continue to be able to reap the economic benefits of the West without the economic problems or social/policital unrest.
IMHO, the old "honeymoon vs disillusionment" thing. Guess which phase they're in, and which one we're in.
Look at it this way... The DOJ consists mostly of working people just trying to do their jobs. Every 4 or 8 years or so, their entire upper management structure changes, and so does the focus of the organization. The workers generally survive the administration, but they have to adapt.
Now apply that to the antitrust division. Under the current administration, they basically don't have a job, except to put up the appearances of doing a job. They have to draw the fine line between sufficient appearance with no effective action. Furthermore, the job they can't do now will come back to haunt them the next time the political winds blow the other direction.
No wonder they're scared. Their job is to not do their job, but make it look like they are. They can't win, merely hold out.
It isn't that simple. Stop flying the shuttle so we can fund a replacement, and I'll wager that the saved money finds its way out of the NASA budget, and the replacement is never developed. ie- the US manned space program would stop until political pressures push us back into it, and then it would most likely be another limited single-goal effort like Apollo.
Of course if the single-goal was to match a sustainable moon base, I just with "they" would start applying the political pressure.
I didn't say they aren't doing it for their own gain. I merely said people can act differently in an organization than they do personally. They will frequently do things that they wouldn't do on their own, and may refrain from other things that they would rather do. We've covered two quadrants. You're argument is just that one of the other quadrants exists, and I don't dispute that, at all.
Another way of looking at it... It's a tradeoff. "If I don't do this action that I find personally distasteful, my family and life will suffer." These tradeoffs merely happen more often in an organization. This doesn't even qualify as an insight, just an observation. Hermits don't have to compromise with other people. (simplistic, I know)
Lumping the net in with organizations... Are you this polite in the real world, where you resort to namecalling before even attempting to discuss?
Put your college hat back on for a moment, and remember the Signals and Systems course...
Think of an economic cycle as a simple oscillator. As long as we had loosely-coupled economic systems in various nations, they could go through their economic cycles somewhat independently. Even better, the loose coupling acted as damping to calm down the ranges of cycling. Things only get REALLY bad when the cycles coincide and/or badly influence each other, like in the 1930's.
Enter "Free Trade" and globalization. Instead of multiple independent systems with damping, we have one bigger, more complex system, and who knows where the damping is. How do you make this giant mess stable, or at least limit the swings?
IMHO the creation of a giant, undamped, unmodelable mess is the real downfall of globalization.
Leaves me wondering how soon the Nations of Africa will get a clue, quit killing each other en masse, and hang out their "Open For Business" signs. (I don't mean to unfairly over-generalize Africa, so I'll include an apology for my wording.) As far as I can see, the cycle has moved through Asia, it's moving into Eastern Europe, so that leaves Africa and South America, except I suspect South America is already too developed to submit to simple exploitation.
I fear I can't completely agree with this. There are too many cases where an organization, be it corporation or government, really does exhibit behavior that's different from its constituents. Look at an organization as a sort of life form built out of people, just like people are life forms built out of organs and cells, etc. Members will do things "for the organization" that they just wouldn't do on their own, or for themselves.
There has already been some debunking of the theory that Microsoft is funding SCO, so I've got two new candidates. How about the RIAA and MPAA?
It's all based on the issue of "economy of scarcity" vs "economy of abundance". The latter is what Open Source offers, and some would think is the natural way of handing most IP matters. All that is needed is a business model to make sure artists/authors/inventors get paid, so they'll keep creating.
But the prime thrust of the RIAA/MPAA (and BSA, for that matter) has been to keep IP in the mode of "economy of scarcity", because under a scheme focused on artists/authors/inventors, they're left out. So far music, movies, etc have remained under a scarcity model.
However, there is a strong and growing amount of software that remains in the "economy of abundance" model. As long as Open Source exists and thrives, the siren call of an alternative business model beckons to artists/authors/inventors, especially those who feel at the short end of the stick from media conglomerates.
So in order to retain scarcity for the long haul, it's necessary to kill/discredit abundance. SCO is now at the forefront of this.
I don't know if this is an attempt at humor, or not.
I found Exim's address rewriting to be great for home use. What your ISP gives you for a username mayb not be what you want, nor sufficient userids for family usage, etc. Supposedly sendmail has the same flexibility, but I've only once been able to get it to work right.
As for security, I haven't audited it, either. But at least they say they take pains to attempt to shed capabilities as much as possible being "fully root" as little as possible. Besides, my Exim only receives mail from my LAN - it's send-only to the outside.
While you're at it, don't forget to mention the many people on Earth who chose to have a picnic at the pre-announced ground-zero for the first demonstration rock. Then somehow the folks on the moon took the flak for that 'tragic loss of life.' (Seemed more to me like a bit of Chlorine for Earth's gene pool)
Slashdot Mirror
The article mentions that online reviews and word of mouth are reducing the effectiveness of advertising. Advertising is what the compnay *wants* you to know about their products. Of course, a really gutsy, ethical company wants you to know the truth about their products, and enjoys the enhanced word of mouth the Internet provides, because perhaps they can save some money on advertising.
There have already been reports about gag orders over product criticism. I wonder when the alarm bells began ringing in the advertising industry, and how their response will develop. (Astroturfing Slashdot?)
While most of the workplace that I'm aware of would never *require* their employees to don some sort of brain-boost helmet to do their jobs, their is something more insidious at work.
Some of the 'most successful' workers are those who focus their lives on the job, with less regard to families or a life outside work. The company didn't tell them, "have no life!" but they simply get more work done than those who do, and benefit accrodingly.
So even if the company doesn't tell its workers that, "It's time to don your coding caps," *some* workers will don them, anyway. Some workers on the borderline will don them because they feel they must, and others will refuse. Then when the next business downturn comes, see who's still around.
...is that in an older, more brutish time, think hundred-thousand-plus years ago we needed excess 'design capacity' so that we could survive long enough to become parents and grandparents, and still have 'adequate capacity' by then.
We talk today about many brain-sapping things, often nutritional problems that especially affect young children. One simple one is vitamin deficincies that today we solve simply with long-distance transportation. No such solution then but to get the diverse diet in the warm half of the year, and do the best you can in the cold half.
As for grandparents, one theory I heard was that parents who survived to be grandparents then helped with the grandchildren, giving the next generation a competitive advantage over those without grandparents in the household. (either more kids, or more prosperous to enhance competitive advantage of existing kids) As older people would be more in declining years, a higher start at birth leaves them more functional later.
I certainly hope so. We're also in a bit of a tightrope, because this may circumscribe the GPL.
Really, the meat of the SCO case revolves around the whole "derivative works" issue, and how sweeping the ownership/control claims they can make under such a contract.
If SCO wins, who things this will be the end of it?
Who thinks it will stop with SCO?
How about another term in everyone else's contracts, claiming "derivative works" rights, including but not limited to Microsoft. Why bother arm-twisting and acquisitions to prevent OS/2 (past) or Linux ports? Now using correct license terms, you can make ISV's works "derivative" and simply make such things illegal.
Anyone want to bet against this, if SCO were to win?
But you can tunnel tcp over udp quite readily, and you can encrypt udp streams, as well. That's why I mentioned OpenVPN - they go into this stuff in better detail than I can. Apparently an OpenVPN author was involved in IPSec development, has beefs with several parts of it, and improvements in OpenVPN. (Of course beefs and improvements may be a matter of opinion, but his writing looks reasonably sound.
I thought about that after posting. Ideally you'd want to block the connection, not the port. I guess this is already standard fare for "dynamic firewalls," just not for this application.
After all, UDP tunnels are frequently better, since tcp-over-tcp can introduce odd timing effects. Run Google against "OpenVPN" for some pretty decent explanations of this and security issues. SSH tunnels are merely secure and easy, not necessarily the best.
Dubya is Reagan II. His policies are far closer to Reagan's than his father's.
But if dubya wins in 2004, the call to repeal the 22nd Ammendment (Presidential term limits) will start the day after. There were Reagan I fans who were starting to rumble about repealing it.
If that happens, we may need to wait a bit for anyone in the US to take action about MS's actions.
Isn't the extra security of IPV6 a disadvantage for folks like the RIAA, MPAA, and DOHS who want to know what we're saying and what files we're moving? It appears that DOD wants IPV6 for its own usage and security. But for general deployment, I suspect most governments and commercial sectors will want the Internet to stay IPV4, so they can 'keep on top of' the general populace.
Perhaps what this means is that once one would have expect the Internet to be IPV6, and a bunch of legacy islands floating in it. Instead, I suspect we're migrating toward a bunch of IPV6 islands floating in an Internet of IPV4. Big Boys (like DOD) will have IPSEC tunnels through the IPV4 connecting their pieces of IPV6.
So we still don't have an answer to IPV4 address space.
Maybe we'll get lucky, and I'll get surprised by general deployment of IPV6.
You're making the assumption that the Chinese will continue to be able to reap the economic benefits of the West without the economic problems or social/policital unrest.
IMHO, the old "honeymoon vs disillusionment" thing. Guess which phase they're in, and which one we're in.
If we told you, we'd have to kill you.
Look at it this way... The DOJ consists mostly of working people just trying to do their jobs. Every 4 or 8 years or so, their entire upper management structure changes, and so does the focus of the organization. The workers generally survive the administration, but they have to adapt.
Now apply that to the antitrust division. Under the current administration, they basically don't have a job, except to put up the appearances of doing a job. They have to draw the fine line between sufficient appearance with no effective action. Furthermore, the job they can't do now will come back to haunt them the next time the political winds blow the other direction.
No wonder they're scared. Their job is to not do their job, but make it look like they are. They can't win, merely hold out.
It isn't that simple. Stop flying the shuttle so we can fund a replacement, and I'll wager that the saved money finds its way out of the NASA budget, and the replacement is never developed. ie- the US manned space program would stop until political pressures push us back into it, and then it would most likely be another limited single-goal effort like Apollo.
Of course if the single-goal was to match a sustainable moon base, I just with "they" would start applying the political pressure.
If you want to speak with Friends of the Committee, I'd suggest you start with public relations offices of the RIAA or MPAA.
Boy is that a cynical and UGLY attempt at a joke. Or is it a diatribe at the truth?
I have/had an optimistic phrase/mantra:
"There is far more stupidity than evil in the world."
In recent year(s) I've added a less optimistic one.
"Sufficient stupidity combined with sufficient power may be indistinguishable from evil."
Kind of like Clarke's Third Law, only pessimistically applied to ethics.
I didn't say they aren't doing it for their own gain. I merely said people can act differently in an organization than they do personally. They will frequently do things that they wouldn't do on their own, and may refrain from other things that they would rather do. We've covered two quadrants. You're argument is just that one of the other quadrants exists, and I don't dispute that, at all.
Another way of looking at it... It's a tradeoff. "If I don't do this action that I find personally distasteful, my family and life will suffer." These tradeoffs merely happen more often in an organization. This doesn't even qualify as an insight, just an observation. Hermits don't have to compromise with other people. (simplistic, I know)
Lumping the net in with organizations... Are you this polite in the real world, where you resort to namecalling before even attempting to discuss?
Put your college hat back on for a moment, and remember the Signals and Systems course...
Think of an economic cycle as a simple oscillator. As long as we had loosely-coupled economic systems in various nations, they could go through their economic cycles somewhat independently. Even better, the loose coupling acted as damping to calm down the ranges of cycling. Things only get REALLY bad when the cycles coincide and/or badly influence each other, like in the 1930's.
Enter "Free Trade" and globalization. Instead of multiple independent systems with damping, we have one bigger, more complex system, and who knows where the damping is. How do you make this giant mess stable, or at least limit the swings?
IMHO the creation of a giant, undamped, unmodelable mess is the real downfall of globalization.
Leaves me wondering how soon the Nations of Africa will get a clue, quit killing each other en masse, and hang out their "Open For Business" signs. (I don't mean to unfairly over-generalize Africa, so I'll include an apology for my wording.) As far as I can see, the cycle has moved through Asia, it's moving into Eastern Europe, so that leaves Africa and South America, except I suspect South America is already too developed to submit to simple exploitation.
I fear I can't completely agree with this. There are too many cases where an organization, be it corporation or government, really does exhibit behavior that's different from its constituents. Look at an organization as a sort of life form built out of people, just like people are life forms built out of organs and cells, etc. Members will do things "for the organization" that they just wouldn't do on their own, or for themselves.
IMHO, there is a real difference here.
How's this for a conspiracy theory...
There has already been some debunking of the theory that Microsoft is funding SCO, so I've got two new candidates. How about the RIAA and MPAA?
It's all based on the issue of "economy of scarcity" vs "economy of abundance". The latter is what Open Source offers, and some would think is the natural way of handing most IP matters. All that is needed is a business model to make sure artists/authors/inventors get paid, so they'll keep creating.
But the prime thrust of the RIAA/MPAA (and BSA, for that matter) has been to keep IP in the mode of "economy of scarcity", because under a scheme focused on artists/authors/inventors, they're left out. So far music, movies, etc have remained under a scarcity model.
However, there is a strong and growing amount of software that remains in the "economy of abundance" model. As long as Open Source exists and thrives, the siren call of an alternative business model beckons to artists/authors/inventors, especially those who feel at the short end of the stick from media conglomerates.
So in order to retain scarcity for the long haul, it's necessary to kill/discredit abundance. SCO is now at the forefront of this.
I don't know if this is an attempt at humor, or not.
I wish I hadn't just lost my mod points. You'd get them.
I found Exim's address rewriting to be great for home use. What your ISP gives you for a username mayb not be what you want, nor sufficient userids for family usage, etc. Supposedly sendmail has the same flexibility, but I've only once been able to get it to work right.
As for security, I haven't audited it, either. But at least they say they take pains to attempt to shed capabilities as much as possible being "fully root" as little as possible. Besides, my Exim only receives mail from my LAN - it's send-only to the outside.
While you're at it, don't forget to mention the many people on Earth who chose to have a picnic at the pre-announced ground-zero for the first demonstration rock. Then somehow the folks on the moon took the flak for that 'tragic loss of life.' (Seemed more to me like a bit of Chlorine for Earth's gene pool)