I think history has proven that large ISP's simply cannot provide the quality of service that small or local ones can. I've never heard an end-user praise of @home, though I've not used it myself. Both ISP's I use are small and both provide snappy customer service and reliable bandwidth. Furthermore, the more small technology companies we have (in the US), the more that technology will be usurped from large corporations which tend to mismanage it and the less power corporate lobbyists will have to push bad laws.
Disclaimer: I am by no means against "hippies" as myself and most of my friends would be easily classified as such. What I refer to in the parody are the people who think it's still the 60's, live like bums, never wash, and are perpetually high. Hence "came out the woodwork" as in there aren't many left, whereas there are a lot of "modern hippies" and "techno hippies" who do not fit the above description.
"Independent publishers and record labels sue the entire computer industry"
In an unprecedented turn of events, a large group of record labels and publishers decided to sue the computer industry for producing technology which enables digital information to be duplicated, some of which they claim, may be unauthorized copyrighted works. "We believe that digital technology is unfairly disrupting our market," commented the owner of a large publishing house who wished to remain anonymous, "once you digitize information, it is volatile and can be recreated, transferred, stored or destroyed at little or no cost." The group aims to sue the industry for over $658 trillion dollars in compensation for all the free, unprinted information consumers have gained access to over the last 30 years using digital technologies such as diskettes, CD-ROM and the Internet. "Computer technology is a monster," proclaimed the director of a well known publisher's association, "we are aiming to educate the public through this lawsuit what a scourge digital information is on our free market economy." "In fact, using computers is like downloading communism into your home," he later quoted at a press conference, "what we really want is full control of the technology so that royalties can be fairly extracted." Among others who are expected to join the lawsuit are a group of smelly hippies who came out of the woodwork carrying cardboard signs to join the protest against computer technology. "Dude.. technology is like fighting mother nature," said one of their leaders, "all we want is peace and harmony with the earth." The group said it wishes to sue for psychological distress caused by playing digitized music while using illicit drugs. "Digital is so unnatural, man," one protester told reporters, "my trips get like totally funky unless I have the smooth, warm tones of vacuum tubes and records to set my vibe." Analysts say that if this suit fails, the respective groups may turn to patents to stave off further use of digital technologies. "We're working to dig up an old patent covering 'the use of binary mathematics in conjunction with an electrical device,'" quoted a prominent intellectual property lawyer, "it's sorta what they call a 'submarine patent,' but we believe it is perfectly valid and somehow just got misfiled."
(yes, this post is entirely fake and satirical.:-)
Internet had and still has the power to subvert corporate domination of culture. This enormous task, however, will require a broad community effort both for production and distribution. Unfortunately, most artists, musicians, and writers tend to be less technically inclined and therefore often miss out on the latest technologies available to them. Fewer still realize the new business models these technologies enable. As a result, their talent either gets sucked up into the mainstream where it is conformed by a producer or goes unnoticed as they struggle to make a living doing whatever they can, while hoping for their "big break." I'm not trying to be down on artists, but I have several musician friends in this situation and it frustrates me to see it.
What we need is something to establish the credibility of independently produced cultural goods as a personal business. MP3.com was a significant attempt in the music world, but I believe it didn't take hold because musicians expected the world to come to them. In addition, MP3.com evolved into a label of its own, limiting the artists' flexibility of advertisement and promotion.
I mention music because it is the art I am closest with, as an amateur keyboardist and backyard acoustics engineer. (offshoot of EE major) As such, I would like to propose a business 'recipe' which budding musicians may use to make a name for themselves. I am currently considering this plan to help a local band I sometimes jam with. Comments are welcome..
1.) Develop your own style. Take what established musicians have done and change it a little. Practice. Then change it radically. Experiment and do not try to emulate other sounds you're familiar with. People generally aren't interested in listening to another clone of B.B.King or Zeppelin or Hendrix or Korn or whoever you like.
2.) Practice until it hurts. Don't stop until your music sounds precisely how you want. Get others opinions and listen to them. Be critical with yourself and take as much criticism as you can handle.
3.) Find a moderately sized room or basement and stuff the ceiling and walls full of soft materials to dampen unwanted reflections. Old mattresses, blankets, egg-crate sheets, and carpet work fine. Dumpsters are your friends. If you want to go all out, search online for plans for homemade acoustic absorbing pillars and tune them to your room to kill natural resonances.
4.) Buy two high-quality microphones or make them yourselves. Search google for "diy microphone." You'll need to position the mics equally in front of the rig and experiment for the best stereo effect. Many of the best classical and jazz recordings are made this way because it sounds more natural than miking every instrument and trying to mix them later. If any instrument is too loud, correct its position relative to the mics or do something to dampen its sound like stuffing drums with old t-shirts. Don't turn up the bass amp too much. You can always boost the lower octaves in post processing if needed. Eliminate any rattle the same way. You don't want to hear your drumset rack shimmer when the bass kicks or any windows or ducts vibrate when the lead guitar has a solo.
5.) Do any (minor) cleanup with your favorite sound editor, then encode your performances to OggVorbis since MP3 is encumbered by patents and royalties.
6.) Create an attractive but bandwidth-friendly webpage and find cheap hosting. Register a domain of your band's name. (Speaking of names, try not to choose a boring, trendy name like "BluezGroovz 22." Think marketing. What will people remember?)
7.) Post your songs in OggVorbis on your website and allow FTP access to the original WAV's (but don't advertise this) so people can burn CD's or make and distribute your music in MP3 on Napster, Gnutella, etc. Use an open license in which YOU maintain copyright, but your work may be freely distributed except for commercial gain.
8.) Burn CD's. Lots of them. They're cheap. Give them out wherever it makes sense. Print your web address boldly on the cover along with a message that says "Please Copy and Share This Disk!" This is your advertisement. It's an investment and you can probably write it off your taxes (IANAL). If people like what they hear, they will come back for more. Make friends with local DJ's and have them play your stuff at parties, dances, etc. if the music suits this environment. Visit all applicable local radio stations and see if they'll bite. Tell them your music is royalty free and they can play it to their hearts content as long as they mention your name. Small stations will be easiest. Larger stations will follow the hype. Get people to call and request your music.
9.) Now your name is out and (hopefully) people have some of your songs 'stuck in their head.' Schedule to play wherever you can but don't limit yourself to bars and clubs where your audience is limited (and likely too inebriated to remember you). Do some charity concerts to enhance your local image. Eventually, people will actually pay $5-15 or so to hear you play live. Take $0.25 of that and use it to give everyone a free CD as they leave.
10.) Depending on the size of your town, record labels may have heard of you by now and offer you contracts. Don't bite or you'll likely end up the next 'one hit Wonders.' You can make more money on your own. Believe in your work as an entrepreneurial business.
11.) As your popularity grows, slowly expand your live touring region. Slowly accumulate your own stage equipment. Don't buy new ever! Avoid local music stores which often charge at least MSRP. Don't rent equipment if you can help it. Starting small is always better, but as you grow, experiment with creative lighting and effects to enhance your professional image.
12.) Enjoy your success. If everything goes as planned and your music doesn't suck, your personal business should be able to pay your bills and those of all other band members with enough left over to buy equipment and save for the future. (You are living comfortably but frugally aren't you?) Keep writing new music and release it often. Change styles when you run dry or at least be versatile. Before long, you'll be known nationwide for a couple hit songs and be able to pull in $30 or more per ticket for your shows. Without a record label leeching off your success, you'll be all set financially and free to do whatever you want.
Once new models are found, even the largest legal teams will no longer protect from the simple truth of evolution: adapt or die.
Allow me to propose a new model, or perhaps an old model if you will: labor markets. Imagine eliminating the idea of intellectual property altogether. Instead of copyrights and licenses, you have buyers and sellers of labor. It's a solely free market solution and it ensures that all information is free at the same time. Let me demonstrate:
A company needs software. A particular open source package fulfills their needs except for a handful of needed features. The company then hires (or more likely, contracts) a programmer or team of programmers or software company to add the features they need. They do this, however, with full knowledge that those features will be released to the public under the GPL and will likely become part of the official code base of the package so that others may use them. (psst.. remember what your CS profs told you about the virtues of modular design?:-)
The owners of a large amphitheater would like to sell some tickets so they search for some popular bands. A particular band has become a hit nearly overnight because they have a really cutting edge sound and have marketed themselves successfully on local radio, on the Internet, and by giving out their music for free at every opportunity. The amphitheater owners compete for bands by what percentage of the ticket price will be given to the band and by providing a nice stage with quality equipment. The bands compete for gigs by offering to perform music that people want to hear live for a reasonable price.
Note a common theme in all this? Competition! True free markets of any type always work because they are natural. They don't require regulation. They don't require false incentives. There's no man in the middle to gum up the works.
Once new models are found, even the largest legal teams will no longer protect from the simple truth of evolution: adapt or die.
Allow me to propose a new model, or perhaps an old model if you will: labor markets. Imagine eliminating the idea of intellectual property altogether. Instead of copyrights and licenses, you have buyers and sellers of labor. It's a solely free market solution and it ensures that all information is free at the same time. Let me demonstrate:
A company needs software. A particular open source package fulfills their needs except for a handful of needed features. The company then hires (or more likely, contracts) a programmer or team of programmers or software company to add the features they need. They do this, however, with full knowledge that those features will be released to the public under the GPL and will likely become part of the official code base of the package so that others may use them. (psst.. remember what your CS profs told you about the virtues of modular design?:-)
The owners of a large amphitheater would like to sell some tickets so they search for some popular bands. A particular band has become a hit nearly overnight because they have a really cutting edge sound and have marketed themselves successfully on local radio, on the Internet, and by giving out their music for free at every opportunity. The amphitheater owners compete for bands by what percentage of the ticket price will be given to the band and by providing a nice stage with quality equipment. The bands compete for gigs by offering to perform music that people want to hear live for a reasonable price.
Note a common theme in all this? Competition! True free markets of any type always work because they are natural. They don't require regulation. They don't require false incentives. There's no man in the middle to gum up the works.
The Internet had and still has the power to "subvert corporate domination of culture," but that is an enormous task which requires a broad community effort both for production and distribution. Unfortunately, most artists, musicians, and writers tend to be less technically inclined and therefore often miss out on the latest technologies available to them. Fewer still realize the new business models these technologies enable. As a result, their talent either gets sucked up into the mainstream where it is conformed by a producer or goes unnoticed as they struggle to make a living doing whatever they can, while hoping for their "big break." I'm not trying to be down on artists, but I have several musician friends in this situation and it frustrates me to see it.
What we need is something to establish the credibility of independently produced cultural goods as a personal business. MP3.com was a significant attempt in the music world, but I believe it didn't take hold because musicians expected the world to come to them. In addition, MP3.com evolved into a label of its own, limiting the artists' flexibility of advertisement and promotion.
I mention music because it is the art I am closest with, as an amateur keyboardist and backyard acoustics engineer. (offshoot of EE major) As such, I would like to propose a business 'recipe' which budding musicians may use to make a name for themselves. I am currently considering this plan to help a local band I sometimes jam with. Comments are welcome..
1.) Develop your own style. Take what established musicians have done and change it a little. Practice. Then change it radically. Experiment and do not try to emulate other sounds you're familiar with. People generally aren't interested in listening to another clone of B.B.King or Zeppelin or Hendrix or Korn or whoever you like.
2.) Practice until it hurts. Don't stop until your music sounds precisely how you want. Get others opinions and listen to them. Be critical with yourself and take as much criticism as you can handle.
3.) Find a moderately sized room or basement and stuff the ceiling and walls full of soft materials to dampen unwanted reflections. Old mattresses, blankets, egg-crate sheets, and carpet work fine. Dumpsters are your friends. If you want to go all out, search online for plans for homemade acoustic absorbing pillars and tune them to your room to kill natural resonances.
4.) Buy two high-quality microphones or make them yourselves. Search google for "diy microphone." You'll need to position the mics equally in front of the rig and experiment for the best stereo effect. Many of the best classical and jazz recordings are made this way because it sounds more natural than miking every instrument and trying to mix them later. If any instrument is too loud, correct its position relative to the mics or do something to dampen its sound like stuffing drums with old t-shirts. Don't turn up the bass amp too much. You can always boost the lower octaves in post processing if needed. Eliminate any rattle the same way. You don't want to hear your drumset rack shimmer when the bass kicks or any windows or ducts vibrate when the lead guitar has a solo.
5.) Do any (minor) cleanup with your favorite sound editor, then encode your performances to OggVorbis since MP3 is encumbered by patents and royalties.
6.) Create an attractive but bandwidth-friendly webpage and find cheap hosting. Register a domain of your band's name. (Speaking of names, try not to choose a boring, trendy name like "BluezGroovz 22." Think marketing. What will people remember?)
7.) Post your songs in OggVorbis on your website and allow FTP access to the original WAV's (but don't advertise this) so people can burn CD's or make and distribute your music in MP3 on Napster, Gnutella, etc. Use an open license in which YOU maintain copyright, but your work may be freely distributed except for commercial gain.
8.) Burn CD's. Lots of them. They're cheap. Give them out wherever it makes sense. Print your web address boldly on the cover along with a message that says "Please Copy and Share This Disk!" This is your advertisement. It's an investment and you can probably write it off your taxes (IANAL). If people like what they hear, they will come back for more. Make friends with local DJ's and have them play your stuff at parties, dances, etc. if the music suits this environment. Visit all applicable local radio stations and see if they'll bite. Tell them your music is royalty free and they can play it to their hearts content as long as they mention your name. Small stations will be easiest. Larger stations will follow the hype. Get people to call and request your music.
9.) Now your name is out and (hopefully) people have some of your songs 'stuck in their head.' Schedule to play wherever you can but don't limit yourself to bars and clubs where your audience is limited (and likely too inebriated to remember you). Do some charity concerts to enhance your local image. Eventually, people will actually pay $5-15 or so to hear you play live. Take $0.25 of that and use it to give everyone a free CD as they leave.
10.) Depending on the size of your town, record labels may have heard of you by now and offer you contracts. Don't bite or you'll likely end up the next 'one hit Wonders.' You can make more money on your own. Believe in your work as an entrepreneurial business.
11.) As your popularity grows, slowly expand your live touring region. Slowly accumulate your own stage equipment. Don't buy new ever! Avoid local music stores which often charge at least MSRP. Don't rent equipment if you can help it. Starting small is always better, but as you grow, experiment with creative lighting and effects to enhance your professional image.
12.) Enjoy your success. If everything goes as planned and your music doesn't suck, your personal business should be able to pay your bills and those of all other band members with enough left over to buy equipment and save for the future. (You are living comfortably but frugally aren't you?) Keep writing new music and release it often. Change styles when you run dry or at least be versatile. Before long, you'll be known nationwide for a couple hit songs and be able to pull in $30 or more per ticket for your shows. Without a record label leeching off your success, you'll be all set financially and free to do whatever you want.
Sure, VA is a cool company and needs to make money somehow, but I question whether this is the way to do it. I highly doubt that proprietary extensions in and of themselves will win VA more customers. The real money is to be made in getting contracts for installation of turnkey solutions. Part of those installations may require either customizations or extensions of Sourceforge and could be sold as services to the customer rather than as software licenses. So it seems like merely a choice of how to raise prices to meet operating costs. Assuming that contracted services are priced the same as proposed license fees, the net effect would be the same, while keeping the source open to the public. If the market saturates, then it's probably time to search for new software to apply this model to. Anyone see problems with doing things this way? Has anyone actually tried this business model?
"Independent publishers and record labels sue the entire computer industry"
In an unprecedented turn of events, a large group of record labels and publishers decided to sue the computer industry for producing technology which enables digital information to be duplicated, some of which they claim, may be unauthorized copyrighted works. "We believe that digital technology is unfairly disrupting our market," commented the owner of a large publishing house who wished to remain anonymous, "once you digitize information, it is volatile and can be recreated, transferred, stored or destroyed at little or no cost." The group aims to sue the industry for over $658 trillion dollars in compensation for all the free, unprinted information consumers have gained access to over the last 30 years using digital technologies such as diskettes, CD-ROM and the Internet. "Computer technology is a monster," proclaimed the director of a well known publisher's association, "we are aiming to educate the public through this lawsuit what a scourge digital information is on our free market economy." "In fact, using computers is like downloading communism into your home," he later quoted at a press conference, "what we really want is full control of the technology so that royalties can be fairly extracted." Among others who are expected to join the lawsuit are a group of smelly hippies who came out of the woodwork carrying cardboard signs to join the protest against computer technology. "Dude.. technology is like fighting mother nature," said one of their leaders, "all we want is peace and harmony with the earth." The group said it wishes to sue for psychological distress caused by playing digitized music while using illicit drugs. "Digital is so unnatural, man," one protester told reporters, "my trips get like totally funky unless I have the smooth, warm tones of vacuum tubes and records to set my vibe." Analysts say that if this suit fails, the respective groups may turn to patents to stave off further use of digital technologies. "We're working to dig up an old patent covering 'the use of binary mathematics in conjunction with an electrical device,'" quoted a prominent intellectual property lawyer, "it's sorta what they call a 'submarine patent,' but we believe it is perfectly valid and somehow just got misfiled."
(yes, this post is entirely fake and satirical.:-)
that PDA's only interaction with schools is clogging the hallways between classes and should therefore be banned. I mean, who really wants to watch some dude sticking his tongue down.. erh.. hUh? Oohhhhh.. THAT kind of PDA.. nevermind..
But for real, PDA's in their current state downright suck. I'll buy one when it runs all my usual open source software, has a bluetooth transmitter, and uses a power-efficient organic LED screen. Right now, they're just yuppie gizmos with no real purpose. A tiny pad of scratch paper in my back pocket does just as well with less weight, no batteries, and no clumsy graffiti language to learn. Then, I can just type in new contacts once I get home and print out a 3-point font list to put in my wallet.
We here at Slashdot would like to take the time to say that strong competition and innovation have been the twin hallmarks of the technology industry, and if the future is going to be as successful as the recent past, the technology sector must remain free from excess regulation.
I take this to mean that the Slashdot editors are against regulation against Microsoft. While the libertarian 'hands off' approach sounds nice up front, you are missing a huge point. Microsoft would not be where it is today if the govenment had not first granted it copyright protections. Commerical, proprietary software is not a natural market and thus you cannot expect the 'invisible hand of the market' to guide it. The government gave Microsoft its power through copyright, and if they abuse it against the best interests of the public, the government has every right to reduce some of that power to restore balance, which in turn actually strengthens the tech sector of the economy. If Microsoft actually stood for "strong competition and innovation" that would be one thing, but they don't. Instead, they have repeatedly shown themselves to be a bully and have publically declared themselves a bitter enemy of everything open source.
As an aside, I would like to mention an alternative, truly free market approach to virtual goods which would require neither government regulation, nor copyright. The creation of labor markets and methods of contract based production of software and/or media content would be a perfectly fair model both for producers and consumers.
This comment represents solely the opinion of the poster and does not reflect in any fashion the opinion of any past or present employer.
"Independent publishers and record labels sue the entire computer industry"
In an unprecedented turn of events, a large group of record labels and publishers decided to sue the computer industry for producing technology which enables digital information to be duplicated, some of which they claim, may be unauthorized copyrighted works. "We believe that digital technology is unfairly disrupting our market," commented the owner of a large publishing house who wished to remain anonymous, "once you digitize information, it is volatile and can be recreated, transferred, stored or destroyed at little or no cost." The group aims to sue the industry for over $658 trillion dollars in compensation for all the free, unprinted information consumers have gained access to over the last 30 years using digital technologies such as diskettes, CD-ROM and the Internet. "Computer technology is a monster," proclaimed the director of a well known publisher's association, "we are aiming to educate the public through this lawsuit what a scourge digital information is on our free market economy." "In fact, using computers is like downloading communism into your home," he later quoted at a press conference, "what we really want is full control of the technology so that royalties can be fairly extracted." Among others who are expected to join the lawsuit are a group of smelly hippies who came out of the woodwork carrying cardboard signs to join the protest against computer technology. "Dude.. technology is like fighting mother nature," said one of their leaders, "all we want is peace and harmony with the earth." The group said it wishes to sue for psychological distress caused by playing digitized music while using illicit drugs. "Digital is so unnatural, man," one protester told reporters, "my trips get like totally funky unless I have the smooth, warm tones of vacuum tubes and records to set my vibe." Analysts say that if this suit fails, the respective groups may turn to patents to stave off further use of digital technologies. "We're working to dig up an old patent covering 'the use of binary mathematics in conjunction with an electrical device,'" quoted a prominent intellectual property lawyer, "it's sorta what they call a 'submarine patent,' but we believe it is perfectly valid and somehow just got misfiled."
(yes, this post is entirely fake and satirical.:-)
Yet another corporation that just doesn't "get it." Who in their right mind would pay $3000 for free software plus some little proprietary package that duplicates the functionality of snort, lids, tripwire, etc. while limiting your support options?..and not to mention the fact that they are not giving anything back to the community.
Electronic voting booths are a downright bad idea. There is a nearly endless list of ways they could be compromised unless a significant amount of redundancy in the form of paper trail is used. But then what has been gained?
As for this particular implementation, seems to me the touch screen is a pretty weak link. Touch screens use thin resistive or capacitative matrices over the regular screen. Because of this, sensitive electronics are fully exposed for public modification. One could, for instance, cut out part of the touch grid with a razor blade to disable it or apply a second thin plastic layer over the screen that would redirect touch signals to a certain section. Such a hack would require significant criminal sophistication, but it is possible. One possible workaround would be to randomize the location of voting choices on the screen.
I find it surprising that anyone has even an inkling of hope that dotNet will succeed. "Web services" is a buzzphrase with no substance, a remaining piece of fallout from the silly dotBomb era. The only reason it is getting press is that the marketing types are at a loss for hype with a stagnant tech industry. In a sense, they are trying to create a market that doesn't exist and doesn't want to exist. Web services are a "tried that, didn't work" affair. They embody the idealistic dream of a business that has no physical presence, no physical product or service, low overhead, and yet makes lots of money because what they have to offer online is so original and desireable. The closest example I can think of of this model working is EBay. But even then, the end product has close ties with the physical world. (..that is unless you're auctioning off your karma-whored Slashdot accounts.:-)
M$ is trying to provide a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. The fact is, Apache, Perl, PHP, and other related toys are all anyone will ever need for web design, "web services," intranet thin-client goodness, kiosks, B2B integration foo, etc. If M$ tries to mandate anything proprietary to the simple task of serving public web pages, it won't fly because anyone not using XP will be instantly alienated. And if M$ does not add anything proprietary, they will have nothing valid to differentiate dotNet from existing Apache/IIS solutions. It's lose-lose for them either way.
Articles like this are nothing but FUD from pundits who are still in disbelief that Open Source actually worked as promised. No, the battle is not over, but Open Source is by no means on the losing end.
I'm really not sure about TV out support. I've heard rumors that if you use something like 640x480 @ 60Hz. that the TV-out will be enabled, but I can't confirm that. Then I've heard other stuff about using FBDev and somehow getting it to work that way (without using the XF86 Radeon driver.) Along those lines, you also might be interested in this: http://fbdri.sourceforge.net/ Basically, it's Radeon DRI functionality without X. If the framebuffer trick works anyhow, you might be able to get 3D on TV-out this way. (Assuming that the Xf86 people haven't indeed implemented Tv-out for Radeon already. Some other ATI cards are supported. I don't see why not.)
The original Radeon card I have works great in Linux using DRI from XF86 4.1 and kernel 2.4.8. However, even now, there is no hardware T&L support and there are some glitches here and there. So I wonder how much different the Radeon2 DRI driver will have to be. And where is ATI in all of this? I commend ATI for releasing enough specs to the DRI developers to support it, but why haven't they taken an active role in development? It's their hardware. If they want us to use it, they ought to support it fully. Don't they see how big the market is for well supported hardware in Linux? Talk about a way of differentiating your product!
And no, closed source drivers (ala NVidia) are absolutely not acceptable for a whole multitude of reasons:
1.) Breaks away from attempts at Linux hardware support standardization. (XFree86, DRI, etc.)
2.) Puts vendor in total control of compatibility with future dependancies and hardware owners at their mercy.
3.) Eliminates community feedback and quality control by source examination and review.
4.) Shows backwards thinking on the part of the vendor. Closed source drivers in no way whatsoever protect their "intellectual property" (if you actually believe in that sort of thing.) Do you really think their competition doesn't have access to disassemblers, decompilers, SET microscopes, etc? Who are they protecting against?
A short while ago, on a news server 7 hops away..
DISTRO WARS (cue cheezy music)
It is a period of civil war. Rebel coders, powered by a well-stocked fridge, have won their first victory against the evil Microsquash Empire.
During the battle, Rebel coders managed to steal market share from the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Screen, an glaring blue menace
with enough buffer overruns to lock up an entire computer.
Pursued by their own egos, the coders argue
about their startup scripts, custodians of the GPL'ed code that can save their uptime and restore freedom to the marketplace...
I think Bush handled this issue remarkably well both from a moral and political standpoint. For such a touchy issue, he did a good job making most everyone happy. Granted, this only concerns Federal funds for stem cell research, but it establishes a moral example for how the US views the issue.
I'm personally against embryonic stem cell research because regardless if those 4 or 5 cells have a soul or not, the very concept of dismantling a living embryo for spare parts devalues human life in a similar way that abortion does. If we encourage this, it will be easier to nudge a little further down the moral slope the next time a biotech ethics issue pops up. Then before long, we arrive in a brave new world where humans are routinely cloned or grown full size for spare parts then frozen, genetically engineered to meet the latest fashion craze, and undesirable persons are slaughtered because society doesn't want them. Extreme? yes. But also fully possible.
Regardless of WEP's weaknesses, it would be stupid to rely on link-level encryption to secure your communications from the outside world. Heck, if you had a really good radio receiver, you might be able to pick up noise from someone's messy CAT5 cables. Guess it depends on who's your enemy. Any business really ought to encrypt most of their internal traffic anyhow just on principle and to keep snoopy employees from poking around.
Although the battle appears to lie in the realm of copyright law, the real war being fought is over control of ANY distribution of content online. Lessig seems to take a stance that the public and big copyright holders can get along if only the DMCA was amended to remove the anti-circumvention provision. However, if you look at the whole picture, you'll see that the internet itself is what has "the establishment" worried. P2P is a very powerful technology that empowers the consumer, sometimes at the expense of traditional companies. I don't mean in terms of stealing; I mean in terms of doing things differently such that those companies become obsolete. Although P2P doesn't have to be anti-commercial, it does require businesses to adapt. But change is scary. Consider how dramatically the Internet has changed the technology landscape. Is it a wonder they are fighting to maintain control?
Open source vs. proprietary software
Independent films vs. movies and TV
Authors' web pages vs. dead tree publishers
Open media vs. newspapers / cable broadcasts
Online vendors vs. shopping centers
Internet telephony vs. toll calls
Email vs. postcards and letters
Magazines vs. online journals
Closed research vs. worldwide collaboration
Indie bands vs. mass marketed pop music
Open public criticism vs. limited word of mouth
Look at who is doing the complaining and realize why. This is not the end of innovation, it clearly marks a new beginning.
While I don't use the branded Netscape 6, there are a lot of Windows users who still associate web browsing with "netscape," whether they now use IE or not. Netscape releasing new versions, while it may not convert any IE users, at least keeps their name visible. When Mozilla 1.0/Netscape 6.2 is released and people finally have a good alternative to IE, it'll get rave reviews and attention. Current IE users will then say, "hey I remember Netscape.. new version eh? Maybe I should try it." Heck, at that point, I'd even be for them packaging it with every AOL disk / AIM client / etc. The point is, they have the power to win users away from IE. In contrast, most non-techies have no clue what Mozilla is. Embrace and extend. The more users who switch back to Netscape, the weaker Microsoft's grip on the desktop will become. The Open/Star Office project is the same way. People will trust a big name like Sun and it too will be big news when 1.0 is released. And the funny thing is, their stock price will probably jump that day too. (-:
Actually, many of the latest distributions of Linux make it far easier to deal with than Windows or even Mac. As for productivity / interfaces, have you tried KDE? I've yet to find someone previously experienced with Windows that had any trouble with it. As long as your hardware is not total crap, Linux is not far from being a "insert CD, click install, come back in 15 minutes, start working" kinda OS. What do I mean by crap hardware? The kind of stuff that no self-respecting kernel hacker would buy, let alone write drivers for. (Like Winmodems, no-name Ethernet cards, old cheap SB-compatible sound cards, scanners with proprietary interfaces made by some company that died 5 years ago, etc.) Sure, you may need to buy or contract or develop some custom software for your needs, but Linux itself is becoming quite mature. Mozilla, btw, is moving along nicely. Keep in mind that it has a ton of debug code still. 1.0 should be quite respectable.
I think it's time to face up to the fact that projects people do in their spare time as tinkerers may never catch up to those that are funded, staffed and managed based on the potential for financial reward.
You need to read Eric Raymond's Cathedral and the Bazaar. http://tuxedo.org/~esr/ Enjoy.
Slashdot Mirror
I think history has proven that large ISP's simply cannot provide the quality of service that small or local ones can. I've never heard an end-user praise of @home, though I've not used it myself. Both ISP's I use are small and both provide snappy customer service and reliable bandwidth. Furthermore, the more small technology companies we have (in the US), the more that technology will be usurped from large corporations which tend to mismanage it and the less power corporate lobbyists will have to push bad laws.
Disclaimer: I am by no means against "hippies" as myself and most of my friends would be easily classified as such. What I refer to in the parody are the people who think it's still the 60's, live like bums, never wash, and are perpetually high. Hence "came out the woodwork" as in there aren't many left, whereas there are a lot of "modern hippies" and "techno hippies" who do not fit the above description.
"Independent publishers and record labels sue the entire computer industry"
:-)
In an unprecedented turn of events, a large group of record labels and publishers decided to sue the computer industry for producing technology which enables digital information to be duplicated, some of which they claim, may be unauthorized copyrighted works. "We believe that digital technology is unfairly disrupting our market," commented the owner of a large publishing house who wished to remain anonymous, "once you digitize information, it is volatile and can be recreated, transferred, stored or destroyed at little or no cost." The group aims to sue the industry for over $658 trillion dollars in compensation for all the free, unprinted information consumers have gained access to over the last 30 years using digital technologies such as diskettes, CD-ROM and the Internet. "Computer technology is a monster," proclaimed the director of a well known publisher's association, "we are aiming to educate the public through this lawsuit what a scourge digital information is on our free market economy." "In fact, using computers is like downloading communism into your home," he later quoted at a press conference, "what we really want is full control of the technology so that royalties can be fairly extracted." Among others who are expected to join the lawsuit are a group of smelly hippies who came out of the woodwork carrying cardboard signs to join the protest against computer technology. "Dude.. technology is like fighting mother nature," said one of their leaders, "all we want is peace and harmony with the earth." The group said it wishes to sue for psychological distress caused by playing digitized music while using illicit drugs. "Digital is so unnatural, man," one protester told reporters, "my trips get like totally funky unless I have the smooth, warm tones of vacuum tubes and records to set my vibe." Analysts say that if this suit fails, the respective groups may turn to patents to stave off further use of digital technologies. "We're working to dig up an old patent covering 'the use of binary mathematics in conjunction with an electrical device,'" quoted a prominent intellectual property lawyer, "it's sorta what they call a 'submarine patent,' but we believe it is perfectly valid and somehow just got misfiled."
(yes, this post is entirely fake and satirical.
Internet had and still has the power to subvert corporate domination of culture. This enormous task, however, will require a broad community effort both for production and distribution. Unfortunately, most artists, musicians, and writers tend to be less technically inclined and therefore often miss out on the latest technologies available to them. Fewer still realize the new business models these technologies enable. As a result, their talent either gets sucked up into the mainstream where it is conformed by a producer or goes unnoticed as they struggle to make a living doing whatever they can, while hoping for their "big break." I'm not trying to be down on artists, but I have several musician friends in this situation and it frustrates me to see it.
What we need is something to establish the credibility of independently produced cultural goods as a personal business. MP3.com was a significant attempt in the music world, but I believe it didn't take hold because musicians expected the world to come to them. In addition, MP3.com evolved into a label of its own, limiting the artists' flexibility of advertisement and promotion.
I mention music because it is the art I am closest with, as an amateur keyboardist and backyard acoustics engineer. (offshoot of EE major) As such, I would like to propose a business 'recipe' which budding musicians may use to make a name for themselves. I am currently considering this plan to help a local band I sometimes jam with. Comments are welcome..
1.) Develop your own style. Take what established musicians have done and change it a little. Practice. Then change it radically. Experiment and do not try to emulate other sounds you're familiar with. People generally aren't interested in listening to another clone of B.B.King or Zeppelin or Hendrix or Korn or whoever you like.
2.) Practice until it hurts. Don't stop until your music sounds precisely how you want. Get others opinions and listen to them. Be critical with yourself and take as much criticism as you can handle.
3.) Find a moderately sized room or basement and stuff the ceiling and walls full of soft materials to dampen unwanted reflections. Old mattresses, blankets, egg-crate sheets, and carpet work fine. Dumpsters are your friends. If you want to go all out, search online for plans for homemade acoustic absorbing pillars and tune them to your room to kill natural resonances.
4.) Buy two high-quality microphones or make them yourselves. Search google for "diy microphone." You'll need to position the mics equally in front of the rig and experiment for the best stereo effect. Many of the best classical and jazz recordings are made this way because it sounds more natural than miking every instrument and trying to mix them later. If any instrument is too loud, correct its position relative to the mics or do something to dampen its sound like stuffing drums with old t-shirts. Don't turn up the bass amp too much. You can always boost the lower octaves in post processing if needed. Eliminate any rattle the same way. You don't want to hear your drumset rack shimmer when the bass kicks or any windows or ducts vibrate when the lead guitar has a solo.
5.) Do any (minor) cleanup with your favorite sound editor, then encode your performances to OggVorbis since MP3 is encumbered by patents and royalties.
6.) Create an attractive but bandwidth-friendly webpage and find cheap hosting. Register a domain of your band's name. (Speaking of names, try not to choose a boring, trendy name like "BluezGroovz 22." Think marketing. What will people remember?)
7.) Post your songs in OggVorbis on your website and allow FTP access to the original WAV's (but don't advertise this) so people can burn CD's or make and distribute your music in MP3 on Napster, Gnutella, etc. Use an open license in which YOU maintain copyright, but your work may be freely distributed except for commercial gain.
8.) Burn CD's. Lots of them. They're cheap. Give them out wherever it makes sense. Print your web address boldly on the cover along with a message that says "Please Copy and Share This Disk!" This is your advertisement. It's an investment and you can probably write it off your taxes (IANAL). If people like what they hear, they will come back for more. Make friends with local DJ's and have them play your stuff at parties, dances, etc. if the music suits this environment. Visit all applicable local radio stations and see if they'll bite. Tell them your music is royalty free and they can play it to their hearts content as long as they mention your name. Small stations will be easiest. Larger stations will follow the hype. Get people to call and request your music.
9.) Now your name is out and (hopefully) people have some of your songs 'stuck in their head.' Schedule to play wherever you can but don't limit yourself to bars and clubs where your audience is limited (and likely too inebriated to remember you). Do some charity concerts to enhance your local image. Eventually, people will actually pay $5-15 or so to hear you play live. Take $0.25 of that and use it to give everyone a free CD as they leave.
10.) Depending on the size of your town, record labels may have heard of you by now and offer you contracts. Don't bite or you'll likely end up the next 'one hit Wonders.' You can make more money on your own. Believe in your work as an entrepreneurial business.
11.) As your popularity grows, slowly expand your live touring region. Slowly accumulate your own stage equipment. Don't buy new ever! Avoid local music stores which often charge at least MSRP. Don't rent equipment if you can help it. Starting small is always better, but as you grow, experiment with creative lighting and effects to enhance your professional image.
12.) Enjoy your success. If everything goes as planned and your music doesn't suck, your personal business should be able to pay your bills and those of all other band members with enough left over to buy equipment and save for the future. (You are living comfortably but frugally aren't you?) Keep writing new music and release it often. Change styles when you run dry or at least be versatile. Before long, you'll be known nationwide for a couple hit songs and be able to pull in $30 or more per ticket for your shows. Without a record label leeching off your success, you'll be all set financially and free to do whatever you want.
Good luck!
Allow me to propose a new model, or perhaps an old model if you will: labor markets. Imagine eliminating the idea of intellectual property altogether. Instead of copyrights and licenses, you have buyers and sellers of labor. It's a solely free market solution and it ensures that all information is free at the same time. Let me demonstrate:
A company needs software. A particular open source package fulfills their needs except for a handful of needed features. The company then hires (or more likely, contracts) a programmer or team of programmers or software company to add the features they need. They do this, however, with full knowledge that those features will be released to the public under the GPL and will likely become part of the official code base of the package so that others may use them. (psst.. remember what your CS profs told you about the virtues of modular design? :-)
The owners of a large amphitheater would like to sell some tickets so they search for some popular bands. A particular band has become a hit nearly overnight because they have a really cutting edge sound and have marketed themselves successfully on local radio, on the Internet, and by giving out their music for free at every opportunity. The amphitheater owners compete for bands by what percentage of the ticket price will be given to the band and by providing a nice stage with quality equipment. The bands compete for gigs by offering to perform music that people want to hear live for a reasonable price.
Note a common theme in all this? Competition! True free markets of any type always work because they are natural. They don't require regulation. They don't require false incentives. There's no man in the middle to gum up the works.
I'd say it's high time we brought out the WD-40.
Allow me to propose a new model, or perhaps an old model if you will: labor markets. Imagine eliminating the idea of intellectual property altogether. Instead of copyrights and licenses, you have buyers and sellers of labor. It's a solely free market solution and it ensures that all information is free at the same time. Let me demonstrate:
A company needs software. A particular open source package fulfills their needs except for a handful of needed features. The company then hires (or more likely, contracts) a programmer or team of programmers or software company to add the features they need. They do this, however, with full knowledge that those features will be released to the public under the GPL and will likely become part of the official code base of the package so that others may use them. (psst.. remember what your CS profs told you about the virtues of modular design? :-)
The owners of a large amphitheater would like to sell some tickets so they search for some popular bands. A particular band has become a hit nearly overnight because they have a really cutting edge sound and have marketed themselves successfully on local radio, on the Internet, and by giving out their music for free at every opportunity. The amphitheater owners compete for bands by what percentage of the ticket price will be given to the band and by providing a nice stage with quality equipment. The bands compete for gigs by offering to perform music that people want to hear live for a reasonable price.
Note a common theme in all this? Competition! True free markets of any type always work because they are natural. They don't require regulation. They don't require false incentives. There's no man in the middle to gum up the works.
I'd say it's high time we brought out the WD-40.
I'll be he used to 'smoke weed everyday..'
The Internet had and still has the power to "subvert corporate domination of culture," but that is an enormous task which requires a broad community effort both for production and distribution. Unfortunately, most artists, musicians, and writers tend to be less technically inclined and therefore often miss out on the latest technologies available to them. Fewer still realize the new business models these technologies enable. As a result, their talent either gets sucked up into the mainstream where it is conformed by a producer or goes unnoticed as they struggle to make a living doing whatever they can, while hoping for their "big break." I'm not trying to be down on artists, but I have several musician friends in this situation and it frustrates me to see it.
What we need is something to establish the credibility of independently produced cultural goods as a personal business. MP3.com was a significant attempt in the music world, but I believe it didn't take hold because musicians expected the world to come to them. In addition, MP3.com evolved into a label of its own, limiting the artists' flexibility of advertisement and promotion.
I mention music because it is the art I am closest with, as an amateur keyboardist and backyard acoustics engineer. (offshoot of EE major) As such, I would like to propose a business 'recipe' which budding musicians may use to make a name for themselves. I am currently considering this plan to help a local band I sometimes jam with. Comments are welcome..
1.) Develop your own style. Take what established musicians have done and change it a little. Practice. Then change it radically. Experiment and do not try to emulate other sounds you're familiar with. People generally aren't interested in listening to another clone of B.B.King or Zeppelin or Hendrix or Korn or whoever you like.
2.) Practice until it hurts. Don't stop until your music sounds precisely how you want. Get others opinions and listen to them. Be critical with yourself and take as much criticism as you can handle.
3.) Find a moderately sized room or basement and stuff the ceiling and walls full of soft materials to dampen unwanted reflections. Old mattresses, blankets, egg-crate sheets, and carpet work fine. Dumpsters are your friends. If you want to go all out, search online for plans for homemade acoustic absorbing pillars and tune them to your room to kill natural resonances.
4.) Buy two high-quality microphones or make them yourselves. Search google for "diy microphone." You'll need to position the mics equally in front of the rig and experiment for the best stereo effect. Many of the best classical and jazz recordings are made this way because it sounds more natural than miking every instrument and trying to mix them later. If any instrument is too loud, correct its position relative to the mics or do something to dampen its sound like stuffing drums with old t-shirts. Don't turn up the bass amp too much. You can always boost the lower octaves in post processing if needed. Eliminate any rattle the same way. You don't want to hear your drumset rack shimmer when the bass kicks or any windows or ducts vibrate when the lead guitar has a solo.
5.) Do any (minor) cleanup with your favorite sound editor, then encode your performances to OggVorbis since MP3 is encumbered by patents and royalties.
6.) Create an attractive but bandwidth-friendly webpage and find cheap hosting. Register a domain of your band's name. (Speaking of names, try not to choose a boring, trendy name like "BluezGroovz 22." Think marketing. What will people remember?)
7.) Post your songs in OggVorbis on your website and allow FTP access to the original WAV's (but don't advertise this) so people can burn CD's or make and distribute your music in MP3 on Napster, Gnutella, etc. Use an open license in which YOU maintain copyright, but your work may be freely distributed except for commercial gain.
8.) Burn CD's. Lots of them. They're cheap. Give them out wherever it makes sense. Print your web address boldly on the cover along with a message that says "Please Copy and Share This Disk!" This is your advertisement. It's an investment and you can probably write it off your taxes (IANAL). If people like what they hear, they will come back for more. Make friends with local DJ's and have them play your stuff at parties, dances, etc. if the music suits this environment. Visit all applicable local radio stations and see if they'll bite. Tell them your music is royalty free and they can play it to their hearts content as long as they mention your name. Small stations will be easiest. Larger stations will follow the hype. Get people to call and request your music.
9.) Now your name is out and (hopefully) people have some of your songs 'stuck in their head.' Schedule to play wherever you can but don't limit yourself to bars and clubs where your audience is limited (and likely too inebriated to remember you). Do some charity concerts to enhance your local image. Eventually, people will actually pay $5-15 or so to hear you play live. Take $0.25 of that and use it to give everyone a free CD as they leave.
10.) Depending on the size of your town, record labels may have heard of you by now and offer you contracts. Don't bite or you'll likely end up the next 'one hit Wonders.' You can make more money on your own. Believe in your work as an entrepreneurial business.
11.) As your popularity grows, slowly expand your live touring region. Slowly accumulate your own stage equipment. Don't buy new ever! Avoid local music stores which often charge at least MSRP. Don't rent equipment if you can help it. Starting small is always better, but as you grow, experiment with creative lighting and effects to enhance your professional image.
12.) Enjoy your success. If everything goes as planned and your music doesn't suck, your personal business should be able to pay your bills and those of all other band members with enough left over to buy equipment and save for the future. (You are living comfortably but frugally aren't you?) Keep writing new music and release it often. Change styles when you run dry or at least be versatile. Before long, you'll be known nationwide for a couple hit songs and be able to pull in $30 or more per ticket for your shows. Without a record label leeching off your success, you'll be all set financially and free to do whatever you want.
Good luck!
Sure, VA is a cool company and needs to make money somehow, but I question whether this is the way to do it. I highly doubt that proprietary extensions in and of themselves will win VA more customers. The real money is to be made in getting contracts for installation of turnkey solutions. Part of those installations may require either customizations or extensions of Sourceforge and could be sold as services to the customer rather than as software licenses. So it seems like merely a choice of how to raise prices to meet operating costs. Assuming that contracted services are priced the same as proposed license fees, the net effect would be the same, while keeping the source open to the public. If the market saturates, then it's probably time to search for new software to apply this model to. Anyone see problems with doing things this way? Has anyone actually tried this business model?
"Independent publishers and record labels sue the entire computer industry"
:-)
In an unprecedented turn of events, a large group of record labels and publishers decided to sue the computer industry for producing technology which enables digital information to be duplicated, some of which they claim, may be unauthorized copyrighted works. "We believe that digital technology is unfairly disrupting our market," commented the owner of a large publishing house who wished to remain anonymous, "once you digitize information, it is volatile and can be recreated, transferred, stored or destroyed at little or no cost." The group aims to sue the industry for over $658 trillion dollars in compensation for all the free, unprinted information consumers have gained access to over the last 30 years using digital technologies such as diskettes, CD-ROM and the Internet. "Computer technology is a monster," proclaimed the director of a well known publisher's association, "we are aiming to educate the public through this lawsuit what a scourge digital information is on our free market economy." "In fact, using computers is like downloading communism into your home," he later quoted at a press conference, "what we really want is full control of the technology so that royalties can be fairly extracted." Among others who are expected to join the lawsuit are a group of smelly hippies who came out of the woodwork carrying cardboard signs to join the protest against computer technology. "Dude.. technology is like fighting mother nature," said one of their leaders, "all we want is peace and harmony with the earth." The group said it wishes to sue for psychological distress caused by playing digitized music while using illicit drugs. "Digital is so unnatural, man," one protester told reporters, "my trips get like totally funky unless I have the smooth, warm tones of vacuum tubes and records to set my vibe." Analysts say that if this suit fails, the respective groups may turn to patents to stave off further use of digital technologies. "We're working to dig up an old patent covering 'the use of binary mathematics in conjunction with an electrical device,'" quoted a prominent intellectual property lawyer, "it's sorta what they call a 'submarine patent,' but we believe it is perfectly valid and somehow just got misfiled."
(yes, this post is entirely fake and satirical.
that PDA's only interaction with schools is clogging the hallways between classes and should therefore be banned. I mean, who really wants to watch some dude sticking his tongue down.. erh.. hUh? Oohhhhh.. THAT kind of PDA.. nevermind..
But for real, PDA's in their current state downright suck. I'll buy one when it runs all my usual open source software, has a bluetooth transmitter, and uses a power-efficient organic LED screen. Right now, they're just yuppie gizmos with no real purpose. A tiny pad of scratch paper in my back pocket does just as well with less weight, no batteries, and no clumsy graffiti language to learn. Then, I can just type in new contacts once I get home and print out a 3-point font list to put in my wallet.
We here at Slashdot would like to take the time to say that strong competition and innovation have been the twin hallmarks of the technology industry, and if the future is going to be as successful as the recent past, the technology sector must remain free from excess regulation.
I take this to mean that the Slashdot editors are against regulation against Microsoft. While the libertarian 'hands off' approach sounds nice up front, you are missing a huge point. Microsoft would not be where it is today if the govenment had not first granted it copyright protections. Commerical, proprietary software is not a natural market and thus you cannot expect the 'invisible hand of the market' to guide it. The government gave Microsoft its power through copyright, and if they abuse it against the best interests of the public, the government has every right to reduce some of that power to restore balance, which in turn actually strengthens the tech sector of the economy. If Microsoft actually stood for "strong competition and innovation" that would be one thing, but they don't. Instead, they have repeatedly shown themselves to be a bully and have publically declared themselves a bitter enemy of everything open source.
As an aside, I would like to mention an alternative, truly free market approach to virtual goods which would require neither government regulation, nor copyright. The creation of labor markets and methods of contract based production of software and/or media content would be a perfectly fair model both for producers and consumers.
This comment represents solely the opinion of the poster and does not reflect in any fashion the opinion of any past or present employer.
"Independent publishers and record labels sue the entire computer industry"
:-)
In an unprecedented turn of events, a large group of record labels and publishers decided to sue the computer industry for producing technology which enables digital information to be duplicated, some of which they claim, may be unauthorized copyrighted works. "We believe that digital technology is unfairly disrupting our market," commented the owner of a large publishing house who wished to remain anonymous, "once you digitize information, it is volatile and can be recreated, transferred, stored or destroyed at little or no cost." The group aims to sue the industry for over $658 trillion dollars in compensation for all the free, unprinted information consumers have gained access to over the last 30 years using digital technologies such as diskettes, CD-ROM and the Internet. "Computer technology is a monster," proclaimed the director of a well known publisher's association, "we are aiming to educate the public through this lawsuit what a scourge digital information is on our free market economy." "In fact, using computers is like downloading communism into your home," he later quoted at a press conference, "what we really want is full control of the technology so that royalties can be fairly extracted." Among others who are expected to join the lawsuit are a group of smelly hippies who came out of the woodwork carrying cardboard signs to join the protest against computer technology. "Dude.. technology is like fighting mother nature," said one of their leaders, "all we want is peace and harmony with the earth." The group said it wishes to sue for psychological distress caused by playing digitized music while using illicit drugs. "Digital is so unnatural, man," one protester told reporters, "my trips get like totally funky unless I have the smooth, warm tones of vacuum tubes and records to set my vibe." Analysts say that if this suit fails, the respective groups may turn to patents to stave off further use of digital technologies. "We're working to dig up an old patent covering 'the use of binary mathematics in conjunction with an electrical device,'" quoted a prominent intellectual property lawyer, "it's sorta what they call a 'submarine patent,' but we believe it is perfectly valid and somehow just got misfiled."
(yes, this post is entirely fake and satirical.
Yet another corporation that just doesn't "get it." Who in their right mind would pay $3000 for free software plus some little proprietary package that duplicates the functionality of snort, lids, tripwire, etc. while limiting your support options? ..and not to mention the fact that they are not giving anything back to the community.
Electronic voting booths are a downright bad idea. There is a nearly endless list of ways they could be compromised unless a significant amount of redundancy in the form of paper trail is used. But then what has been gained?
As for this particular implementation, seems to me the touch screen is a pretty weak link. Touch screens use thin resistive or capacitative matrices over the regular screen. Because of this, sensitive electronics are fully exposed for public modification. One could, for instance, cut out part of the touch grid with a razor blade to disable it or apply a second thin plastic layer over the screen that would redirect touch signals to a certain section. Such a hack would require significant criminal sophistication, but it is possible. One possible workaround would be to randomize the location of voting choices on the screen.
I find it surprising that anyone has even an inkling of hope that dotNet will succeed. "Web services" is a buzzphrase with no substance, a remaining piece of fallout from the silly dotBomb era. The only reason it is getting press is that the marketing types are at a loss for hype with a stagnant tech industry. In a sense, they are trying to create a market that doesn't exist and doesn't want to exist. Web services are a "tried that, didn't work" affair. They embody the idealistic dream of a business that has no physical presence, no physical product or service, low overhead, and yet makes lots of money because what they have to offer online is so original and desireable. The closest example I can think of of this model working is EBay. But even then, the end product has close ties with the physical world. (..that is unless you're auctioning off your karma-whored Slashdot accounts. :-)
M$ is trying to provide a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. The fact is, Apache, Perl, PHP, and other related toys are all anyone will ever need for web design, "web services," intranet thin-client goodness, kiosks, B2B integration foo, etc. If M$ tries to mandate anything proprietary to the simple task of serving public web pages, it won't fly because anyone not using XP will be instantly alienated. And if M$ does not add anything proprietary, they will have nothing valid to differentiate dotNet from existing Apache/IIS solutions. It's lose-lose for them either way.
Articles like this are nothing but FUD from pundits who are still in disbelief that Open Source actually worked as promised. No, the battle is not over, but Open Source is by no means on the losing end.
I'm really not sure about TV out support. I've heard rumors that if you use something like 640x480 @ 60Hz. that the TV-out will be enabled, but I can't confirm that. Then I've heard other stuff about using FBDev and somehow getting it to work that way (without using the XF86 Radeon driver.) Along those lines, you also might be interested in this: http://fbdri.sourceforge.net/ Basically, it's Radeon DRI functionality without X. If the framebuffer trick works anyhow, you might be able to get 3D on TV-out this way. (Assuming that the Xf86 people haven't indeed implemented Tv-out for Radeon already. Some other ATI cards are supported. I don't see why not.)
The original Radeon card I have works great in Linux using DRI from XF86 4.1 and kernel 2.4.8. However, even now, there is no hardware T&L support and there are some glitches here and there. So I wonder how much different the Radeon2 DRI driver will have to be. And where is ATI in all of this? I commend ATI for releasing enough specs to the DRI developers to support it, but why haven't they taken an active role in development? It's their hardware. If they want us to use it, they ought to support it fully. Don't they see how big the market is for well supported hardware in Linux? Talk about a way of differentiating your product!
And no, closed source drivers (ala NVidia) are absolutely not acceptable for a whole multitude of reasons:
1.) Breaks away from attempts at Linux hardware support standardization. (XFree86, DRI, etc.)
2.) Puts vendor in total control of compatibility with future dependancies and hardware owners at their mercy.
3.) Eliminates community feedback and quality control by source examination and review.
4.) Shows backwards thinking on the part of the vendor. Closed source drivers in no way whatsoever protect their "intellectual property" (if you actually believe in that sort of thing.) Do you really think their competition doesn't have access to disassemblers, decompilers, SET microscopes, etc? Who are they protecting against?
A short while ago, on a news server 7 hops away.. DISTRO WARS (cue cheezy music) It is a period of civil war. Rebel coders, powered by a well-stocked fridge, have won their first victory against the evil Microsquash Empire. During the battle, Rebel coders managed to steal market share from the Empire's ultimate weapon, the Death Screen, an glaring blue menace with enough buffer overruns to lock up an entire computer. Pursued by their own egos, the coders argue about their startup scripts, custodians of the GPL'ed code that can save their uptime and restore freedom to the marketplace...
I think Bush handled this issue remarkably well both from a moral and political standpoint. For such a touchy issue, he did a good job making most everyone happy. Granted, this only concerns Federal funds for stem cell research, but it establishes a moral example for how the US views the issue.
I'm personally against embryonic stem cell research because regardless if those 4 or 5 cells have a soul or not, the very concept of dismantling a living embryo for spare parts devalues human life in a similar way that abortion does. If we encourage this, it will be easier to nudge a little further down the moral slope the next time a biotech ethics issue pops up. Then before long, we arrive in a brave new world where humans are routinely cloned or grown full size for spare parts then frozen, genetically engineered to meet the latest fashion craze, and undesirable persons are slaughtered because society doesn't want them. Extreme? yes. But also fully possible.
Regardless of WEP's weaknesses, it would be stupid to rely on link-level encryption to secure your communications from the outside world. Heck, if you had a really good radio receiver, you might be able to pick up noise from someone's messy CAT5 cables. Guess it depends on who's your enemy. Any business really ought to encrypt most of their internal traffic anyhow just on principle and to keep snoopy employees from poking around.
Although the battle appears to lie in the realm of copyright law, the real war being fought is over control of ANY distribution of content online. Lessig seems to take a stance that the public and big copyright holders can get along if only the DMCA was amended to remove the anti-circumvention provision. However, if you look at the whole picture, you'll see that the internet itself is what has "the establishment" worried. P2P is a very powerful technology that empowers the consumer, sometimes at the expense of traditional companies. I don't mean in terms of stealing; I mean in terms of doing things differently such that those companies become obsolete. Although P2P doesn't have to be anti-commercial, it does require businesses to adapt. But change is scary. Consider how dramatically the Internet has changed the technology landscape. Is it a wonder they are fighting to maintain control?
Open source vs. proprietary software
Independent films vs. movies and TV
Authors' web pages vs. dead tree publishers
Open media vs. newspapers / cable broadcasts
Online vendors vs. shopping centers
Internet telephony vs. toll calls
Email vs. postcards and letters
Magazines vs. online journals
Closed research vs. worldwide collaboration
Indie bands vs. mass marketed pop music
Open public criticism vs. limited word of mouth
Look at who is doing the complaining and realize why. This is not the end of innovation, it clearly marks a new beginning.
While I don't use the branded Netscape 6, there are a lot of Windows users who still associate web browsing with "netscape," whether they now use IE or not. Netscape releasing new versions, while it may not convert any IE users, at least keeps their name visible. When Mozilla 1.0/Netscape 6.2 is released and people finally have a good alternative to IE, it'll get rave reviews and attention. Current IE users will then say, "hey I remember Netscape.. new version eh? Maybe I should try it." Heck, at that point, I'd even be for them packaging it with every AOL disk / AIM client / etc. The point is, they have the power to win users away from IE. In contrast, most non-techies have no clue what Mozilla is. Embrace and extend. The more users who switch back to Netscape, the weaker Microsoft's grip on the desktop will become. The Open/Star Office project is the same way. People will trust a big name like Sun and it too will be big news when 1.0 is released. And the funny thing is, their stock price will probably jump that day too. (-:
Actually, many of the latest distributions of Linux make it far easier to deal with than Windows or even Mac. As for productivity / interfaces, have you tried KDE? I've yet to find someone previously experienced with Windows that had any trouble with it. As long as your hardware is not total crap, Linux is not far from being a "insert CD, click install, come back in 15 minutes, start working" kinda OS. What do I mean by crap hardware? The kind of stuff that no self-respecting kernel hacker would buy, let alone write drivers for. (Like Winmodems, no-name Ethernet cards, old cheap SB-compatible sound cards, scanners with proprietary interfaces made by some company that died 5 years ago, etc.) Sure, you may need to buy or contract or develop some custom software for your needs, but Linux itself is becoming quite mature. Mozilla, btw, is moving along nicely. Keep in mind that it has a ton of debug code still. 1.0 should be quite respectable.
I think it's time to face up to the fact that projects people do in their spare time as tinkerers may never catch up to those that are funded, staffed and managed based on the potential for financial reward. You need to read Eric Raymond's Cathedral and the Bazaar. http://tuxedo.org/~esr/ Enjoy.
Everyone knows dumpster diving is the best way to get old hardware. (-: