Forgetting about the complete lack of speed-limit obediance on NJTP, your answer assumes a constant rate of speed. Considering that travel between Philly and New York can be achieved via many routes, each of which requires numerous stops and starts, assuming the 12 cylinder car can accelerate faster than the 6 cylinder car, the answer could quite honestly be "yes".
More important than cylinder count would be the overall handling of the vehical, which would help or hinder your ability to weave through traffic.
The problem with your argument is that they most certainly do NOT have to even check the code back into the Mozilla tree, they can maintain their own separate tree of the code. Sure, it's GPLed, and they'll make it available on a POS 486 with a single 56K modem for access.
So what we're left with is AOL breaking the standards, not checking in their code, and making it somehow the only browser that will run over their pipe which is the only one going out of your house.
Hmm.. how many residential users are using a T3? I know several people with T1s in their house, but those people are stupid. Quite honestly, there's nothing stopping the bells from declaring that your domicile is not a place of business and so they won't sell you a T1.
More importantly, you'd be surprised how many businesses are using DSL now. Not every company needs to have their web and e-mail hosted in house. Better to co-lo those boxes and then connect to them remotely for a lot less (especially because you save on having to keep the space, physical security and extra admin help for monitoring, you benefit from 24/7 security monitoring and IDS, etc., etc., etc.). That even further consolidates the bells' control over the internet. All they need to do is maintain their own peering relationships and then start kicking off the other, non-bell hosting companies. Now, you can only connect to the internet over DSL (unless you're so big you need the real deal in which case the price is worked out on a business by business basis, and for a lot more than today) and you are forced to host with the Bells and they'll just use the fiber for themselves.
And how long do you think that will really last? I mean, look at what the FCC is doing with the telecom operators? Only a few years ago legislation was passed requiring them to open their pipes, and we all know how that went down. Now, rather than really enforcing the rules, the FCC is just saying,... ahh... who cares!
Well, I care, but then, I'm just the consumer.
In all honesty, the stipulation that AOL would allow their pipes to remain open will last only as long as the next round of budget cuts after which the FCC will fire the people enforcing it (because it is stupid to have one set of rules for an industry and another for a particular company) and it will be forgotten...
Conceivably, AOL could make it somehow impossible to use any browser over your modem connection (controlled through the AOL drivers) other than theirs.
I agree with you completely that there should be an active and competitive browser market, if for no other reason than it will keep the W3C specs moving. The problem is that the W3C doesn't properly enforce their standards and so the browser companies are able to market under the specs while not properly conforming to them.
The real problem isn't the companies selling the browsers, it's the W3C's lack of teeth in standards conformance requirements. If the W3C could correct that, you wouldn't have the degree of incompatibility that exists today and the browser wars would never have happened and we'd all probably be much better off for it.
Oh well...
Uhhhhh... Because AOL isn't abusing a monopoly position to destroy potential competition? Next question.
Right, right... and the FCC didn't just declare that cable operators don't have to share their pipes.. and no one has ever known AOL to be proprietary... I mean, look at how open and standards compliant the current AOL version is...
Oh yeah, that's right, you are required to use AOL and Gecko now... How silly of me. I thought you had any number of choices of ISPs and could still use IE or Opera if you wanted to.
Indeed, and when AOL finally blocks out all the other ISPs from using their pipes, and the Bells kill off all the DSL competitors you'll be able to browse with IE and Opera and Konqueror over either a 56K modem or a T1 line... man, I can't wait!
The point is... they're using Gecko today... and it's opensores, what's to stop them from changing the code in the future to add new "features" that make it work "better" inside the AOL "environment"??? hmmmm.... just you wait... besides, netscape started the browser war to begin with.
No, you are dumb.... the point is that just because AOL releases a new version of their software doesn't mean that people upgrade immediately... that's why mentioned that the majority of his site's hits from AOL users are from people running AOL 5.0.... not everybody in the world is like a linux admin, who upgrades his kernel the moment linus finishes compiling it.
The problem with your argument is that you are attacking the fact that these companies are trying to maximize profits. There's nothing immoral about that. The thing you should be attacking is that they are trying to protect their profits by stifling innovation by preventing better business models from taking hold. This prevents anyone from achieving maximum profits, in the end, and it hurts society.
Corporations' social obligation is to maximize profits, and when one corporation attempts to prevent the maximum profit from something it should be frowned upon. What's peculiar about this situation is that people continue to buy into it, even when it's quite obvious that the most profit can be derived from other means.
2) I think my argument is quite reasonable actually, why don't you provide some details? Afraid?
3) BSD is hardly tired, nor are its arguments. What's tiring, are people who refuse to accept other viewpoints, and wish to force their own on others. I personally don't have a problem with anyone who chooses to utilize the GPL, or code released under the GPL. What I have a problem with, are people who feel that it is the ONLY "free" license, and people who are against user choice. That includes RMS, and Bill Gates.
Stallman is NOT about Freedom. He wants you to be forced to use software in a manner that HE dictates. True freedom, freedom that is embodied by such licenses as the BSD licenses, allows you to use software in whatever manner you see fit. Forcing people to use free software is denying them the RIGHT TO CHOOSE software that is proprietary and potentially better that what is freely available. Having proprietary software available for use creates competition for free software, and can only make it better.
Stallman is not unlike a communist in his views (and I'm sure he is anyway)... they claim that subjecting yourself to communism will "free you" from the yoke of "bourgeois oppression", only to replace is with the yoke of mass exploitation.
To use the word "Free Software" when referring to the GPL and GNU software, is to be disingenuous to the point of lying outright.
St. John's College, with campuses in Maryland and New Mexico, offers a curriculum called "The Great Books Curriculum." It is probably the best liberal arts education money can buy. http://www.sjca.edu/
I wonder if Universal set up this company just so that it COULD be sued... by doing so that would have helped set a precedent in the courts against this kind of thing. IANAL, but I wonder if this sort of thing happens with cartels such as the RIAA... one of the cartel members sets up a small subsidiary and then another member of the cartel sues that subsidiary over some kind of infringement. The owner of the subsidiary puts up a fight.... but not much of a fight. A legal precedent is then set and all members of the cartel benefit...
Maybe I'm just being paranoid....
Why was this modded up???
Sir, your contention that what transpired was "something the [BSD] license permits" is completely false.
Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer, without modification, immediately at the beginning of the file.
That's the first provision of the FreeBSD license. Therefore, what the RedHat guys did WAS in violation of the license. And that's what Soren's complaint was about (note that it appears that RedHat was quick to respond to this and it has been taken care of).
Furthermore, your contention that we're all working towards the same end of "no IP" is also way off base. There are plenty of people working on OpenSource projects that support IP. That's the point of the BSD license. Yes, the code is released into the public domain, but at least this way you are ensured that you will be cited for having done the work.
If this is how you feel about Microsoft and Windows, then I'd like to know what your feelings on Sun and Java and their MAJC (Microprocessor Architecture for Java Computing; see http://arstechnica.com/cpu/4q99/majc/majc-1.html for details).
Seems to me like all you M$ haters out there that are getting in bed with Sun really are hypocrites after all.
(I know this is a repost, but this time I bothered to login so y'all could see it).
This reads like a stupid advertisement for the Home Power website... I think slashdot got paid to post this story.... swilson@numbsafari.com
Re:Why use MySQL -- INSIGHTFUL?
on
Why Not MySQL?
·
· Score: 2
So you are saying that ignorance is an excuse for not delivering a system that fully works?
The honest to goodness truth of the matter is that there are a lot of people out there pawning themselves off as systems architects, building things under the expectation that they will "work"... without ever developing the concept of what a "working product" really is.
Just because some business guy doesn't know what transactional integrity is, doesn't mean that his Systems Architect's and Analyst's ignorance of it is excused.
Personally, I do not believe that MySQL is an RDBMS because it fails to support Foreign Key constraints. That's just me. I like the comment above that mentioned using it for a temporary cache, but not as a master copy...
How's this sound: Get a real DB to do your writes from, and make some kind of replication engine to go from that to MySQL for execution of your reads? The problem here is that MySQL doesn't support some of the key parts of SQL (sub selects) that can make DB queries really hum. I know most people out there building web-sites probably won't need sub-selects, it just pains me to see MySQL win off because people should be excused for their ignorance.
I think I'll stick with the guy who wrote the article, and wonder why exactly people are willing to be so negligent in their use of MySQL, but be so adamant about not using Windows.
I've been following your arguments about ownership and intellectual property on slashdot for some time now. I think you are indeed opening up an important conversation that our culture, indeed all cultures that wish to participate in the internet medium, must participate in. However, I quite often find myself appalled with what you have to say.
The first thing I would like to ask you to do is to stop referring to the people you feel share your views as "geeks." I find this quite offensive. Honestly, I identify myself as a geek, largely because the people around me identify me as a geek. However, I do not agree with your goals. And it isn't just me. There are TONS of geeks out there in thisworld who simply don't share your views on things. Sure, we probably agree on a lot of things. However, I really don't feel that your views about economics and intellectual property rights are representative of all "geeks". Quite frankly, it's getting to be annoying.
That aside, I find that there are a number of things in your most recent posting that I disagree with. Before I detail any of my criticism, however, I would like to say that it is quite well written, nicely thought out, and intelligent. I think you are doing a very good job of brokering the conversation.
I think you are very correct in identifying ideas as a 'non-rivalrous" commodity. What consternates me is that you separate the acts of having thought, from benefiting from thought. The only reason why individuals and organizations are interested in limiting the distribution of thought that they are responsible for, is to control who benefits from them.
If an artist produces a work of art, should he be allowed to gain anything from that. If so, then you would be of the thinking that ideas are, in fact, capital. If not, then you are arguing that they are not, and so no one has the right to either claim them, or benefit from them. In that case they are the property of all society.
If this is what you truly believe, then I'll see you the day the "government of the people" comes around to install your "brain reader" device so that we can all share in the possession of one another's ideas. I'll see you the day that the one thing that makes us all unique individuals, our minds, becomes public property, for the sole benefit and consumption of "the community". And when I do see you, I'd better see you at the front of the line, begging for them to steal your mind.
I find it quite humerous that you would argue for greater "internet privacy" on the one hand, and on the other, would argue that "ideas are free and open." The basic premise of privacy is that there are things going on in my mind that I reserve for myself and for the people that *I* choose to share them with. If, as you so eloquently argue, my ideas and thoughts are "free and open" for public consumption, then why shouldn't someone be allowed to take them from me without my permission?
Later in your editorial you bring up the issue of fan-based sites. You argue that essentially, because the sounds and images that constitute art and music and film are not capital, the result of one individual or group's efforts, one should be able to redistribute them freely.
If I find that I'm a big fan of Cindy Crawford's naked form, does this give me the right to freely distribute A/V clips of it? Does this give me the right to freely take of it? After all, it does represent what one might consider to be the "cultural norm of a tasteful figure"? If Cindy Crawford's body is part of my "cultural identity" does that mean I or anyone else can own it?
I seriously doubt even you would find this thinking to be tasteful or morally correct.
What you are arguing, at the core, is that ideas are not capital. That, because they are not "physical" they cannot be owned, and therefore, cannot be stolen.
You move away from this core argument at the end of your article. There, you argue that, because there are so many different ways in which someone can take the ideas of someone else and give them to everyone else regardless of the original person's desires for this to be the case, that there is no such thing as thievery in cyberspace. If I told you that there are countless ways in which I could violate your person, does that mean you shouldn't be allowed to protect it? I don't think so, and I doubt you do either. Just because there are a lot of ways to violate someone, whether it be their physical person or their non-physical mind or soul, doesn't mean it's right to do so.
You bring up the topic of "means-of distribution" earlier in your article. In your argument you state:
"People who create music and literature have never been particularly good at selling their work, which tends to be collected and distributed by increasingly monopolistic corporate entities: publishers, record labels, Hollywood studios."
The only part of this that disturbs me, and makes me tend to agree with you that the existing media companies are bad, is that they *are* increasingly monopolistic, and that poorly-written laws such as the DMCA only help them to continue to be so. Personally, I see nothing wrong with a group of musicians/artists getting together to better enable them to distribute and protect the products of their labor. What I do have a problem with, as I believe you also do, is when a law or group seeks toprevent artists/musicians who do not wish to participate from having equal opportunity to disseminate their works through whatever alternative means they choose.
MP3.com is a good thing. it provides an entity, not at all unlike a normal recording label, through which musicians can distribute their works via an alternative means. So long as MP3.com does not seek to violate other's copyrights, which they have not done and nor will they do, they are fine by me. However, when the RIAA and its affiliated companies seek to hinder MP3.com's ability to distribute their content, through various means, I take issue with them (RIAA).
I agree with you, Mr. Katz, in defense of maintaining a free and open market. I disagree with you in your definition of capital as it relates to ideas.
I am really beginning to resent the fact that Slashdot feels the need to go out prostelitizing in the name of all "Geek-dom". Quite frankly I am embarrassed for some of the people here on slashdot for holding the views that they hold. Furthermore, it gives people who are geeks but do not share your views a bad reputation. Quite frankly, I don't believe in your communist, "productive-mind raping" views. I think it's great when someone decides to put their work up in the public domain. But I also believe in an individual or organization's right to proprietary ownership of their own work. So please, Mr. Katz, and the rest of you slashdotters, please don't go around screaming "these are geek views", because not all geeks think alike. That's what makes the geek community so great; the wild variation and depth of views and intellectual pursuits. If I wanted to participate in a clone culture I'd go where the real action is: MSDN.
I attend West Chester University in Pennsylvania as a CS student. WCU has approximately a 10MB connection to the net that it essentially shares with all the other SSHE schools (State System of Higher Education), of which there are something like 10. They are all connected via ATM and then go out to the net from WCU over a 10MB connection provided by VoiceNet (ich!). Personally, I believe the internal network here sucks. Aside from that, the University is very open about what it allows/doesn't allow to go on with the campus network. Basically, you can't run any money-making scheme from a server hosted in your dorm room. Further more you can't use the university network to break the law, and you can't host a porn site. I know a bunch of people that run Napster and a few that have used IP calling. The problem with those two as I see it, is that there is only so much bandwidth to be used. I don't know a single person using Napster for research, nor do I know anyone using IP calling for research (if you were doing research and needed to make a phone call, you'd use a university phone anyway, since they'd be funding it). Anyhow, the purpose of a University network is education, not playing. Education comes first. If a University has limited funding for it's network connection, then it has to prioritize. Personally, if WCU were to ban Napster and IP calling on the grounds of preserving network bandwidth, I would support them. I would also begin a campaign to try and get better bandwidth. However, if they decided to do it for other reasons, I would oppose them, as would every other student. Luckily, this is one thing our administration is very much in tune with. Sam Wilson
Well, I can't answer for Oracle specifically, however.... what it comes down to is this. When you complete a WRITE operation, and the system comes back and says "Yes, I successfully wrote that." Then it had better be committed to disk. You can't do that today with Linux. Sure, the WRITE can fail, the point is that it doesn't say SUCCESS unless it has been committed to disk. (Note: This also requires you to turn on synchronous disk writes on your hardware... some hardware configurations will do caching, and this can create problems as well.).
MySQL is in NO WAY comparable to a REAL SQL backend, such as SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, or Informix. Neither is Postgres. Now, Postgres may be a cool system, but when it comes to *SQL*, it has some major issues (no outer joins). MySQL just doesn't compare because it is hardly full featured in terms of SQL support, transaction support, etc. Furthermore, you would NEVER run a database on Linux because there are problems with synchronous IO in the kernel. Transactional Integrity is a 100% MUST HAVE. XA support is a MUST HAVE. If you run a business without these things BUILT IN, then you should be fired. It is impossible for you to look your client in the face and say "I can guarantee the integrity of your data and your transactions with my Linux-MySQL solution." Why? Because they DON'T SUPPORT IT. What you MAY support in the FUTURE, has nothing to do with what you DO support RIGHT NOW. rant off.
Of course you think it's funny that Time put up the story... you have no concept of journalistic integrity, and I seriously doubt that Slashdot would ever OBJECTIVELY report on a lawsuit against itself OR Andover, or any of Andover's subsidiaries...
Slashdot Mirror
Forgetting about the complete lack of speed-limit obediance on NJTP, your answer assumes a constant rate of speed. Considering that travel between Philly and New York can be achieved via many routes, each of which requires numerous stops and starts, assuming the 12 cylinder car can accelerate faster than the 6 cylinder car, the answer could quite honestly be "yes".
More important than cylinder count would be the overall handling of the vehical, which would help or hinder your ability to weave through traffic.
The problem with your argument is that they most certainly do NOT have to even check the code back into the Mozilla tree, they can maintain their own separate tree of the code. Sure, it's GPLed, and they'll make it available on a POS 486 with a single 56K modem for access.
So what we're left with is AOL breaking the standards, not checking in their code, and making it somehow the only browser that will run over their pipe which is the only one going out of your house.
Damn, business is fun.
Hmm.. how many residential users are using a T3? I know several people with T1s in their house, but those people are stupid. Quite honestly, there's nothing stopping the bells from declaring that your domicile is not a place of business and so they won't sell you a T1. More importantly, you'd be surprised how many businesses are using DSL now. Not every company needs to have their web and e-mail hosted in house. Better to co-lo those boxes and then connect to them remotely for a lot less (especially because you save on having to keep the space, physical security and extra admin help for monitoring, you benefit from 24/7 security monitoring and IDS, etc., etc., etc.). That even further consolidates the bells' control over the internet. All they need to do is maintain their own peering relationships and then start kicking off the other, non-bell hosting companies. Now, you can only connect to the internet over DSL (unless you're so big you need the real deal in which case the price is worked out on a business by business basis, and for a lot more than today) and you are forced to host with the Bells and they'll just use the fiber for themselves.
And how long do you think that will really last? I mean, look at what the FCC is doing with the telecom operators? Only a few years ago legislation was passed requiring them to open their pipes, and we all know how that went down. Now, rather than really enforcing the rules, the FCC is just saying,... ahh... who cares! Well, I care, but then, I'm just the consumer. In all honesty, the stipulation that AOL would allow their pipes to remain open will last only as long as the next round of budget cuts after which the FCC will fire the people enforcing it (because it is stupid to have one set of rules for an industry and another for a particular company) and it will be forgotten...
Conceivably, AOL could make it somehow impossible to use any browser over your modem connection (controlled through the AOL drivers) other than theirs. I agree with you completely that there should be an active and competitive browser market, if for no other reason than it will keep the W3C specs moving. The problem is that the W3C doesn't properly enforce their standards and so the browser companies are able to market under the specs while not properly conforming to them. The real problem isn't the companies selling the browsers, it's the W3C's lack of teeth in standards conformance requirements. If the W3C could correct that, you wouldn't have the degree of incompatibility that exists today and the browser wars would never have happened and we'd all probably be much better off for it. Oh well...
The point is... they're using Gecko today... and it's opensores, what's to stop them from changing the code in the future to add new "features" that make it work "better" inside the AOL "environment"??? hmmmm.... just you wait... besides, netscape started the browser war to begin with.
No, you are dumb.... the point is that just because AOL releases a new version of their software doesn't mean that people upgrade immediately... that's why mentioned that the majority of his site's hits from AOL users are from people running AOL 5.0.... not everybody in the world is like a linux admin, who upgrades his kernel the moment linus finishes compiling it.
Microsoft will focus on security like Mr. Magoo at Coney Island...
Corporations' social obligation is to maximize profits, and when one corporation attempts to prevent the maximum profit from something it should be frowned upon. What's peculiar about this situation is that people continue to buy into it, even when it's quite obvious that the most profit can be derived from other means.
1) Sorry, we all make mistakes from time to time.
2) I think my argument is quite reasonable actually, why don't you provide some details? Afraid?
3) BSD is hardly tired, nor are its arguments. What's tiring, are people who refuse to accept other viewpoints, and wish to force their own on others. I personally don't have a problem with anyone who chooses to utilize the GPL, or code released under the GPL. What I have a problem with, are people who feel that it is the ONLY "free" license, and people who are against user choice. That includes RMS, and Bill Gates.
This is not flaim.
Stallman is NOT about Freedom. He wants you to be forced to use software in a manner that HE dictates. True freedom, freedom that is embodied by such licenses as the BSD licenses, allows you to use software in whatever manner you see fit. Forcing people to use free software is denying them the RIGHT TO CHOOSE software that is proprietary and potentially better that what is freely available. Having proprietary software available for use creates competition for free software, and can only make it better.
Stallman is not unlike a communist in his views (and I'm sure he is anyway)... they claim that subjecting yourself to communism will "free you" from the yoke of "bourgeois oppression", only to replace is with the yoke of mass exploitation.
To use the word "Free Software" when referring to the GPL and GNU software, is to be disingenuous to the point of lying outright.
St. John's College, with campuses in Maryland and New Mexico, offers a curriculum called "The Great Books Curriculum." It is probably the best liberal arts education money can buy. http://www.sjca.edu/
I wonder if Universal set up this company just so that it COULD be sued... by doing so that would have helped set a precedent in the courts against this kind of thing. IANAL, but I wonder if this sort of thing happens with cartels such as the RIAA... one of the cartel members sets up a small subsidiary and then another member of the cartel sues that subsidiary over some kind of infringement. The owner of the subsidiary puts up a fight.... but not much of a fight. A legal precedent is then set and all members of the cartel benefit... Maybe I'm just being paranoid....
(I know this is a repost, but this time I bothered to login so y'all could see it).
This reads like a stupid advertisement for the Home Power website... I think slashdot got paid to post this story.... swilson@numbsafari.com
So you are saying that ignorance is an excuse for not delivering a system that fully works?
The honest to goodness truth of the matter is that there are a lot of people out there pawning themselves off as systems architects, building things under the expectation that they will "work"... without ever developing the concept of what a "working product" really is.
Just because some business guy doesn't know what transactional integrity is, doesn't mean that his Systems Architect's and Analyst's ignorance of it is excused.
Personally, I do not believe that MySQL is an RDBMS because it fails to support Foreign Key constraints. That's just me. I like the comment above that mentioned using it for a temporary cache, but not as a master copy...
How's this sound: Get a real DB to do your writes from, and make some kind of replication engine to go from that to MySQL for execution of your reads? The problem here is that MySQL doesn't support some of the key parts of SQL (sub selects) that can make DB queries really hum. I know most people out there building web-sites probably won't need sub-selects, it just pains me to see MySQL win off because people should be excused for their ignorance.
I think I'll stick with the guy who wrote the article, and wonder why exactly people are willing to be so negligent in their use of MySQL, but be so adamant about not using Windows.
Sam Wilson
numbsafari@hotmail.com
I've been following your arguments about ownership and intellectual property on slashdot for some time now. I think you are indeed opening up an important conversation that our culture, indeed all cultures that wish to participate in the internet medium, must participate in. However, I quite often find myself appalled with what you have to say.
The first thing I would like to ask you to do is to stop referring to the people you feel share your views as "geeks." I find this quite offensive. Honestly, I identify myself as a geek, largely because the people around me identify me as a geek. However, I do not agree with your goals. And it isn't just me. There are TONS of geeks out there in thisworld who simply don't share your views on things. Sure, we probably agree on a lot of things. However, I really don't feel that your views about economics and intellectual property rights are representative of all "geeks". Quite frankly, it's getting to be annoying.
That aside, I find that there are a number of things in your most recent posting that I disagree with. Before I detail any of my criticism, however, I would like to say that it is quite well written, nicely thought out, and intelligent. I think you are doing a very good job of brokering the conversation.
I think you are very correct in identifying ideas as a 'non-rivalrous" commodity. What consternates me is that you separate the acts of having thought, from benefiting from thought. The only reason why individuals and organizations are interested in limiting the distribution of thought that they are responsible for, is to control who benefits from them.
If an artist produces a work of art, should he be allowed to gain anything from that. If so, then you would be of the thinking that ideas are, in fact, capital. If not, then you are arguing that they are not, and so no one has the right to either claim them, or benefit from them. In that case they are the property of all society.
If this is what you truly believe, then I'll see you the day the "government of the people" comes around to install your "brain reader" device so that we can all share in the possession of one another's ideas. I'll see you the day that the one thing that makes us all unique individuals, our minds, becomes public property, for the sole benefit and consumption of "the community". And when I do see you, I'd better see you at the front of the line, begging for them to steal your mind.
I find it quite humerous that you would argue for greater "internet privacy" on the one hand, and on the other, would argue that "ideas are free and open." The basic premise of privacy is that there are things going on in my mind that I reserve for myself and for the people that *I* choose to share them with. If, as you so eloquently argue, my ideas and thoughts are "free and open" for public consumption, then why shouldn't someone be allowed to take them from me without my permission?
Later in your editorial you bring up the issue of fan-based sites. You argue that essentially, because the sounds and images that constitute art and music and film are not capital, the result of one individual or group's efforts, one should be able to redistribute them freely.
If I find that I'm a big fan of Cindy Crawford's naked form, does this give me the right to freely distribute A/V clips of it? Does this give me the right to freely take of it? After all, it does represent what one might consider to be the "cultural norm of a tasteful figure"? If Cindy Crawford's body is part of my "cultural identity" does that mean I or anyone else can own it?
I seriously doubt even you would find this thinking to be tasteful or morally correct.
What you are arguing, at the core, is that ideas are not capital. That, because they are not "physical" they cannot be owned, and therefore, cannot be stolen.
You move away from this core argument at the end of your article. There, you argue that, because there are so many different ways in which someone can take the ideas of someone else and give them to everyone else regardless of the original person's desires for this to be the case, that there is no such thing as thievery in cyberspace. If I told you that there are countless ways in which I could violate your person, does that mean you shouldn't be allowed to protect it? I don't think so, and I doubt you do either. Just because there are a lot of ways to violate someone, whether it be their physical person or their non-physical mind or soul, doesn't mean it's right to do so.
You bring up the topic of "means-of distribution" earlier in your article. In your argument you state:
The only part of this that disturbs me, and makes me tend to agree with you that the existing media companies are bad, is that they *are* increasingly monopolistic, and that poorly-written laws such as the DMCA only help them to continue to be so. Personally, I see nothing wrong with a group of musicians/artists getting together to better enable them to distribute and protect the products of their labor. What I do have a problem with, as I believe you also do, is when a law or group seeks toprevent artists/musicians who do not wish to participate from having equal opportunity to disseminate their works through whatever alternative means they choose.
MP3.com is a good thing. it provides an entity, not at all unlike a normal recording label, through which musicians can distribute their works via an alternative means. So long as MP3.com does not seek to violate other's copyrights, which they have not done and nor will they do, they are fine by me. However, when the RIAA and its affiliated companies seek to hinder MP3.com's ability to distribute their content, through various means, I take issue with them (RIAA).
I agree with you, Mr. Katz, in defense of maintaining a free and open market. I disagree with you in your definition of capital as it relates to ideas.
And I'm still a geek.
I am really beginning to resent the fact that Slashdot feels the need to go out prostelitizing in the name of all "Geek-dom". Quite frankly I am embarrassed for some of the people here on slashdot for holding the views that they hold. Furthermore, it gives people who are geeks but do not share your views a bad reputation. Quite frankly, I don't believe in your communist, "productive-mind raping" views. I think it's great when someone decides to put their work up in the public domain. But I also believe in an individual or organization's right to proprietary ownership of their own work. So please, Mr. Katz, and the rest of you slashdotters, please don't go around screaming "these are geek views", because not all geeks think alike. That's what makes the geek community so great; the wild variation and depth of views and intellectual pursuits. If I wanted to participate in a clone culture I'd go where the real action is: MSDN.
I attend West Chester University in Pennsylvania as a CS student. WCU has approximately a 10MB connection to the net that it essentially shares with all the other SSHE schools (State System of Higher Education), of which there are something like 10. They are all connected via ATM and then go out to the net from WCU over a 10MB connection provided by VoiceNet (ich!). Personally, I believe the internal network here sucks. Aside from that, the University is very open about what it allows/doesn't allow to go on with the campus network. Basically, you can't run any money-making scheme from a server hosted in your dorm room. Further more you can't use the university network to break the law, and you can't host a porn site. I know a bunch of people that run Napster and a few that have used IP calling. The problem with those two as I see it, is that there is only so much bandwidth to be used. I don't know a single person using Napster for research, nor do I know anyone using IP calling for research (if you were doing research and needed to make a phone call, you'd use a university phone anyway, since they'd be funding it). Anyhow, the purpose of a University network is education, not playing. Education comes first. If a University has limited funding for it's network connection, then it has to prioritize. Personally, if WCU were to ban Napster and IP calling on the grounds of preserving network bandwidth, I would support them. I would also begin a campaign to try and get better bandwidth. However, if they decided to do it for other reasons, I would oppose them, as would every other student. Luckily, this is one thing our administration is very much in tune with. Sam Wilson
Well, I can't answer for Oracle specifically, however.... what it comes down to is this. When you complete a WRITE operation, and the system comes back and says "Yes, I successfully wrote that." Then it had better be committed to disk. You can't do that today with Linux. Sure, the WRITE can fail, the point is that it doesn't say SUCCESS unless it has been committed to disk. (Note: This also requires you to turn on synchronous disk writes on your hardware... some hardware configurations will do caching, and this can create problems as well.).
MySQL is in NO WAY comparable to a REAL SQL backend, such as SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, or Informix. Neither is Postgres. Now, Postgres may be a cool system, but when it comes to *SQL*, it has some major issues (no outer joins). MySQL just doesn't compare because it is hardly full featured in terms of SQL support, transaction support, etc. Furthermore, you would NEVER run a database on Linux because there are problems with synchronous IO in the kernel. Transactional Integrity is a 100% MUST HAVE. XA support is a MUST HAVE. If you run a business without these things BUILT IN, then you should be fired. It is impossible for you to look your client in the face and say "I can guarantee the integrity of your data and your transactions with my Linux-MySQL solution." Why? Because they DON'T SUPPORT IT. What you MAY support in the FUTURE, has nothing to do with what you DO support RIGHT NOW. rant off.
Of course you think it's funny that Time put up the story... you have no concept of journalistic integrity, and I seriously doubt that Slashdot would ever OBJECTIVELY report on a lawsuit against itself OR Andover, or any of Andover's subsidiaries...
Cause he's right... nobody reads around here do they? sheesh...