I don't think the DMCA would apply in this case. It can't stop the sale of blank CDs, why can it stop the sale of media without ID bytes. Removing the ID byte on a disk with one might be a crime, but just making blank disks wouldn't be.
You can't stop the "bad" traffic without also viewing some of the "good" traffic. If people want to work in a company that deals with sensitive financial information, they should be able to deal with the fact that the emails they send while at work are not confidential. If not, they should leave. This isn't a platform for some crusade against censorship, it's people's personal financial information you're talking about - information that could severely damage them in the wrong hands (like, a bank for instance;).
I find it disappointing that you're more worried about "conforming to the law" than about actually securing this information.
Yeah, yeah, very pedantic. I think you know what I mean, and I hope you realize that racially-oriented lynchings are a slightly different kettle of fish than copyright extension. But in the latter case, if the public don't give a fuck, nothing's going to happen. This is practical reality, my friend, which has little to do with your constitutional rights, as I think the last few governments have demonstrated.
May I just say after that pedantic gripe, that the article *was* most excellent, and I agree with your points completely. I'm just trying to make the point that, unfortunately, complacency wins in a democracy.
It always niggles me when people use historical precedent ("this is the reason we had copyright in the first place") to argue against the current status of something. Times change.
But on the subject of the UCITA and your proposed amendment to the constitution I am 100% behind you. No-one should be able to argue against those 3 simple principles.
Most people are unaware of this or think it is OK. It is not.
Actually, if most people think it is OK, it is OK. In a democracy, what is OK is decided by the people, not by the author of poltical texts such as this.
Win2000 is an excellent product, but if you're using Linux every day you're probably suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
For the SDMI, my recommendation is to download the stuff, hack it, and then NOT TELL THEM. Then, when they release this stuff, you release your hack the very same day. Take that, SDMI!;)
It *is* Sun's software, the code that converts Linux drivers to Solaris drivers. The drivers aren't. Just as Napster is Napter's software, but Master of Puppets is not.
Putting marketing on a level with development is a sure way to skew the organization and make it marketing-driven. Marketing is fundamentally different from development, and needs to be treated as such, not just botched in as "just another team".
Hmm. Not sure about this. Management is a priori "heirarchically superior" because the management commands the developers. If you want management to insulate developers from marketing, it has to be able to command marketing (e.g. "stop trying to market this product which we have no intention of developing")
I also feel you're giving too much power to marketing. Marketing is not "on the same level" as development, it exists in a totally different dimension, and should be viewed as a necessary thing given that we're developers, not as an end in itself.
The fact that marketeers think that marketing is an end in itself is a big problem.
I might be misunderstanding you, though, because in the Open Source case you seem to consider marketing as "what the user community wants" rather than as the process of finding out what the user community wants, and selling it to them. (Just because money doesn't change hands doesn't mean the OSS community does no marketing!)
Actually I recently submitted a Slashdot article about a new form of programming that Microsoft Research are pioneering - Intentional Programming. (I can't find the link now.)
The article got turned down.
So it's not that Microsoft don't innovate, it's that Slashdot deliberately avoids covering it when they do.
Anyone with half a brain and a reasonably open mind can see that in fact Microsoft have innovated hundreds of ideas over the last decade, which the Linux crowd is still busy copying. That's why Windows is usable to the average Joe while Linux is restricted to nerds (who think it's cool that Linux is incomprehensible to the "losers" who can't configure an inetd).
Funnily enough, I used to hate Microsoft as much as anyone when I started reading Slashdot, but Slashdot's utterly biased coverage, and the idiocy of the Linux zealots, has given me new respect for the organization.
That 99% of surveys come up with highly questionable statistics. X% of people agreed with this statement isn't even a statistic; X% of people will agree with you, period. People don't want to argue with researchers, they want to get rid of them.
At least, that's the impression one gets reading a Slashdot editorial.
Stallman is perilously close to becoming a political figure (if he isn't one already) and - hey - political figures get the hell knocked out of them. Regularly. It's not like the great RMS can't take the heat, either. He doesn't need Slashdot as apologist.
Well, we're all living in a consensual hallucination. You wanna drop acid and go and talk to space monkeys, be my guest, but if you want to discuss economics you have to discuss it on the plane on which it's been defined.
What you say is true... of course it is. But this article is not "nothing more" than this. That's like saying that Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is "nothing more" than a rehash of Euclid's postulates. It is, and it isn't.
If we accept the axioms of Economic Theory then we can argue further. That's what this article does, and in doing so it uses the RIAA and MPAA's ammunition against them. It's like a philosophical argument where you disagree with your partner's basic axioms. You don't argue axioms, necessarily, if you can beat his logic with the axioms he has already.
Anyway, if you want to discuss economics in the real world, rather than in an ivory tower, you'd better either accept the axioms that already exist, or come up with some of your own. Mathematics wouldn't have got very far if Archimedes and Euclid had just sat in their dorm rooms arguing about whether or not an axiomatic foundation for mathematics is even possible.
Let's take a reality check on how the domain-name registrars operate.
You go to a registrar, and lookup "aolbeta". Then you request to register it. You may or may not succeed.
Meanwhile, someone else goes to a different registrar, and looks up "aolbeta". It's not taken, so they request to register it. They may or may not succeed.
It's called a race condition and it happens in all distributed databases of this nature. This doesn't mean AOL are throwing their weight around. They may simply have registered it before this other guy.
The fact that AOL had it the very next day seems to bear with this analysis. Let's focus on real issues, not some guy who's peeved because he doesn't understand the domain name registration process.
Which one country do you mean... the UK or the USA?
I figured you meant the USA, but then you said that industry in this country uses metric units and everybody knows that NASA's Mars disasters were caused because industry in the USA doesn't use metric units.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're making too much of this.
Everyone saw this coming three years ago. Thing is, most of Slashdot is still in denial - just read the posts on this article.
That depends if the door is ajar or not.
I find it disappointing that you're more worried about "conforming to the law" than about actually securing this information.
Yeah, yeah, very pedantic. I think you know what I mean, and I hope you realize that racially-oriented lynchings are a slightly different kettle of fish than copyright extension. But in the latter case, if the public don't give a fuck, nothing's going to happen. This is practical reality, my friend, which has little to do with your constitutional rights, as I think the last few governments have demonstrated.
It always niggles me when people use historical precedent ("this is the reason we had copyright in the first place") to argue against the current status of something. Times change.
But on the subject of the UCITA and your proposed amendment to the constitution I am 100% behind you. No-one should be able to argue against those 3 simple principles.
Anyway, the 2 posters I was talking to clearly hadn't even read Bruce Perens' statement, let alone were refuting it.
Actually, if most people think it is OK, it is OK. In a democracy, what is OK is decided by the people, not by the author of poltical texts such as this.
Evidence meaning this Myers-Brigg nonsense? What are you, a psych major?
Aren't you the fucking psychologist. Tend to the plank in your own eye before you point out the splinter in your neighbor's.
For the SDMI, my recommendation is to download the stuff, hack it, and then NOT TELL THEM. Then, when they release this stuff, you release your hack the very same day. Take that, SDMI! ;)
No-one else here cares, why should you? ;)
And that's the point.
You're both wrong, because even Bruce Perens admits that technically Sun are not in violation of the GPL.
Putting marketing on a level with development is a sure way to skew the organization and make it marketing-driven. Marketing is fundamentally different from development, and needs to be treated as such, not just botched in as "just another team".
I also feel you're giving too much power to marketing. Marketing is not "on the same level" as development, it exists in a totally different dimension, and should be viewed as a necessary thing given that we're developers, not as an end in itself.
The fact that marketeers think that marketing is an end in itself is a big problem.
I might be misunderstanding you, though, because in the Open Source case you seem to consider marketing as "what the user community wants" rather than as the process of finding out what the user community wants, and selling it to them. (Just because money doesn't change hands doesn't mean the OSS community does no marketing!)
The article got turned down.
So it's not that Microsoft don't innovate, it's that Slashdot deliberately avoids covering it when they do.
Anyone with half a brain and a reasonably open mind can see that in fact Microsoft have innovated hundreds of ideas over the last decade, which the Linux crowd is still busy copying. That's why Windows is usable to the average Joe while Linux is restricted to nerds (who think it's cool that Linux is incomprehensible to the "losers" who can't configure an inetd).
Funnily enough, I used to hate Microsoft as much as anyone when I started reading Slashdot, but Slashdot's utterly biased coverage, and the idiocy of the Linux zealots, has given me new respect for the organization.
That 99% of surveys come up with highly questionable statistics. X% of people agreed with this statement isn't even a statistic; X% of people will agree with you, period. People don't want to argue with researchers, they want to get rid of them.
Stallman is perilously close to becoming a political figure (if he isn't one already) and - hey - political figures get the hell knocked out of them. Regularly. It's not like the great RMS can't take the heat, either. He doesn't need Slashdot as apologist.
What you say is true ... of course it is. But this article is not "nothing more" than this. That's like saying that Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is "nothing more" than a rehash of Euclid's postulates. It is, and it isn't.
If we accept the axioms of Economic Theory then we can argue further. That's what this article does, and in doing so it uses the RIAA and MPAA's ammunition against them. It's like a philosophical argument where you disagree with your partner's basic axioms. You don't argue axioms, necessarily, if you can beat his logic with the axioms he has already.
Anyway, if you want to discuss economics in the real world, rather than in an ivory tower, you'd better either accept the axioms that already exist, or come up with some of your own. Mathematics wouldn't have got very far if Archimedes and Euclid had just sat in their dorm rooms arguing about whether or not an axiomatic foundation for mathematics is even possible.
You go to a registrar, and lookup "aolbeta". Then you request to register it. You may or may not succeed.
Meanwhile, someone else goes to a different registrar, and looks up "aolbeta". It's not taken, so they request to register it. They may or may not succeed.
It's called a race condition and it happens in all distributed databases of this nature. This doesn't mean AOL are throwing their weight around. They may simply have registered it before this other guy.
The fact that AOL had it the very next day seems to bear with this analysis. Let's focus on real issues, not some guy who's peeved because he doesn't understand the domain name registration process.
Subject says it all, for once.
It's still a joke. That adds credibility. Americans are not known for "getting" jokes though, so be my guest and take it seriously if you want.
I wouldn't say a measurement system is to blame anyway, more like incompetent adminstration. But the US doesn't have a monopoly on that!
I figured you meant the USA, but then you said that industry in this country uses metric units and everybody knows that NASA's Mars disasters were caused because industry in the USA doesn't use metric units.
Industry in the UK has been metric for decades.