Great Link; waaay more interesting than /.'s!
on
2001: A Space Laptop
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· Score: 1
This is the sort of thing that Slashdotters should be reading and writing about. If we really held, say, Linux to standards anything close to those described in the article, maan, would we have stability!
It is not a big stretch to think that the problem with most software--planning too loosely, coding too soon--is worse for OSS than for commercial software. OSS really is a patchwork of code looking for a purpose. The whole point is that there is no overarching script. (That would be boring, as I am sure writing shuttle code is).
Then again, there are companies around who could easily afford to fork out $35Mil for 500,000 lines of perfect code. There are good reasons why this doesn't happen. It takes a long time, is slow to adopt new features, discourages upgrades, and apparently wastes lots of paper (read the linked article!). Still, we can dream of an enlightened government, or a federation of governments, that recruits an army of patient but otherwise ordinary programmers to write a 5,000,000 line operating system and then distributes it for free. Talk about a lubricant for the the digital economy--a perfectly-written OS! If the costs are comparable, this would run us about $350 Million. Hell, I think we've made movies that cost more! I'm sure that if you add the money spent each year by just the European governments it comes to more than this.
The more I think about it the more I find it stupid that no governments have done this already. It seems this would start paying off pretty quickly as they eliminate the need to import software, plus they would save their citizens money which would have gone to Microsoft and can now go to buying more domestic products (provided the country in question is not the US). Plus, imagine the increases in productivity created by a perfectly architectured and coded operating system. I hold out little hope that my country (the US) is enlightened enough to do this, with all the lobbying power from the software supercompanies. Canada is our bitch so we wouldn't let them try this either. Fine. But how about Europe, or India? Why is China doodling around with Linux when they should be writing the perfect OS from scratch? (Because they're cheap bastards and they want results soon, two reasons I can understand, but still I think it's a shame.)
Well, anyway, interesting article, thanks for the link.
The problem with this sort of alarmism is exactly the lack of subtlety. OSO readers are not idiots... or are they... ?? Anyway, the problem with this, like all bad science fiction, is that the author fails to explain how the present situation could plausibly lead to the future he describes.
My picture is that though more things might start becomming illegal soon, the pirate community will hook us up anyway.
Yaay pirates! Go post an.iso today! Once the savvy users get used to never paying and never caring, there is no way anyone could clamp down the copyrights without pissing everyone off. Sure, the piracy movement conflicts with the OSS movement because it lands proprietary software on more hard drives, but maybe a healthy and growing pirate community will make it impossible to seriously start gouging people.
I understood the article differently from the way the posts here seem to want to take it. I thought there would be no money leaking out of the system, except maybe a little cut for Mojo developers. The idea is that you don't actually *pay* for a download; you just get negative mojo karma for downloading, which you can cancel out if you let someone upload. So it's not like they're really charging you money. The micropayments are an inscentive for you to share your files.
This way, a dorm-kiddie on a T1 can fill up half of his 60Gig drive with MP3s, connect to Mojo, and watch the mojo karma roll in. I guess it could then be sold off, so you can actually MAKE money on this scheme (by hijacking university bandwidth; hmm...).
I think this is in principle a good idea exactly because it really encourages people to post stuff. I think that almost all recent music would quickly be posted on the site by people fishing for suckers. I think this is great. Napster could still run alongside, sort of the "poor man's trading program," but if you need something really rare, you'd log in on Mojo and pay for it, or, stay logged in on Mojo and hope people download from you so that you don't have to pay.
1. Morons and idiots are still using the Xing mp3 encoder and other inferior products. From the filename and size you don't see how well it was encoded--not until you've paid for it. The system would encourage people to encode their MP3s using the fastest encoders available, which also happen to be the ones producing the most horrible results. (benchmarks). How would we reward good citizens like me who use only LAME 3.8x -V1 -h (which is what everyone with working ears should be using, by the way...)? Sure, it eats up CPU cycles...
2. Here's a get-rich-quick scheme: make up filenames like "Britney Spears-live rare bootleg Sao Paulo98-Pinball Wizard.mp3" That would earn you some uploads! Of course the file itself would be a recording of you lauging (all the way to the bank). So you would need an E-bay type ratings system for each user, that would show a username in red, for example, if they had bad ratings. But if you get bad ratings just use up any credit left in your account, ditch it and start all over again with a clean one, or get your buddy to write compliments like on Ebay. I just don't see how this would self-regulate.
Shit... need to go.. submit!
Napigator now can't show Napster servers!!
on
Two-Faced Napster?
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· Score: 1
A timely article; Napster seems to have prevented Napigator from even displaying its servers at some point this evening! Look at their server list page! You can still use Napigator to pick a Napster server, but now you need the exact address and you need to enter it manually.
Though I'm a fan of peer-to-peer file distribution, I'm getting pretty fed up with Napster. I think the WSJ article is right on. They're acting like a bunch of corporate bastards. I think the best thing that can happen for the file sharing community is the downfall of Napster. Users that once used the Napster servers would just jump ship to OpenNap or Gnutella, where there wouldn't be any stupid restrictions placed on them (like only trading MP3 files). Napster is now the AOL of file sharing, with hordes of idiot users sitting there isolated on one of those servers. Napster will try hard to lead them around by the nose and control them. So, paradoxically, right now I think Napster is the worst thing for open file sharing. And since if you read this far down you're down on a Slashdot forum you're probably no AOLer, here is where you should go if you are now a Napster user:
Both websites have programs that (still!) search multiple sites simultaneously, both support resuming broken downloads (and it works, unlike Napster!), neither will ban you for downloading a no-no band, and they won't jerk you around.
I especially like MyNapster; if you need addresses for Napster servers, here they are:
208.184.216.177 to 208.184.216.220
At each address there are two servers; one on port 8888 and the other on port 7777.
The great thing about MyNapster is that you can be logged in on several servers simultaneously, and the users from all those servers can d/l from you (and you from them, of course). This might be a burden if you have a slow connection and a bunch of Brittney songs, but if you have cool rare shit that's hard to find, it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling when a bunch of people have access to it. Oh, and by the way, unlike the unenlightened Napster servers, OpenNap servers communicate with each other, so searching one means searching them all--so if you use MyNapster, only log yourself in on one OpenNap server. If you do more you might get errors, because the system will wonder why you're logged in twice.
The original article was at least nicely written, though I think quite misguided in the handling of the concrete examples they discuss. Sure, their PRICIPLES sound right, but when it comes to actually proposing concrete changes, they all sound like steps backwards.
For example, the proposed motivation for violating the Mac "Forgiveness" principle was weeak! No one gets mad when they have to click through one more warning in an unprobable situation like the one they describe, if they can in exchange feel secure that all of their actions will be reversible for a while.
In fact, one problem with Windows, and to a lesser extent Mac and Linux, is that the reversability principle that falls under the heading of Forgiveness is constatnly violated. When I install something into Windows from the internet I have to pray that it has an uninstaller, because it sure as hell isn't going to tell me where it is putting all of its files, and what lines of the registry it is modifying. And even most GOOD uninstallers don't fix your registry. RPM and DEB are a pretty good solution to this in Linux, but how much fun is it to uninstall WordPerfect 8? Or KDE? I have a feeling no one really tries; we just install fresh, because by the time we muck up our drive enough, our favorite distribution has released a new version. This does not cut it in the way of reversability.
In short, there is nothing to be proud of in violating the Mac design principles. It might have a pleasant "look, I'm a bad boy!" feel to it, like using profane words or screwing some chick in the butt used to have for me when I was in grade school--but come on, people, let's grow up!
Probably the best way to accomodate to new and advanced users at the same time is to start with an intuitive interface which is hard-core customizable. And I mean more than just E or something we have now. This is where Linux beats the Mac interface--because the Mac people are too afraid to let users customize the interface (and it looks like this won't change much in OS X). For tedious operations we write scripts, and for all I care, if they program some friendly voice that helps me write it, that's fine with me, as long as it doesn't remove any power from what I'm able to do. The nice thing about this "newbie default, rich customization" attitude is that it's self-regulating. Newbies don't seem to mess around with complicated preferences until they are to a large part over their newbieness. But then, at least in Mac and Windows, they hit the program's ceiling and aren't able to customize any more. This is what needs to get fixed.
The solution isn't some language-based agent living in my computer with whom I negotiate an action. No way! My computer should be my bitch and to exactly what I tell her to, and nothing else. Most of the configuring I have to do in Windows involves turning shit OFF that they have on by default. (Including the paperclip!) No thanks, I don't want an OS that's more autonomous than Windows; I want one that's less. I'm not quite a newbie user, but as I taught my mom Win95 she was almost demoralized by how unpredictable everytihng seemed ("Why is the program capitalizing that word for me?"), and how easily she might screw something up. So it's not just me that wants my computer to behave predictably.
... that the whole thing ran on Windows. I mean, sheesh, I was working hard to suspend my disbelief, but when I saw those stupid Microsoft window frames as the computer "wasn't responding to their commands" I lost all hope for all the X files to come. And I thought they couldn't beat the lameness of that "Cops" episode last week!
I have a feeling their writers quit years ago and that the scripts being filmed were found in their trash cans.
Slashdot Mirror
It is not a big stretch to think that the problem with most software--planning too loosely, coding too soon--is worse for OSS than for commercial software. OSS really is a patchwork of code looking for a purpose. The whole point is that there is no overarching script. (That would be boring, as I am sure writing shuttle code is).
Then again, there are companies around who could easily afford to fork out $35Mil for 500,000 lines of perfect code. There are good reasons why this doesn't happen. It takes a long time, is slow to adopt new features, discourages upgrades, and apparently wastes lots of paper (read the linked article!). Still, we can dream of an enlightened government, or a federation of governments, that recruits an army of patient but otherwise ordinary programmers to write a 5,000,000 line operating system and then distributes it for free. Talk about a lubricant for the the digital economy--a perfectly-written OS! If the costs are comparable, this would run us about $350 Million. Hell, I think we've made movies that cost more! I'm sure that if you add the money spent each year by just the European governments it comes to more than this.
The more I think about it the more I find it stupid that no governments have done this already. It seems this would start paying off pretty quickly as they eliminate the need to import software, plus they would save their citizens money which would have gone to Microsoft and can now go to buying more domestic products (provided the country in question is not the US). Plus, imagine the increases in productivity created by a perfectly architectured and coded operating system. I hold out little hope that my country (the US) is enlightened enough to do this, with all the lobbying power from the software supercompanies. Canada is our bitch so we wouldn't let them try this either. Fine. But how about Europe, or India? Why is China doodling around with Linux when they should be writing the perfect OS from scratch? (Because they're cheap bastards and they want results soon, two reasons I can understand, but still I think it's a shame.)
Well, anyway, interesting article, thanks for the link.
Dave
My picture is that though more things might start becomming illegal soon, the pirate community will hook us up anyway.
Yaay pirates! Go post an .iso today! Once the savvy users get used to never paying and never caring, there is no way anyone could clamp down the copyrights without pissing everyone off. Sure, the piracy movement conflicts with the OSS movement because it lands proprietary software on more hard drives, but maybe a healthy and growing pirate community will make it impossible to seriously start gouging people.
This way, a dorm-kiddie on a T1 can fill up half of his 60Gig drive with MP3s, connect to Mojo, and watch the mojo karma roll in. I guess it could then be sold off, so you can actually MAKE money on this scheme (by hijacking university bandwidth; hmm...).
I think this is in principle a good idea exactly because it really encourages people to post stuff. I think that almost all recent music would quickly be posted on the site by people fishing for suckers. I think this is great. Napster could still run alongside, sort of the "poor man's trading program," but if you need something really rare, you'd log in on Mojo and pay for it, or, stay logged in on Mojo and hope people download from you so that you don't have to pay.
Problems (many already mentioned here; somewhat redundant):
1. Morons and idiots are still using the Xing mp3 encoder and other inferior products. From the filename and size you don't see how well it was encoded--not until you've paid for it. The system would encourage people to encode their MP3s using the fastest encoders available, which also happen to be the ones producing the most horrible results. (benchmarks). How would we reward good citizens like me who use only LAME 3.8x -V1 -h (which is what everyone with working ears should be using, by the way...)? Sure, it eats up CPU cycles...
2. Here's a get-rich-quick scheme: make up filenames like "Britney Spears-live rare bootleg Sao Paulo98-Pinball Wizard.mp3" That would earn you some uploads! Of course the file itself would be a recording of you lauging (all the way to the bank). So you would need an E-bay type ratings system for each user, that would show a username in red, for example, if they had bad ratings. But if you get bad ratings just use up any credit left in your account, ditch it and start all over again with a clean one, or get your buddy to write compliments like on Ebay. I just don't see how this would self-regulate.
Shit... need to go .. submit!
Though I'm a fan of peer-to-peer file distribution, I'm getting pretty fed up with Napster. I think the WSJ article is right on. They're acting like a bunch of corporate bastards. I think the best thing that can happen for the file sharing community is the downfall of Napster. Users that once used the Napster servers would just jump ship to OpenNap or Gnutella, where there wouldn't be any stupid restrictions placed on them (like only trading MP3 files). Napster is now the AOL of file sharing, with hordes of idiot users sitting there isolated on one of those servers. Napster will try hard to lead them around by the nose and control them. So, paradoxically, right now I think Napster is the worst thing for open file sharing. And since if you read this far down you're down on a Slashdot forum you're probably no AOLer, here is where you should go if you are now a Napster user:
http://www.mynapster.com/
http://www.beam.to/suxxx
Both websites have programs that (still!) search multiple sites simultaneously, both support resuming broken downloads (and it works, unlike Napster!), neither will ban you for downloading a no-no band, and they won't jerk you around.
I especially like MyNapster; if you need addresses for Napster servers, here they are:
208.184.216.177 to 208.184.216.220
At each address there are two servers; one on port 8888 and the other on port 7777.
The great thing about MyNapster is that you can be logged in on several servers simultaneously, and the users from all those servers can d/l from you (and you from them, of course). This might be a burden if you have a slow connection and a bunch of Brittney songs, but if you have cool rare shit that's hard to find, it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling when a bunch of people have access to it. Oh, and by the way, unlike the unenlightened Napster servers, OpenNap servers communicate with each other, so searching one means searching them all--so if you use MyNapster, only log yourself in on one OpenNap server. If you do more you might get errors, because the system will wonder why you're logged in twice.
For example, the proposed motivation for violating the Mac "Forgiveness" principle was weeak! No one gets mad when they have to click through one more warning in an unprobable situation like the one they describe, if they can in exchange feel secure that all of their actions will be reversible for a while.
In fact, one problem with Windows, and to a lesser extent Mac and Linux, is that the reversability principle that falls under the heading of Forgiveness is constatnly violated. When I install something into Windows from the internet I have to pray that it has an uninstaller, because it sure as hell isn't going to tell me where it is putting all of its files, and what lines of the registry it is modifying. And even most GOOD uninstallers don't fix your registry. RPM and DEB are a pretty good solution to this in Linux, but how much fun is it to uninstall WordPerfect 8? Or KDE? I have a feeling no one really tries; we just install fresh, because by the time we muck up our drive enough, our favorite distribution has released a new version. This does not cut it in the way of reversability.
In short, there is nothing to be proud of in violating the Mac design principles. It might have a pleasant "look, I'm a bad boy!" feel to it, like using profane words or screwing some chick in the butt used to have for me when I was in grade school--but come on, people, let's grow up!
Probably the best way to accomodate to new and advanced users at the same time is to start with an intuitive interface which is hard-core customizable. And I mean more than just E or something we have now. This is where Linux beats the Mac interface--because the Mac people are too afraid to let users customize the interface (and it looks like this won't change much in OS X). For tedious operations we write scripts, and for all I care, if they program some friendly voice that helps me write it, that's fine with me, as long as it doesn't remove any power from what I'm able to do. The nice thing about this "newbie default, rich customization" attitude is that it's self-regulating. Newbies don't seem to mess around with complicated preferences until they are to a large part over their newbieness. But then, at least in Mac and Windows, they hit the program's ceiling and aren't able to customize any more. This is what needs to get fixed.
The solution isn't some language-based agent living in my computer with whom I negotiate an action. No way! My computer should be my bitch and to exactly what I tell her to, and nothing else. Most of the configuring I have to do in Windows involves turning shit OFF that they have on by default. (Including the paperclip!) No thanks, I don't want an OS that's more autonomous than Windows; I want one that's less. I'm not quite a newbie user, but as I taught my mom Win95 she was almost demoralized by how unpredictable everytihng seemed ("Why is the program capitalizing that word for me?"), and how easily she might screw something up. So it's not just me that wants my computer to behave predictably.
You wouldn't think it's possible, but Microsoft found a way...
I have a feeling their writers quit years ago and that the scripts being filmed were found in their trash cans.