Say "Netscape" to most Internet users and I suspect they'll think "browser".
Say "Mozilla" to the same folks and I suspect they'll think "Japanese monster movie??"
You've made an interesting critique of the Netscape home page. However, since Netscape isn't gonna make any money from free downloads, why should they bother to hype it that much?
When was the last time you saw an ad for Mozilla? Or a free Mozilla CD at the check-out line? Or anything else that smacks of publicity?
One of the weaknesses of open source -- from a business perspective -- is that it doesn't buy advertising, or buy its way into distribution deals. It depends on word of mouth. Unfortunately, when geek recommends something to non-geek, non-geek often says "Ok, I'll try that" but thinks "That guy can probably get it to work, but not me. Too many hassles. I'll stick with what I have."
No, it's barely a beginning, whether as a country or as a species. Living vicariously via TV imagery is no more a reason to go into space than is science. The reason to go is the same reason the species left Africa.
And don't worry about your money. There's profit to be made in space
>> Replace "White House" with "Capitol." They're the ones that decide funding.
Have you ever heard of a single human spaceflight proposal originating in Congress? The lead in space policy belongs in the White House. Sadly, successive Presidents have failed to provide this leadership.
>> It's not like the feds have ever told anybody "No, you can't launch anything into space, only we can do that."
Sorry, that's not true. Any space launch by an American requires a series of government approvals. NASA has effectively killed several private sector space businesses.
>>...why should Congress throw money at some private organization...
Absolutely not! The federal government should get out of the business of designing, building and flying manned space craft. The DoD doesn't build missiles, aircraft or ships. DoD tells industry what it wants, reviews the bids and awards contracts. This has enabled the U.S. to build a huge industrial infrastructure to support the Pentagon.
We have no national spaceflight infrastructure precisely because NASA follows a different and monopolistic path. That's what we need to change. When the government thinks it needs a spacecraft, let it put out an RFP and wait for bids.
As InforVore's post points out, NASA has effectively combatted and eliminated private efforts to build spaceflight capacity. Rather than encourage the creation of a national spaceflight infrastructure, NASA has been busy ensuring its own survival as a govrnment bureaucracy.
Consider: NASA put people in orbit in 1961. NASA went to the Moon in 1969. Where has NASA gone since? Back to orbit, over and over. What's the purpose of the Shuttle? To go to the space station. What's the purpose of the space station? To give the shuttle a place to go.
I didn't suggest eliminating NASA. I suggested eliminating its monopoly and control of human spaceflightin the U.S. So long as NASA is the only game in town, it won't be much of a game.
Note that I said we need to end NASA's monopoly, net end NASA. The agency should be repurposed to spur the development of human spaceflight infrastructure. Infrastructure is essential to supporting human activities in space, and NASA has done little if anything toward that goal. In fact, one could argue that it has managed to destroy 50 percent of the only capability we have to put people in space.
So long as NASA runs the only train in town, and so long as NASA pretends that science is wjy we go to space, we will see precious little human space flight.
NASA's age becomes relevant when you consider that the status and survival of the agency itself motivates its managers at least as strongly as does assertive human space flight.
Our total reliance on NASA for human space flight means the U.S. has no spaceflight infrastructure. We fly a very small team of people into low Earth orbit a few times a year in a spacecraft that was intentionally designed to go nowhere but low Earth orbit. Human space flight has been treading water since 1969.
We spend billions supporting a space station that serves no real purpose other than to score a few diplomatic points with the other participating nations.
It is now more than 40 years after the first human space flights. We should have a national spaceflight infrastructure equivalent to the aviation infrastucture we had in 1943 -- 40 years after the Wright's first flight.
We don't have that infrastructure or the capabilities it would support because NASA has been given a monopoly.
Don't be embarrassed about the "to boldy go..." stuff. Roddenberry touched a cord with that line. It's easy to be proud when you acting boldly in response to a challenge; and it is easy to be ashamed when your deliberately being meek.
The danger of pinning human space flight on the science they perform there is thet it convinces people that the only reason to go to space is science. Science is peripheral. Science will be done in space, but it shouldn't be a primary motivation for human space trave any more than science was a motive for the British settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth.
He's right -- the best reason for himan space travel is the need for humans to travel in space -- but his most telling statement about the Shuttle is made in passing: the Shuttle has "no place to Shuttle to". Thanks to a wrongheaded space policy -- while you're pointing fingers at NASA, point the rest of your body at the White House -- the U.S. space monopoly (that's NASA) built spacecraft that had no place to go.
Let's stop pretending that a 50-year old govrnment agency like NASA can revive the energy and drive of the Apollo era. Let's have a space policy that ends NASA's constricting monopoly and allows American enterprise to go where it will in space
Well, for example, the U.S. Constitution contains words asserting the freedom of assembly. That aspect of freedom is an idea, but the words always remain just words. You're correct that the words may provoke a response in the reader, but the words and the idea are distinct.
You are suffering from a common/. malady whereby someone believes their personal and self-serving opinion takes precedence over the law. Good luck with your lawyer.
So, you're saying this guy wasn't in the business of figuring out how to steal satellite TV? That, knowing he was innocent, he agreed to this rather than risk going to court?
And, last I heard, "all those 'enemy combatants" totalled 3 people.
>>... the likelihood is that they may never need support.
Yeah, right. Linux is good, but it's not perfect. What happens when the boss comes back from the last roadtrip having bought a dozen steam-powered Twin Confabulators that she wants on every Linux server in the building?
Or, when the summer intern drops a coke on the billing server, doesn't tell anyone, and a week's worth of online purchases disappear?
Unless a business wants to commit to always maintaining an internal support staff regardless of cost, management has to know if the vendor is going to be there to provide support.
An equally reasonable reason to desire external support is that relying on in-house staff can eventually block forward movement. For example, if you're a Micorosoft house, with a veteran in-house support staff, you've got a subtantial amount of equity tied up in your commitment to Microsoft. The cost of replacing all those Microsoft techies with Linux techies can easily push a decision to stay with Microsoft.
Without a representation of an idea via some form of symbolism, the entire discussion is moot. You cannot transfer an idea. You can only transfer the informatiom someone created to represent the idea.
Doens't make me sick, but your reasoning comes close.
People who can't afford to pay for legal satellite should just do without. We're not talking about food or medicine here. Anyone whose moral code can justify stealing a blatant luxury like satellite TV has the moral code of a thief.
Whether or not theft of satellite TV represents lost revenue to the companies selling it is irrelevant. It has no bearing on the morality of the theft. It isn't much of a defense to argue that there's no crime because you stole something that you'd otherwise not buy.
>>...intellectual property doesn't describe the true state of the material.
Some things -- paper, modulated broadcast signals, stored binary bits, etc. -- meet my definition of property. If that property also contains or transmits symbolic representations of someone's thought process (i.e., information) then it meets my definition of intellectual property.
The core of the attack on IP seems to be the rhetorical slogan that "an idea can't be owned". I believe the notion expressed in that slogan is without merit: By definition, an idea is created and exists within the mind of a single individual. As soon as that individual has translated that idea into some form of symbolic representation (usually language) it becomes information. When that information is recorded, the medium used to contain the record is intellectul property. That property can be owned.
This notion reminds me of those inane/. arguments in which someone tries to score points by looking up the dictionary definition of a word: "See? The dictionary says I'm right?"
Changing the name of something doesn't change that "something".
Intellectual property is not about intellectual activity inside someone's head. It is about what is created when someone uses language and other forms of symbolic representation to record and communicate the results of that activity.
That is exactly what I am doing, right now, by posting to SLashdot. The activity in my brain determining what I want to say is not intellectual property; whatever's going on in there is completely, and forever, unknowable by anyone else if I don't record it in some fashion. That recording is intellectual property.
Many Occupations Expect Performance, Not Hours
on
Working Hard?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
If the only thing that keeps you showing up at work every day is your paycheck, then I suppose you have a reason to want to be paid overtime for enduring another hour of hell. You do that knowing that you're just another warm body.
However, many occupations exist where performance counts more than just putting in hours. Millions of these jobs exist in the U.S. -- in the traditional professions, in new professions, in the government and military, etc. It has been my experience that people in these jobs routinely work 50-70 weeks per week.
Slashdot Mirror
Say "Netscape" to most Internet users and I suspect they'll think "browser".
Say "Mozilla" to the same folks and I suspect they'll think "Japanese monster movie??"
You've made an interesting critique of the Netscape home page. However, since Netscape isn't gonna make any money from free downloads, why should they bother to hype it that much?
When was the last time you saw an ad for Mozilla? Or a free Mozilla CD at the check-out line? Or anything else that smacks of publicity?
One of the weaknesses of open source -- from a business perspective -- is that it doesn't buy advertising, or buy its way into distribution deals. It depends on word of mouth. Unfortunately, when geek recommends something to non-geek, non-geek often says "Ok, I'll try that" but thinks "That guy can probably get it to work, but not me. Too many hassles. I'll stick with what I have."
Undocumented?
I must have read something you didn't.
>> ...isn't that enough for us as a country?
No, it's barely a beginning, whether as a country or as a species. Living vicariously via TV imagery is no more a reason to go into space than is science. The reason to go is the same reason the species left Africa.
And don't worry about your money. There's profit to be made in space
>> Replace "White House" with "Capitol." They're the ones that decide funding.
...why should Congress throw money at some private organization ...
Have you ever heard of a single human spaceflight proposal originating in Congress? The lead in space policy belongs in the White House. Sadly, successive Presidents have failed to provide this leadership.
>> It's not like the feds have ever told anybody "No, you can't launch anything into space, only we can do that."
Sorry, that's not true. Any space launch by an American requires a series of government approvals. NASA has effectively killed several private sector space businesses.
>>
Absolutely not! The federal government should get out of the business of designing, building and flying manned space craft. The DoD doesn't build missiles, aircraft or ships. DoD tells industry what it wants, reviews the bids and awards contracts. This has enabled the U.S. to build a huge industrial infrastructure to support the Pentagon.
We have no national spaceflight infrastructure precisely because NASA follows a different and monopolistic path. That's what we need to change. When the government thinks it needs a spacecraft, let it put out an RFP and wait for bids.
As InforVore's post points out, NASA has effectively combatted and eliminated private efforts to build spaceflight capacity. Rather than encourage the creation of a national spaceflight infrastructure, NASA has been busy ensuring its own survival as a govrnment bureaucracy.
Consider: NASA put people in orbit in 1961. NASA went to the Moon in 1969. Where has NASA gone since? Back to orbit, over and over. What's the purpose of the Shuttle? To go to the space station. What's the purpose of the space station? To give the shuttle a place to go.
I didn't suggest eliminating NASA. I suggested eliminating its monopoly and control of human spaceflightin the U.S. So long as NASA is the only game in town, it won't be much of a game.
Note that I said we need to end NASA's monopoly, net end NASA. The agency should be repurposed to spur the development of human spaceflight infrastructure. Infrastructure is essential to supporting human activities in space, and NASA has done little if anything toward that goal. In fact, one could argue that it has managed to destroy 50 percent of the only capability we have to put people in space.
So long as NASA runs the only train in town, and so long as NASA pretends that science is wjy we go to space, we will see precious little human space flight.
NASA's age becomes relevant when you consider that the status and survival of the agency itself motivates its managers at least as strongly as does assertive human space flight.
Our total reliance on NASA for human space flight means the U.S. has no spaceflight infrastructure. We fly a very small team of people into low Earth orbit a few times a year in a spacecraft that was intentionally designed to go nowhere but low Earth orbit. Human space flight has been treading water since 1969.
We spend billions supporting a space station that serves no real purpose other than to score a few diplomatic points with the other participating nations.
It is now more than 40 years after the first human space flights. We should have a national spaceflight infrastructure equivalent to the aviation infrastucture we had in 1943 -- 40 years after the Wright's first flight.
We don't have that infrastructure or the capabilities it would support because NASA has been given a monopoly.
Don't be embarrassed about the "to boldy go..." stuff. Roddenberry touched a cord with that line. It's easy to be proud when you acting boldly in response to a challenge; and it is easy to be ashamed when your deliberately being meek.
The danger of pinning human space flight on the science they perform there is thet it convinces people that the only reason to go to space is science. Science is peripheral. Science will be done in space, but it shouldn't be a primary motivation for human space trave any more than science was a motive for the British settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth.
He's right -- the best reason for himan space travel is the need for humans to travel in space -- but his most telling statement about the Shuttle is made in passing: the Shuttle has "no place to Shuttle to". Thanks to a wrongheaded space policy -- while you're pointing fingers at NASA, point the rest of your body at the White House -- the U.S. space monopoly (that's NASA) built spacecraft that had no place to go.
Let's stop pretending that a 50-year old govrnment agency like NASA can revive the energy and drive of the Apollo era. Let's have a space policy that ends NASA's constricting monopoly and allows American enterprise to go where it will in space
If copying something without authorization is a crime, then the copier is a criminal.
What does someone's shopping preferences have to do with whether or not their behavior is a crime?
The "stupid" touch is nice. So typically Slashdot. The rest of your post is just unproven, unsubstantiated assertion.
Well, for example, the U.S. Constitution contains words asserting the freedom of assembly. That aspect of freedom is an idea, but the words always remain just words. You're correct that the words may provoke a response in the reader, but the words and the idea are distinct.
You are suffering from a common /. malady whereby someone believes their personal and self-serving opinion takes precedence over the law. Good luck with your lawyer.
Looks like you ought to be wearing your tinfoil.
If the signal is encryted, you have no more right to it than you do to open a piece of mail mistakenly dropped in your mail box.
So, you're saying this guy wasn't in the business of figuring out how to steal satellite TV? That, knowing he was innocent, he agreed to this rather than risk going to court?
And, last I heard, "all those 'enemy combatants" totalled 3 people.
>> ... the likelihood is that they may never need support.
Yeah, right. Linux is good, but it's not perfect. What happens when the boss comes back from the last roadtrip having bought a dozen steam-powered Twin Confabulators that she wants on every Linux server in the building?
Or, when the summer intern drops a coke on the billing server, doesn't tell anyone, and a week's worth of online purchases disappear?
Unless a business wants to commit to always maintaining an internal support staff regardless of cost, management has to know if the vendor is going to be there to provide support.
An equally reasonable reason to desire external support is that relying on in-house staff can eventually block forward movement. For example, if you're a Micorosoft house, with a veteran in-house support staff, you've got a subtantial amount of equity tied up in your commitment to Microsoft. The cost of replacing all those Microsoft techies with Linux techies can easily push a decision to stay with Microsoft.
Without a representation of an idea via some form of symbolism, the entire discussion is moot. You cannot transfer an idea. You can only transfer the informatiom someone created to represent the idea.
Doens't make me sick, but your reasoning comes close.
People who can't afford to pay for legal satellite should just do without. We're not talking about food or medicine here. Anyone whose moral code can justify stealing a blatant luxury like satellite TV has the moral code of a thief.
Whether or not theft of satellite TV represents lost revenue to the companies selling it is irrelevant. It has no bearing on the morality of the theft. It isn't much of a defense to argue that there's no crime because you stole something that you'd otherwise not buy.
Loss of freedom is the usual penalty for a crime.
RTFA. He entered a guilty plea. That is, he admitted he's a criminal.
>> ...intellectual property doesn't describe the true state of the material.
Some things -- paper, modulated broadcast signals, stored binary bits, etc. -- meet my definition of property. If that property also contains or transmits symbolic representations of someone's thought process (i.e., information) then it meets my definition of intellectual property.
The core of the attack on IP seems to be the rhetorical slogan that "an idea can't be owned". I believe the notion expressed in that slogan is without merit: By definition, an idea is created and exists within the mind of a single individual. As soon as that individual has translated that idea into some form of symbolic representation (usually language) it becomes information. When that information is recorded, the medium used to contain the record is intellectul property. That property can be owned.
This notion reminds me of those inane /. arguments in which someone tries to score points by looking up the dictionary definition of a word: "See? The dictionary says I'm right?"
Changing the name of something doesn't change that "something".
Intellectual property is not about intellectual activity inside someone's head. It is about what is created when someone uses language and other forms of symbolic representation to record and communicate the results of that activity.
That is exactly what I am doing, right now, by posting to SLashdot. The activity in my brain determining what I want to say is not intellectual property; whatever's going on in there is completely, and forever, unknowable by anyone else if I don't record it in some fashion. That recording is intellectual property.
If the only thing that keeps you showing up at work every day is your paycheck, then I suppose you have a reason to want to be paid overtime for enduring another hour of hell. You do that knowing that you're just another warm body.
However, many occupations exist where performance counts more than just putting in hours. Millions of these jobs exist in the U.S. -- in the traditional professions, in new professions, in the government and military, etc. It has been my experience that people in these jobs routinely work 50-70 weeks per week.
>> ...they are doing the same things that made Slashdot a possibility...
Threats of extortion made Slashdot the deepest cesspool on the web?
Too bad it worked.