One point of Lessig's Code is that software code and legal code essentially do the same thing in different ways. What Microsoft can't or won't do in software code it is supporting in legal code.
Although we do have a right to free speech (1st Amend.) and a right against search and seizure (4th Amend.), we also have a right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Our rights are complex legal ideals, and embodying them in practice may be difficult and even contradictory. Media pundits have been talking about the danger to our civil rights if the government's reaction is too strong, but it's clear the right to safe flights is a right we should have. (Interestingly, it's been the conservatives that are bemoaning the possible loss of our rights, even though the administration is very conservative.)
We represent America Online, Inc. ("AOL"), with respect to its intellectual property matters. Our client is the owner of federal Registration Nos. 2,423,368 and 2,423,367 for its mark AIM (hereinafter, the "AIM Mark") and operates the most widely-used interactive online service in the world. Our client has made extensive use of its AIM Mark in interstate and international commerce.
Your use of the name "Target" and the giant red and white target logo may cause considerable confusion with the AIM Mark, as a target is something at which one takes aim. In order to avoid such confusion and to avoid infringing the AIM Mark, you must immediately cease and desist from using such a confusing name and logo or immediately turn over all assets to AOL. If you don't, AOL will buy you just like Time-Warner.
Entirely true. Speaking as an American who has experienced various British accents, there seem to be a lot crammed into a relatviely small space.
I was in Wales once with a bunch of students from all over the UK, and even those from middle and southern England had several different accents. There was one guy fom northern England who I couldn't understand half the time.
Scotland is also the same way, with a variety of accents. Edinburgh and Glasgow are only about an hour apart by train, but have completely different accents.
There are currently two problems I have with slashdot, and they are the reasons I don't usually read postings about non-linux issues. One is that people really don't know what they are talking about, and since those very same people are the moderators then posts that sound good but are still wrong get modded up. Secondly I think it is difficult to get modded at all once there are a certain number of posts - I've modded once, and the thought of looking at 200+ posts isn't fun. Thus if you try to write something intelligent, you have to do it quickly before too many well-intentioned but off-base posters make their views known.
The first problem is pretty apparent with this Katz piece, unless the whole thing is a troll. Far too many posts here have said something along the lines of how consumers control the market. This is not only wrong, nor is it only laughable, it is a dangerous idea, especially when it comes to media. In order to have a well-functioning democracy, which we don't quite have (troll: FL), you need not only a well-educated citizenry (not consumers) but also areas where they can discuss issues. If large media companies control too much of the media, then the majority of the mediaspace will contain information that is favorable, directly or indirectly, to large corporations.
A second problem with the posts here, a point I just mentioned, is that people must be citizens in a democracy, not consumers, regardless of how politicians run (or have to run) their campaigns.
So, if large media companies control too much of the mediaspace, it will probably have a negative effect on our democracy, and no, consumers (who should be citizens) can't do too much about it (unless the band together, but that's another thread).
Here's a story about how consumers don't control the market, regarding instant oatmeal (like Quaker makes). Rolled oats were invented in the late 1800's in the US during the "health craze" era (when the big cereal co's, like Kellogg, started, for the same reason). No one ate them when they were first made, because no one had eaten them before. A few poor people did, but that's because they used to eat crushed oats (not rolled oats, I've had both, they're different).
However, after a large marketing campaign as to the healthiness of eating rolled oats (which no one had ever done before), people began to eat them. The consumers didn't control the market, the corporation and the advertisers did. This doesn't mean that consumers are always unwitting pawns, nor does it mean that you are. Corporations like it when consumers think the power rests in the hands of the consumers, because it doesn't and that benefits the corporations.
When clueless/.'ers go around saying how consumers control the market in the current media environment and get modded up, it's doubly dangerous because we don't have that control nor should we be constructed as consumers, we are citizens.
(Troll, on!) If you want to debate me on code, fine, I haven't coded in about ten years, but if you want to debate me on media, you'd better get a couple of years of PhD-level media studies from one of the world's best universities under your belt, because I've got five years at Michigan (and heck it's the state where/. started anyways).
...its stock price has soared 60% this year, to 70 - which is all good and true, except that this is up from its lowest point in several years, which was in the 40's. Before that it had been over 100 and still hasn't recovered. This is just one of the many stories the article isn't mentioning: the stock has tanked in the last two years.
But let the real numbers, not Business Week's, do the talking - check out the
52-week low. 160% of 40 is 64, almost 70! Wow! But a better picture is a 5-year plot (I believe it's adjusted for the stock splits). One story is that the stock was almost at 120, and instead of being dismayed that it was reduced to one-third of its value, Business Week thinks we should be happy that's it's at nearly two-thirds instead - but they forgot to mention that part...
The reporter has no clue about the show, because if you've ever watched even ten minutes you understand that the dubbing is *exact*, even giggles and "uhms", it's not at all "inept".
Translating the show as a whole to an American context is going to be impossible, as we do not have hundreds and hundreds of years of culinary cultural heritage that is our own, and although Twinkies can last that long they don't count. Game shows in Japan are different from ones here because, simply, the US and Japan are different, very different. Their food means a lot more to them than our food (and lack thereof) means to us.
If people are interested, Standage's "Victorian Internet" deals with pneumatic tubes a fair amount. They were a good complement to the telegraph for short distances since they were actually faster (skipping the encoding and decoding steps).
Half of the book lampoons Victorian society and its strongly class-based structure. The imagination and the mathematical basis are fantastic, and when I read it as an undergrad math major it was great, but it was also readily apparent that Abbott's mathematical imagination and his social beliefs were of equal importance to him.
In fact, the social (albeit historical nowadays) aspect is what might make this book highly relevant for slashdotters. Open source isn't cool because people say so, it's cool because it's the right thing to do. It's science and society. The same is true of Flatland.
Although I'm glad to see that Slashdot remembers history, I've never really understood the fascination with the space shuttle Challenger explosion - thousands of people die every day, and rockets are big (usually) controlled bombs. The US is so wrapped up in its technological navel it's rather sad. It meant a lot to people who had bought into the space program as an integral part of the American identity, but to others I think it all seemed rather odd, a media moment removed from reality.
But, if you want to read a thorough book on the subject, try Diane Vaughan's The Challenger Launch Decision.
two things:
first, if you want to understand what the luddites were upset about, read Lewis Mumford's "Technics and Civilization." It's from 1930, but is pretty incredible about describing the IR. As others have pointed out, it wasn't the technology, it was its use to enslave the majority of the populace. That isn't to say there aren't positive uses of technology, but time and time again we need regulation to stop human greed.
second, Katz, when you say There are virtually no credible connections between technology use, media and violence, you are wrong. I've TA'd a class in media and violence, and although lots of idiots write in to the NYT, the connections are there, proven time and again. It's not that playing Q2 will make you violent, that's far too simple. One of the profs in my dept is huge on media, violence, and children, try reading some of his stuff if you can find it and if you can understand academic and statistical papers, his name is Rowell Huesmann - he's actually testified before the US Congress (and has two books listed at Amazon, but one is out of print and the other is special order).
if you can find NeXTSTEP on CD you can pretty much run OSX on intel, since that's what it's based on and they had to port OSX from intel to PPC...
i think unix programmers might love the new huge user base that all G3+ macs give them, and hopefully being BSD underneath will help when porting apps... the NeXT used to be awesome to code for, too.
i don't think it's so much that microsoft is worrying about linux per se, although they are, it's more the open source software and business model that they are concerned about
i still think that macosX will give linux a big challenge on the desktop for a lot of reasons, microsoft right now is more concerned about the server market when it comes to linux
comparing apple, microsoft, linux, and the guis is difficult because you are trying to compare an OS/hardware company, an OS/software uber-titan, and a global open source OS that doesn't have one sole company driving it but instead has lots of contributors - we can talk all we want about interface, but we all know there are a lot of reasons we have the ones we currently do
at least microsoft is worried about something - how's that lawsuit?
I had a 5300 for 3 years and never had any problems with it, except it would crash coming out of sleep (so i never slept it). don't know what those other people are talking about. (of course i got a later 5300, the earlier ones were known to be problematic)
but anyways, i got rid of it a year ago under the exact same trade in as this post mentions, except for a then-current PBG3, which rocks and i also have no problems with it.
when apple did this last year, it was never clear why they were doing it, lots of speculation, but the one thing they did do was offer the discount on soon-to-be-discontinued models. perhaps something new is in the pipe for powerbooks.
The score for mosts of the posts to this story suck, and the original post is off-base. Apparently slashdot readers don't know what an NDA is, which is too bad because many of them might want to.
The TidBITS piece is completely on target and well-written. It explains NDA's, the economics of product release cycles, and why you might want to hold people to the legally binding contracts that they choose to sign.
Apple is going to bring unix to mainstream desktops long before linux does, the "linux community" should forge ties to the "apple community", whatever and whoever they are exactly, this kind of post doesn't help and shows the ignorance of some of the slashdotters who usually value computer knowledge (maybe those types are just not posting on this topic).
i don't think slashdotters are quite the right target for this review
i used to be the sysadmin for a small enviro non-prof where Paul Hawken was on the board, and i've met him
he gave a talk at the UM b-school (one of the top five) and gave an amazing standing room only speech without notes for an hour and a half -- he knows his subject
the comments here have been pathetic, none are (as i post) over 3
an important parallel is that both the environmental movement and the open source movement have had to fight entrenched economic beliefs by showing how the current system doesn't use the right metrics. almost all/.ers know the benefits of open source, but we all know it's been quite a battle to get the rest of the world to see those.
tech support and massive viruses are par for the course. dumping my toxic waste is the way it goes. this is normal, my bottom line looks good. both the environmental movement and the open source movement point out that this thinking is wrong, the metrics are missing important measures, and that the bottom line can be improved.
if we all use windows, we won't know any better and the computing world will suffer. if we all pollute the air with our SUV's, we probably won't think about it much and the air we breathe and ourselves will suffer. it's the same thing. open source'ers and enviromentalists are fighting different versions of the same battle.
it doesn't really go against the "standard" business model, it goes against the previously dominant business model in the computer world, which focused more on goods than services.
one trend in current-day capitalist economies is a switch to the services part of goods and services - this doesn't mean that goods don't underly the economy (try running that open source server without hardware), but look at companies like the post-AT&T phone companies, the overnight shipping industry (UPS's big IPO), and the computer book industry (although you could say Amazon sells goods which are essentially an information good, or perhaps a service).
there are so many players in the "goods" part of the computer economy that the obvious niches are rather full, there are opportunities for services related to all of those computers floating around now - open source merely fills a need (although it's one that some older players neither understand nor want).
over time, economies change (anyone remember feudalism? serfdom?), hopefully for the better, and that's what we're seeing. specifically new yes, but the meta-economy is the same in that it is still changing, adding "new" pieces and discarding "old" ones.
keep in mind that most people, when you get to know them, are quite nice, and although those nice people may make up a company, companies are a very different level of analysis.
where are the marketing people? where are the people who threaten compaq or gateway when they want to change the WinXX desktop slightly? where are the lawyers?
when you look at the people, you'll get one picture, when you look at MS as a company, you'll get a different picture -- this is true of pretty much all large companies, regardless of what you think of them. the picture presented here is not wrong, but it's only one picture, and only one part of the picture. big companies do have to do things right to become big, but stepping on a few players along the way doesn't hurt, although it isn't always needed.
his story is also ahistorical, just a snapshot of one point in time, readers here have a long-time exposure to MS and so a different perspective.
There are a lot of classic sci-fi books listed here, but I think a good idea would be to take some printouts and head to your nearest used bookstore where you can browse and get books cheap but most importantly you'll get to see what you like before you buy it.
That's what I used to do, and it served me well since different authors have very different styles.
I also think that some exposure to different types of fiction is useful for a fuller understanding of all reading, not just sci-fi, however "the classics" (which vary depending on who you're asking and for what age group) are useful since they speak to the human condition in some way (a writing prof I had once said "all good stories are everyman stories"). In junior high I had to read Shakespeare (which I didn't understand until later), but also Catcher in the Rye and The Chosen, which made more sense to me then. Not that people must read "classics" first, but if you want to read, reading a variety of material is a good idea as your life progresses so you can compare the works you've read.
Slashdot Mirror
One point of Lessig's Code is that software code and legal code essentially do the same thing in different ways. What Microsoft can't or won't do in software code it is supporting in legal code.
Although we do have a right to free speech (1st Amend.) and a right against search and seizure (4th Amend.), we also have a right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Our rights are complex legal ideals, and embodying them in practice may be difficult and even contradictory. Media pundits have been talking about the danger to our civil rights if the government's reaction is too strong, but it's clear the right to safe flights is a right we should have. (Interestingly, it's been the conservatives that are bemoaning the possible loss of our rights, even though the administration is very conservative.)
We represent America Online, Inc. ("AOL"), with respect to its intellectual property matters. Our client is the owner of federal Registration Nos. 2,423,368 and 2,423,367 for its mark AIM (hereinafter, the "AIM Mark") and operates the most widely-used interactive online service in the world. Our client has made extensive use of its AIM Mark in interstate and international commerce.
Your use of the name "Target" and the giant red and white target logo may cause considerable confusion with the AIM Mark, as a target is something at which one takes aim. In order to avoid such confusion and to avoid infringing the AIM Mark, you must immediately cease and desist from using such a confusing name and logo or immediately turn over all assets to AOL. If you don't, AOL will buy you just like Time-Warner.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
- Mahatma Ghandi
(note he does not say "then we gloat" anywhere)
I was in Wales once with a bunch of students from all over the UK, and even those from middle and southern England had several different accents. There was one guy fom northern England who I couldn't understand half the time.
Scotland is also the same way, with a variety of accents. Edinburgh and Glasgow are only about an hour apart by train, but have completely different accents.
The first problem is pretty apparent with this Katz piece, unless the whole thing is a troll. Far too many posts here have said something along the lines of how consumers control the market. This is not only wrong, nor is it only laughable, it is a dangerous idea, especially when it comes to media. In order to have a well-functioning democracy, which we don't quite have (troll: FL), you need not only a well-educated citizenry (not consumers) but also areas where they can discuss issues. If large media companies control too much of the media, then the majority of the mediaspace will contain information that is favorable, directly or indirectly, to large corporations.
A second problem with the posts here, a point I just mentioned, is that people must be citizens in a democracy, not consumers, regardless of how politicians run (or have to run) their campaigns.
So, if large media companies control too much of the mediaspace, it will probably have a negative effect on our democracy, and no, consumers (who should be citizens) can't do too much about it (unless the band together, but that's another thread).
Here's a story about how consumers don't control the market, regarding instant oatmeal (like Quaker makes). Rolled oats were invented in the late 1800's in the US during the "health craze" era (when the big cereal co's, like Kellogg, started, for the same reason). No one ate them when they were first made, because no one had eaten them before. A few poor people did, but that's because they used to eat crushed oats (not rolled oats, I've had both, they're different).
However, after a large marketing campaign as to the healthiness of eating rolled oats (which no one had ever done before), people began to eat them. The consumers didn't control the market, the corporation and the advertisers did. This doesn't mean that consumers are always unwitting pawns, nor does it mean that you are. Corporations like it when consumers think the power rests in the hands of the consumers, because it doesn't and that benefits the corporations.
When clueless /.'ers go around saying how consumers control the market in the current media environment and get modded up, it's doubly dangerous because we don't have that control nor should we be constructed as consumers, we are citizens.
(Troll, on!) If you want to debate me on code, fine, I haven't coded in about ten years, but if you want to debate me on media, you'd better get a couple of years of PhD-level media studies from one of the world's best universities under your belt, because I've got five years at Michigan (and heck it's the state where /. started anyways).
But let the real numbers, not Business Week's, do the talking - check out the 52-week low. 160% of 40 is 64, almost 70! Wow! But a better picture is a 5-year plot (I believe it's adjusted for the stock splits). One story is that the stock was almost at 120, and instead of being dismayed that it was reduced to one-third of its value, Business Week thinks we should be happy that's it's at nearly two-thirds instead - but they forgot to mention that part...
Translating the show as a whole to an American context is going to be impossible, as we do not have hundreds and hundreds of years of culinary cultural heritage that is our own, and although Twinkies can last that long they don't count. Game shows in Japan are different from ones here because, simply, the US and Japan are different, very different. Their food means a lot more to them than our food (and lack thereof) means to us.
If people are interested, Standage's "Victorian Internet" deals with pneumatic tubes a fair amount. They were a good complement to the telegraph for short distances since they were actually faster (skipping the encoding and decoding steps).
In fact, the social (albeit historical nowadays) aspect is what might make this book highly relevant for slashdotters. Open source isn't cool because people say so, it's cool because it's the right thing to do. It's science and society. The same is true of Flatland.
"This software is stated to be able to determine the sex of the speaker..."
Bart Simpson: Male
Bart's Voice: Female (Nancy Cartwright)
Software says: Shemale?
it's by Diane Vaughan, not Diane Franklin.
Although I'm glad to see that Slashdot remembers history, I've never really understood the fascination with the space shuttle Challenger explosion - thousands of people die every day, and rockets are big (usually) controlled bombs. The US is so wrapped up in its technological navel it's rather sad. It meant a lot to people who had bought into the space program as an integral part of the American identity, but to others I think it all seemed rather odd, a media moment removed from reality.
But, if you want to read a thorough book on the subject, try Diane Vaughan's The Challenger Launch Decision.
first, if you want to understand what the luddites were upset about, read Lewis Mumford's "Technics and Civilization." It's from 1930, but is pretty incredible about describing the IR. As others have pointed out, it wasn't the technology, it was its use to enslave the majority of the populace. That isn't to say there aren't positive uses of technology, but time and time again we need regulation to stop human greed.
second, Katz, when you say There are virtually no credible connections between technology use, media and violence, you are wrong. I've TA'd a class in media and violence, and although lots of idiots write in to the NYT, the connections are there, proven time and again. It's not that playing Q2 will make you violent, that's far too simple. One of the profs in my dept is huge on media, violence, and children, try reading some of his stuff if you can find it and if you can understand academic and statistical papers, his name is Rowell Huesmann - he's actually testified before the US Congress (and has two books listed at Amazon, but one is out of print and the other is special order).
i think unix programmers might love the new huge user base that all G3+ macs give them, and hopefully being BSD underneath will help when porting apps... the NeXT used to be awesome to code for, too.
i still think that macosX will give linux a big challenge on the desktop for a lot of reasons, microsoft right now is more concerned about the server market when it comes to linux
comparing apple, microsoft, linux, and the guis is difficult because you are trying to compare an OS/hardware company, an OS/software uber-titan, and a global open source OS that doesn't have one sole company driving it but instead has lots of contributors - we can talk all we want about interface, but we all know there are a lot of reasons we have the ones we currently do
at least microsoft is worried about something - how's that lawsuit?
but anyways, i got rid of it a year ago under the exact same trade in as this post mentions, except for a then-current PBG3, which rocks and i also have no problems with it.
when apple did this last year, it was never clear why they were doing it, lots of speculation, but the one thing they did do was offer the discount on soon-to-be-discontinued models. perhaps something new is in the pipe for powerbooks.
The TidBITS piece is completely on target and well-written. It explains NDA's, the economics of product release cycles, and why you might want to hold people to the legally binding contracts that they choose to sign.
Apple is going to bring unix to mainstream desktops long before linux does, the "linux community" should forge ties to the "apple community", whatever and whoever they are exactly, this kind of post doesn't help and shows the ignorance of some of the slashdotters who usually value computer knowledge (maybe those types are just not posting on this topic).
an important parallel is that both the environmental movement and the open source movement have had to fight entrenched economic beliefs by showing how the current system doesn't use the right metrics. almost all /.ers know the benefits of open source, but we all know it's been quite a battle to get the rest of the world to see those.
tech support and massive viruses are par for the course. dumping my toxic waste is the way it goes. this is normal, my bottom line looks good. both the environmental movement and the open source movement point out that this thinking is wrong, the metrics are missing important measures, and that the bottom line can be improved.
if we all use windows, we won't know any better and the computing world will suffer. if we all pollute the air with our SUV's, we probably won't think about it much and the air we breathe and ourselves will suffer. it's the same thing. open source'ers and enviromentalists are fighting different versions of the same battle.
one trend in current-day capitalist economies is a switch to the services part of goods and services - this doesn't mean that goods don't underly the economy (try running that open source server without hardware), but look at companies like the post-AT&T phone companies, the overnight shipping industry (UPS's big IPO), and the computer book industry (although you could say Amazon sells goods which are essentially an information good, or perhaps a service).
there are so many players in the "goods" part of the computer economy that the obvious niches are rather full, there are opportunities for services related to all of those computers floating around now - open source merely fills a need (although it's one that some older players neither understand nor want).
over time, economies change (anyone remember feudalism? serfdom?), hopefully for the better, and that's what we're seeing. specifically new yes, but the meta-economy is the same in that it is still changing, adding "new" pieces and discarding "old" ones.
keep in mind that most people, when you get to know them, are quite nice, and although those nice people may make up a company, companies are a very different level of analysis.
where are the marketing people? where are the people who threaten compaq or gateway when they want to change the WinXX desktop slightly? where are the lawyers?
when you look at the people, you'll get one picture, when you look at MS as a company, you'll get a different picture -- this is true of pretty much all large companies, regardless of what you think of them. the picture presented here is not wrong, but it's only one picture, and only one part of the picture. big companies do have to do things right to become big, but stepping on a few players along the way doesn't hurt, although it isn't always needed.
his story is also ahistorical, just a snapshot of one point in time, readers here have a long-time exposure to MS and so a different perspective.
That's what I used to do, and it served me well since different authors have very different styles.
I also think that some exposure to different types of fiction is useful for a fuller understanding of all reading, not just sci-fi, however "the classics" (which vary depending on who you're asking and for what age group) are useful since they speak to the human condition in some way (a writing prof I had once said "all good stories are everyman stories"). In junior high I had to read Shakespeare (which I didn't understand until later), but also Catcher in the Rye and The Chosen, which made more sense to me then. Not that people must read "classics" first, but if you want to read, reading a variety of material is a good idea as your life progresses so you can compare the works you've read.