Hmmm...if my local Data Dept does as good a job providing me net access as my local Roads Dept does in providing me physical access, then there's going to be pretty big potholes in my "onramp to the Internet Superhighway"!
How would you encourage the quality of service in the last mile? What options would you have if the service was not being provided to your satisfaction?
Where I live, the street always has potholes, and the road is always the last in the neighborhood to be plowed in the winter. I see nothing to convince me that a local Data Dept would do any better job...
This might really be an interesting case to watch. It covers a major aspect of the patent process that many have been complaining about -- the ability to continue and expand patents far beyond the original application.
Why would the AC mains frequency have anything to do with the platter speed? Hard drives don't run directly off of the AC, they use the DC from the power supply.
Interviewer: But in terms of the iCraveTV and DeCSS injunctions, (which the courts handed down in January), both are keeping people from accessingt he product of the Motion Picture Association.
Jack Valenti: They're not at all. I don't follow you're logic there.
Okay, it's clear that he doesn't understand the way this community looks at restrictions. After all, we have a whole culture built up around the idea that restrictions to distribution are bad. But he's coming from a completely different culture.
Like a number of other posters have mentioned, movies are not the ultimate product of the MPAA. Rather, the distribution and paid access to those movies is the ultimate product. That's what the MPAA provides to the consumer, and that's what the consumer pays for.
Given that viewpoint, I'd think that to Mr. Valenti, access means access through a fee-based method that is controlled by the I.P. owners. Anything that works around (or has the potential to work around) the established control and fee structure when viewing a movie would be piracy rather than access.
So, to rephrase the question the way Mr. Valenti probably heard it:
Interviewer:But in terms of the iCraveTV and DeCSS injunctions, (which the courts handed down in January), both are keeping people from [paying the fees and] accessing product of the Motion Picture Association [through the established and accepted methods of distribution].
Is there any wonder that he couldn't see the logic of the question? There's no way that the lawsuits will prevent people from buying a movie ticket, a tape, or a DVD, so from his viewpoint the question is indeed illogical.
I sincerely doubt that Mr. Valenti will ever understand the distinction that we see between access and authorized, fee-based access. But we must make sure that others understand this distinction. Like so many other posts have said, even the media often misunderstand the point at issue here. We've got to do our best to help both the consumers and the legislators to understand this distinction.
Other older translations, like the Revised Standard Version are also in the public domain, as are the original manuscripts.
The original manuscripts are not published, however. Instead, compiled and edited texts of the Hebrew and Greek are published. These show the editors' best judgment as to the original readings. All of the recent original language texts are copyrighted by their compilers/editors.
The underlying ethic that makes Open Source development work is that the users are empowered to change the application to tailor it to their needs -- but only as long as the users are programmers. A non-programmer can only do what the developer has allowed in the configuration.
Say you're a non-programmer, and you have some ideas on improvements for an Open Source app. What options do you have? Of course, you could learn to program just to work on the application. Or you could convince/pay some programmer to work on what you want. (This situation is a bit better than closed development, BTW. If it's a closed application, you must convince the original author/owner of the application to make the change.)
If you can't afford the resources needed to learn to program, then how do you convince a programmer to work on what you think is important? Appeal to their vanity? Shout your feedback loudly? Pay them? Pay them more???
I'm not saying that Open Source developers don't listen to user suggestions. They probably listen better than commercial companies, generally. But it's still rare for a user suggestion to hold the same priority in the developer's mind as it does in the user's mind. And that's what makes OS development so powerful for programming users: the changes are just as important in the developer's mind as in the user's mind -- 'cause they're the same mind!
What we need in UI development is a way to move the non-programming user from feedback mode into development mode. Instead of finding and convincing a programmer to make UI changes, the non-programming user needs a way to make substantial changes to their UI, and publish the changes in some format that other uesrs can adopt if they find it useful.
As non-programming users are empowered to develop or modify their own UI, we'll see the same bazaar-type innovation in UI that we've had in the more technical OS applications. We need that bazaar
You're right, the F-22 can cruise supersonic without using the afterburners. But I believe the Concorde can also do this, and only uses the afterburners for takeoff and transitioning into supersonic.
You're right about the SR-71 being in a league of its own -- at cruise, with the compressor bypassed, the afterburner effectively becomes the combustion chamber of a ramjet. Gotta love elegant engineering, eh?;)
I see you agree with me on the Concorde. Also, while military fighters can go supersonic, they can't CRUISE supersonic, like the Concorde does.
The exception is the F-22 which is not even in service yet.
True, current fighters can't cruise supersonically. That's not because it's technologically impossible, but because their mission profile doesn't require it. There have been military planes capable of supersonic cruise, though. In addition to the SR-71, there was the YF-12A interceptor version with similar performance, intended to replace the F-106 for interception of Soviet bombers. It never went into active service, though.
The other significant supersonic-cruise military plane was the General Dynamics B-58 Hustler. In service from 1958 until 1969, it was designed for supersonic cruise. How does a New York - LA round trip in 4 hours, 41 minutes sound?
The SR-71. I am not aware of a replacement of the SR-71 especially since it was brough back into service for the Gulf war. Why didn't they use a
more capable replacement if they had any?
Because funding of military projects is based solely on political perception of needs...there won't be a replacement until the politicians believe (correctly or not) that we need a replacement.
This brings up an issue that's uncannily similar to the "applications barrier to entry" that Judge Jackson identified in DOJ vs MS. Maybe it's time to clone the terminology and start talking about the "file format barrier to entry" as well.
As Judge Jackson noted, a proprietary operating system API prevents competing applications from gaining a foothold in the overall market. Similarly, proprietary file formats prevent competing applications from gaining a foothold in the business market. The more files you have in a certain product's format, the more it will cost you to migrate to a competing application.
Migration from an installed application to a competing application will always mean additional file conversion cost, which can vary from negligible to astronomical depending on how many existing files you have, how complex they are, and difficult it is to convert the files to the new format. Since this conversion cost exists, businesses must include it in the overall cost of moving from an installed application to a competing application. In order to compete with an installed application, the new application must either allow trivially simple conversion of old files, provide a significantly lower purchase price, or provide added-value features that the installed application can not match.
I have no issue with the latter two of these three requirements. In order to succeed in a competitive evaluation, a product must offer better features or a lower cost. But the first requirement does concern me. It allows the vendor with the installed application to raise a barrier to competition. If the installed application uses a complex, proprietary file format that changes frequently, then it will be difficult for competitors to provide simple conversion for existing files, so the competitors will be forced either to spend more money reverse-engineering the file format or to reduce the purchase cost of their product beyond simple competitive pricing before they can offset this cost of conversion.
The big problem here is that the file format barrier to entry can easily be manipulated by the vendor of the installed software to make it extremely difficult for competitors to enter into any market where access to and exchange of previously-created files is important.
Of course, I'm preaching to the choir, here...but it may be time for the choir to start holding public concerts. The general public is now starting to be aware of the tactics identified in DOJ vs MS. Let's leverage this awareness by showing them how proprietary file formats are also detrimental to competition.
According to Brad Chase, MS VP of Marketing, Windows is "the most popular software brand name in the world." That helps us understand what MS is doing here. They are not claiming that a "Windows Powered" handheld is running the Windows operating system. They are not committing to a unifying the WinCE/WP code base with the W2K code base. They are not even changing the WinCE operating system itself.
All they are doing is unifying their products under a familiar and popular brand name, and hoping that people will think "Windows? That's what I'm running at work/home, so I've got to get a Windows Powered handheld, too." They're obviously hoping that the brand name recognition will pull WinCE/WP out of the market share hole that PalmOS has driven it into.
Yes, it's pure marketing drivel. Yes, it's silly. Yes, it's misleading. But hardly surprising, unfortunately. Perception is often more important to sales than reality.
I'm not too worried about application incompatibilities. The uproar that occurs when an upgrade causes problems almost guarantees that it will be fixed.
I think the "Old Trick" that we should be watching for is what Microsoft does with Windows Online. The idea of having an "application server" for office applications can be pretty useful.
But according to The New Forces of Change at Information Week, Microsoft is planning to host Windows Online on MSN. This gives Microsoft the ideal way to leverage their applications monopoly so that they can supress competition in the emerging "application service provider" marketplace, and build up MSN. Of course, if people have the choice of signing with MSN and getting the newest versions of Windows Online all the time, or signing with another ASP that isn't so close to the OS source, which one are they going to choose?
I shudder to think what BG means about "picking a personality" -- images of Bob's obnoxious rat come to mind (y'all remember MS Bob, don't ya?). Or maybe the silly MS Office paperclip...
Sorry, but there's more to personality than just the interface. The OS itself has a personality. MS Windows is like an overeducated pseudo-intellectual. It's arrogant -- it's absolutely sure that it knows better than I do what I want to do. It's obscure and secretive -- master of the BS -- often, it takes me forever to find the option or information I want, because it's hidden behind thick curtains of false user-friendliness. It's often clueless -- "No drivers are required or have been loaded for this device. To update the driver files for this device, click Update Driver" -- "Please insert the floppy disk labeled 'Windows NT Workstation CD-ROM' into drive F: and then click OK.' -- etc. And it's not trustworthy -- there's no knowing when it'll let you down.
Linux, on the other hand, is like an extremely intelligent friend, although he has difficulty tolerating incompetence. It accomodates itself to my wishes -- instead of telling me what I want to do, it provides nearly innumerable ways to do it, and lets me pick one -- and if there isn't a way to do it, I can often figure out a way to do it. It's open and honest -- instead of hiding its complexity, it flaunts it, and lets me dig, poke, and prod as deep as I want to (or as deep as I can handle). It doesn't tolerate incompetence very well, though -- it demands that I take responsibility for the twiddling and poking that I do. And it's reliable -- I can count on it to do what it promises.
It doesn't matter whether the computer talks through voice or text, the personality comes from inside. I'd much rather have a computer that is honest, open, and challenges me to do better than one that is secretive, arrogant, and untrustworthy.
WARNING - Rapid slowing or speeding-up can cause loss of control on slippery surfaces. If you crash, you can be injured. (Acura Integra 1998 Owner's Guide)
WARNING - Continuous contact with USED motor oil has caused cancer in laboratory mice. (1996 Ford Contour Owner Guide)
WARNING - To avoid danger of suffocation, keep away from babies and children. (on a plastic bag)
14.2 You hereby grant MediaOne and ServiceCo. and hereby represent and warrant that You have all necessary rights to so grant, the worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, distribute, perform and display all material posted on the public areas of the Road Runner Service via Your account and/or to incorporate the same in other works in any form, media or technology whether now known or hereafter developed.
Is this common with ISPs, or is MediaOne being more greedy?
...not with the article, but with the responses. Given a perfect chance for Microsoft-bashing, the majority of the replies have avoided the knee-jerk reactions and instead tried to evaluate the true situation. Now this is how I like to see Slashdot!
And who can forget the PS/2's "Generally Operational Linear Digital Biphase Electronic Retardance Gate" -- GOLDBERG for short -- that silly rod that went from the Big Red Switch all the way back to the power supply...
Y'all remember the Know Your Customer program, right? Where banks were supposed to monitor accounts for "anomalous activity" and report that to the proper officials...
No matter how many battles are won, the war for security and privacy continues...
I was under the mistaken impression that you have to pay for AIM access even if you use a non-AOL client. That sort of ruins the comparison I was making -- use at your own risk;)
Slashdot Mirror
Using Windows is taxing.
Upgrading Windows is both a tax and taxing.
How would you encourage the quality of service in the last mile? What options would you have if the service was not being provided to your satisfaction?
Where I live, the street always has potholes, and the road is always the last in the neighborhood to be plowed in the winter. I see nothing to convince me that a local Data Dept would do any better job...
This might really be an interesting case to watch. It covers a major aspect of the patent process that many have been complaining about -- the ability to continue and expand patents far beyond the original application.
Silly me. Shows why I'm not an engineer...I guess I'll go away, now! ;)
I'm getting 580 g -- if I'm remembering the dimensional stuff correctly -- gotta convert w to radians and r to meters, right?:
Why would the AC mains frequency have anything to do with the platter speed? Hard drives don't run directly off of the AC, they use the DC from the power supply.
This is an essential issue!
Okay, it's clear that he doesn't understand the way this community looks at restrictions. After all, we have a whole culture built up around the idea that restrictions to distribution are bad. But he's coming from a completely different culture.
Like a number of other posters have mentioned, movies are not the ultimate product of the MPAA. Rather, the distribution and paid access to those movies is the ultimate product. That's what the MPAA provides to the consumer, and that's what the consumer pays for.
Given that viewpoint, I'd think that to Mr. Valenti, access means access through a fee-based method that is controlled by the I.P. owners. Anything that works around (or has the potential to work around) the established control and fee structure when viewing a movie would be piracy rather than access.
So, to rephrase the question the way Mr. Valenti probably heard it:
Is there any wonder that he couldn't see the logic of the question? There's no way that the lawsuits will prevent people from buying a movie ticket, a tape, or a DVD, so from his viewpoint the question is indeed illogical.
I sincerely doubt that Mr. Valenti will ever understand the distinction that we see between access and authorized, fee-based access. But we must make sure that others understand this distinction. Like so many other posts have said, even the media often misunderstand the point at issue here. We've got to do our best to help both the consumers and the legislators to understand this distinction.
When corporations and government are in each others' pocket rather than at each others' throats, it's a bad omen for the individuals.
[sorry, couldn't resist...]
The original manuscripts are not published, however. Instead, compiled and edited texts of the Hebrew and Greek are published. These show the editors' best judgment as to the original readings. All of the recent original language texts are copyrighted by their compilers/editors.
Say you're a non-programmer, and you have some ideas on improvements for an Open Source app. What options do you have? Of course, you could learn to program just to work on the application. Or you could convince/pay some programmer to work on what you want. (This situation is a bit better than closed development, BTW. If it's a closed application, you must convince the original author/owner of the application to make the change.)
If you can't afford the resources needed to learn to program, then how do you convince a programmer to work on what you think is important? Appeal to their vanity? Shout your feedback loudly? Pay them? Pay them more???
I'm not saying that Open Source developers don't listen to user suggestions. They probably listen better than commercial companies, generally. But it's still rare for a user suggestion to hold the same priority in the developer's mind as it does in the user's mind. And that's what makes OS development so powerful for programming users: the changes are just as important in the developer's mind as in the user's mind -- 'cause they're the same mind!
What we need in UI development is a way to move the non-programming user from feedback mode into development mode. Instead of finding and convincing a programmer to make UI changes, the non-programming user needs a way to make substantial changes to their UI, and publish the changes in some format that other uesrs can adopt if they find it useful.
As non-programming users are empowered to develop or modify their own UI, we'll see the same bazaar-type innovation in UI that we've had in the more technical OS applications. We need that bazaar
You're right about the SR-71 being in a league of its own -- at cruise, with the compressor bypassed, the afterburner effectively becomes the combustion chamber of a ramjet. Gotta love elegant engineering, eh? ;)
True, current fighters can't cruise supersonically. That's not because it's technologically impossible, but because their mission profile doesn't require it. There have been military planes capable of supersonic cruise, though. In addition to the SR-71, there was the YF-12A interceptor version with similar performance, intended to replace the F-106 for interception of Soviet bombers. It never went into active service, though.
The other significant supersonic-cruise military plane was the General Dynamics B-58 Hustler. In service from 1958 until 1969, it was designed for supersonic cruise. How does a New York - LA round trip in 4 hours, 41 minutes sound?
The SR-71. I am not aware of a replacement of the SR-71 especially since it was brough back into service for the Gulf war. Why didn't they use a more capable replacement if they had any?
Because funding of military projects is based solely on political perception of needs...there won't be a replacement until the politicians believe (correctly or not) that we need a replacement.
;-P
As Judge Jackson noted, a proprietary operating system API prevents competing applications from gaining a foothold in the overall market. Similarly, proprietary file formats prevent competing applications from gaining a foothold in the business market. The more files you have in a certain product's format, the more it will cost you to migrate to a competing application.
Migration from an installed application to a competing application will always mean additional file conversion cost, which can vary from negligible to astronomical depending on how many existing files you have, how complex they are, and difficult it is to convert the files to the new format. Since this conversion cost exists, businesses must include it in the overall cost of moving from an installed application to a competing application. In order to compete with an installed application, the new application must either allow trivially simple conversion of old files, provide a significantly lower purchase price, or provide added-value features that the installed application can not match.
I have no issue with the latter two of these three requirements. In order to succeed in a competitive evaluation, a product must offer better features or a lower cost. But the first requirement does concern me. It allows the vendor with the installed application to raise a barrier to competition. If the installed application uses a complex, proprietary file format that changes frequently, then it will be difficult for competitors to provide simple conversion for existing files, so the competitors will be forced either to spend more money reverse-engineering the file format or to reduce the purchase cost of their product beyond simple competitive pricing before they can offset this cost of conversion.
The big problem here is that the file format barrier to entry can easily be manipulated by the vendor of the installed software to make it extremely difficult for competitors to enter into any market where access to and exchange of previously-created files is important.
Of course, I'm preaching to the choir, here...but it may be time for the choir to start holding public concerts. The general public is now starting to be aware of the tactics identified in DOJ vs MS. Let's leverage this awareness by showing them how proprietary file formats are also detrimental to competition.
All they are doing is unifying their products under a familiar and popular brand name, and hoping that people will think "Windows? That's what I'm running at work/home, so I've got to get a Windows Powered handheld, too." They're obviously hoping that the brand name recognition will pull WinCE/WP out of the market share hole that PalmOS has driven it into.
Yes, it's pure marketing drivel. Yes, it's silly. Yes, it's misleading. But hardly surprising, unfortunately. Perception is often more important to sales than reality.
I think the "Old Trick" that we should be watching for is what Microsoft does with Windows Online. The idea of having an "application server" for office applications can be pretty useful.
But according to The New Forces of Change at Information Week, Microsoft is planning to host Windows Online on MSN. This gives Microsoft the ideal way to leverage their applications monopoly so that they can supress competition in the emerging "application service provider" marketplace, and build up MSN. Of course, if people have the choice of signing with MSN and getting the newest versions of Windows Online all the time, or signing with another ASP that isn't so close to the OS source, which one are they going to choose?
Can you teach an old Microsoft new tricks?
Sorry, but there's more to personality than just the interface. The OS itself has a personality. MS Windows is like an overeducated pseudo-intellectual. It's arrogant -- it's absolutely sure that it knows better than I do what I want to do. It's obscure and secretive -- master of the BS -- often, it takes me forever to find the option or information I want, because it's hidden behind thick curtains of false user-friendliness. It's often clueless -- "No drivers are required or have been loaded for this device. To update the driver files for this device, click Update Driver" -- "Please insert the floppy disk labeled 'Windows NT Workstation CD-ROM' into drive F: and then click OK.' -- etc. And it's not trustworthy -- there's no knowing when it'll let you down.
Linux, on the other hand, is like an extremely intelligent friend, although he has difficulty tolerating incompetence. It accomodates itself to my wishes -- instead of telling me what I want to do, it provides nearly innumerable ways to do it, and lets me pick one -- and if there isn't a way to do it, I can often figure out a way to do it. It's open and honest -- instead of hiding its complexity, it flaunts it, and lets me dig, poke, and prod as deep as I want to (or as deep as I can handle). It doesn't tolerate incompetence very well, though -- it demands that I take responsibility for the twiddling and poking that I do. And it's reliable -- I can count on it to do what it promises.
It doesn't matter whether the computer talks through voice or text, the personality comes from inside. I'd much rather have a computer that is honest, open, and challenges me to do better than one that is secretive, arrogant, and untrustworthy.
WARNING - Continuous contact with USED motor oil has caused cancer in laboratory mice. (1996 Ford Contour Owner Guide)
WARNING - To avoid danger of suffocation, keep away from babies and children. (on a plastic bag)
14.2 You hereby grant MediaOne and ServiceCo. and hereby represent and warrant that You have all necessary rights to so grant, the worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, distribute, perform and display all material posted on the public areas of the Road Runner Service via Your account and/or to incorporate the same in other works in any form, media or technology whether now known or hereafter developed.
Is this common with ISPs, or is MediaOne being more greedy?
...not with the article, but with the responses. Given a perfect chance for Microsoft-bashing, the majority of the replies have avoided the knee-jerk reactions and instead tried to evaluate the true situation. Now this is how I like to see Slashdot!
And who can forget the PS/2's "Generally Operational Linear Digital Biphase Electronic Retardance Gate" -- GOLDBERG for short -- that silly rod that went from the Big Red Switch all the way back to the power supply...
No matter how many battles are won, the war for security and privacy continues...
I was under the mistaken impression that you have to pay for AIM access even if you use a non-AOL client. That sort of ruins the comparison I was making -- use at your own risk ;)