Indeed, they do support a large IM network. Why? Well. ..because they wish to. There's certainly no technical reason to do so.
If they used an alternative technology, like say, oooooooooh, the internet, they could save themselves all that trouble and expense. Sending text over the internet doesn't seem to be a great deal of trouble. It's so easy that one might even deduce it was designed for the purpose.
Ah, but they can't control, and can't charge extra for, the use of the internet, now can they?
This is a pure lock in issue. Plain and simple.
Both to be able to charge the users and charge advertisers directly.
Yes, it's their service. Yes, they can do whatever they like with it. That doesn't mean it's not slimey. What's more it'll only work until their client base smartens up and gets a real ISP.
It was already proven, in multiple instances, in the antitrust case. Such behaviour is business as usual at Microsoft.
It is business as usual in any number of other companies as well, but it's rarely a winning a strategy in the long run. . . unless you have a monopoly or something.
The primary difference here is that with insurance the insurance company is betting too and imposes limits on just how much risk of loss they themselves might suffer. They're not going to let you insure your Chevette for a 10 million bucks.
With the lottery the state not only suffers no loss but always gains more the more tickets are sold. They have no risk. Therefore they were perfectly happy when that moron in Pennsylvania mortaged his house for $40k and and put it all into tickets.
Buying the odd ticket now and again is no biggy. It's even smart. For the risk of the cost of a Coke you might become wealthy. If you lose, well, it was only a buck. Likewise a few hundred bucks a year of auto insurance against a potential loss of $100k or so that has a pretty good likelyhood of occuring is so smart it's mandated by law most places.
Spending only $20 a week on lottery tickets, especially if that much money hurts you, is the act of a complete moron.
Well, the mechanical drawings are not patentable. They are copyrightable, in fact because they are printed matter and art. Only the physical mechanical object is patentable.
Ever see a book of furniture plans? You can build whatever you want from the plans and sell the results, but you can't reproduce them for other than fair use.
This is copyright free of patent restraints.
Code never becomes a physical object. It is always, even when compiled and run, strictly the logic embodied in the text.
Always the algorithm, never the "thing."
Patents were conceived to expressly cover only physical objects and not merely idea.
Actually this is a serious concept that goes back to John Cage's piece Imaginary Landscape #4, which was scored for 12 radios tuned at random.
Of course that doesn't necessarily preclude it's being satire as well. The mind is fully capable of holding two contradictory ideas at once. Religious fundamentalists do it all the time.
You are confusing criminal law, which is imposed upon you from outside whether you like it or not for the "good of society" with civil law contract law which merely regulates agreements between people.
Please note the word "agreement." It is key. That is why the button says, "I agree."
Just what constitutes a legally binding agreement is legally defined. If the law states that you were for some reason or other ( like ignorance. You can't be held to terms that weren't expressed in the contract, for instance) incapable of making a valid agreement ( like you were wacked out on crack at the time. You can try to get a client drunk and then get him to sign, but it won't hold up in court if he chooses to challange it).
Contracts, under law, require legally valid consent.
Damned good thing too as otherwise you'd just be getting bills in the mail for goods and services you didn't request and be liable for them.
Nevermind the fact that sometimes ignorance of the law is even a valid defence in criminal cases, as many crimes require an intent to knowingly commit the crime.
So, ironically, the blanket statement "Ignorance of the law is no defense" is ignorance of the law.
I'm at a complete loss as to how a unique ID number more uniquely identifies Van Gogh's Starry Night than "Van Gogh's Starry Night."
Unique items are already unique and I don't think Sotheby's is going to "swipe" paintings when they sell them.
Unique identifiers are only needed for those objects that are otherwise indistiguishable from each other and being sold to a mass market. Like razor blades.
Please note that I explicitly said counting your time as "valuless." The cost of paying people for their time ( not necessarily their skills) is the main cost of the standardized business beauracracy.
In the context of trying to claim the X-Prize it isn't faster and cheaper to buy the rocket. You have to make it. Remember the rocket? That's the economic issue we're discussing here. How they could build one for only a million or so.
As for your sports car if you had to spend more than a few grand to build it your skill set in doing it on the cheap was lacking. Go back and try it again.
Start by building a hang glider for nothing and then work your way up from there.
Or just go buy one if that's what rows your boat. Makes no nevermind to me.
Ah bugger. I didn't preview and missed closing a tag properly. Why doesn't someone invent an idiot proof markup language. There isn't any reason in this day and age we should have to deal with this low level shit.
I came to computers as a physicist. They filled rooms and were tended to by swarms of real scientists and engineers, not "technicians".
They were built by scientists and engineers for scientists and engineers.
The languages developed to program them, and the logical grammer developed within these languages, were those in common use by scientists and engineers, which is to say mathmatical syntax, grammer and logic. That's why they're called computers and not emailers or blogers.
This lead to the rise of "functional" programing through the natural course of things as computers became advanced enough to ignore the physical architecture when programing them. The Function is the natural "object" of the mathmatical language. You can do anything on a computer with the purely functional approach and, what may be hard for the modern trained mind to grasp, the mathmatically trained mind can often do so faster and easier this way than with any of the more recent "developments" in programing.
This is not to say that other ways of looking at things doesn't have its, ummm, functionality. The Object Oriented approach was developed by engineers ( who didn't have very mathmatical minds and didn't particularly understand computers or programing) to conceptualize and solve certain engineering problems dealing with real objects. Beams, pistons and the like. It made a lot of sense to model these objects as objects. What may not be obvious the Object Oriented programer is that these objects are still mathmatical models, in fact just a class (sorry) of function whose variables are handled in a predefined sort of way making the function into a kind of virtual Mechano set.
The way these varibles are handled from and programer point of view ( once the object itself is written) constitutes a user interface to the object.
What Microsoft is doing at the logical and matmatical scale isn't really any different, they're just using a slightly different terminolgy and logic to accomplish largely the same end, but one they are able to "brand" and control, not to mention leverage for their own dominence.
The main difference is that their interface is more ridigly controled by them, being sold by an "ease of use" argument of many small componants which are really just objects with a restricted interface, replacing understanding of what you are doing mathmatically and logically with a kind of tinkertoy set of objects. Just plug 'em together and watch 'em work.
I don't wish to ruffle any feathers, but I'm not particularly afraid of doing so.
This is an approach that may be valid for the modern crop of "programer", but if you wish to honestly be considered a computer engineer, let alone a computer "scientist", it is a largely unworkable solution, just as a person adept at using tinkertoys and mechano sets isn't qualfied to be called an engineer.
This isn't to belittle tinkertoys and mechano sets either. They have their valid place and uses.
Personally I've been "Object Oriented" programing since before there was any such thing. It's an obvious format for modeling real objects in a compact, understandable, easily modified and reusable way, although I didn't call my "beam object" a beam object. I called it my beam function, because that's what it is, even though it may well contain subfuntions while at the same time being a subfunction of the "building function."
I've always tended to think of my programing models in terms of ICs. Note that there are two basic kinds of ICs. Those that are hard wired to perform a single task, such as the venerable 555 chip, and those that are designed with a changable internal logic (you're using at least one of these right now to read this post) such as the Z80.
Both of these kinds of ICs have their valid uses. The programable chip hasn't replaced the hard wired chip, it has augmented the toolset available. Both kinds of mathmatical logic these chips represent are valuable to the programer in t
If you know how, and count your time as "valueless," you can build a hang glider for. . . nothing.
You can build a sports car that rivals a Corvette and get it road certified for only a few grand, even though a new Corvette costs a damned sight more than that.
Most of the expense of doing things, even making video games, comes from doing things in a standard way inside of a standardize buearacratic system.
Throw out the red tape, open your mind to alternative ways of accomplishing the same goals, work for the joy of it and eliminate the market as motivator and you might surprised at how much you can accomplish with relatively little cash.
I understand the issue. I once shared my home with 15 cats, the odd rabbit or two and other various smaller forms of furball.
Someone once asked my mother, "What do you do about all the cat hair?"
To which she replied, "Do with it? I walk on it, breath it, sleep in it and eat it."
I'm unconvinced that the Roomba is up to this sort of thing. Even with just one cat and one oriental rug frequent teardowns of my upright are required to keep it from smothering in the stuff. The fact that I wear my own hair long contributes to the problem, the cat isn't the only source of vacuum killing detritus.
Thinking of Linux as a "product" of a "developer."
It isn't, although the evidence suggests this is a hard concept for those trained as consumers of software to grasp.
As I'm just a few years younger than RMS hisself I'm old enough to still find the concept of "consuming" software rather hard to grasp.
OK, here's something for these people and the Linux folk to find hard to grasp. When Linus says his goal is "world domination" it's a joke.
What's more, freedom of choice not only precludes a standard GUI, but includes Windows as a relevant choice.
Linux will only replace Windows as a major desktop platform when people wish to use it more than Windows. That includes its built in panoply of choices.
Everybody just get used to the idea.
KFG
Re:Give us more, and make it hurt!
on
Razor Blade Games?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Those of us who are older may have a slightly different point of view though. The only games that I play regularly now are years old, Grand Prix Legends, Red Baron 3D, Age of Empires. Throw in a bit of replay of Grim Fandango. Not to mention the classics like Asteroids.
None of these require the latest screaming system to play, yet they all still represent the Best of Class.
I havn't purchased a game in years, not becasue of cost. Not because of lack of interest. Simply because I haven't been presented with a game superiour to those I already play.
It wouldn't take much to grab a few hundred more bucks out of my pocket, but the latest gee whiz bang twist to the same tired old formula isn't going to do it for me.
Give me games instead of technology and I'll buy them.
This would be true if it weren't for the fact that SCO's revenue source is Microsoft making donations to its legal fund, errrrr, licensing Unix and Linux.
The problem is that on a hard floor nothing beats a broom and one of the new variety of "sticky" mops. They also have the advanage of being cheap, nonelectric and lasting for as long as you do.
For carpet I've found nothing that beats a good set of Oreck products. You really need line power to do a good job here. Orecks are a bit on the expensive side compared to a Hoover or Eureka, but damned cheap compared to a Kirby or Electrolux ( you can get an Oreck upright, handheld AND steamer for the price of one Kirby)and competitively priced with the Roomba itself.
The Roomba strikes me as an "intermediate" product. It'll do a kind of a good job between times when you do it properly. This may be a legitimate niche for some people, but I find I can do an equal job in only a handful of minutes ( like during television commercials) with the broom and a damp rag.
Having an automatic floor cleaning "maid" is an old dream ( often fulfilled with an actual maid) but we aren't quite there yet.
The convenience and the cost of the Roomba just don't quite add up to the amount of labor saved yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed, they do support a large IM network. Why? Well. . .because they wish to. There's certainly no technical reason to do so.
If they used an alternative technology, like say, oooooooooh, the internet, they could save themselves all that trouble and expense. Sending text over the internet doesn't seem to be a great deal of trouble. It's so easy that one might even deduce it was designed for the purpose.
Ah, but they can't control, and can't charge extra for, the use of the internet, now can they?
This is a pure lock in issue. Plain and simple.
Both to be able to charge the users and charge advertisers directly.
Yes, it's their service. Yes, they can do whatever they like with it. That doesn't mean it's not slimey. What's more it'll only work until their client base smartens up and gets a real ISP.
KFG
Nonsense. Microsoft has hired former White House staffer and expert in records integrity Rose Mary Woods to look after their backups.
.
Nothing can go wrong. . . go wrong. . . go wrong. . . go. .
KFG
This is just another example of Microsoft being "innovative" with their business practices, records and court evidence.
Just wait until they start showing videotapes in support of their arguement.
KFG
It was already proven, in multiple instances, in the antitrust case. Such behaviour is business as usual at Microsoft.
It is business as usual in any number of other companies as well, but it's rarely a winning a strategy in the long run. . . unless you have a monopoly or something.
KFG
The primary difference here is that with insurance the insurance company is betting too and imposes limits on just how much risk of loss they themselves might suffer. They're not going to let you insure your Chevette for a 10 million bucks.
With the lottery the state not only suffers no loss but always gains more the more tickets are sold. They have no risk. Therefore they were perfectly happy when that moron in Pennsylvania mortaged his house for $40k and and put it all into tickets.
Buying the odd ticket now and again is no biggy. It's even smart. For the risk of the cost of a Coke you might become wealthy. If you lose, well, it was only a buck. Likewise a few hundred bucks a year of auto insurance against a potential loss of $100k or so that has a pretty good likelyhood of occuring is so smart it's mandated by law most places.
Spending only $20 a week on lottery tickets, especially if that much money hurts you, is the act of a complete moron.
KFG
Well, the mechanical drawings are not patentable. They are copyrightable, in fact because they are printed matter and art. Only the physical mechanical object is patentable.
Ever see a book of furniture plans? You can build whatever you want from the plans and sell the results, but you can't reproduce them for other than fair use.
This is copyright free of patent restraints.
Code never becomes a physical object. It is always, even when compiled and run, strictly the logic embodied in the text.
Always the algorithm, never the "thing."
Patents were conceived to expressly cover only physical objects and not merely idea.
KFG
Actually this is a serious concept that goes back to John Cage's piece Imaginary Landscape #4, which was scored for 12 radios tuned at random.
Of course that doesn't necessarily preclude it's being satire as well. The mind is fully capable of holding two contradictory ideas at once. Religious fundamentalists do it all the time.
KFG
You are confusing criminal law, which is imposed upon you from outside whether you like it or not for the "good of society" with civil law contract law which merely regulates agreements between people.
Please note the word "agreement." It is key. That is why the button says, "I agree."
Just what constitutes a legally binding agreement is legally defined. If the law states that you were for some reason or other ( like ignorance. You can't be held to terms that weren't expressed in the contract, for instance) incapable of making a valid agreement ( like you were wacked out on crack at the time. You can try to get a client drunk and then get him to sign, but it won't hold up in court if he chooses to challange it).
Contracts, under law, require legally valid consent.
Damned good thing too as otherwise you'd just be getting bills in the mail for goods and services you didn't request and be liable for them.
Nevermind the fact that sometimes ignorance of the law is even a valid defence in criminal cases, as many crimes require an intent to knowingly commit the crime.
So, ironically, the blanket statement "Ignorance of the law is no defense" is ignorance of the law.
Go figure.
KFG
I'm at a complete loss as to how a unique ID number more uniquely identifies Van Gogh's Starry Night than "Van Gogh's Starry Night."
Unique items are already unique and I don't think Sotheby's is going to "swipe" paintings when they sell them.
Unique identifiers are only needed for those objects that are otherwise indistiguishable from each other and being sold to a mass market. Like razor blades.
Or people.
KFG
Don't worry, the rate at which the US assimilates, errrrrrrrrr, liberates small, defensless countries is accelerating.
China is just getting warmed up along these lines as well.
"New Rome" should take care of the proliferation of nations issue.
KFG
Right after ordering you a gallon of goat's milk and burning your toast.
KFG
And I recall reading somewhere that Microsoft had payed them $10M for a Unix license.
Veeeeeely interesting.
KFG
Because we'd use it. :)
KFG
Please note that I explicitly said counting your time as "valuless." The cost of paying people for their time ( not necessarily their skills) is the main cost of the standardized business beauracracy.
In the context of trying to claim the X-Prize it isn't faster and cheaper to buy the rocket. You have to make it. Remember the rocket? That's the economic issue we're discussing here. How they could build one for only a million or so.
As for your sports car if you had to spend more than a few grand to build it your skill set in doing it on the cheap was lacking. Go back and try it again.
Start by building a hang glider for nothing and then work your way up from there.
Or just go buy one if that's what rows your boat. Makes no nevermind to me.
KFG
Ah bugger. I didn't preview and missed closing a tag properly. Why doesn't someone invent an idiot proof markup language. There isn't any reason in this day and age we should have to deal with this low level shit.
I didn't buy a computer so I'd have to think.
KFG
I came to computers as a physicist. They filled rooms and were tended to by swarms of real scientists and engineers, not "technicians".
They were built by scientists and engineers for scientists and engineers.
The languages developed to program them, and the logical grammer developed within these languages, were those in common use by scientists and engineers, which is to say mathmatical syntax, grammer and logic. That's why they're called computers and not emailers or blogers.
This lead to the rise of "functional" programing through the natural course of things as computers became advanced enough to ignore the physical architecture when programing them. The Function is the natural "object" of the mathmatical language. You can do anything on a computer with the purely functional approach and, what may be hard for the modern trained mind to grasp, the mathmatically trained mind can often do so faster and easier this way than with any of the more recent "developments" in programing.
This is not to say that other ways of looking at things doesn't have its, ummm, functionality. The Object Oriented approach was developed by engineers ( who didn't have very mathmatical minds and didn't particularly understand computers or programing) to conceptualize and solve certain engineering problems dealing with real objects. Beams, pistons and the like. It made a lot of sense to model these objects as objects. What may not be obvious the Object Oriented programer is that these objects are still mathmatical models, in fact just a class (sorry) of function whose variables are handled in a predefined sort of way making the function into a kind of virtual Mechano set.
The way these varibles are handled from and programer point of view ( once the object itself is written) constitutes a user interface to the object.
What Microsoft is doing at the logical and matmatical scale isn't really any different, they're just using a slightly different terminolgy and logic to accomplish largely the same end, but one they are able to "brand" and control, not to mention leverage for their own dominence.
The main difference is that their interface is more ridigly controled by them, being sold by an "ease of use" argument of many small componants which are really just objects with a restricted interface, replacing understanding of what you are doing mathmatically and logically with a kind of tinkertoy set of objects. Just plug 'em together and watch 'em work.
I don't wish to ruffle any feathers, but I'm not particularly afraid of doing so.
This is an approach that may be valid for the modern crop of "programer", but if you wish to honestly be considered a computer engineer, let alone a computer "scientist", it is a largely unworkable solution, just as a person adept at using tinkertoys and mechano sets isn't qualfied to be called an engineer.
This isn't to belittle tinkertoys and mechano sets either. They have their valid place and uses.
Personally I've been "Object Oriented" programing since before there was any such thing. It's an obvious format for modeling real objects in a compact, understandable, easily modified and reusable way, although I didn't call my "beam object" a beam object. I called it my beam function, because that's what it is, even though it may well contain subfuntions while at the same time being a subfunction of the "building function."
I've always tended to think of my programing models in terms of ICs. Note that there are two basic kinds of ICs. Those that are hard wired to perform a single task, such as the venerable 555 chip, and those that are designed with a changable internal logic (you're using at least one of these right now to read this post) such as the Z80.
Both of these kinds of ICs have their valid uses. The programable chip hasn't replaced the hard wired chip, it has augmented the toolset available. Both kinds of mathmatical logic these chips represent are valuable to the programer in t
If you know how, and count your time as "valueless," you can build a hang glider for. . . nothing.
You can build a sports car that rivals a Corvette and get it road certified for only a few grand, even though a new Corvette costs a damned sight more than that.
Most of the expense of doing things, even making video games, comes from doing things in a standard way inside of a standardize buearacratic system.
Throw out the red tape, open your mind to alternative ways of accomplishing the same goals, work for the joy of it and eliminate the market as motivator and you might surprised at how much you can accomplish with relatively little cash.
Watch a few episodes of Rough Science.
KFG
I understand the issue. I once shared my home with 15 cats, the odd rabbit or two and other various smaller forms of furball.
Someone once asked my mother, "What do you do about all the cat hair?"
To which she replied, "Do with it? I walk on it, breath it, sleep in it and eat it."
I'm unconvinced that the Roomba is up to this sort of thing. Even with just one cat and one oriental rug frequent teardowns of my upright are required to keep it from smothering in the stuff. The fact that I wear my own hair long contributes to the problem, the cat isn't the only source of vacuum killing detritus.
KFG
Yes, what you are missing is that that is to be charged per listener, as in a live performance, rather than per play, as in radio.
KFG
Thinking of Linux as a "product" of a "developer."
It isn't, although the evidence suggests this is a hard concept for those trained as consumers of software to grasp.
As I'm just a few years younger than RMS hisself I'm old enough to still find the concept of "consuming" software rather hard to grasp.
OK, here's something for these people and the Linux folk to find hard to grasp. When Linus says his goal is "world domination" it's a joke.
What's more, freedom of choice not only precludes a standard GUI, but includes Windows as a relevant choice.
Linux will only replace Windows as a major desktop platform when people wish to use it more than Windows. That includes its built in panoply of choices.
Everybody just get used to the idea.
KFG
Those of us who are older may have a slightly different point of view though. The only games that I play regularly now are years old, Grand Prix Legends, Red Baron 3D, Age of Empires. Throw in a bit of replay of Grim Fandango. Not to mention the classics like Asteroids.
None of these require the latest screaming system to play, yet they all still represent the Best of Class.
I havn't purchased a game in years, not becasue of cost. Not because of lack of interest. Simply because I haven't been presented with a game superiour to those I already play.
It wouldn't take much to grab a few hundred more bucks out of my pocket, but the latest gee whiz bang twist to the same tired old formula isn't going to do it for me.
Give me games instead of technology and I'll buy them.
KFG
Once you spread enough bullshit it continues to stink for a rather goodly amount of time.
I'm a Vermont boy and know whereof I speak.
KFG (You insensitive clod)
This would be true if it weren't for the fact that SCO's revenue source is Microsoft making donations to its legal fund, errrrr, licensing Unix and Linux.
KFG
Because Symantec is offering them this licensing "service."
KFG
The problem is that on a hard floor nothing beats a broom and one of the new variety of "sticky" mops. They also have the advanage of being cheap, nonelectric and lasting for as long as you do.
For carpet I've found nothing that beats a good set of Oreck products. You really need line power to do a good job here. Orecks are a bit on the expensive side compared to a Hoover or Eureka, but damned cheap compared to a Kirby or Electrolux ( you can get an Oreck upright, handheld AND steamer for the price of one Kirby)and competitively priced with the Roomba itself.
The Roomba strikes me as an "intermediate" product. It'll do a kind of a good job between times when you do it properly. This may be a legitimate niche for some people, but I find I can do an equal job in only a handful of minutes ( like during television commercials) with the broom and a damp rag.
Having an automatic floor cleaning "maid" is an old dream ( often fulfilled with an actual maid) but we aren't quite there yet.
The convenience and the cost of the Roomba just don't quite add up to the amount of labor saved yet.
KFG