Take a look at the Unix Roadmap. BSD forked from the Unix Time Sharing System (V6). SunOS actually came from 4BSD, FreeBSD shows up right after 386 BSD 0.1.
Anyway, the map is so convoluted at that point that it is hard to tell what shares code with what.
This type of performance isn't really all that unusual for young industries. Investors are always looking for the next big thing and many will ignore what they know about markets on the hunch they might be getting in on the ground level of the next Microsoft. The lure of the upside is enough to make them forget about the need for a good business plan, P/E ratios, earnings per share, or any of the other things that typically figure in to whether a company is valued correctly by the stock market.
Since stocks are tough to predict is might not be completely accurate to say that this is the end of the tech boom. Another could be around the corner. This is probably just the market shedding its excess baggage, competition is grew because there were more companies getting in so the weaker ones had to fall off. You could also say that the early predictions of the growth of the online market itself were overly ambitious, something that didn;t exactly help keep the enthusiasm high.
Luckily there are companies and people out there who aren't in this for the money. Good thingd will continue to happen on the internet, they just might not be profitable things.
I'm somewhat familiar with orphan drugs, at least through reading about them.
In the interest of fairness I think all patents ans copyrights ought to begin at the point of approval. Doing otherwise would only punish consumers for the inefficiencies of bureaucracy. The way most corporations calculate return on investment any lag time between the start of research and the time a product actually makes money will be reflected in its cost. If a company invests a hundred million dollars in something that can get to market in five years they will want to get back five years worth of the opportunity cost of spending that money elsewhere. If the FDA ties things up for a couple of years it will just force the company to increase its price.
The purpose of all of this is to encourage investment through reasonable protection while keeping some semblance of competition. The hard part is striking a good balance between the two.
I'm not quite sure what that PDF proves but it is interesting. Its just one graph and one way to look at things and anyone who has been on Slashdot long should know that things like that can be misleading (let ZDnet benchmark web servers).
Maybe its because I don't really feel too sorry for the people in Florida who voted for the wrong guy. You're expected to at least pay attention when you're voting.
Many countries that don't have copyright laws certainly don't have the economic strength or stability that we enjoy in the US. Although there are others that don't have copyright laws as strong as ours yet still enjoy economic health.
The reasons for a good economy are mind bogglingly vast, there is little doubt that to promote research and development under a capitalist system companies will require some sort of protection in the way of copyright. To remove it completely would discourage the for-profit folks from pouring money into new technology. I think what has been lost, particularly since the advent of 'intellectual property' is that these laws were originally intended to be temporary. Just left in place long enough to recoup any money put into R&D. Corporations have successfully convinced lawmakers and the USPTO that they need their copyrights extended beyond any reasonable period so that they can maintain their market advantages.
The best solution, in my humble opinion, is that a no loopholes time limit be placed on all copyrights beyond which they cannot be held. This would force companies to take a harder look at whether they can make enough money quickly enough to justify product development. It might harm R&D in a small way, things that wouldn't provide enough return during the copyright period just wouldn't get done, but it might also improve competition and swing a little of the power away from big business.
As an aside, was the Lettermen network switch the advent of intellectual property? I seem to remember that it was treated as a radical concept by the media.
This Netscape argument is a good example of the incompatabilities between Open Source projects and for-profit companies. OSS programmers are used to technically correct code, things like standards compliance (when applicable) and lack of bugs are often the most important goals of a project beyond just putting together something that satifies a purpose. People who market software for profit have to worry about keeping up with the competition by getting new features to customers as quickly as possible. A lot of times things have to ship with bugs. You see this everywhere, Red Hat is a poster child for it and they get ripped by a lot of old school developers.
There isn't any reason why these goals have to remain incompatible. For OSS companies to compete with proprietary vendors they will have to come to some sort of compromise. It is amazing the problems people will put up with (daily crashes) just to get a little functionality (Windows). You can read a story a day about how some project, Open or Closed, has its deadlines moved around for one reason or another. Programmers everywhere end up shipping something that isn't as good as they would like it to be. It is just a tug of war between the people who know the code and the people who know the consumers.
Read some of the comments below the article. Particularly this one. He plans to keep carrying news, just not criticism. I think he is more upset about who is criticising Netscape rather than the criticism itself. Note that he uses the term 'armchair marketers' or something like that.
Focus group results indicate that consumers in the 3-16 age range prefer dinosaurs that hold their heads high. In light of this data dinosaurs in movies and action figures will continue to be depicted as hold their heads high regardless of scientific fact or heresay.
This is actually a stupid move on the part of the music industry
I wouldn't put that on the entire music industry. This is just one company, BMG, that sees a way to rake in some money. It will probably hurt the RIAA in the long run but my guess is that BMG doesn't care too much about that, they just want to make some money and the rest of the industry can be damned.
Yep, joke. I suppose it was a narrow one, if you aren't a fan of american baseball then the John Rocker part would mean nothing.
for the record, read his subway comment at here and some more stuff here. The guy is a true moron.
Also, for the record, I myself find public transportation perfectly acceptable. I don't use it much but then I live in a rural area.
Most people aren't harmed by using the net but there will always be some fringe who are. Unfortunately, just like in other aspects of our live (guns, drugs, coffee), politicians and people looking for a cause to champion are going to support protecting that small population. They make emotional arguments about how some kid in some city somewhere was surfing the net and tunred into an idiot. People hear that argument and it is much easier for them to accept having their freedoms taken away in exchange for making sure that no more kids will turn into idiots. Kind of like in high school when you had to sit there and listen to the teacher explain how to multiply a fraction for the twentieth time, for some reason everything has to get dumbed down so that the weakest in the herd can keep up.
The tough part is that because their arguments are so emotional these people are hard to combat. In public debate you really can't come right out and say "Sorry ma'am, your son is of weak mind" because that only adds to the emotional mindset. You can only try to hope that people can see through all the hype and use logic. The ability of the Jerry Springer show to hold an audience and continue to find people willing to appear on the show indicates that this isn't a strong point of the some folks.
Its funny how a lot of the posts about Carnivore mimic the same attitude that you read in a DeCSS or Napster article. Essentially its 'I can get around it'. Whether its encryption, decentralized file sharing, or mirroring files from some toehr counrty. This is quite probably true, regardless of US laws a lot of people in other countries, and a lot of others in the US, will be able to do things that the US government doesn't want them to do. It misses the point though. These laws infringe on our liberties. I'd much rather think about ways to get those liberties back rather than figure out a way to hide from the cops.
I think the workarounds are pretty simple and probably obvious to most Slashdotters. Using encryption to muzzle Carnivore might be news on CNN but not on Slashdot. We also might want to think about the day when 4096 bit encryption can be broken in a few minutes (or seconds). Once a log of your session is captured it can be kept around for quite a long time.
Most of the companies I have worked with have tried to deal with security the same way they deal with other issues: by trying to devise some kind of system in a meeting. This kind of approach leaves a lot of holes and obviously a security program is only as good as its weakest link.
A good example is the company who's project I've recently been assigned. At the moment they are particularly concerned with security as they have a high profile product quality problem (really high profile) and they are worried about keeping information 'in' as much as they are keeping people out. It is maddening to try to get these people to understand that they won't secure their data by getting everyone together and trying to work out a best fit solution. Their most recent decision was to require everyone to change their network passwords so that the string contained at least one non-alpha and one capital letter. I attempted to make the point that, since they were an NT shop, the passwords could be fairly easily cracked (L0phtcrack) regardless but the solution caused too many hardships.
Many times the benefit of security isn't realized until something catastrophic happens. Managers don;t want to spend the money, devote the resources, or make the kinds of sacrifices required to maintain really good security. Convenience is far more important to them.
That said, I suppose that the particular situation in the example could be remedied by some better physical security. Things like alarm systems, cameras, etc. As for the laptop itself I guess it depends on the operating system and by the time I submit this I'm sure many will have already suggested using BSD's ability to encrypt data. Maybe even something as simple as PGP would have helped in this case.
At the risk of coming off as AOLish: Me too. I use Napster for previewing new music and for getting MP3s of CDs that I already own but am too lazy to rip. I would venture a guess that Napster hasn't hurt CD sales because a lot of people use it that way. Unfortunately, thats just a guess. The RIAA will be able to bend the numbers to suit its argument once the appeal opens up. I'd also say that if I were in college (read: broke) Napster would be my sole source of music.
CD sales aside, at some point during this debate we will all realize, even the politicians, that this is about a lot more than whether some kid can write some software that allows people to trade MP3s. I would have been much happier if the question had been 'How do you think the Napster decision will affect the way the United States defines property and fair use?' or even 'Do you understand that it will?'.
Every time Slashdot puts up a Napster or DeCSS the majority of the replies are of the 'You can't stop us' ilk. We've covered that already. No half assed attempt at crypto will be safe. If a person wants they will always be able to share peer to peer. The question is whether or not it will remain legal. The answer to that will affect a lot more than MP3s, it will help define the degree of control that corporations have over what you do. If you think Digital Convergance is insane for trying to cliam that they still own their Cue:Cats you could wrong, they might just be a little ahead of their time.
Older generations have been attacking the state of society for hundreds of years, something Katz acknowledges by including references to rock and roll and TV. I think it is a matter of understanding, or a lack thereof. It is easy to denegrate something that you don't understand. Racism springs to mind as a perfect example.
Since the public in general doesn't understand much about the Internet it is an easy target. Rock and roll isn't much of a target anymore because it is mainstream, people have moved on to rap music. The same logic can be applied to women voting, alcohol, printing presses, etc. If its new, someone will attack it despite the enormous good that might come of it, Politicians are just capitalizing on the sensationalism that the media can stir up over things like the Columbine shootings. Once the media brands the Internet as contributing to some tragedy it is very hard to convince people (who don't know much about it) that that idea is ludicrous.
Politicians are particularly skilled at this type of spin. Examples abound: Vote against a gun control measure and you might be branded 'pro-crime', vote to cut some sprending out of a bloated federal program and you could be branded 'anti-education' or be accused of wanting to throw old people out into the streets.
Society is, by and large, ignorant of what the internet is and what it can do for them. They assume its only purpose, other than IMing your friends on AOL, is evil. Politicians are just trying to ride wave into office. Unfortunately, these are the guys who make the laws.
It would only be once they got close to a star that they would be killed off by lethal radiation.
You answered your own question. 'Close to a star', in terms of the amount of radiation a celestial body receives isn't exactly withing spitting distance.
How would UV destroy organic matter inside a meteorite but not on the surface of the earth?
One would also think that any life that could survive the unrestrained UV barrage it would experience in space could also do so once blanketed by the atmosphere of earth.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway, the map is so convoluted at that point that it is hard to tell what shares code with what.
Since stocks are tough to predict is might not be completely accurate to say that this is the end of the tech boom. Another could be around the corner. This is probably just the market shedding its excess baggage, competition is grew because there were more companies getting in so the weaker ones had to fall off. You could also say that the early predictions of the growth of the online market itself were overly ambitious, something that didn;t exactly help keep the enthusiasm high.
Luckily there are companies and people out there who aren't in this for the money. Good thingd will continue to happen on the internet, they just might not be profitable things.
Slashcoded it....Maybe Quova
Maybe Quova
In the interest of fairness I think all patents ans copyrights ought to begin at the point of approval. Doing otherwise would only punish consumers for the inefficiencies of bureaucracy. The way most corporations calculate return on investment any lag time between the start of research and the time a product actually makes money will be reflected in its cost. If a company invests a hundred million dollars in something that can get to market in five years they will want to get back five years worth of the opportunity cost of spending that money elsewhere. If the FDA ties things up for a couple of years it will just force the company to increase its price.
The purpose of all of this is to encourage investment through reasonable protection while keeping some semblance of competition. The hard part is striking a good balance between the two.
Maybe its because I don't really feel too sorry for the people in Florida who voted for the wrong guy. You're expected to at least pay attention when you're voting.
The reasons for a good economy are mind bogglingly vast, there is little doubt that to promote research and development under a capitalist system companies will require some sort of protection in the way of copyright. To remove it completely would discourage the for-profit folks from pouring money into new technology. I think what has been lost, particularly since the advent of 'intellectual property' is that these laws were originally intended to be temporary. Just left in place long enough to recoup any money put into R&D. Corporations have successfully convinced lawmakers and the USPTO that they need their copyrights extended beyond any reasonable period so that they can maintain their market advantages.
The best solution, in my humble opinion, is that a no loopholes time limit be placed on all copyrights beyond which they cannot be held. This would force companies to take a harder look at whether they can make enough money quickly enough to justify product development. It might harm R&D in a small way, things that wouldn't provide enough return during the copyright period just wouldn't get done, but it might also improve competition and swing a little of the power away from big business.
As an aside, was the Lettermen network switch the advent of intellectual property? I seem to remember that it was treated as a radical concept by the media.
There isn't any reason why these goals have to remain incompatible. For OSS companies to compete with proprietary vendors they will have to come to some sort of compromise. It is amazing the problems people will put up with (daily crashes) just to get a little functionality (Windows). You can read a story a day about how some project, Open or Closed, has its deadlines moved around for one reason or another. Programmers everywhere end up shipping something that isn't as good as they would like it to be. It is just a tug of war between the people who know the code and the people who know the consumers.
Digital Convergence has already issued Cease and Desist letters for their impending RF:Cat.
I wouldn't put that on the entire music industry. This is just one company, BMG, that sees a way to rake in some money. It will probably hurt the RIAA in the long run but my guess is that BMG doesn't care too much about that, they just want to make some money and the rest of the industry can be damned.
for the record, read his subway comment at here and some more stuff here. The guy is a true moron. Also, for the record, I myself find public transportation perfectly acceptable. I don't use it much but then I live in a rural area.
There are many projects - from expanding Amtrak
I'm guessing that he is advocating public transportation by train. If so, he won't be getting my vote.
Sincerely,
John Rocker - Atlanta Braves
The tough part is that because their arguments are so emotional these people are hard to combat. In public debate you really can't come right out and say "Sorry ma'am, your son is of weak mind" because that only adds to the emotional mindset. You can only try to hope that people can see through all the hype and use logic. The ability of the Jerry Springer show to hold an audience and continue to find people willing to appear on the show indicates that this isn't a strong point of the some folks.
I think the workarounds are pretty simple and probably obvious to most Slashdotters. Using encryption to muzzle Carnivore might be news on CNN but not on Slashdot. We also might want to think about the day when 4096 bit encryption can be broken in a few minutes (or seconds). Once a log of your session is captured it can be kept around for quite a long time.
A good example is the company who's project I've recently been assigned. At the moment they are particularly concerned with security as they have a high profile product quality problem (really high profile) and they are worried about keeping information 'in' as much as they are keeping people out. It is maddening to try to get these people to understand that they won't secure their data by getting everyone together and trying to work out a best fit solution. Their most recent decision was to require everyone to change their network passwords so that the string contained at least one non-alpha and one capital letter. I attempted to make the point that, since they were an NT shop, the passwords could be fairly easily cracked (L0phtcrack) regardless but the solution caused too many hardships.
Many times the benefit of security isn't realized until something catastrophic happens. Managers don;t want to spend the money, devote the resources, or make the kinds of sacrifices required to maintain really good security. Convenience is far more important to them.
That said, I suppose that the particular situation in the example could be remedied by some better physical security. Things like alarm systems, cameras, etc. As for the laptop itself I guess it depends on the operating system and by the time I submit this I'm sure many will have already suggested using BSD's ability to encrypt data. Maybe even something as simple as PGP would have helped in this case.
Then why experienced rather than am experiencing?
CD sales aside, at some point during this debate we will all realize, even the politicians, that this is about a lot more than whether some kid can write some software that allows people to trade MP3s. I would have been much happier if the question had been 'How do you think the Napster decision will affect the way the United States defines property and fair use?' or even 'Do you understand that it will?'.
Every time Slashdot puts up a Napster or DeCSS the majority of the replies are of the 'You can't stop us' ilk. We've covered that already. No half assed attempt at crypto will be safe. If a person wants they will always be able to share peer to peer. The question is whether or not it will remain legal. The answer to that will affect a lot more than MP3s, it will help define the degree of control that corporations have over what you do. If you think Digital Convergance is insane for trying to cliam that they still own their Cue:Cats you could wrong, they might just be a little ahead of their time.
It is 16.
Since the public in general doesn't understand much about the Internet it is an easy target. Rock and roll isn't much of a target anymore because it is mainstream, people have moved on to rap music. The same logic can be applied to women voting, alcohol, printing presses, etc. If its new, someone will attack it despite the enormous good that might come of it, Politicians are just capitalizing on the sensationalism that the media can stir up over things like the Columbine shootings. Once the media brands the Internet as contributing to some tragedy it is very hard to convince people (who don't know much about it) that that idea is ludicrous.
Politicians are particularly skilled at this type of spin. Examples abound: Vote against a gun control measure and you might be branded 'pro-crime', vote to cut some sprending out of a bloated federal program and you could be branded 'anti-education' or be accused of wanting to throw old people out into the streets.
Society is, by and large, ignorant of what the internet is and what it can do for them. They assume its only purpose, other than IMing your friends on AOL, is evil. Politicians are just trying to ride wave into office. Unfortunately, these are the guys who make the laws.
You answered your own question. 'Close to a star', in terms of the amount of radiation a celestial body receives isn't exactly withing spitting distance.
One would also think that any life that could survive the unrestrained UV barrage it would experience in space could also do so once blanketed by the atmosphere of earth.