It IS possible to do better. The Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD both got 7 of 10 in repairability scores from iFixit. When the battery dies in my nexus 7 (and it will), I'll just buy a new battery and slap it in.
Though I hate the term "brogramming" and think it's completely stupid to try to program while drunk, I believe there is room for what used to be called the "heroic" model of software development in certain circumstances. The fact is that the technology world is fast paced, and often the product that becomes dominant (makes the most money) is not the one that's the most well engineered. It is the one that works well enough, has features people like, and makes it to the market first. A few very good coders with good domain knowledge and broad skills working heads down on such a project can absolutely run circles around (iterate faster) a large engineering team of siloed engineers focusing on requirements and architecture.
That is not to say that proper software engineering is dead... quite the opposite. In most industries and once a product reaches a certain size - quality, security, etc. are expected. You need a combination of good engineers and the right processes in place to make that happen. You cannot substitute processes for good engineers. As for waterfall vs agile... neither is perfect.... but Agile is better when requirements tend to change. It's bad to be dogmatic about either one though.
>I can appreciate their efforts from a technical standpoint, but in the end they used that time to create a technical novelty that in reality will not see a long term use nor large scale adoption. A sharper and more polished Arch experience would have a tremendously larger impact compared to this.
Personally, I don't see the point to having a Linux userland with a FreeBSD kernel or vice versa. I'd much rather have a stable system with wide adoption (either Linux or FreeBSD, not some unholy hybrid), but I like the fact that this exists anyway. In the free and open source software world, anyone with interest and time on their hands can do what they want to do. This is in opposition to the closed model where a few decision makers are trying to maximize profit given their resources.
FOSS works a lot like darwinian evolution. A lot of random mutations occur and most do not survive. A few, however, do survive and become widespread and we are better off for it. Don't think of it as wasted effort, think of it as part of the process.
I used to use Net tamer (a combination PPP client, e-mail client, and web browser) on my 80286 over a 2400 baud modem. This was in 1996... ah the anguish. Seriously though if you want credit for having the least powerful online machine, you have to be able to do something useful with something less powerful than an 80286. Turns out you can browse the web with a Comodore 64. http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/classic-tech/surf-the-web-on-your-commodore-64/182
Here they are (as best I can remember, and excluding any non-linux operating systems):
Slackware RedHat Mandrake Debian Kubuntu Ubuntu with unity (got rid of it immediately after installing) Mint LXDE edition (still using) Raspbian (still using)
My primary motivation for switching early on was the package manager. I thought RPM would be better than Slackware's lack of a package manager (at the time), but I still ended up in dependency hell. Debian package management is a few steps up from this (love apt-get) , but I wanted more recent software (and libraries) than are in debian stable, so I switched to Kubuntu . I tried Unity, hated it, so moved to Linux Mint, which is basically the same as Ubuntu without Unity.
RS does not have any Raspberry Pis... Newark/Farnell/Element14 have them. I cancelled my RS order and got it in 4 days from Newwark. Newark is showing 100 in stock right now.
>I'd also like to point out that mankind may be having a detrimental effect on evolution. There are too many efforts lead by humans to rescue species that have been slated for extinction.
As evolution doesn't have a predetermined direction or speed, it's difficult to say what is detrimental - that's a value judgement. Evolution is simply the mechanism by which species change to survive and reproduce given their environmental pressures. There's also no slate that marks species for extinction. The reason we rescue species that are almost extinct is that we are causing their extinction, and we also value biodiversity. From a strictly Darwinian perspective, we could say that humans are fitter than those other species, therefore they should go. But at least some of us try not to do that because we value biodiversity and what we can learn from it.
You're right though that we do have the ability to consciously or unconsciously direct evolution. Ever heard of the Aurochs? It now provides the cheese flavor on your Cheetos... well, the "Cheddar cheese" part of it anyway. It is interesting to speculate about how human intervention medical science will direct human evolution over time. We've effectively eliminated most selection pressures, made the infertile fertile, and generally intervened in coupling, fertility, birth and death in every way we can think of. Does this stop evolution or is this evolution at work?
>I thought A Scanner Darkly was pretty close to the book...
The movie was pretty accurate reading of the events in the book, but the telling of it was lacking. The book is gripping in some ways, but the movie was largely emotionless with flat voice acting and toned down dialogue. For a better passive experience than the movie, I recommend Paul Giamatti's audiobook version.
>I don't have a solution, but I wish I did. The present state of affairs isn't really satisfactory to anyone IMO.
Agreed. I find myself almost on Microsoft's side of this. Our current class action system has devolved into ambulance chasing and legal theft; rare is the class action lawsuit that actually helps someone, or punishes a company for doing something genuinely bad. All they do in general is harass companies into lining lawyer's pockets. The law firms involved are representing themselves and not the plaintiff class, since they have much more to gain.
I would like to propose the following changes to class action law: 1) Class members would have to opt in and not out. If a majority of the class does not care enough to opt-in, the suit cannot proceed. 2) A Law firm representing a class may work on contingency, but may take no more of the award or settlement than the actual costs incurred, with receipts presented to and audited by the court. Class members would be given full access to all receipts, and could protest any of them.
Yes I'm aware that this would cut down on the number of class action lawsuits by 90% or more. I assert that is a good thing. Remaining consumer annoyances can be handled via other mechanisms.
Apple sells hardware/software bundles wherein a major reason people buy the hardware is to use their exclusive software. Examples? Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod. All I'm saying is let's not discount the software aspect of what apple sells. If they sold windows or android devices, nobody would care about them.
Until a huge breakthrough is made in battery technology, electric cars are doomed to fail, no matter how high the price of gasoline. Not so sure about that. If electric commuting is 10X cheaper than gas, and you can get by with an electric's range, it would be stupid economically to use gasoline.
Electric cars are too expensive -- it's cheaper to just pay the high gasoline prices. The Volt is expensive, but it is not a pure electric. It's a very expensive series hybrid. The Leaf is still a bit expensive, but not outrageous.
With batteries, there is no repair or rebuild or get a used one from a junk yard Incorrect. There are many companies that can recondition a Prius battery, and there will be companies that do the same for Leaf batteries once there is a market demand.
I agree that electric cars aren't for everyone (not even the majority) but there certainly is a market niche in which they are practical and economical and will likely be moreso in the future as gas prices have nowhere to go but up. We have 100s of models of gasoline vehicles to fit every possible buyer's desire, isn't it a good thing to have choices in how your vehicle will be powered?
In my experience, the only way to deal with this is to use a force rank priority system, meaning everything is put into a stack, and you work from the top of the stack. You only rank your requirements relative to each other and not against some sort of "high, med, low" system. If you do this, you need to expose the ranking to all the stakeholders. If they have problems with the ranking, they can negotiate with the other stakeholders. Yes, "deadlines" will absolutely slip, but you are providing value by doing the most important things first, and everyone knew what was most important. A lot of people have trouble with this, because they are used to just kicking and screaming until they get what they want, but it is better to train the stakeholders to work this way than to deal with the alternative.
How many of you would contribute $50 to take a controlling interest in this festering pimple of an "IP" company? If the next ~80,000/. regulars that read this were willing the company could be taken over and put down, permanently.
It's too late for that. SCO is in bankruptcy court, in chapter 11 proceedings. This means that the current stockholders have effectively no say in what goes on at this point. It's up to the SCO to come up with a reorganization plan that will allow it to continue to operate. Generally a reorganization plan includes cancelling any and all common stock, as does theirs "On the Effective Date, the existing common stock and common stock equivalents of SCO Group shall be cancelled and extinguished." Anyone buying the stock now is hoping for a miracle and that SCO will somehow continue to operate without completing chapter 11 reorganization.
In summary, doing this would neither give you control of the company now, nor when they exit chapter 11.... not a financial expert either, but did own WCOM stock:)
Re:So when do we get its successor?
on
X Power Tools
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· Score: 1
aren't we all fed up with this dinosaur? Not really, no. As a user and application developer, X works great for me. It provides the functionality the user needs, and application developers is largely isolated from low-level X APIs by their GUI toolkit (GTK+, QT, etc).
A new window system might be a good thing for Linux as a whole. I'm not sure about that. Inventing something new without first establishing what is really wrong with the existing product (and for whatever reason, can't be fixed) would be a waste of time. This is why all the attempts at creating a better window system than X on Linux/Unix have failed; they don't have a driving reason for their existence, or a killer app that would ensure adoption.
I could be wrong, but I seem to remember Hotmail being very, very popular before MS bought it out and Microsofted it into obscurity. Lots of people fled for higher ground, which was Yahoo! at the time. If this acquisition takes place, I think it will drastically accelerate the growth of GMail and begin the demise of Yahoo! Mail.
So the question is whether the judge simply ruled the factual disputes were not relevant to the claims, or whether he improperly took the role of jury and decided to favor one set of evidence as more credible than another. Or maybe he did a little of both, which would be par for this case.
I think at some point, a judge has to decide what is hand waving and what is admissible legal evidence. SCO provided a ton of hand waving, but admitted to their predecessor in interest (Old SCO) signing the APA, a contract which contains plain language that did not transfer the copyrights.
In regards to the SCO Group's other claims that were thrown out, they failed to provide a single shred of evidence that could be brought to a jury. Where there's no evidence, there is nothing for the jury to decide. You do need to present evidence at a trial, don't you?
I think that actually real aliens are more likely to be quite similar to terrestrial life
Hm... I'm not too sure about that. We are a product of random mutations and of our environment (through natural selection). Why do most animals have five skeletal phalanges? Is it because five is the ideal number for every conceivable environment, or is it because this arrangement comes from a common ancestor, who achieved that configuration through randomness and natural selection?
There are many features of life on earth that are neither positive or negative, they just are because that's how it evolved. If you take this concept back to the formation of life itself, and make some variations there, there could be massively different lifeforms; even in the same environment. If you imagine life forming on an alien world with different conditions in natural selection, the effect would be multiplied.
If the US does not adjust, then, it is very likely setting itself up for an enormous defeat in a naval engagement against a determined opponent.
I agree. The US Navy points to its fleet of aircraft carriers as the sign of its naval superiority, but the age of the aircraft carrier is over. In WWII an aircraft carrier could project power around the world, so owning a few of them meant you were a superpower. Now, however, the carrier is costly and vulnerable when compared to submarines, missiles, and long-range bombers. Sure, they're good in a low-level conventional skirmish against a low-tech opponent; but an aircraft carrier would be useless against a country with the resources to invade our territory. They'd sink the carriers, then move on. Why then do we need so many of them? Are we anticipating that many simultaneous low-level conflicts? I guess so.
Please remember that in computing, nothing new has been invented since 1970.
A fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached! (Abe Simpson, circa 1990)
That being said, I wonder if this is some kind of strange social experiment to see if anyone actually puts more than $0 in the price box. I probably won't.
Maybe if I was really hard up for cash, I'd consider putting in a lowball amount, but not $0. Putting in $0 would be worse, IMO than stiffing the waitstaff at a nice restaurant on their tip. You're not required to tip them, but you should. Why? They work hard, and make most of their money that way. Maybe it's just me, but I think that artists deserve to be paid for their efforts, even when they don't force the payment. They're asking to be paid a fair price, not to be stiffed. They've cut out the middlemen here, so perhaps that amount is less than you'd pay for a CD on Amazon. Perhaps it's more, for that very reason. They've let you decide.
Last time I checked, Copyright, was not a "god-given" or even constitutionally guaranteed right. Copyright is a right granted by the people, and it is a right that can be revoked by the people. The right was granted for a temporary (repeat, temporary) monopoly to a given work, in exchange for a public record to be kept in the library of congress, stored for future generations. In addition, copyright included provisions to not harm the common citizens for utilizing their own copies of such works as they see fit. Otherwise, copyright holders could impose ludicrus and rediculous limitations, such as "if you watch this... no, if you even recieve a copy of this, watched or not, you must agree to sleep with the director" and, if these guys have their interpretations of copyright forced on us, we would be obliged!
It is in the constitution.
That issue aside, it's important to know that copyright is based on the exclusive right to copy a given work, as prescribed in law. It's not necessary to register a work in the LOC to get protection, though it is helpful. You're correct that the people grant this monopoly, through their representation. You're also correct that copyright does not allow for crazy contract terms upon viewing, because it's not based on viewing, it's based on copying.
Contrary to popular belief, copying for personal use and format shifting are not expressly allowed for in copyright law. It's just that if you do it for entirely personal purposes, the copyright holder does not lose any money, and is unlikely to successfully sue for damages. Fair use comes in when you make a copy of the work, and need to defend the making of the copy as fair; for educational use or to create a new work that has value independent from the original work.
Often people are so confused about copyright law, that they forget this; Copyright law is about copying a work. It's not about viewing or licensing the ability to view or listen to a work. When you buy a CD, you do not buy a license to listen to the music; you buy a copy of it. This is why used CD stores are entirely legal and sharing copyrighted material over bittorrent is not. IP protection based on the right to copy naturally makes little sense when dealing with digital content, since copies of the bits are made automatically; regardless of intent. This is where the DMCA comes in, which is a vain attempt to preserve the notion of copyright law by restricting the ability of an end user to make useful digital copies, where DRM technologies are in place.
This is not an argument for the DMCA, it's an argument for re-thinking the notion of copyright entirely. I'm not sure what would be better, but we shouldn't have to ban reverse engineering of proprietary hardware/software to protect copyright holders.
Look, you either have an object, which is patentable, a work, which can be copyrighted, a symbol, which can be trademarked... or you have an idea, which is only protected until you tell somebody else. If you don't want to share, don't.
I'm afraid that objects are not patentable, it is the design of the object or process the object implements that is patentable (an invention). The point behind a patent is not to keep something to yourself, it's to license the process/design/etc to someone else. The licensing aspect is what makes it property.
In that vein, I'm not really sure what the submitter of this question intends to do, so it's hard to give advice, but here are some rules of thumb: If it's something you want to publish the expression of an idea (in words, music, video, etc), copyright it (with the copyright office) If you want to license the idea itself, patent it. If it's a logo or name that you want to use to sell something else, trademark it. If you want to just keep it secret, just don't tell anyone; or do the appropriate NDAs, etc as a trade secret.
And I have to say, IP in all its forms (copyright, patent, etc) does exist. Just ask a musician (recording artist), author, or inventor how they make their money.
A bunch of science majors flipping burgers doesn't lead to any advances in science and engineering.
That's a good point. This is fundamentally an economic problem. If Country A produces an engineer at quality level 1, and that engineer costs $80k, and country C can produce an engineer at quality level 1 for $10k, what is to stop company X from chosing country C's product? It's possible that overproduction in country A would lower the cost; but lowering the cost would also lower the number of people that choose that profession, resulting in no net gain. If country C has a much lower standard of living, it can simply outstrip country A on price. If country A expects to stay in the high tech field, it should not focus on producing more engineers, it should carve out niches of high quality engineers, or highly specialized engineers, that are able to command their premium price in the global economy.
That's why this effort is silly. Reducing tuition for science and engineering could only increase the number of engineers, who will attempt to compete at quality level 1 with India and China, (who command a much lower price); and end up, as you say, flipping burgers. What we need to do instead is focus our education efforts in highly skilled, highly specialized fields; and increase the quality of engineers and scientists coming out of the more general programs to the point where their superiority in the marketplace is unquestioned.
Slashdot Mirror
It IS possible to do better. The Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD both got 7 of 10 in repairability scores from iFixit. When the battery dies in my nexus 7 (and it will), I'll just buy a new battery and slap it in.
Though I hate the term "brogramming" and think it's completely stupid to try to program while drunk, I believe there is room for what used to be called the "heroic" model of software development in certain circumstances. The fact is that the technology world is fast paced, and often the product that becomes dominant (makes the most money) is not the one that's the most well engineered. It is the one that works well enough, has features people like, and makes it to the market first. A few very good coders with good domain knowledge and broad skills working heads down on such a project can absolutely run circles around (iterate faster) a large engineering team of siloed engineers focusing on requirements and architecture.
That is not to say that proper software engineering is dead... quite the opposite. In most industries and once a product reaches a certain size - quality, security, etc. are expected. You need a combination of good engineers and the right processes in place to make that happen. You cannot substitute processes for good engineers. As for waterfall vs agile... neither is perfect.... but Agile is better when requirements tend to change. It's bad to be dogmatic about either one though.
>I can appreciate their efforts from a technical standpoint, but in the end they used that time to create a technical novelty that in reality will not see a long term use nor large scale adoption. A sharper and more polished Arch experience would have a tremendously larger impact compared to this.
Personally, I don't see the point to having a Linux userland with a FreeBSD kernel or vice versa. I'd much rather have a stable system with wide adoption (either Linux or FreeBSD, not some unholy hybrid), but I like the fact that this exists anyway. In the free and open source software world, anyone with interest and time on their hands can do what they want to do. This is in opposition to the closed model where a few decision makers are trying to maximize profit given their resources.
FOSS works a lot like darwinian evolution. A lot of random mutations occur and most do not survive. A few, however, do survive and become widespread and we are better off for it. Don't think of it as wasted effort, think of it as part of the process.
I used to use Net tamer (a combination PPP client, e-mail client, and web browser) on my 80286 over a 2400 baud modem. This was in 1996... ah the anguish. Seriously though if you want credit for having the least powerful online machine, you have to be able to do something useful with something less powerful than an 80286. Turns out you can browse the web with a Comodore 64. http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/classic-tech/surf-the-web-on-your-commodore-64/182
Here they are (as best I can remember, and excluding any non-linux operating systems):
Slackware
RedHat
Mandrake
Debian
Kubuntu
Ubuntu with unity (got rid of it immediately after installing)
Mint LXDE edition (still using)
Raspbian (still using)
My primary motivation for switching early on was the package manager. I thought RPM would be better than Slackware's lack of a package manager (at the time), but I still ended up in dependency hell. Debian package management is a few steps up from this (love apt-get) , but I wanted more recent software (and libraries) than are in debian stable, so I switched to Kubuntu . I tried Unity, hated it, so moved to Linux Mint, which is basically the same as Ubuntu without Unity.
+1 to the parent.
RS does not have any Raspberry Pis... Newark/Farnell/Element14 have them. I cancelled my RS order and got it in 4 days from Newwark. Newark is showing 100 in stock right now.
>I'd also like to point out that mankind may be having a detrimental effect on evolution. There are too many efforts lead by humans to rescue species that have been slated for extinction.
As evolution doesn't have a predetermined direction or speed, it's difficult to say what is detrimental - that's a value judgement. Evolution is simply the mechanism by which species change to survive and reproduce given their environmental pressures. There's also no slate that marks species for extinction. The reason we rescue species that are almost extinct is that we are causing their extinction, and we also value biodiversity. From a strictly Darwinian perspective, we could say that humans are fitter than those other species, therefore they should go. But at least some of us try not to do that because we value biodiversity and what we can learn from it.
You're right though that we do have the ability to consciously or unconsciously direct evolution. Ever heard of the Aurochs? It now provides the cheese flavor on your Cheetos... well, the "Cheddar cheese" part of it anyway. It is interesting to speculate about how human intervention medical science will direct human evolution over time. We've effectively eliminated most selection pressures, made the infertile fertile, and generally intervened in coupling, fertility, birth and death in every way we can think of. Does this stop evolution or is this evolution at work?
>I thought A Scanner Darkly was pretty close to the book...
The movie was pretty accurate reading of the events in the book, but the telling of it was lacking. The book is gripping in some ways, but the movie was largely emotionless with flat voice acting and toned down dialogue. For a better passive experience than the movie, I recommend Paul Giamatti's audiobook version.
>I don't have a solution, but I wish I did. The present state of affairs isn't really satisfactory to anyone IMO.
Agreed. I find myself almost on Microsoft's side of this. Our current class action system has devolved into ambulance chasing and legal theft; rare is the class action lawsuit that actually helps someone, or punishes a company for doing something genuinely bad. All they do in general is harass companies into lining lawyer's pockets. The law firms involved are representing themselves and not the plaintiff class, since they have much more to gain.
I would like to propose the following changes to class action law:
1) Class members would have to opt in and not out. If a majority of the class does not care enough to opt-in, the suit cannot proceed.
2) A Law firm representing a class may work on contingency, but may take no more of the award or settlement than the actual costs incurred, with receipts presented to and audited by the court. Class members would be given full access to all receipts, and could protest any of them.
Yes I'm aware that this would cut down on the number of class action lawsuits by 90% or more. I assert that is a good thing. Remaining consumer annoyances can be handled via other mechanisms.
Apple sells hardware/software bundles wherein a major reason people buy the hardware is to use their exclusive software. Examples? Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPod. All I'm saying is let's not discount the software aspect of what apple sells. If they sold windows or android devices, nobody would care about them.
Until a huge breakthrough is made in battery technology, electric cars are doomed to fail, no matter how high the price of gasoline.
Not so sure about that. If electric commuting is 10X cheaper than gas, and you can get by with an electric's range, it would be stupid economically to use gasoline.
Electric cars are too expensive -- it's cheaper to just pay the high gasoline prices.
The Volt is expensive, but it is not a pure electric. It's a very expensive series hybrid. The Leaf is still a bit expensive, but not outrageous.
With batteries, there is no repair or rebuild or get a used one from a junk yard
Incorrect. There are many companies that can recondition a Prius battery, and there will be companies that do the same for Leaf batteries once there is a market demand.
I agree that electric cars aren't for everyone (not even the majority) but there certainly is a market niche in which they are practical and economical and will likely be moreso in the future as gas prices have nowhere to go but up. We have 100s of models of gasoline vehicles to fit every possible buyer's desire, isn't it a good thing to have choices in how your vehicle will be powered?
In my experience, the only way to deal with this is to use a force rank priority system, meaning everything is put into a stack, and you work from the top of the stack. You only rank your requirements relative to each other and not against some sort of "high, med, low" system. If you do this, you need to expose the ranking to all the stakeholders. If they have problems with the ranking, they can negotiate with the other stakeholders. Yes, "deadlines" will absolutely slip, but you are providing value by doing the most important things first, and everyone knew what was most important. A lot of people have trouble with this, because they are used to just kicking and screaming until they get what they want, but it is better to train the stakeholders to work this way than to deal with the alternative.
>Until somebody can find more proof to back up the 1421 claim, it is an undecidable as to its veracity.
Undecidable? Hm... If I claim to be the true King of Spain without a shred of proof, is that equally undecidable?
Sorry, but as intriguing as it may be, the 1421 "theory" is just a scam to make money on books.
How many of you would contribute $50 to take a controlling interest in this festering pimple of an "IP" company? If the next ~80,000 /. regulars that read this were willing the company could be taken over and put down, permanently.
... not a financial expert either, but did own WCOM stock :)
It's too late for that. SCO is in bankruptcy court, in chapter 11 proceedings. This means that the current stockholders have effectively no say in what goes on at this point. It's up to the SCO to come up with a reorganization plan that will allow it to continue to operate. Generally a reorganization plan includes cancelling any and all common stock, as does theirs "On the Effective Date, the existing common stock and common stock equivalents of SCO Group shall be cancelled and extinguished." Anyone buying the stock now is hoping for a miracle and that SCO will somehow continue to operate without completing chapter 11 reorganization.
In summary, doing this would neither give you control of the company now, nor when they exit chapter 11.
aren't we all fed up with this dinosaur?
Not really, no. As a user and application developer, X works great for me. It provides the functionality the user needs, and application developers is largely isolated from low-level X APIs by their GUI toolkit (GTK+, QT, etc).
A new window system might be a good thing for Linux as a whole.
I'm not sure about that. Inventing something new without first establishing what is really wrong with the existing product (and for whatever reason, can't be fixed) would be a waste of time. This is why all the attempts at creating a better window system than X on Linux/Unix have failed; they don't have a driving reason for their existence, or a killer app that would ensure adoption.
it's also the world's largest webmail service
I could be wrong, but I seem to remember Hotmail being very, very popular before MS bought it out and Microsofted it into obscurity. Lots of people fled for higher ground, which was Yahoo! at the time. If this acquisition takes place, I think it will drastically accelerate the growth of GMail and begin the demise of Yahoo! Mail.
So the question is whether the judge simply ruled the factual disputes were not relevant to the claims, or whether he improperly took the role of jury and decided to favor one set of evidence as more credible than another. Or maybe he did a little of both, which would be par for this case.
I think at some point, a judge has to decide what is hand waving and what is admissible legal evidence. SCO provided a ton of hand waving, but admitted to their predecessor in interest (Old SCO) signing the APA, a contract which contains plain language that did not transfer the copyrights.
In regards to the SCO Group's other claims that were thrown out, they failed to provide a single shred of evidence that could be brought to a jury. Where there's no evidence, there is nothing for the jury to decide. You do need to present evidence at a trial, don't you?
I think that actually real aliens are more likely to be quite similar to terrestrial life
Hm... I'm not too sure about that. We are a product of random mutations and of our environment (through natural selection). Why do most animals have five skeletal phalanges? Is it because five is the ideal number for every conceivable environment, or is it because this arrangement comes from a common ancestor, who achieved that configuration through randomness and natural selection?
There are many features of life on earth that are neither positive or negative, they just are because that's how it evolved. If you take this concept back to the formation of life itself, and make some variations there, there could be massively different lifeforms; even in the same environment. If you imagine life forming on an alien world with different conditions in natural selection, the effect would be multiplied.
If the US does not adjust, then, it is very likely setting itself up for an enormous defeat in a naval engagement against a determined opponent.
I agree. The US Navy points to its fleet of aircraft carriers as the sign of its naval superiority, but the age of the aircraft carrier is over. In WWII an aircraft carrier could project power around the world, so owning a few of them meant you were a superpower. Now, however, the carrier is costly and vulnerable when compared to submarines, missiles, and long-range bombers. Sure, they're good in a low-level conventional skirmish against a low-tech opponent; but an aircraft carrier would be useless against a country with the resources to invade our territory. They'd sink the carriers, then move on. Why then do we need so many of them? Are we anticipating that many simultaneous low-level conflicts? I guess so.
Please remember that in computing, nothing new has been invented since 1970. A fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached! (Abe Simpson, circa 1990)
But the difference is that now everybody gets their own little sandbox.
Um... hate to break it to you, but virtualization has been available on the mainframe since 1972. You did get your own little sandbox, even in 1972.
That being said, I wonder if this is some kind of strange social experiment to see if anyone actually puts more than $0 in the price box. I probably won't.
Maybe if I was really hard up for cash, I'd consider putting in a lowball amount, but not $0. Putting in $0 would be worse, IMO than stiffing the waitstaff at a nice restaurant on their tip. You're not required to tip them, but you should. Why? They work hard, and make most of their money that way. Maybe it's just me, but I think that artists deserve to be paid for their efforts, even when they don't force the payment. They're asking to be paid a fair price, not to be stiffed. They've cut out the middlemen here, so perhaps that amount is less than you'd pay for a CD on Amazon. Perhaps it's more, for that very reason. They've let you decide.
Last time I checked, Copyright, was not a "god-given" or even constitutionally guaranteed right. Copyright is a right granted by the people, and it is a right that can be revoked by the people. The right was granted for a temporary (repeat, temporary) monopoly to a given work, in exchange for a public record to be kept in the library of congress, stored for future generations. In addition, copyright included provisions to not harm the common citizens for utilizing their own copies of such works as they see fit. Otherwise, copyright holders could impose ludicrus and rediculous limitations, such as "if you watch this... no, if you even recieve a copy of this, watched or not, you must agree to sleep with the director" and, if these guys have their interpretations of copyright forced on us, we would be obliged!
It is in the constitution.
That issue aside, it's important to know that copyright is based on the exclusive right to copy a given work, as prescribed in law. It's not necessary to register a work in the LOC to get protection, though it is helpful. You're correct that the people grant this monopoly, through their representation. You're also correct that copyright does not allow for crazy contract terms upon viewing, because it's not based on viewing, it's based on copying.
Contrary to popular belief, copying for personal use and format shifting are not expressly allowed for in copyright law. It's just that if you do it for entirely personal purposes, the copyright holder does not lose any money, and is unlikely to successfully sue for damages. Fair use comes in when you make a copy of the work, and need to defend the making of the copy as fair; for educational use or to create a new work that has value independent from the original work.
Often people are so confused about copyright law, that they forget this; Copyright law is about copying a work. It's not about viewing or licensing the ability to view or listen to a work. When you buy a CD, you do not buy a license to listen to the music; you buy a copy of it. This is why used CD stores are entirely legal and sharing copyrighted material over bittorrent is not. IP protection based on the right to copy naturally makes little sense when dealing with digital content, since copies of the bits are made automatically; regardless of intent. This is where the DMCA comes in, which is a vain attempt to preserve the notion of copyright law by restricting the ability of an end user to make useful digital copies, where DRM technologies are in place.
This is not an argument for the DMCA, it's an argument for re-thinking the notion of copyright entirely. I'm not sure what would be better, but we shouldn't have to ban reverse engineering of proprietary hardware/software to protect copyright holders.
IP sucks because it doesn't exist.
Look, you either have an object, which is patentable, a work, which can be copyrighted, a symbol, which can be trademarked... or you have an idea, which is only protected until you tell somebody else. If you don't want to share, don't.
I'm afraid that objects are not patentable, it is the design of the object or process the object implements that is patentable (an invention). The point behind a patent is not to keep something to yourself, it's to license the process/design/etc to someone else. The licensing aspect is what makes it property.
In that vein, I'm not really sure what the submitter of this question intends to do, so it's hard to give advice, but here are some rules of thumb:
If it's something you want to publish the expression of an idea (in words, music, video, etc), copyright it (with the copyright office)
If you want to license the idea itself, patent it.
If it's a logo or name that you want to use to sell something else, trademark it.
If you want to just keep it secret, just don't tell anyone; or do the appropriate NDAs, etc as a trade secret.
And I have to say, IP in all its forms (copyright, patent, etc) does exist. Just ask a musician (recording artist), author, or inventor how they make their money.
A bunch of science majors flipping burgers doesn't lead to any advances in science and engineering.
That's a good point. This is fundamentally an economic problem. If Country A produces an engineer at quality level 1, and that engineer costs $80k, and country C can produce an engineer at quality level 1 for $10k, what is to stop company X from chosing country C's product? It's possible that overproduction in country A would lower the cost; but lowering the cost would also lower the number of people that choose that profession, resulting in no net gain. If country C has a much lower standard of living, it can simply outstrip country A on price. If country A expects to stay in the high tech field, it should not focus on producing more engineers, it should carve out niches of high quality engineers, or highly specialized engineers, that are able to command their premium price in the global economy.
That's why this effort is silly. Reducing tuition for science and engineering could only increase the number of engineers, who will attempt to compete at quality level 1 with India and China, (who command a much lower price); and end up, as you say, flipping burgers. What we need to do instead is focus our education efforts in highly skilled, highly specialized fields; and increase the quality of engineers and scientists coming out of the more general programs to the point where their superiority in the marketplace is unquestioned.