Right, the expression of ideas is what is copyrighted. The ideas come from somewhere. Your work is protected so that you can gain something from synthesizing those ideas into a published work. eventuall the copyright expires so that your work can freely contribute back to the community of ideas.
This is one of the reasons behind copyright having a limited term. Numerous ideas from the commons are used by people when they create a copyrighted work. Thus, after the term is up, that work is returned to the commons. Well, in theory, but don't get me started on the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.
Anyhow, their ideas are valuable and they will get the same fruit of their efforts that the rest of society gets when your copyright expires. Unless you expressed that they would get some greater interest in it, I don't think they have any room to suggest some ownership.
His point is that ultimately "bandwidth hogs" don't cost the cable company a dime as long as there isn't contention for the same bandwidth by multiple users. If they've got 50Mbit woth of bandwidth and the bandwidth hog is constantly using 512Kbit, it's bad if 100 of those guys are on at the same time. However, if only one of those guys is on, why should anybody care. At that point he is not depleting a scarce resource he's using a barely tapped resource.
There are two solutions here. The first is to provide better tiering of services to allow those who want more bandwidth to get it (and yes, pay a little bit more). Personally I pay roughly double what I might otherwise be paying for bandwidth so I can have decent upstream speeds and static IP addresses. The second is to use dynamic management of bandwidth restrictions based on system capacity. At primetime, it makes sense that Mr. Bandwidth hog shouldn't get his full 512, but no reason for it to be an issue at 3am when he's downloading Linux ISO's. This system makes everybody happier because the bandwidth hogs can still be hogs and not have it hurt the provider, and the non-hogs can still do their routine without noticeble slowdowns.
If Linux did indeed have more bugs, there are two questions worth asking:
1) which versions of Linux? If you were concerned about security you probably wouldn't be running the most bleeding edge version
2) how siginificant were the security holes? Are they remote root compromises or something less severe. Linux might have several more minor vulnerabilities and look numerically worse if windows has one gaping vulnerability
Having said that though, I'm willing to believe this is possible:)
Has anybody really sat down and worked out the physics of this thing if it were to collapse? How would the atmosphere effect it? How much of the structure would burn up? Most of the models for something colliding with the earth involve something that is one contained piece of mass. How does a big long rope like mass react during a similar collision?
Maybe what Tivo needs to do is go door to door and actually show people what these things are capable of. The problem you thruney into is that people aren't getting it from watching the commercials apparently. If you can actually bring one into the home and show what it does, they might take more interest. It seems that once people see what's so cool about it, they are totally enamored with it. If people buy your product and immediately become frustrated when they can't use it, you've definitely got a winner if you can get people hooked.
When cable companies went in and set up shop, most municipalities gave them exclusive access to the areas they were building in. That's why the huge capital outlay for wiring up all of those houses made sense. I
I'm wondering if the cable companies would even bother investing in the equipment to make this possible. Given that the phone companies can't provide any serious competition in this market and the barrier to entry for anybody else to do local loop service is too high, I can't fathom why an incumbent cable company would bother. They already make pretty good money off the services they provide, so why take the financial risk?
If the average consumer would be willing to pay a premium over their current service to get this upgraded service, it might make sense. But if a large group of consumers isn't willing to pay substantially more, there's no reason to bother unless somebody else is offering a competing service. Since there's nobody capable of that right now, there is no competition and therefor no incentive to innovate.
What AOL should do is lock down their protocol so that nobody else can use it. Then, license the way for anybody to access the protocol providing that they show the advertisements that AOL provides. Thus anybody who wants to make a client can do so with little trouble and AOL doesn't have to worry about profits.
Okay, so if AIM blocks the clients that block the advertisements, you're going to boycott the advertisers? Okay, so if your boycott works, then AOL has problems funding AIM and are pushed to futher close it and be bastards to the independent messenger clients. Taking this to it's furthest extreme would mean eliminating AIM all together. Then what? Then you have one less viable option for instant messaging.
This is a rather nasty quandry. The people who run the servers that all of this traffic goes over need to fund those servers somehow. If they leave the protocol open to everybody and don't have some way to force through advertisements, how do they pay for it? I like using Trillian, and Gaim (depending on what OS I'm dealing with), but I can see AOL's point.
What you do is develop a media disc with two areas for data. The first part of the data is used to store the codec relavent to decoding the media that would then be recorded on the rest of the disc. You have a player that can load the codec off of the disc on the fly and use that codec to play back the media.
So you start off with something the size of a DVD let's say. But you want to be able to use Divx;-) encoded video. Fine load the codec on the codec track dump your encoded media on the other track, and suddenly you've got the ability to play a lot more content at the sacrifice of some compression artifacting.
It seems silly to me to tie the nature of the video's encoding to the media it comes on. If you have an intelligent generalized player, you should be able to play just about anything that's within the capabilities of the hardware.
The media involved should be a disc to provide random access. Optical is ideal because it last a hell of a lot longer than tape. Capacity should be ludicrously huge but affordable. The current price point of DVD's seems pretty reasonable, so maximize the capacity that would be cost effective at that price.
I do remember that... Not that I owned one, but I do remember it:).
The only advantage this format has going with it is HDTV capabilities. Given that so few people actually own HDTV's this doesn't seem like that big a deal to me. If you could RECORD HDTV to this tape it might have some usefulness but given their paranoia, this seems very unlikely.
What would be even more hilarious is to have them step into the arena thinking they are going to demolish the other team with their EMP. Then they find out about 5 seconds later that the competitor is all old school. Then Mr. Old School drives them into the ground thanks to all that money they wasted.
Also, any effective EMP device would likely piss off TLC. You know how expensive those cameras are?:)
Actually I'd be fascinated to see how an over-engineered ultra-expensive bot would fair against somebody sticking to the budget. Having watched much Battlebots, it's always hilarious to see some bot with sponsors, get it's butt handed to it by some 12 year old who built their bot as a science project for school.
They mention that the arena is "secret". I'm wondering if the contestants know what they are getting into before they show up. Will they be able to customize the vehicle to the environment or will they have to build something fairly adaptable to handle an unknown situation. It would suck to show up with racing slicks on some low slung fast vehicle to find out that you have to deal with a mud bog, etc.
Always fascinating to see the how the ethics start sliding when the money from big corporations starts floating around. I mean, using another open source license is hardly unethical, but it's just deciding to change it because of Intel that grates on me. Seems like it would be doing the community a service to try to convince Intel of the value of a GPL'd product.
Granted, Ximian is a business, and it's not their job to evangelize the GPL. That's RMS' job last time I checked:).
It says that maintaining a "well regulated" militia is necessary for the protection of the state. So you COULD read that as meaning that the only reason people are granted that right is for the creating of such a militia. Given the existence of the national guard, a well regulated militia, it may not necessitate that all citizens should bear arms.
Can you honestly sit there and tell me that the all the gun owners in this country somehow make up a militia, well regulated or no? If there reason for the rule is for the purposes of forming militia it is legitimate to argue that it isn't necessary for all people to have weapons.
Now, having said that, I personally tend to take the view that there needs to be a balance. That the citizenry should be able to have guns, but that there's a limit. And if you look at how our laws are constructed that is true. But if you look at the constitution it doesn't say anything about a balanced set of regulation. If you focus on the "not be infringed" part, then our existing gun laws are a blatant violation of the 2nd amendment, but they sure as hell hold up in court. On the other hand, if you look at the first part, bringing up a well regulated militia, then it suggests that there's a reason for the guns, but that it's not a broad scope approval of all guns for all people.
By the way, by your interpretation of this amendment, I have the legal right to bear a nuclear weapon. I mean come on, if I can't aren't my rights being infringed?
Anyhow, for futher reading on the debate that surronds the second amendment, check out:
The second amendment is a perfect example of this. It says:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
You can read this in few ways. In one sense this may suggest that you only should be able to bear arms for the purposes of defending the state. Basically that you need to have guns for things like the national guards, etc. But you can focus on the "free" part of that comment and read that the average citizen should have the right to have a weapon to defend their freedom from those within the state who would take it.
Personally I find the interpretability of the constitution to be one of its most valuable assets. It gives our nation a common thread to work from but it also provides flexibility to accomodate for changing attitudes.
I am currently paying $89/month for DSL. Why? Because I get 1.5/384 with 4 STATIC IP addresses. It's worth every penny to me to get this service.
Comcast shouldn't bill me for how many people I have connected, they should bill me for how much I actually use. If I want 256 up/down, then they should bill me for that. If I want more IP addresses, and more bandwidth, I should be able to upgrade to pay for that. This is why I've avoided the cable modem services like the plague. None of them really provide exactly what I want at a reasonable price.
If I go to comcast's site they scream out all the features I get including for my low $39.95/month. They don't have a plan for people who like to do P2P file sharing or host websites. If instead of charging me more for two connections they would charge me $20 more for more guaranteed bandwidth, I'd buy into that in a heart beat. But no, they keep it deceptively simple and then tack on BS regulations on the back end agreement.
I'd have some sympathy for them if now, realizing their mistakes, they did something to change their pricing structure or at least make their advertisements clearer about what you were really getting. No, they are still advertising a cornucopia of high speed bandwidth, and then they get pissed off when people believe them and try to use it.
So let's say you use NAT and comcast cuts you off because of it. You can:
1) pay them extra money to allow extra connections
2) pay somebody else to provide your interet service who doesn't care
3) go read a book
I mean fine, if they want to operate that way, great. And then they'll lose your business and you'll find somebody elsewhere who does provide what you want. Eventually if enough people are pissed off a market will develop to support their need (give or take stupid regulation of the market).
LinuRe:It was gonna happen eventuallyx is an excel
on
Loki Games Closing?
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· Score: 1
Linux is an excellent gaming platform. I've got a copy of Loki's Quake III port and it works wonderfully. The problem that kills it is the problem that has killed many of my favorite systems: market share. Why write a game for Linux when only 5% of the market has Linux and most of that 5% still has a windows box around.
If it didn't have to get over that huge hurdle, Linux is otherwise an excellent gaming platform.
One thing that's been rolling around in my brain for a while is the notion of using P2P to provide content for the net without the issues associated with centralized servers. The slashdot effect is evidence of what's wrong with the current model of distribution. If all of that content could be picked up from some more local resource rather than having to go to a central server, you'd solve a lot of problems (system bandwidth, hosting costs, etc).
A few examples of companies that have been doing quite well selling information:
-Lexus/Nexus
-Time Magazine
-The Wall Street Journal
People have been paying for information for a long time and they will continue to do so. To judge the validity of such schemes based on the success and failure of a bunch of dot com's doesn't really account for the true nature of this market.
What we've really seen in the world of internet information is a failure of ad based revenue models. Everybody believed they could give everything away for free but then make money on advertising. But there were so many outlets for advertising and the audiences were so dispersed that these models quickly fizzled out. Those sites that coninute to post worthwhile content will continue to see ad revenue and will be able to establish subscriber bases over the long term.
Personally I pay for a salon subscription because I like the content and consider it worth the money to keep them in business. Also, can you explain to my why you believe Salon's subscription service is a disaster? Last time I checked they were still in business.
I suppose the result is the growth of individuals over the growth of geographic communities. If the person in the above example is unable to find supportive peers they will probably not feel comfortbale expressing themselves as they might otherwise do. So they integrate more with their community and perhaps influence subtlely to be more tolerant but not in a huge way.
On the other hand if they can find internet support, then they can come to better grips with their individual expression, but it would tend to isolate them further from their georgraphic community.
So I guess the question is: what is the value of a geographic community and how that compare to an on-line community?
Slashdot Mirror
Right, the expression of ideas is what is copyrighted. The ideas come from somewhere. Your work is protected so that you can gain something from synthesizing those ideas into a published work. eventuall the copyright expires so that your work can freely contribute back to the community of ideas.
This is one of the reasons behind copyright having a limited term. Numerous ideas from the commons are used by people when they create a copyrighted work. Thus, after the term is up, that work is returned to the commons. Well, in theory, but don't get me started on the Mickey Mouse Protection Act.
Anyhow, their ideas are valuable and they will get the same fruit of their efforts that the rest of society gets when your copyright expires. Unless you expressed that they would get some greater interest in it, I don't think they have any room to suggest some ownership.
His point is that ultimately "bandwidth hogs" don't cost the cable company a dime as long as there isn't contention for the same bandwidth by multiple users. If they've got 50Mbit woth of bandwidth and the bandwidth hog is constantly using 512Kbit, it's bad if 100 of those guys are on at the same time. However, if only one of those guys is on, why should anybody care. At that point he is not depleting a scarce resource he's using a barely tapped resource.
There are two solutions here. The first is to provide better tiering of services to allow those who want more bandwidth to get it (and yes, pay a little bit more). Personally I pay roughly double what I might otherwise be paying for bandwidth so I can have decent upstream speeds and static IP addresses. The second is to use dynamic management of bandwidth restrictions based on system capacity. At primetime, it makes sense that Mr. Bandwidth hog shouldn't get his full 512, but no reason for it to be an issue at 3am when he's downloading Linux ISO's. This system makes everybody happier because the bandwidth hogs can still be hogs and not have it hurt the provider, and the non-hogs can still do their routine without noticeble slowdowns.
If Linux did indeed have more bugs, there are two questions worth asking:
:)
1) which versions of Linux? If you were concerned about security you probably wouldn't be running the most bleeding edge version
2) how siginificant were the security holes? Are they remote root compromises or something less severe. Linux might have several more minor vulnerabilities and look numerically worse if windows has one gaping vulnerability
Having said that though, I'm willing to believe this is possible
Has anybody really sat down and worked out the physics of this thing if it were to collapse? How would the atmosphere effect it? How much of the structure would burn up? Most of the models for something colliding with the earth involve something that is one contained piece of mass. How does a big long rope like mass react during a similar collision?
Maybe what Tivo needs to do is go door to door and actually show people what these things are capable of. The problem you thruney into is that people aren't getting it from watching the commercials apparently. If you can actually bring one into the home and show what it does, they might take more interest. It seems that once people see what's so cool about it, they are totally enamored with it. If people buy your product and immediately become frustrated when they can't use it, you've definitely got a winner if you can get people hooked.
When cable companies went in and set up shop, most municipalities gave them exclusive access to the areas they were building in. That's why the huge capital outlay for wiring up all of those houses made sense. I
I'm wondering if the cable companies would even bother investing in the equipment to make this possible. Given that the phone companies can't provide any serious competition in this market and the barrier to entry for anybody else to do local loop service is too high, I can't fathom why an incumbent cable company would bother. They already make pretty good money off the services they provide, so why take the financial risk?
If the average consumer would be willing to pay a premium over their current service to get this upgraded service, it might make sense. But if a large group of consumers isn't willing to pay substantially more, there's no reason to bother unless somebody else is offering a competing service. Since there's nobody capable of that right now, there is no competition and therefor no incentive to innovate.
What AOL should do is lock down their protocol so that nobody else can use it. Then, license the way for anybody to access the protocol providing that they show the advertisements that AOL provides. Thus anybody who wants to make a client can do so with little trouble and AOL doesn't have to worry about profits.
Okay, so if AIM blocks the clients that block the advertisements, you're going to boycott the advertisers? Okay, so if your boycott works, then AOL has problems funding AIM and are pushed to futher close it and be bastards to the independent messenger clients. Taking this to it's furthest extreme would mean eliminating AIM all together. Then what? Then you have one less viable option for instant messaging.
This is a rather nasty quandry. The people who run the servers that all of this traffic goes over need to fund those servers somehow. If they leave the protocol open to everybody and don't have some way to force through advertisements, how do they pay for it? I like using Trillian, and Gaim (depending on what OS I'm dealing with), but I can see AOL's point.
What you do is develop a media disc with two areas for data. The first part of the data is used to store the codec relavent to decoding the media that would then be recorded on the rest of the disc. You have a player that can load the codec off of the disc on the fly and use that codec to play back the media.
;-) encoded video. Fine load the codec on the codec track dump your encoded media on the other track, and suddenly you've got the ability to play a lot more content at the sacrifice of some compression artifacting.
So you start off with something the size of a DVD let's say. But you want to be able to use Divx
It seems silly to me to tie the nature of the video's encoding to the media it comes on. If you have an intelligent generalized player, you should be able to play just about anything that's within the capabilities of the hardware.
The media involved should be a disc to provide random access. Optical is ideal because it last a hell of a lot longer than tape. Capacity should be ludicrously huge but affordable. The current price point of DVD's seems pretty reasonable, so maximize the capacity that would be cost effective at that price.
I do remember that... Not that I owned one, but I do remember it :).
The only advantage this format has going with it is HDTV capabilities. Given that so few people actually own HDTV's this doesn't seem like that big a deal to me. If you could RECORD HDTV to this tape it might have some usefulness but given their paranoia, this seems very unlikely.
Signing up for Al Qaeda? I hear they've been seeing lots of projectiles, and high explosives lately :)
What would be even more hilarious is to have them step into the arena thinking they are going to demolish the other team with their EMP. Then they find out about 5 seconds later that the competitor is all old school. Then Mr. Old School drives them into the ground thanks to all that money they wasted.
:)
Also, any effective EMP device would likely piss off TLC. You know how expensive those cameras are?
Actually I'd be fascinated to see how an over-engineered ultra-expensive bot would fair against somebody sticking to the budget. Having watched much Battlebots, it's always hilarious to see some bot with sponsors, get it's butt handed to it by some 12 year old who built their bot as a science project for school.
They mention that the arena is "secret". I'm wondering if the contestants know what they are getting into before they show up. Will they be able to customize the vehicle to the environment or will they have to build something fairly adaptable to handle an unknown situation. It would suck to show up with racing slicks on some low slung fast vehicle to find out that you have to deal with a mud bog, etc.
Always fascinating to see the how the ethics start sliding when the money from big corporations starts floating around. I mean, using another open source license is hardly unethical, but it's just deciding to change it because of Intel that grates on me. Seems like it would be doing the community a service to try to convince Intel of the value of a GPL'd product.
:).
Granted, Ximian is a business, and it's not their job to evangelize the GPL. That's RMS' job last time I checked
It says that maintaining a "well regulated" militia is necessary for the protection of the state. So you COULD read that as meaning that the only reason people are granted that right is for the creating of such a militia. Given the existence of the national guard, a well regulated militia, it may not necessitate that all citizens should bear arms.
Can you honestly sit there and tell me that the all the gun owners in this country somehow make up a militia, well regulated or no? If there reason for the rule is for the purposes of forming militia it is legitimate to argue that it isn't necessary for all people to have weapons.
Now, having said that, I personally tend to take the view that there needs to be a balance. That the citizenry should be able to have guns, but that there's a limit. And if you look at how our laws are constructed that is true. But if you look at the constitution it doesn't say anything about a balanced set of regulation. If you focus on the "not be infringed" part, then our existing gun laws are a blatant violation of the 2nd amendment, but they sure as hell hold up in court. On the other hand, if you look at the first part, bringing up a well regulated militia, then it suggests that there's a reason for the guns, but that it's not a broad scope approval of all guns for all people.
By the way, by your interpretation of this amendment, I have the legal right to bear a nuclear weapon. I mean come on, if I can't aren't my rights being infringed?
Anyhow, for futher reading on the debate that surronds the second amendment, check out:
http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_2nd.html
The second amendment is a perfect example of this. It says:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
You can read this in few ways. In one sense this may suggest that you only should be able to bear arms for the purposes of defending the state. Basically that you need to have guns for things like the national guards, etc. But you can focus on the "free" part of that comment and read that the average citizen should have the right to have a weapon to defend their freedom from those within the state who would take it.
Personally I find the interpretability of the constitution to be one of its most valuable assets. It gives our nation a common thread to work from but it also provides flexibility to accomodate for changing attitudes.
I am currently paying $89/month for DSL. Why? Because I get 1.5/384 with 4 STATIC IP addresses. It's worth every penny to me to get this service.
Comcast shouldn't bill me for how many people I have connected, they should bill me for how much I actually use. If I want 256 up/down, then they should bill me for that. If I want more IP addresses, and more bandwidth, I should be able to upgrade to pay for that. This is why I've avoided the cable modem services like the plague. None of them really provide exactly what I want at a reasonable price.
If I go to comcast's site they scream out all the features I get including for my low $39.95/month. They don't have a plan for people who like to do P2P file sharing or host websites. If instead of charging me more for two connections they would charge me $20 more for more guaranteed bandwidth, I'd buy into that in a heart beat. But no, they keep it deceptively simple and then tack on BS regulations on the back end agreement.
I'd have some sympathy for them if now, realizing their mistakes, they did something to change their pricing structure or at least make their advertisements clearer about what you were really getting. No, they are still advertising a cornucopia of high speed bandwidth, and then they get pissed off when people believe them and try to use it.
Enron... That's all I have to say about the invisible hand mantra.
So let's say you use NAT and comcast cuts you off because of it. You can:
1) pay them extra money to allow extra connections
2) pay somebody else to provide your interet service who doesn't care
3) go read a book
I mean fine, if they want to operate that way, great. And then they'll lose your business and you'll find somebody elsewhere who does provide what you want. Eventually if enough people are pissed off a market will develop to support their need (give or take stupid regulation of the market).
Linux is an excellent gaming platform. I've got a copy of Loki's Quake III port and it works wonderfully. The problem that kills it is the problem that has killed many of my favorite systems: market share. Why write a game for Linux when only 5% of the market has Linux and most of that 5% still has a windows box around.
If it didn't have to get over that huge hurdle, Linux is otherwise an excellent gaming platform.
One thing that's been rolling around in my brain for a while is the notion of using P2P to provide content for the net without the issues associated with centralized servers. The slashdot effect is evidence of what's wrong with the current model of distribution. If all of that content could be picked up from some more local resource rather than having to go to a central server, you'd solve a lot of problems (system bandwidth, hosting costs, etc).
A few examples of companies that have been doing quite well selling information:
-Lexus/Nexus
-Time Magazine
-The Wall Street Journal
People have been paying for information for a long time and they will continue to do so. To judge the validity of such schemes based on the success and failure of a bunch of dot com's doesn't really account for the true nature of this market.
What we've really seen in the world of internet information is a failure of ad based revenue models. Everybody believed they could give everything away for free but then make money on advertising. But there were so many outlets for advertising and the audiences were so dispersed that these models quickly fizzled out. Those sites that coninute to post worthwhile content will continue to see ad revenue and will be able to establish subscriber bases over the long term.
Personally I pay for a salon subscription because I like the content and consider it worth the money to keep them in business. Also, can you explain to my why you believe Salon's subscription service is a disaster? Last time I checked they were still in business.
I suppose the result is the growth of individuals over the growth of geographic communities. If the person in the above example is unable to find supportive peers they will probably not feel comfortbale expressing themselves as they might otherwise do. So they integrate more with their community and perhaps influence subtlely to be more tolerant but not in a huge way.
On the other hand if they can find internet support, then they can come to better grips with their individual expression, but it would tend to isolate them further from their georgraphic community.
So I guess the question is: what is the value of a geographic community and how that compare to an on-line community?