Oh, the subject is "Gnutella," so somebody obviously moderated it "offtopic" without reading the content of the message--ignorant, but not stupid, moderation.
This Karma limit really sucks! I have a post that gets moderated to 4 and I LOSE Karma because of it; go figure. The moderation system on Kuro5hin sounds interesting because it is based on averaging the score assigned to the user's messages instead of allowing Karma whores to rake up points and then SPAM or troll the board at +1./. should implement a similar system rather than limiting the number of allowable Karma. BTW, what is the "magic number"--if this keeps up any longer, I'll lose my +1 bonus.
This is NBC reporting yet another Internet slowdown that is affecting e-businesses around the world; here is regional correspondant John Doe.
Doe: It seems that over 100,000 people with 1Mbps or above Internet connections are connected to GnutellaNET at this time. The sheer volume of packets being routed across the public Internet has saturated the American backbone and is preventing web surfers from being able to visit their favorite web sites. Over $1billion is lost revenue is expected by the time that those *&%*& log off. The NASDAQ has finally crossed the 1000 limit as shareholders are flocking to their brokers to sell off any remaining stock that they hold in e-businesses. This is the third Internet slowdown in as many days that has resulted from widespread use of the Gnutella file-sharing software and it could easily happen again. Governors of all fifty states have enacted a state of emergency and are asking that users conserve Internet bandwidth until the Internet can be expanded to accept more users. Gnutella users will be fined $100 for each unauthorized use of the software during this crisis. More news later as NBC continues its 24-hour a day crisis watch. Back to NBC New York...
Between the press portraying Napster as simply a network of piracy and the RIAA pumping big money into lobbying for even more restrictive copyright law than the DMCA, it is not surprising that the government would intervent on the RIAA's behalf. Next year, I'm going to ask my relatives to buy me a politician for my birthday--geez, at least a prostitute has limits to what she will do for money.
Instead of continuing to post various accounts of where the DMCA was used to prevent a company from reverse engineering a protocol to foster interoperability, host a petition on the/. site and allow visitors to sign it. There is nothing that anybody can post to this story that has not already been said about DeCSS, CueCat, etc.
Not only would you finally be able to produce something tangible that represents the opinions of the community, you would get TONS of page-views as people include a link to the petition on their sites. I would be willing to work with you to draft the petition and I'm sure other/.ers would be willing to help as well. Slashdot's YRO section needs to evolve beyond simply news to include an ACLU-like action center.
There is no doubt that they will fail to create "intelligence," but I'm looking forward to seeing chatbots and IMbots made using this neural network interact with unsuspecting victims...
I think one of the good points that the article makes is that this type of arrogance is losing its sting. No longer does the lack of a college education have as significant an effect on gross earnings potential--and the intellectual distinction between those who attended college and those who have not is NOT evident.
The decision whether or not to go to college really boils down to career goals and personal preference--not intellectual ability.
If you want to learn INTERESTING things, help design a Perl module using XS. Put five different flavors of Unix, NT, and OS/390 on the same network. Design a database schema that will actually have people using it to get their work done.
If you want to learn BORING things, take that CS361 class on fifty different numerical methods for finding the derivative of a made-up function. Yawn.
Do you really find systems integration and Perl coding more interesting than theoretical CS? Last summer, I coded a scientific web application using Perl; I have coded in C++; I have coded in Visual Basic...but simple coding gets very boring after a while. It is developing the concept of an interesting program or designing a unique algorithm that is cool. Have you ever been really excited about a project and thought about how to best accomplish the task night and day only to be completely bored once you are forced to sit by your terminal and hack out one line of code after another?
I'm a little bothered by your association of "interesting things" with "the things that a company will pay you to do." I am the closest thing on/. to a capitalist-pig-wannabe (except the Andover.net management team, hehe) but sometimes the most interesting things are those that you may get paid very little to do, or which you will have to do on your own.
Sure, most of the stuff in a CS curriculum is completely irrelevant to the jobs most CS graduates get. But, some people do not want to be just another IT drone or coder; they want to work on interesting problems or find a niche that they can build a company around. For the people who want more out of CS than cabling a network, a BS and possible MS/MBA really are necessary.
I actually spent a summer working in the IT department of the County Department of Health and Human Services and have had friends work in the IT departments of financial institutions and computer companies both over the summer and as a career. In IT, you have a clearly defined ceiling that you can rise to within an organization; senior management positions are usually not open to people in IT (even with pretentious college degrees). Believe me, my Uncle is CIO of a large private firm and, even though the pay is great, the work is very mundane.
You can find opportunities at college that you will not find in the workforce without a degree. If you are a *real* techie, then academic research may appeal to you even if the pay is not as good. I took a job last summer at NIH with an almost non-existant salary because I found that you cannot find interesting and challenging work as an entry-level IT drone, and I think it is worth earning less to do work that is interesting to you.
I sure hope classes get harder and occupy more of my time. As a freshman Engineer, they are forcing me to repeat much of the math that I have already taken in HS and my Physics class is interesting and challenging only because it is one of those "snooty" for-majors courses. In addition, they encourage you to only take 16 credits for the first semester. But, even with a full schedule, the flexibility that a college schedule offers is much more conducive to independent work than full-time IT work (especially with a startup).
BTW, somebody thought I pay full tuition--I don't. I got some money from the University, my parents are helping, but have been paying over 50% of the amount billed to my family and plan to keep that up as long as possible. Otherwise I'll be forced to take out loans. But, using industry salary surveys, I once took the time to calculate whether paying full tuition for 4 years and losing four years of salary would have a positive or negative effect on gross earnings potential. I found that I would recover lost money and opportunity cost after 22-25 years (even taking into account interest on student loans). Do the cost-benefits analysis for yourself and you will probably get the same result I did (or less if you are going to a 2 year university or are paying less than $30,000/year tuition+expenses).
As a student who is just beginning his Freshman year in CS at Cornell, I have to admit that this was a question that I had to consider over the past year and will probably grapple with all four years of college. Each month, when I write a check to make the monthly tuition payment, I wonder whether I would be better off earning about 2 1/2 - 3 times more each month than I am currently giving away. And each month I come to the same conclusion--no.
While most of what you learn in college will not in any way relate to your future career, the people you meet and the experiences you have will be carried with you the rest of your life. If you always dreamed of working in a shared office space as a UNIX sysadmin, then maybe college is not for you--but, if you have ever wanted to start your own business or do high-level research in CS, then there is no better place to be than a major university.
In college, classes only occupy a small portion of your day. Unlike work in an IT department, which we leave you drained and too tired to really do meaningful independent work, college will leave you with plenty of time to pursue whatever you want. If you have any aspirations or career goals that extend beyond IT, then you can use the extra time that you have in college to get a leg up. For instance, I want to develop my own web network; where will I be better able to begin--working 40+ hour weeks for an established company or in my bountiful free time at college (especially considering that there is nothing else to do in Ithaca). If I acheive my objectives and reach a point where I would be better served by dropping out, I have no qualms about doing so. Remember, it is easier to drop out of a good college after getting in than it is to reapply to a BS program after going directly to work.
For those who aspire to nothing more than the IT life, go ahead, college has little to offer you. But if you would like to meet smart people, learn interesting things, and get a leg up on a future career in your free time, then give college a chance. I think Bill Gates answered this question best when he said that college is an excellent option that should only be dismissed in favor of the opportunity of a lifetime. Take his advice if you ignore mine.
Every time I hear about these "cutting-edge" webpads, I remember that they're basically only more sophisticated programmable remotes. Most people would be able to use the Internet more productively on a standard notebook, with a keyboard. These devices seem designed to facilitate home automation and other tasks (perhaps connecting to embedded web servers in consumer electronics) within the home. As such, they are no more functional than a high-end programmable remote (i.e. Pronto). The only difference is that these use Linus and standard Internet protocols for communication. But, functionally, these units are not at all superior to their predecessors and they cost a **** of a lot more.
How is CmdrTaco meeting all of these people if there are only 8 people per server? Do you keep your possessions and attributes as you move from server to server? Can you play off of the network to advance your character?
I usually stick to FPS, but any game that CmdrTaco would support MS to play must be good. How does Diablo II compare to other MMP online games like Everquest and do people without hours a day to play get anything out of the experience?
And would you argue, say, that the folks auditing code for OpenBSD (and those in similar projects) do NOT know about computer security, simply because they don't break into other folks systems without their consent?
Simply because a statement is true does not mean that its converse it true--you know that. The fact is that convicted computer criminals have (1) name recognition and (2) valuable knowledge about computer security. One of the other posts mentioned the lack of loyalty that computer criminals possess, but that is true of almost all employees in the computer industry. If/. put up a poll asking how many people would leave their current employer for a 20% raise and founders' shares, almost all would respond in the affirmative--employee loyalty is almost non-existant at this time.
Computer criminals would be a valuable asset to any security consulting firm and can be had for a bargain price. Corporations would be irresponsible to not hire these people.
Convicted hackers should be *more* desireable from a corporate perspective as they have documentation substantiating their knowledge and are better able to "think like the enemy." They could probably be hired for a lower salary as they would not have the same expectations of somebody who has not recently been in prison.
MindPixel -- help build the world's largest neural network and get free stock!
Do you ever skip the current latest/greatest because you know what's around the corner?
I have not bought a new computer since 1996 because I have been waiting for the Merced--doh! It seems Intel was only able to give the project a new name (Itanium) by the scheduled release date--go figure.
The only reason to use an SGI is for real-time visualization applications and scientific computing (because so many applications were written and optimized for the SGI and they scale incredibly). I wonder what the cost per frame would be on a 256+ processor Origin cluster; they could probably get much better price/performance than a Beowulf cluster of Linux machines because of the amount of inter-process communication needed for rendering.
I will host any serious effort to create a system to consolidate the efforts of multiple people to produce this type of media assault on eactivism.org for free. This is exactly the type of project that I want to promote in the "projects" section--one that unifies the community in self-defense. Please e-mail me at the address in my userinfo (minus the "[dontspam]" of course).
"He controls the past controls the future and he who controls the present controls the past." Let's face it, media companies have a strong influence on the way that modern Americans perceive the world; the MPAA/RIAA do control the present and their portrayal of the OS community, accurate or not, will prove the basis for many people's opinions! We need propaganda of our own if we wish to compete.
People Are Impatient and Content to be Ignorant
on
The New Mediascape
·
· Score: 1
With a generation that has a large percentage diagnosed with hyperactivity and ADD, it is not surprising that fewer people are willing to sit down to read a newspaper or watch a half hour news program. At the same time, however, the Internet allows people to search for the limited amount of news that interests them, from sources they trust, in real time. Sites like Marketwatch,/., Wired and other specialty news sites are popping up in droves as people seek out news that is targetted to their interests.
If we had an educated populice, this trend would lead to citizens being more proactive citizens of the world, or at least of the limited "world" that they seek. Instead, it merely allows the narrow-minded to avoid looking at *important* national and international news, while focusing on the private lives of celebrities. Remember, entertainment sites are always the top traffic draws after generic portals and advertising networks.
There is no way to force people out of their ignorance, but I think that people's increasing apathy and blissful ignorance is the greatest threat to American democracy.
In time, some of the companies might be enlightened to change their business concepts and release their products as free software.
Why is it assumed that commercial software and free software must exist in opposition to one another? Simply because this is RMS's position? The fact is that the free software community has flourished because most software developers earn enough money working to develop commercial software so they are able to dedicate a portion of their free time to develop free software.
Throughout history, art and culture is at its peak when people are well-off. The fact is that neither Red Hat nor VA Linus (parent of/.) are profitable, so the open source business model is not even proven. Encouraging companies to risk their future and their developers jobs on an unproven business plan out of a misguided philanthropic effort is counterproductive. Instead, we should encourage more developers who hold "regular jobs" as commercial developers to contribute to OS projects in their free time. OS is a movement by developers for developers; lets focus on promoting this OS movement instead of that presented in RMS's anti-capitalist rants.
Is there an SDK/DLL files on the associated CD that let custom applications interface with the barcode scanner? This could be really cool for grocery delivery services; just scan in the empty can/box/etc. and a new one will arrive at your door in 24 hours!
I think that many Napster and Gnutella users are afraid of sharing large numbers of files because of the MPAA's recent lawsuit against Napster. Should the RIAA actually lose (an event that is not very likely), they will probably search for "wholesale pirates," those with large numbers of shares. Consequently, people are afraid to share their files.
Even if the RIAA is unsuccessful in court, they will have been successful in turning potential members of the file-sharing community into leeches or non-users.
Traditionally, console manufacturers have dervied a large portion of their revenues from the sale of development kits and development licenses. Since all Linux-based console OSs have to be released under the GPL, it would no longer be possible for Linux console manufacturers to sell their consoles as loss leaders. They will either have to build less-powerful consoles and sell them at the same price point, or sell their units for significantly more than competing systems. Could the restrictive nature of the GPL end up preventing the development of competitive Linux consoles?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, the subject is "Gnutella," so somebody obviously moderated it "offtopic" without reading the content of the message--ignorant, but not stupid, moderation.
/. should implement a similar system rather than limiting the number of allowable Karma. BTW, what is the "magic number"--if this keeps up any longer, I'll lose my +1 bonus.
This Karma limit really sucks! I have a post that gets moderated to 4 and I LOSE Karma because of it; go figure. The moderation system on Kuro5hin sounds interesting because it is based on averaging the score assigned to the user's messages instead of allowing Karma whores to rake up points and then SPAM or troll the board at +1.
This is NBC reporting yet another Internet slowdown that is affecting e-businesses around the world; here is regional correspondant John Doe.
Doe: It seems that over 100,000 people with 1Mbps or above Internet connections are connected to GnutellaNET at this time. The sheer volume of packets being routed across the public Internet has saturated the American backbone and is preventing web surfers from being able to visit their favorite web sites. Over $1billion is lost revenue is expected by the time that those *&%*& log off. The NASDAQ has finally crossed the 1000 limit as shareholders are flocking to their brokers to sell off any remaining stock that they hold in e-businesses. This is the third Internet slowdown in as many days that has resulted from widespread use of the Gnutella file-sharing software and it could easily happen again. Governors of all fifty states have enacted a state of emergency and are asking that users conserve Internet bandwidth until the Internet can be expanded to accept more users. Gnutella users will be fined $100 for each unauthorized use of the software during this crisis. More news later as NBC continues its 24-hour a day crisis watch. Back to NBC New York...
Between the press portraying Napster as simply a network of piracy and the RIAA pumping big money into lobbying for even more restrictive copyright law than the DMCA, it is not surprising that the government would intervent on the RIAA's behalf. Next year, I'm going to ask my relatives to buy me a politician for my birthday--geez, at least a prostitute has limits to what she will do for money.
Instead of continuing to post various accounts of where the DMCA was used to prevent a company from reverse engineering a protocol to foster interoperability, host a petition on the /. site and allow visitors to sign it. There is nothing that anybody can post to this story that has not already been said about DeCSS, CueCat, etc.
/.ers would be willing to help as well. Slashdot's YRO section needs to evolve beyond simply news to include an ACLU-like action center.
Not only would you finally be able to produce something tangible that represents the opinions of the community, you would get TONS of page-views as people include a link to the petition on their sites. I would be willing to work with you to draft the petition and I'm sure other
There is no doubt that they will fail to create "intelligence," but I'm looking forward to seeing chatbots and IMbots made using this neural network interact with unsuspecting victims...
I think one of the good points that the article makes is that this type of arrogance is losing its sting. No longer does the lack of a college education have as significant an effect on gross earnings potential--and the intellectual distinction between those who attended college and those who have not is NOT evident.
The decision whether or not to go to college really boils down to career goals and personal preference--not intellectual ability.
If you want to learn INTERESTING things, help design a Perl module using XS. Put five different flavors of Unix, NT, and OS/390 on the same network. Design a database schema that will actually have people using it to get their work done.
/. to a capitalist-pig-wannabe (except the Andover.net management team, hehe) but sometimes the most interesting things are those that you may get paid very little to do, or which you will have to do on your own.
If you want to learn BORING things, take that CS361 class on fifty different numerical methods for finding the derivative of a made-up function. Yawn.
Do you really find systems integration and Perl coding more interesting than theoretical CS? Last summer, I coded a scientific web application using Perl; I have coded in C++; I have coded in Visual Basic...but simple coding gets very boring after a while. It is developing the concept of an interesting program or designing a unique algorithm that is cool. Have you ever been really excited about a project and thought about how to best accomplish the task night and day only to be completely bored once you are forced to sit by your terminal and hack out one line of code after another?
I'm a little bothered by your association of "interesting things" with "the things that a company will pay you to do." I am the closest thing on
Sure, most of the stuff in a CS curriculum is completely irrelevant to the jobs most CS graduates get. But, some people do not want to be just another IT drone or coder; they want to work on interesting problems or find a niche that they can build a company around. For the people who want more out of CS than cabling a network, a BS and possible MS/MBA really are necessary.
I actually spent a summer working in the IT department of the County Department of Health and Human Services and have had friends work in the IT departments of financial institutions and computer companies both over the summer and as a career. In IT, you have a clearly defined ceiling that you can rise to within an organization; senior management positions are usually not open to people in IT (even with pretentious college degrees). Believe me, my Uncle is CIO of a large private firm and, even though the pay is great, the work is very mundane.
You can find opportunities at college that you will not find in the workforce without a degree. If you are a *real* techie, then academic research may appeal to you even if the pay is not as good. I took a job last summer at NIH with an almost non-existant salary because I found that you cannot find interesting and challenging work as an entry-level IT drone, and I think it is worth earning less to do work that is interesting to you.
I sure hope classes get harder and occupy more of my time. As a freshman Engineer, they are forcing me to repeat much of the math that I have already taken in HS and my Physics class is interesting and challenging only because it is one of those "snooty" for-majors courses. In addition, they encourage you to only take 16 credits for the first semester. But, even with a full schedule, the flexibility that a college schedule offers is much more conducive to independent work than full-time IT work (especially with a startup).
BTW, somebody thought I pay full tuition--I don't. I got some money from the University, my parents are helping, but have been paying over 50% of the amount billed to my family and plan to keep that up as long as possible. Otherwise I'll be forced to take out loans. But, using industry salary surveys, I once took the time to calculate whether paying full tuition for 4 years and losing four years of salary would have a positive or negative effect on gross earnings potential. I found that I would recover lost money and opportunity cost after 22-25 years (even taking into account interest on student loans). Do the cost-benefits analysis for yourself and you will probably get the same result I did (or less if you are going to a 2 year university or are paying less than $30,000/year tuition+expenses).
As a student who is just beginning his Freshman year in CS at Cornell, I have to admit that this was a question that I had to consider over the past year and will probably grapple with all four years of college. Each month, when I write a check to make the monthly tuition payment, I wonder whether I would be better off earning about 2 1/2 - 3 times more each month than I am currently giving away. And each month I come to the same conclusion--no.
While most of what you learn in college will not in any way relate to your future career, the people you meet and the experiences you have will be carried with you the rest of your life. If you always dreamed of working in a shared office space as a UNIX sysadmin, then maybe college is not for you--but, if you have ever wanted to start your own business or do high-level research in CS, then there is no better place to be than a major university.
In college, classes only occupy a small portion of your day. Unlike work in an IT department, which we leave you drained and too tired to really do meaningful independent work, college will leave you with plenty of time to pursue whatever you want. If you have any aspirations or career goals that extend beyond IT, then you can use the extra time that you have in college to get a leg up. For instance, I want to develop my own web network; where will I be better able to begin--working 40+ hour weeks for an established company or in my bountiful free time at college (especially considering that there is nothing else to do in Ithaca). If I acheive my objectives and reach a point where I would be better served by dropping out, I have no qualms about doing so. Remember, it is easier to drop out of a good college after getting in than it is to reapply to a BS program after going directly to work.
For those who aspire to nothing more than the IT life, go ahead, college has little to offer you. But if you would like to meet smart people, learn interesting things, and get a leg up on a future career in your free time, then give college a chance. I think Bill Gates answered this question best when he said that college is an excellent option that should only be dismissed in favor of the opportunity of a lifetime. Take his advice if you ignore mine.
The "X" key is too close to the "S" key :-)
Every time I hear about these "cutting-edge" webpads, I remember that they're basically only more sophisticated programmable remotes. Most people would be able to use the Internet more productively on a standard notebook, with a keyboard. These devices seem designed to facilitate home automation and other tasks (perhaps connecting to embedded web servers in consumer electronics) within the home. As such, they are no more functional than a high-end programmable remote (i.e. Pronto). The only difference is that these use Linus and standard Internet protocols for communication. But, functionally, these units are not at all superior to their predecessors and they cost a **** of a lot more.
How is CmdrTaco meeting all of these people if there are only 8 people per server? Do you keep your possessions and attributes as you move from server to server? Can you play off of the network to advance your character?
I usually stick to FPS, but any game that CmdrTaco would support MS to play must be good. How does Diablo II compare to other MMP online games like Everquest and do people without hours a day to play get anything out of the experience?
And would you argue, say, that the folks auditing code for OpenBSD (and those in similar projects) do NOT know about computer security, simply because they don't break into other folks systems without their consent?
/. put up a poll asking how many people would leave their current employer for a 20% raise and founders' shares, almost all would respond in the affirmative--employee loyalty is almost non-existant at this time.
Simply because a statement is true does not mean that its converse it true--you know that. The fact is that convicted computer criminals have (1) name recognition and (2) valuable knowledge about computer security. One of the other posts mentioned the lack of loyalty that computer criminals possess, but that is true of almost all employees in the computer industry. If
Computer criminals would be a valuable asset to any security consulting firm and can be had for a bargain price. Corporations would be irresponsible to not hire these people.
Convicted hackers should be *more* desireable from a corporate perspective as they have documentation substantiating their knowledge and are better able to "think like the enemy." They could probably be hired for a lower salary as they would not have the same expectations of somebody who has not recently been in prison.
MindPixel -- help build the world's largest neural network and get free stock!
It's not funny, damnit! It should be moderated "-1 Pitiful"!
Do you ever skip the current latest/greatest because you know what's around the corner?
I have not bought a new computer since 1996 because I have been waiting for the Merced--doh! It seems Intel was only able to give the project a new name (Itanium) by the scheduled release date--go figure.
The only reason to use an SGI is for real-time visualization applications and scientific computing (because so many applications were written and optimized for the SGI and they scale incredibly). I wonder what the cost per frame would be on a 256+ processor Origin cluster; they could probably get much better price/performance than a Beowulf cluster of Linux machines because of the amount of inter-process communication needed for rendering.
I will host any serious effort to create a system to consolidate the efforts of multiple people to produce this type of media assault on eactivism.org for free. This is exactly the type of project that I want to promote in the "projects" section--one that unifies the community in self-defense. Please e-mail me at the address in my userinfo (minus the "[dontspam]" of course).
"He controls the past controls the future and he who controls the present controls the past." Let's face it, media companies have a strong influence on the way that modern Americans perceive the world; the MPAA/RIAA do control the present and their portrayal of the OS community, accurate or not, will prove the basis for many people's opinions! We need propaganda of our own if we wish to compete.
With a generation that has a large percentage diagnosed with hyperactivity and ADD, it is not surprising that fewer people are willing to sit down to read a newspaper or watch a half hour news program. At the same time, however, the Internet allows people to search for the limited amount of news that interests them, from sources they trust, in real time. Sites like Marketwatch, /., Wired and other specialty news sites are popping up in droves as people seek out news that is targetted to their interests.
If we had an educated populice, this trend would lead to citizens being more proactive citizens of the world, or at least of the limited "world" that they seek. Instead, it merely allows the narrow-minded to avoid looking at *important* national and international news, while focusing on the private lives of celebrities. Remember, entertainment sites are always the top traffic draws after generic portals and advertising networks.
There is no way to force people out of their ignorance, but I think that people's increasing apathy and blissful ignorance is the greatest threat to American democracy.
In time, some of the companies might be enlightened to change their business concepts and release their products as free software.
/.) are profitable, so the open source business model is not even proven. Encouraging companies to risk their future and their developers jobs on an unproven business plan out of a misguided philanthropic effort is counterproductive. Instead, we should encourage more developers who hold "regular jobs" as commercial developers to contribute to OS projects in their free time. OS is a movement by developers for developers; lets focus on promoting this OS movement instead of that presented in RMS's anti-capitalist rants.
Why is it assumed that commercial software and free software must exist in opposition to one another? Simply because this is RMS's position? The fact is that the free software community has flourished because most software developers earn enough money working to develop commercial software so they are able to dedicate a portion of their free time to develop free software.
Throughout history, art and culture is at its peak when people are well-off. The fact is that neither Red Hat nor VA Linus (parent of
Is there an SDK/DLL files on the associated CD that let custom applications interface with the barcode scanner? This could be really cool for grocery delivery services; just scan in the empty can/box/etc. and a new one will arrive at your door in 24 hours!
I think that many Napster and Gnutella users are afraid of sharing large numbers of files because of the MPAA's recent lawsuit against Napster. Should the RIAA actually lose (an event that is not very likely), they will probably search for "wholesale pirates," those with large numbers of shares. Consequently, people are afraid to share their files.
Even if the RIAA is unsuccessful in court, they will have been successful in turning potential members of the file-sharing community into leeches or non-users.
Traditionally, console manufacturers have dervied a large portion of their revenues from the sale of development kits and development licenses. Since all Linux-based console OSs have to be released under the GPL, it would no longer be possible for Linux console manufacturers to sell their consoles as loss leaders. They will either have to build less-powerful consoles and sell them at the same price point, or sell their units for significantly more than competing systems. Could the restrictive nature of the GPL end up preventing the development of competitive Linux consoles?