Well, if you exclude, ANSI, the ISO, and all the other public standards making bodies from "anyone", maybe.
Think about what you're saying. Do you really want to wait for ANSI or ISO to set a standard before any software can be written? Should WordPerfect have told ANSI that they were about to release a word processor in 1985 that had such and so features, and then let them get back to them on a standard format before they implemented those features?
Or Netscape -- people have criticized them for extending HTML, but how much longer would things have taken if they had waited for some committee to take years to set a standard, rather than going ahead and implemented https?
When it comes to technologies, particularly software technologies, it is often best for standards bodies to be reactive rather than proactive. A good example is Standard C, when the standards bodies formalized existing practice.
Microsoft is often criticized for "embrace and extend", but every company does it. Because you often have to extend a standard in order to implement new features that simply don't work within the existing framework. Again, see Netscape/HTML.
Everyone started bitching about Microsoft and IE. What the fuck. Do you not read slashdot or something?
And this was "influential" how? I don't deny that there a lot of fools that believe everything they see on Slashdot, but the original poster believed that "influential people" bought into Slashdot's often misleaing postings. I don't believe that anyone smart enough to have influence in real ways would be dumb enough to believe everything they read on Slashdot.
In other words, I don't think the Unicode committee is going see that article and say to themselves, "Good God! Slashdot thinks that Unicode is a failure, so I guess we better close up shop!"
Slashdot has evolved into a powerful media outlet for an important group of people.
I think you vastly overestimate Slashdot's influence. I don't deny that there are probably a lot of influential people who check it regularly or occasionally, but let's remember that Slashdot mainly links to other's articles. I don't think anyone seriously believes that anything posted on Slashdot is automatically true.
And the original editorial content on Slashdot whipsaws between the hopelessly naive and the outright obvious, so I doubt they have much influence there beyond high schoolers who still have pretty narrow horizons.
First you are wrong on this point.. the primary purpose of Napster is file sharing, which is perfectly legal and legitimate
Come on, let's not pretend here. The reason the what's-his-name invented Napster in the first place was so his l33t buddies could get the songs they want. Even if you buy into this ludicrous "hey, all we want is our users to exchange legal songs", you can't deny that 99.9% of all activity was illegal. Not to mention that Napster has been totally abandoned once the heavy duty filtering was in place. If Napster was primarily legigitimate, then that should have made almost no difference in traffic, right?
A screwdriver can be used to break the lock on a house does that mean that all screwdrivers should be illegal?
No, and no one is trying shut down all ftp activity, either.
however, Stocking Caps and Cars can also be used to facilitate crime, so if Honda doesn't immediately shut their doors and stop producing vehicles they are no better than my fictional robbers.
No, because the primary purpose of stocking caps and cars is legitimate. The primary purpose of Napster was to facilitate piracy of copyrighted material.
Put it this way: it is illegal for my to stockpile dynamite in my garage, despite the fact that dynamite has legitimate purposes.
Don't like that analogy? How about this one: The mafia owns a pizza parlor. Perfectly legitimate business -- until they start laundering money. Then it is a crime, because the primary purpose is not selling pizza, it's to launder money.
The intent of a business does matter. And Napster's "wink wink" agreement is worth less than the bits it uses.
And another megacorp gets its way in the crazy world of the USian corporate state.
Uh, Napster was a corporation.
In any case, you have it exactly backwards. This proves that a rogue corporation like Napster determined to rip off people can and will be brought to justice, despite their protestations that they don't support piracy.
I'm not a huge fan of the music industry (I wish they would allow me to buy electronic versions of music that are not copy restricted), but in no way was Napster the good guy. If you facilitate people breaking the law, you are no better than the people breaking it.
They get good by playing in small, cheap shows over and over and over.
That's called "playing professionally". But you're right, in the sense that Napster doesn't necessarily kill live performances, and musicians can still earn a living.
However, I think it can't be ignored that we have seen an explosion of musical talent in the 20th century that is primarily owed to the recording industry. The recording industry has allowed the potential market to be expanded tremendously to people that otherwise wouldn't be able to hear the London Philharmonic, or whomever. If the recording industry was destroyed, how many people would have heard early black Jazz performers?
And, Mozart was composing at the age of eight. Exactly how much cash do you think he was getting at that age?
And how much less music would we have if he had to lay bricks by day?
This is the right principle, the only question is the execution. If you think this is bad, then you are part of the problem, not the solution.
I want to be able to pay the artists money for their songs. Up until now, there simply is no way to give money if you want to download an electronic version. If they allow me to pay a reasonable price to download a song, then I will gladly pay it.
The only question is whether they are going to put restrictions on what I can do with my purchased song for my personal use. If there is any copy restriction, then that obviously is not acceptable.
But this knee-jerk reaction to any kind of paying for music is just stupid. If there is no money in music, then a lot of the best musicians will simply cease to exist. Yes, we will always have amateur musicians, but a lot of the best musicians will never happen unless they are able to practice all day, every day, and you can't do that unless you do it professionally. There is a reason why professional athletes, for example, will kick almost any amateur's ass.
And no, 200 years ago Mozart or whoever DID NOT do it on an amateur basis. They were paid by either royalty, upper class citizens or the church. In fact, most artists were compensated in that way. Art and money have always gone hand in hand. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive (and impractical).
AOL has too much to lose if their software isn't pre-installed, it was their key to success in the first place.
Huh? Michael, AOL's success owes nothing to being pre-installed on Windows. Or didn't you receive one of the endless AOL floppies/CD-ROMs?
In fact, Slashdot's mocking of AOL to the contrary, AOL is the perfect example of a company that can be successful despite Microsoft. Say what you will about AOL, but the secret to their success was the fact that any idiot could plop a floppy into the drive and it "just worked". In fact, for a long time it was totally self contained -- it found the modem and used it's own communication software. No Internet setup, no TCP/IP setting, no nothing. Boom! You're connected.
In fact, this should be a lesson to the Linux-on-the-desktop crowd about how to beat Microsoft. Make it simple enough, and the world will beat a path to your door. The other example is Apple, whose simplicity has kept them alive despite high prices, incredible arrogance, crapping on their developers, decade-behind-the-times software (up until recently), poor selection, on and on. The only thing they had going was simplicity, and it has kept them alive this long.
I might agree with you in this case (I'm not sure), but there are times when civil disobedience (aka "breaking the law") is necessary to move change forward. For example, black people sitting in "unapproved" seats on the bus was probably a necessary catalyst to bring attention to the injustice of those laws.
I'm constantly amazed, saddened, and ashamed that anyone that I share a species with really believes that any political party (including the Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, or whatever) has all the answers, [...]
I agree with you. No party has all the answers. For example, I hate the religious wing of the Republican party and wish they would go away (or at least keep Religion out of the party). But I also disagree with the sentiment that all the parties are the same, with equal amounts of corruption. There is a difference between the two major parties in terms of how willing they are to lie to preserve their own power.
Look, Democrats dislike Bush, but you simply cannot compare it to the unabashed, vitriolic, mindless HATRED republicans had for Clinton.
The difference is that Clinton really was corrupt. I mean, someone may not like Bush (I or II), Reagan or whoever, but they weren't completely corrupt. Clinton was truly in Nixon's class. Perhaps even slimier than Nixon, because at least Nixon had thought about the best interests of the country on occasion.
I gave a link to a clearinghouse site that in turn links to many more sites, some of which have very good documentation of the things I mentioned.
Oh, well, if it's on the Internet, it must be true.
I could give you an even longer list of UFO sites that prove aliens exist, "some of which have very good documentation." Does that make it true?
Trust me, if any of it was provable in the slightest way, the national media would have crucified Bush with it.
If you don't believe the charges, why don't you supply some counter-evidence?
You know, I've heard that you regularly beat your wife. How do I know it's not true? Supply me some counter-evidence. All of your "accusations" are just innuendo that you're trying to pass off as "facts", with the exception of the one about malaprops. Reagan never made malaprops, you're probably thinking of Quayle. Of course, I could point out that mispeaking in public is totally irrelevent to one's capabilities, and only someone desperately trying to find flaws would bring it up.
I am not a Democrat.
Well, being farther left than a Democrat is not something I would personally admit to.
Along with this article and the Aimster article that the Slashdot population seems to be getting a lot more clued in? There is not nearly as much knee-jerk, automatic Slashbot "coporations are always bad", "patents are always bad", "copyrights are always bad", "Microsoft is always evil", "Capitalism is evil", etc, etc, on and on?
Of course, the irony is that the exception to this are the people who actually run Slashdot.:)
Generalizations, when not mistaken for absolute consensus, are a necessary time saver.
Perhaps, when "not mistaken for absolute consensus". But that's the mistake that document was making, which was presuming to speak for the "Internet culture".
Geez, I think I'll compain about dictionaries that designate expressions that I commonly use as "archaic"!
The difference between dictionary analysts and ESR is that analysts attempt to document the evolution of the culture, while ESR was trying to lead the culture.
This condition has caused an awakening on the part of the Internet community-at-large.
The thing is littered with phrases like this. Repeat after me: YOU ARE NOT THE COMMUNITY. You do not represent me. Presuming to speak for other people is height of self-righteousness. It reminds me of ESR's entry in the Jargon File saying that the usage of "hacker" as someone who breaks into computers is "deprecated". ESR does not have the right deprecate anything for anyone else, and neither do any of you.
If they want this to be half-way effective, then they need to stick to the facts and not whine about how it makes the "culture" mad. If spam creates more ill-will than profit, then back it up with facts.
And saying that e-mail has all these hidden costs is just stupid. The cost of sending e-mail is exactly what it costs for the Internet connection. No more and no less. If the costs are significant for the recipient, then see above about proving that they are creating ill-will.
In short, I think that a lot of self appointed Internet cops should say "I do not like spam, and I have proof that enough others don't like it that it's not worth it for you to send it" rather than "the Internet culture hates spam, and you are violating the rights of everyone by sending it". Speak for yourself, and back up the rest with facts.
This event might have been the catalyst, but the kid clearly had some serious psychological problems. He didn't commit suicide because of this arrest, any more than the proverbial straw is the cause of the camel's back breaking.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if you exclude, ANSI, the ISO, and all the other public standards making bodies from "anyone", maybe.
Think about what you're saying. Do you really want to wait for ANSI or ISO to set a standard before any software can be written? Should WordPerfect have told ANSI that they were about to release a word processor in 1985 that had such and so features, and then let them get back to them on a standard format before they implemented those features?
Or Netscape -- people have criticized them for extending HTML, but how much longer would things have taken if they had waited for some committee to take years to set a standard, rather than going ahead and implemented https?
When it comes to technologies, particularly software technologies, it is often best for standards bodies to be reactive rather than proactive. A good example is Standard C, when the standards bodies formalized existing practice.
Microsoft is often criticized for "embrace and extend", but every company does it. Because you often have to extend a standard in order to implement new features that simply don't work within the existing framework. Again, see Netscape/HTML.
--
Everyone started bitching about Microsoft and IE. What the fuck. Do you not read slashdot or something?
And this was "influential" how? I don't deny that there a lot of fools that believe everything they see on Slashdot, but the original poster believed that "influential people" bought into Slashdot's often misleaing postings. I don't believe that anyone smart enough to have influence in real ways would be dumb enough to believe everything they read on Slashdot.
In other words, I don't think the Unicode committee is going see that article and say to themselves, "Good God! Slashdot thinks that Unicode is a failure, so I guess we better close up shop!"
--
Of course they have a right to propose standards for everyone to use. The trouble is, what they call a "standard" is usually a moving target.
Every standard is a moving target. HTML, Unicode, TCP/IP, everything evolves.
--
Slashdot has evolved into a powerful media outlet for an important group of people.
I think you vastly overestimate Slashdot's influence. I don't deny that there are probably a lot of influential people who check it regularly or occasionally, but let's remember that Slashdot mainly links to other's articles. I don't think anyone seriously believes that anything posted on Slashdot is automatically true.
And the original editorial content on Slashdot whipsaws between the hopelessly naive and the outright obvious, so I doubt they have much influence there beyond high schoolers who still have pretty narrow horizons.
--
First you are wrong on this point.. the primary purpose of Napster is file sharing, which is perfectly legal and legitimate
Come on, let's not pretend here. The reason the what's-his-name invented Napster in the first place was so his l33t buddies could get the songs they want. Even if you buy into this ludicrous "hey, all we want is our users to exchange legal songs", you can't deny that 99.9% of all activity was illegal. Not to mention that Napster has been totally abandoned once the heavy duty filtering was in place. If Napster was primarily legigitimate, then that should have made almost no difference in traffic, right?
A screwdriver can be used to break the lock on a house does that mean that all screwdrivers should be illegal?
No, and no one is trying shut down all ftp activity, either.
--
Buy CDs. I do.
Well, that's what I normally do, but that doesn't work well if I just want one obscure song and don't feel like paying $10-$15 for an entire album.
--
however, Stocking Caps and Cars can also be used to facilitate crime, so if Honda doesn't immediately shut their doors and stop producing vehicles they are no better than my fictional robbers.
No, because the primary purpose of stocking caps and cars is legitimate. The primary purpose of Napster was to facilitate piracy of copyrighted material.
Put it this way: it is illegal for my to stockpile dynamite in my garage, despite the fact that dynamite has legitimate purposes.
Don't like that analogy? How about this one: The mafia owns a pizza parlor. Perfectly legitimate business -- until they start laundering money. Then it is a crime, because the primary purpose is not selling pizza, it's to launder money.
The intent of a business does matter. And Napster's "wink wink" agreement is worth less than the bits it uses.
--
And another megacorp gets its way in the crazy world of the USian corporate state.
Uh, Napster was a corporation.
In any case, you have it exactly backwards. This proves that a rogue corporation like Napster determined to rip off people can and will be brought to justice, despite their protestations that they don't support piracy.
I'm not a huge fan of the music industry (I wish they would allow me to buy electronic versions of music that are not copy restricted), but in no way was Napster the good guy. If you facilitate people breaking the law, you are no better than the people breaking it.
--
You forgot Michael... he's my particularly irritating nutcase.
--
They get good by playing in small, cheap shows over and over and over.
That's called "playing professionally". But you're right, in the sense that Napster doesn't necessarily kill live performances, and musicians can still earn a living.
However, I think it can't be ignored that we have seen an explosion of musical talent in the 20th century that is primarily owed to the recording industry. The recording industry has allowed the potential market to be expanded tremendously to people that otherwise wouldn't be able to hear the London Philharmonic, or whomever. If the recording industry was destroyed, how many people would have heard early black Jazz performers?
And, Mozart was composing at the age of eight. Exactly how much cash do you think he was getting at that age?
And how much less music would we have if he had to lay bricks by day?
--
This is the right principle, the only question is the execution. If you think this is bad, then you are part of the problem, not the solution.
I want to be able to pay the artists money for their songs. Up until now, there simply is no way to give money if you want to download an electronic version. If they allow me to pay a reasonable price to download a song, then I will gladly pay it.
The only question is whether they are going to put restrictions on what I can do with my purchased song for my personal use. If there is any copy restriction, then that obviously is not acceptable.
But this knee-jerk reaction to any kind of paying for music is just stupid. If there is no money in music, then a lot of the best musicians will simply cease to exist. Yes, we will always have amateur musicians, but a lot of the best musicians will never happen unless they are able to practice all day, every day, and you can't do that unless you do it professionally. There is a reason why professional athletes, for example, will kick almost any amateur's ass.
And no, 200 years ago Mozart or whoever DID NOT do it on an amateur basis. They were paid by either royalty, upper class citizens or the church. In fact, most artists were compensated in that way. Art and money have always gone hand in hand. Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive (and impractical).
--
AOL has too much to lose if their software isn't pre-installed, it was their key to success in the first place.
Huh? Michael, AOL's success owes nothing to being pre-installed on Windows. Or didn't you receive one of the endless AOL floppies/CD-ROMs?
In fact, Slashdot's mocking of AOL to the contrary, AOL is the perfect example of a company that can be successful despite Microsoft. Say what you will about AOL, but the secret to their success was the fact that any idiot could plop a floppy into the drive and it "just worked". In fact, for a long time it was totally self contained -- it found the modem and used it's own communication software. No Internet setup, no TCP/IP setting, no nothing. Boom! You're connected.
In fact, this should be a lesson to the Linux-on-the-desktop crowd about how to beat Microsoft. Make it simple enough, and the world will beat a path to your door. The other example is Apple, whose simplicity has kept them alive despite high prices, incredible arrogance, crapping on their developers, decade-behind-the-times software (up until recently), poor selection, on and on. The only thing they had going was simplicity, and it has kept them alive this long.
--
I might agree with you in this case (I'm not sure), but there are times when civil disobedience (aka "breaking the law") is necessary to move change forward. For example, black people sitting in "unapproved" seats on the bus was probably a necessary catalyst to bring attention to the injustice of those laws.
--
I am not arguing for or against graduates. But your reasoning makes no sense.
Neither was I, really. I was mostly just pointing out the silliness of the original poster comparing pieces of sheepskin.
--
Bill Gates, a Harvard dropout, and Richard Stallman, a Harvard graduate,
Hmmm. One point for Gates, in my book. I know more brilliant people that are college drop-outs than brilliant people with college degrees.
--
I'm constantly amazed, saddened, and ashamed that anyone that I share a species with really believes that any political party (including the Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, or whatever) has all the answers, [...]
I agree with you. No party has all the answers. For example, I hate the religious wing of the Republican party and wish they would go away (or at least keep Religion out of the party). But I also disagree with the sentiment that all the parties are the same, with equal amounts of corruption. There is a difference between the two major parties in terms of how willing they are to lie to preserve their own power.
--
Look, Democrats dislike Bush, but you simply cannot compare it to the unabashed, vitriolic, mindless HATRED republicans had for Clinton.
The difference is that Clinton really was corrupt. I mean, someone may not like Bush (I or II), Reagan or whoever, but they weren't completely corrupt. Clinton was truly in Nixon's class. Perhaps even slimier than Nixon, because at least Nixon had thought about the best interests of the country on occasion.
--
I gave a link to a clearinghouse site that in turn links to many more sites, some of which have very good documentation of the things I mentioned.
Oh, well, if it's on the Internet, it must be true.
I could give you an even longer list of UFO sites that prove aliens exist, "some of which have very good documentation." Does that make it true?
Trust me, if any of it was provable in the slightest way, the national media would have crucified Bush with it.
If you don't believe the charges, why don't you supply some counter-evidence?
You know, I've heard that you regularly beat your wife. How do I know it's not true? Supply me some counter-evidence. All of your "accusations" are just innuendo that you're trying to pass off as "facts", with the exception of the one about malaprops. Reagan never made malaprops, you're probably thinking of Quayle. Of course, I could point out that mispeaking in public is totally irrelevent to one's capabilities, and only someone desperately trying to find flaws would bring it up.
I am not a Democrat.
Well, being farther left than a Democrat is not something I would personally admit to.
--
On the other hand, the replies to the parent article are making a liar out of me. :)
--
Along with this article and the Aimster article that the Slashdot population seems to be getting a lot more clued in? There is not nearly as much knee-jerk, automatic Slashbot "coporations are always bad", "patents are always bad", "copyrights are always bad", "Microsoft is always evil", "Capitalism is evil", etc, etc, on and on?
Of course, the irony is that the exception to this are the people who actually run Slashdot. :)
--
If the community supports your assertion that junk email doesn't cost anybody anything, then perhaps it will become STD or BCP, hmm? And good luck.
Read what I wrote.
--
Generalizations, when not mistaken for absolute consensus, are a necessary time saver.
Perhaps, when "not mistaken for absolute consensus". But that's the mistake that document was making, which was presuming to speak for the "Internet culture".
Geez, I think I'll compain about dictionaries that designate expressions that I commonly use as "archaic"!
The difference between dictionary analysts and ESR is that analysts attempt to document the evolution of the culture, while ESR was trying to lead the culture.
--
From the RFC...
This condition has caused an awakening on the part of the Internet community-at-large.
The thing is littered with phrases like this. Repeat after me: YOU ARE NOT THE COMMUNITY. You do not represent me. Presuming to speak for other people is height of self-righteousness. It reminds me of ESR's entry in the Jargon File saying that the usage of "hacker" as someone who breaks into computers is "deprecated". ESR does not have the right deprecate anything for anyone else, and neither do any of you.
If they want this to be half-way effective, then they need to stick to the facts and not whine about how it makes the "culture" mad. If spam creates more ill-will than profit, then back it up with facts.
And saying that e-mail has all these hidden costs is just stupid. The cost of sending e-mail is exactly what it costs for the Internet connection. No more and no less. If the costs are significant for the recipient, then see above about proving that they are creating ill-will.
In short, I think that a lot of self appointed Internet cops should say "I do not like spam, and I have proof that enough others don't like it that it's not worth it for you to send it" rather than "the Internet culture hates spam, and you are violating the rights of everyone by sending it". Speak for yourself, and back up the rest with facts.
--
This event might have been the catalyst, but the kid clearly had some serious psychological problems. He didn't commit suicide because of this arrest, any more than the proverbial straw is the cause of the camel's back breaking.
--
"Submitted for your approval:"
If it was good enough for Rod Serling, it's good enough for me.
--