You make some good points, but I think you missed a critical one. Ticketmaster, rather than paying some techies to FIX the problem, paid some lawyers to file a frivoulous suit that had no merit, and which could have set a very dangerous precedent, had the judge and appeals court been clueless (this is ENTIRELY possible; read a random sampling of early decisions related to the internet). Ticketmaster's behavior was like me using a.50 caliber machine gun to shoot your dog when it craps on my lawn. Sure, I'm justified in doing SOMETHING, but I did the wrong thing and endangered a lot of uninvolved people.
No, it doesn't work that way. Mattel didn't license the code under the GPL. They didn't receive some rights in exchange for giving up others. They got the whole enchilada.
For that matter, as far as I remember (been a few months since I read it), I don't think that you can require ANYONE to give you a copy of their software, even GPLed software. In other words, just because I have on my hard drive a binary of the Red Hat 6.1 ISO image (which is GPL'd), you can't demand that I give you a copy of it. However, if I DO give you a copy of it, you can demand that I make available the source code.
It's not to say that The Sixth Sense was a bad movie, (it was a GREAT movie!) it's just that the way the ending is written, you can't really watch it more the once. It's like a murder mystery -- you allready know the butler did it, so what's the point?
Oh, I've got to disagree with you...sort of. I had to watch it twice. Once to see it the first time, then again to see all the scenes where Bruce Willis's character "interacts" with other people, just to see how they fooled us. The scene with his wife in the restaurant, or when he first meets the boy in his home...they were masterfully done, and I didn't really appreciate them until I saw them the second time. After that, though, you're right...what's the point?
Looks like somebody's been reading too much Bill Gates...:)
No shortage up top - what about the ground floor?
on
The IT Labor Shortage
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· Score: 2
This article's validity came to a screeching halt about four paragraphs down.
...a group of core occupational specialties -- computer scientists, computer engineers, and systems analysts. Programmers were added to this group... In some cases...electrical engineers...were also included...
I see no reason to say that there is no shortage in the IT market when you only include the high end of the IT market. What about the bottom rungs of the career ladder - tech support, help desk, network admins, etc? That's where you'll find your shortage. Critical, high-level positions MUST be filled, even if you have to take someone who is not highly qualified. Meanwhile, OEMS are staffing tech support lines with people who have a pulse and can spellk "computer".
Further down, we read In other words, if employers are experiencing shortages, they are not shortages of qualified people in general but rather shortages of particular kinds of qualified people. Right. So when trucking companies claim there's a shortage of qualified drivers, I expect Dr. Dobbs would say "But there's over 200 million qualified drivers in this country!"
The *SOLE* purpose of this is to try to crush all competing gaming systems, while preserving WOTC's rights.
Pretty much. Read the following statement that Dancey makes in the article that was linked to:
The D20 System Trademark License restricts you from creating a work that explains how to create characters, and how to apply the effects of experience to those characters. To be blunt, it means you can't take the D20 stuff and publish a complete roleplaying game to compete with the D&D Player's Handbook.
In other words, you can make adventures or worlds or characters or whatever, but you can't make an RPG that competes with D&D. This is the MS model - feel free to create things for the users of our system, but don't you dare compete with our system.
I see this as an improvement from TSR's position, where you couldn't legally create anything for D&D, but this is a far cry from open source. It really ticks me off that this is presented here as an example of how "open source" is influencing other industries. Read the article carefully, folks; the ONLY influence is the word "OPEN".
This reminds me of a short-short story I once read; my summary will probably be about as long as the story itself.
The scientists are all waiting excitedly to turn on the machine that will link all the computers in the world. When it comes on, they ask all the computers "Is there a God?" The computers reply "There is now!" One of the scientists moves to turn the power off when a lightning bolt kills him and fuses the switch in the ON position.
yup...reminds me of the guy who owned George Washington's axe, the very axe he had used, presumably, to chop down his father's cherry tree...of course, the axe head had been replaced twice, and the handle had been replaced seven times, but it was George Washington's axe...
The most powerful Christian meme (politically speaking) is the one that says "Eveybody will go to hell unless you save them." That is what makes the so-called "Religious Right" so powerful - they can use this meme to mobilize their group members. Where is the comparable geek meme? I don't think there is one.
I just fired up a utility from the Win NT resource kit the other day that recommended that I remove the POSIX compliant portion of Windows NT Workstation, as it was a security risk.
But if you take your fingers and snap the very tip of the tail off, the entire structure will instantly POP and disentigrate into a pile of sand!
Have you seen this done/done it yourself, or merely read about it? I've read about this phenomenon (National Geographic had an article on glass a while back), and I understood that it would actually shatter. Based on that, I don't think that holding it in your hand would be a good idea...
And that, my son, is why you would never want to live in a world without glass. Glass is SiO2. Life without SiO2 means a shortage of either Si or O2. Shortage of O2 => death. Shortage of Si => no computers. That horible decision is why I would never want to live in a world without glass.
Better make sure that no remnant of your dog is left around, either. Your dog's DNA could be extracted (theoretically) from its feces, urine, hairs, saliva, blood, etc.
MS owns the exams. They will behave capriciously and arbitrarily if they want to. They are the only game in town when it comes to NT certs. Deal with it.
If you want to do something to Microsoft, then don't support their products. Don't buy their software, their training, or their certifications. In a politely worded letter, let Microsoft know the reason for your decision. Describe specific situations where you have steered clients away from MS and to a competing solution (MS would fit this category). Don't offer to change your mind.
Don't be so naive as to think that an open letter will have any more effect on Microsoft than it would on the U.S. Marines ("Dear General, We think killing is bad..."). MS (the masters of marketing and perception) knew exactly what its MCPs would think of its policies, so congratulations to those who confirmed what market researchers told MS ages ago...
They won't move off shore. They can't. At some point, they need to take my money (that's why they're in business, right?), and I'm right here. They might be able to move their servers offshore, but some part of their business must be here in the US so that they can collect my money. Shut down that part of the business, and the spam server will wither and die, no matter where it is.
Suppose, though, that they collect their money via credit card, and they enter the charges from overseas (ie outside US jurisdiction). I would suggest that it could be made legal to refuse payment of charges on your credit card if you can prove that the transaction originated as a result of an unsolicite email, sort of like you can refuse charges that result from unsolicited delivery of merchandise.
The spammer's counterpunch to this would be to accept only money orders or cashier's checks (this after Mastercard/Visa cut them off). There's not much you can do about this, but how many people do you know would willingly send the equivalent of cash to an off-shore address to a recipient who is known to violate US law? The flow of spam would soon slow to a trickle, and the worst offenders would become well-known and be easily blocked.
Since unsolicited commercial email is acceptable, I'd have to say that unsolicited personal email is acceptable too. Especially when it constitutes political expression and it's directed at a public official.
I encourage all of you to share your political opinions with this court (no terrorist or death threats, please). Email early and email often. Do everything you can to share your opinion with the judge that SPAM costs its recipient MONEY.
I don't doubt that there are a lot of non-residents of King County, Washington reading this, but keep in mind that this is a case of national importance. If anti-spam laws fail at the local and state level, there is little chance of national anti-spam legislation. Share your opinion with this judge that the issue he is deciding is of more importance than he seems to realize.
If the US Patent Office violates its constitutional mandate, shouldn't we be able to sue them? (Note that the constitutional mandate may be completely different from the statutory mandate - they may be following the laws passed by Congress to a "t", yet still violating the constitution). Constitutionally, the purpose of patents is "to Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". If the Patent Office is not doing this, then I would suggest that they are engaging in some kind of illegal restraint of trade.
BTW, I don't see any kind of change occurring until the megacorps decide that it is in their best interests.
I fail to see why what you describe is a serious problem. The goal should not be to write a metaformat with hooks so anyone can plug in their own algorithm; the goal should be to write a single application which implements LOTS of algorithms. Successive versions of the program would, of course, implement more algorithms. Granted, early in the application's life span, there could be lots of revisions. But as the application matured, the only time there should be a revision is when a new type of content is developed, or mathematical advances result in significantly improved compression routines.
Do you see problems with this? Am I missing something?
One view is that algorithms should not be patentable at all, whether obvious or not. Algorithms are patentable. In a sense, Algorithms have always been patentable. You just had to have a good patent attorney. Here's how it works:
1. Submit application for algorithm patent 2. Get laughed at by patent office clerk 3. Hire good attorney to write application 4. Submit application for a DEVICE which implements the algorithm 5. Rake in the big bucks
Anyone can implement your algorithm, as long as they don't manufacture a device that implements the algorithm. So if I had a compression algorithm, I would patent a device, consisting of CPU, memory, and disk drive that compresses data by (insert algorithm here). You would be free to implement the algorithm by hand, or maybe in a device made up of steam-powered wheels, cams, and rods. For all practical purposes, my algorithm would be patented.
BTW, this same technique could be used to get around five year limits on software patents. Bezos is almost certainly aware of this, so I found his open letter to be quite disingenuous.
Frank Herbert was involved in the production of the movie, and approved of it. He told a different story in a different media. The two stories shared major characters and thematic elements. You are absolutely correct when you say that the book should have taken six hours as a movie, but the ecomonic realities don't permit this. Quite frankly, I think the first book is almost meaningless without the context of its two sequels. That's 18 hours of movie for you; almost a prime-time dramatic series.
Slashdot Mirror
What will happen if UFO is abandoned?
AT to PS/2 adapter: $7
AT to USB adapter: $27.50
AT to newfangled futuristic keyboard connector, circa 2025: priceless
Go rent "Miracle on 34th Street."
You make some good points, but I think you missed a critical one. Ticketmaster, rather than paying some techies to FIX the problem, paid some lawyers to file a frivoulous suit that had no merit, and which could have set a very dangerous precedent, had the judge and appeals court been clueless (this is ENTIRELY possible; read a random sampling of early decisions related to the internet). Ticketmaster's behavior was like me using a .50 caliber machine gun to shoot your dog when it craps on my lawn. Sure, I'm justified in doing SOMETHING, but I did the wrong thing and endangered a lot of uninvolved people.
No, it doesn't work that way. Mattel didn't license the code under the GPL. They didn't receive some rights in exchange for giving up others. They got the whole enchilada.
For that matter, as far as I remember (been a few months since I read it), I don't think that you can require ANYONE to give you a copy of their software, even GPLed software. In other words, just because I have on my hard drive a binary of the Red Hat 6.1 ISO image (which is GPL'd), you can't demand that I give you a copy of it. However, if I DO give you a copy of it, you can demand that I make available the source code.
This is not necessarily ethical, or even legal. Consider reporting this to your state's bar association, not to mention the Better Business Bureau.
If I was auditing this guy's books and saw very much of this, I'd be like "What's that smell? Oh, yeah, that's money laundering."
He'll contest it and win.
Hopefully he'll sue them for punitive damages and win...
It's not to say that The Sixth Sense was a bad movie, (it was a GREAT movie!) it's just that the way the ending is written, you can't really watch it more the once. It's like a murder mystery -- you allready know the butler did it, so what's the point?
Oh, I've got to disagree with you...sort of. I had to watch it twice. Once to see it the first time, then again to see all the scenes where Bruce Willis's character "interacts" with other people, just to see how they fooled us. The scene with his wife in the restaurant, or when he first meets the boy in his home...they were masterfully done, and I didn't really appreciate them until I saw them the second time. After that, though, you're right...what's the point?
Looks like somebody's been reading too much Bill Gates... :)
Pretty much. Read the following statement that Dancey makes in the article that was linked to:
In other words, you can make adventures or worlds or characters or whatever, but you can't make an RPG that competes with D&D. This is the MS model - feel free to create things for the users of our system, but don't you dare compete with our system.
I see this as an improvement from TSR's position, where you couldn't legally create anything for D&D, but this is a far cry from open source. It really ticks me off that this is presented here as an example of how "open source" is influencing other industries. Read the article carefully, folks; the ONLY influence is the word "OPEN".
This reminds me of a short-short story I once read; my summary will probably be about as long as the story itself.
The scientists are all waiting excitedly to turn on the machine that will link all the computers in the world. When it comes on, they ask all the computers "Is there a God?" The computers reply "There is now!" One of the scientists moves to turn the power off when a lightning bolt kills him and fuses the switch in the ON position.
yup...reminds me of the guy who owned George Washington's axe, the very axe he had used, presumably, to chop down his father's cherry tree...of course, the axe head had been replaced twice, and the handle had been replaced seven times, but it was George Washington's axe...
The most powerful Christian meme (politically speaking) is the one that says "Eveybody will go to hell unless you save them." That is what makes the so-called "Religious Right" so powerful - they can use this meme to mobilize their group members. Where is the comparable geek meme? I don't think there is one.
I just fired up a utility from the Win NT resource kit the other day that recommended that I remove the POSIX compliant portion of Windows NT Workstation, as it was a security risk.
VX is a type of nerve gas.
But if you take your fingers and snap the very tip of the tail off, the entire structure will instantly POP and disentigrate into a pile of sand!
Have you seen this done/done it yourself, or merely read about it? I've read about this phenomenon (National Geographic had an article on glass a while back), and I understood that it would actually shatter. Based on that, I don't think that holding it in your hand would be a good idea...
And that, my son, is why you would never want to live in a world without glass.
Glass is SiO2. Life without SiO2 means a shortage of either Si or O2. Shortage of O2 => death. Shortage of Si => no computers. That horible decision is why I would never want to live in a world without glass.
Better make sure that no remnant of your dog is left around, either. Your dog's DNA could be extracted (theoretically) from its feces, urine, hairs, saliva, blood, etc.
Disclaimer - I'm working on my MCSE
MS owns the exams. They will behave capriciously and arbitrarily if they want to. They are the only game in town when it comes to NT certs. Deal with it.
If you want to do something to Microsoft, then don't support their products. Don't buy their software, their training, or their certifications. In a politely worded letter, let Microsoft know the reason for your decision. Describe specific situations where you have steered clients away from MS and to a competing solution (MS would fit this category). Don't offer to change your mind.
Don't be so naive as to think that an open letter will have any more effect on Microsoft than it would on the U.S. Marines ("Dear General, We think killing is bad..."). MS (the masters of marketing and perception) knew exactly what its MCPs would think of its policies, so congratulations to those who confirmed what market researchers told MS ages ago...
what do we do when the spammers move off-shore?
They won't move off shore. They can't. At some point, they need to take my money (that's why they're in business, right?), and I'm right here. They might be able to move their servers offshore, but some part of their business must be here in the US so that they can collect my money. Shut down that part of the business, and the spam server will wither and die, no matter where it is.
Suppose, though, that they collect their money via credit card, and they enter the charges from overseas (ie outside US jurisdiction). I would suggest that it could be made legal to refuse payment of charges on your credit card if you can prove that the transaction originated as a result of an unsolicite email, sort of like you can refuse charges that result from unsolicited delivery of merchandise.
The spammer's counterpunch to this would be to accept only money orders or cashier's checks (this after Mastercard/Visa cut them off). There's not much you can do about this, but how many people do you know would willingly send the equivalent of cash to an off-shore address to a recipient who is known to violate US law? The flow of spam would soon slow to a trickle, and the worst offenders would become well-known and be easily blocked.
Comments, questions, or rude remarks, anyone?
Since unsolicited commercial email is acceptable, I'd have to say that unsolicited personal email is acceptable too. Especially when it constitutes political expression and it's directed at a public official.
I encourage all of you to share your political opinions with this court (no terrorist or death threats, please). Email early and email often. Do everything you can to share your opinion with the judge that SPAM costs its recipient MONEY.
I don't doubt that there are a lot of non-residents of King County, Washington reading this, but keep in mind that this is a case of national importance. If anti-spam laws fail at the local and state level, there is little chance of national anti-spam legislation. Share your opinion with this judge that the issue he is deciding is of more importance than he seems to realize.
If the US Patent Office violates its constitutional mandate, shouldn't we be able to sue them? (Note that the constitutional mandate may be completely different from the statutory mandate - they may be following the laws passed by Congress to a "t", yet still violating the constitution). Constitutionally, the purpose of patents is "to Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". If the Patent Office is not doing this, then I would suggest that they are engaging in some kind of illegal restraint of trade.
BTW, I don't see any kind of change occurring until the megacorps decide that it is in their best interests.
I fail to see why what you describe is a serious problem. The goal should not be to write a metaformat with hooks so anyone can plug in their own algorithm; the goal should be to write a single application which implements LOTS of algorithms. Successive versions of the program would, of course, implement more algorithms. Granted, early in the application's life span, there could be lots of revisions. But as the application matured, the only time there should be a revision is when a new type of content is developed, or mathematical advances result in significantly improved compression routines.
Do you see problems with this? Am I missing something?
One view is that algorithms should not be patentable at all, whether obvious or not.
Algorithms are patentable. In a sense, Algorithms have always been patentable. You just had to have a good patent attorney. Here's how it works:
1. Submit application for algorithm patent
2. Get laughed at by patent office clerk
3. Hire good attorney to write application
4. Submit application for a DEVICE which implements the algorithm
5. Rake in the big bucks
Anyone can implement your algorithm, as long as they don't manufacture a device that implements the algorithm. So if I had a compression algorithm, I would patent a device, consisting of CPU, memory, and disk drive that compresses data by (insert algorithm here). You would be free to implement the algorithm by hand, or maybe in a device made up of steam-powered wheels, cams, and rods. For all practical purposes, my algorithm would be patented.
BTW, this same technique could be used to get around five year limits on software patents. Bezos is almost certainly aware of this, so I found his open letter to be quite disingenuous.
Frank Herbert was involved in the production of the movie, and approved of it. He told a different story in a different media. The two stories shared major characters and thematic elements. You are absolutely correct when you say that the book should have taken six hours as a movie, but the ecomonic realities don't permit this. Quite frankly, I think the first book is almost meaningless without the context of its two sequels. That's 18 hours of movie for you; almost a prime-time dramatic series.