>This is like cars that do 0-60 in 2.4 >milliseconds and can go up to 250mph.
No, it's not like that at all. Cars that can go 250MPh (show me one) are irrelevant because there is no speed limit that high. Unless I've missed something, there is no speed limit on processors.
>It just doesn't matter to most people, at least >practically-speaking
To the unwashed masses, it doesn't matter; but that's not who the chipmakers are targetting in their first releases. I work for an investment bank whose traders won't be happy with 1GHz; faster math processing = faster trading = more profit.
Also, as someone else pointed out: how important was the PII to the "average person" when it first came out? Just as important as this speed bump, I'd say. Newer, faster technology at the top pushes prices down at the bottom and all the way up. When an even newer, faster technology comes out your "average joe" won't buy anything less than n-1 tier technology.
You're right, although I think it varies from state to state. But, I've taken advantage of that law a few times.
A perceptive person might have caught on to the fact that they had a prototype, and might have contacted their lawyer prior to / in anticipation of hearing from Microsoft (although the NYPD part would throw me too) and then, through their lawyer, demand that Microsoft pay them money (you insert ghastly amount here) in order to get their unsolicited shipment back. The lawyer could at least hold the NYPD and Microsoft lawyers at bay while the recipient had some fun at Microsoft's expense.
Actually, I don't know about California law, but in Illinois tresspassing implies that the owner of the private property has advised you that you are on private property, that you are not welcome, and that you are to leave poste-haste.
If this is the case in California, then a browser is welcome on their property without specific permission, until they are asked to leave and then after being asked to leave, any contact with their property is considered tresspassing.
So the point is, if eBay asked a deep indexer (or whatever they're called) to stop indexing and they continued despite that, maybe they have a case.
The more interesting question is: does trespassing law apply to a computer? I'm not physically standing in the computer room or on the computer, right? Hmm... good question. I wonder if I can Sue The Spammers on these grounds!
I'm happy to see spammers pay, but how far could this go?
I hint a tone of, hmmm... concern? in this comment. I haven't seen anyone address that yet.
How far could this go? Maybe we should be concerned that sending our humor e-mails to a large list of recipients could end us up in court paying AOL heaps of money for tying up their servers, even when the recipients didn't mind receiving it. It doesn't just apply to this case -- one could argue anyone who sends large volumes of e-mail for any reason could be subject to penalties. I guess that's a concern, in a very convoluted way (although the spammers that were clipped here were guilty of much worse crimes...)
One way I've deal with this (my geographically wide-spread family sends each other a dozen or so humor e-mails per day) is by signing up for one of those free listserver/majordomo services. I'm not sure that they (e.g. OneList would defend me, but I do know that by subscribing to my list, I can show that the recipients were not just passive but took active steps to become involved in my list, therefore my weekly humor digest is not "spam". At least, that's my thinking.
I'm not happy with the spector of being abused by big business because I send a lot of e-mail to their subscribers, but on the other hand spam has gotten out of control. If direct-mail marketting companies operated like they do, they would have been locked up years ago. Sure, the "spam" snail-mail can come to you without an address; likewise you can throw it away unopened or even mail it back to them in their own post-paid envelopes. BUT, if direct-mail companies sent out snail-mail with someone else's return address on the envelope, you can bet they'd be clipped quickly. Why spammers think this helps their business case, I have no idea.
In my opinion, another thing that must be stopped are so-called "web bugs", effectively something we've already all talked about here (cookies in GIFs) but attached to HTML e-mails that automatically load on Outlook Express. I guess people who use OE get what they deserve, but this practice should be illegal. Unfortunately, I can't find the Web Bug FAQ link here, but those "1 X 1 GIFs" must go!
I dealt with RSI with some simple steps; I found that the worst of my RSI was caused not by computer work but by my poor driving habits. A few minor computer tools helped also.
First, I arranged my driver's seat so that I could comfortably grip the steering wheel without bending my wrists. I keep my hands at 10 and 2, wrists strait (but not rigid) and that helped a LOT.
Next, I added one of the afformentioned keyboard strips and had a great deal of response.
I did the wrist splint for a while, it might have helped but I stopped after the pain went away and I was doing the above things at the same time too.
My pain went away about seven years ago, and has not been back (I was diagnosed in 1980 or so, maybe '82 or '83...)
On the other hand, my mom (who works as an Op) had the surgury and complained a lot about it -- out of work for many weeks, couldn't drive for months, still had pain, etc.
We often attribute our wrist pain immediately to computers, without looking at what other wrist-related bad habits might be contributing as well. Essentially, you need to keep pressure off the wrist tunnel as much as possible; whether you're at the computer, driving, golfing, or channel-surfing!
I was about to jump on the Litigious-Happy-Californians-Suck bandwagon, but that seems to be well covered here.
In fact, what I see are two different issues: One, that credit card companies allow online betting sites to accept their cards. Two, that web is not constrained by state or even federal geographic boundries.
It didn't say in the article, but I'm willing to bet that these gambling sites are not illegal outside of California; indeed, they might even be off-shore betting sites. I'm not sure that this issue (of accessing services around the globe that are illegal in your locality) has been addressed by the courts yet, but it'll probably come up if this case moves forward.
As far as credit card companies working with LEGAL casinos, this has been happening for a long time. You're not "purchasing" gambling; you're getting a cash advance (for which the credit card company usually charges you extra) and you're using that cash how you see fit; you can choose to walk away from the casino with all your money, or you can choose to bet it.
One possible scenario I see coming out of this: one way that the US Govt. has dealt with Child Porn coming over the Internet is to determine that this material essentially originates in the state in which it is downloaded (e.g. when someone downloads such material, the 'transaction' occurs in your location.)
Since this guy claims that he was encouraged to participate in "illegal gambling activity", couldn't the same rule be applied to him, and his computer be deemed the origination of such illegal gambling? As such, not only would he lose this case, but he would be guilty of a felony in California! Wouldn't that be justice...
"We're not really interested in what the client wants," he says. "What we do reflects what the client needs. We have our own analytic system for looking at what the structure of a name should be, and actually, tend to ignore the client's wishes" Ooh, sign me up for this service! That's just what I want, someone who not only doesn't give a hoot about my wishes, but is willing to tell the press so much.
Funniest quote: "I'm not suggesting that a company couldn't get it right with a stroke of insight or genius or luck. But if it's your own brand, how can you possibly be objective? I mean, would you name your own baby?" Redhill thinks for a minute, then backpedals. "I mean, of course you would name your own baby."
I do like Lu Cordova's comment, pretty much sums up these bunch of "naming service" wankers: "Let's face it," she says. "We know who's in these big naming companies. We went to college with some of them. They say they're experts at this and experts at that. But they're really just our peers. They don't have any special mystical powers."
It's clear from these remarks from insiders that are two types of people in this business: a bunch of overcharging snobs that just replicate their process for every customer and charge each one as if they were doing it for the first time, and a bunch of snobs who think that their linguistics skills are just so much better than the average person.
Good points about car names too; all decided by a bunch of snobby wankers who think too much of themselves and end up creating soulless names nobody cares about.
Sadly, I participated in one of these "naming" focus groups once; it was when I was doing about weekly "focus groups" for a market research company that paid me about $75 for 2 hours work a week. You get into these groups, they've just handed you (or are about to hand you) a good lump of cash, and then ask you how you feel about this-or-that. Frankly, I would have dis'd all the names I heard - that was my first thought - but I wanted to get invited back so I could keep making the bucks. So, I chose the least stupid name, sounded really excited about it, told them it conjured up all these images of [insert adjective or verb here], got my $75 bucks cash, and forgot about it. Yeah, and I can't even remember what names I picked! That's how effective those focus groups are.
Eventually, this self-aggrandizing attitude will catch up with them, I hope. There's just no room in this economy for more self-aggrandizing holier-than-thou business models. Once the fame and money wears thin, this crowd will be back doing real work somewhere.
That's not the case at all. Catalog shopping has been around for a long time; in fact computer-based shopping member-only clubs (via a private dial-up number) came and went in the 80's with little success.
It's all about prices, IMHO. Oh, yeah... and skipping out on sales tax, but that goes to price also.
This has been forwarded to my friends and family not to shop there
And, in fact, your friends and family will be much better off. I found that except for ONE item on my son's wish-list, all were cheaper at other toy sites and even at brick-and-mortar sites than at etoys.com.
Examples:
LeapFrog Phonics Bus: $19.98 at Noodle Kidoodle, $29.99 at eToys. $24.99 at ToyTime.
New Bright Power Horse Loader: $19.99 at Noodle Kidoodle, $34.99 at eToys, $21.99 at ToyTime.
The popular Elmo's Radio Controlled Roadway was also $60 at eToys up until yesterday, when ToyTime put it on sale at $39 and so eToys matched it. Up to that time, eToys was $10 more than the brick-and-mortar venue.
In my opinion, eToys is just capitalizing on the growing popularity of e-commerce without actually offering the benefit that e-commerce is supposed to provide: lower prices. They've got their gorilla advertising dollars to spend on T.V. ads to get people shopping there, but an intelligent consumer would soon quickly learn that their prices aren't the best.
>What would the world be like if the United States >fell next....?
Hmm, that depends -- what do you mean by "fell"? It is less conceivable that the United States and it's government will cease to exist anytime in our lifetimes than, say, NATO or UN.
Is there really a United States Empire right now? Sure, the U.S. is the biggest customer of international goods; sure, the U.S. holds most of the wealth of the world. But, Japan dominated commerce in the '80's; Europe is growing in importance now in the banking/financial and technology sectors perhaps to the detriment of the U.S. Geographically, all of the Empires except one that you listed still exist as countries, and in fact several (British and German) are fairly powerful nations today.
The point is that it's a complicated world, and Jon Katz is trying to simplify it, albeit a bit too much. Marxism is no more the answer than Nihlism, technocratism, or Scientology (or lack thereof.)
We need to come to grips with an International commerce, social and political model. These are growing pains; I like to think that the growth will be "good" growth, not cancer. Reverting to old, dead dogmatic philosophies that are generally isolationist in nature does not solve the problem.
The obvious answers--to restrict contracts between Microsoft and computer manufacturers, or to break up the company--will not make a crucial difference. The former might encourage the availability of computers with the GNU/Linux system preinstalled, but that is happening anyway. The latter would mainly help others proprietary application developers compete, which would only offer users alternative ways to let go of their freedom. So I propose three remedies that would help enable free software operating systems such as GNU/Linux compete technically while respecting users' freedom. These three remedies directly address the three biggest obstacles to development of free operating systems, and to giving them the capability of running programs written for Windows. They also directly address the methods Microsoft has said (in the "Halloween documents") it will use to obstruct free software. It would be most effective to use all three of these remedies together.
A few points about Stallman's remarks:
Stallman says he proposes three remedies that would "help enable free software operating systems such as GNU/Linux compete technically while respecting users' freedom." Funny, I don't remember reading anything in Penfield's FoF (or in Antitrust law in general) that says that any stated purpose is to enable free operating systems, GNU/Linux or otherwise. Stallman seems to be taking a (flawed) position that the purpose of Antitrust laws is to protect the alternative parties (e.g. Microsoft's competitors, free or otherwise) While his suggestions go toward improving software for consumers, he seems more interested in making his own agenda easier to achieve. While free (beer or speech) software might be beneficial to consumers, there's no evidence in the FoF to support that a goal would be to strengthen the Open Source movement.
Requiring Microsoft to "publish complete documentation of all interfaces between software components, all communications protocols, and all file formats" is probably the best suggestion he makes. However,...
"Require Microsoft to use its patents for defense only, in the field of software." I don't see this helping anything, I think that this issues is not addressed anywhere in the FoF that I can find. Indeed, I think this is Stallman's own agenda handily finding it's way into reparations as a result of another document, the FoF, which doesn't address patent abuse at all, that I can see.
"Require Microsoft not to certify any hardware as working with Microsoft software, unless the hardware's complete specifications have been published" And then Stallman goes on to point out that this wasn't even Microsoft's doing! Gee, let's use the DOJ FoF as a milk-crate I can stand on to espouse my own agenda!
I think that Stallman is ignoring the FoF where his personal agenda isn't addressed by it.
Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, has never included credits. The company has always considered its name to represent the work of all its internal teams, said company spokesman Adam Sohn.
I think that they overlooked some famous MS Easter Eggs of past that did, in fact, include a roster of credits for Windows (3.1? 95?) including some artistic renderings or pictures of some members, IIRC.
Yeah, here they are...
Create a new folder on the desktop and title it "and now, the moment you've all been waiting for"
Rename that folder to "we proudly present for your viewing pleasure"
Rename it the folder to "The Microsoft Windows 95 Product Team!"
Open the folder, and the credits should be displayed.
>From a earlier USA Today article, it didn't sound >like NASA was supremely confident that this thing >would work.
And sadly, that's been what has put us (US) behind in space exploration -- the loss of that "What the hell, it probably won't work but let's try it" attitude, an attitude that probably gets better results.
And, I don't mean that the US is "behind" in the traditional competitive sense of US vs. Them... I mean behind where we could be right now, given how far ahead we got in the '60's.
I pine for the days when we did things "Not because it is easy, but because it is hard." With all due respect to JFK.
Hey, I'm looking forward to the day when we can "Plug in to the old noodle", as a line from Brainstorm (1983, Douglas Trumbull directed it) puts it. I wonder if this technology can be reversed? That would be true VR, if the downside that was covered in the movie (military taking over the project) could be controlled.
I don't disagree with you philosophically, but take Red Hat (please!): RPMs, directories in different places, etc. etc. Granted, not "kernel" mods, but "different" -- and significantly different (IMHO) than any other Linux distro. Yet, nobody but nobody has adopted their modifications. I'm not a kernel geek, but I'd be willing to bet that there are kernel differences too. Hey, maybe I'm wrong.
Anyway, I am not saying that what Red Hat is doing is a Bad Thing (tm), but at the same time clearly they (RH) has no intention of letting their mods die, and no one else has any intention of adopting them. What we end up with is a distro of Linux that you must know in order to administer; e.g. you can't be a Debian admin and just walk off the street and admin a Red Hat box. To me, that represents the Bad Thing (tm) in forking.
About 20 years ago, I was talking to a commercial artist about designing me a logo and he said that this idea, which is pure bunk, has been floating around for about 80 years.
Saying that there will be "no acceptable logos left" is like saying there will be no acceptable artwork after this piece is done, no acceptable music after this one, or on a less artistic plane no more inventions after this one. Please, any creative commercial artist worth his weight will always be able to come up with a new logo design that hasn't been protected yet. Please.
Actually I was purposely ignoring the obvious illegal intent of Napster for a reason.
First off, just to make sure I wasn't missing something in the install process, I checked with a few friends and confirmed that other than what's in the legalese in the license agreement you ascend to, Napster never warns you that it's going to harvest data on your hard drive or upload it to a central server. You may be able to figure it out, being a Smart Person(tm), but then Real could conceivably contend that the same Smart Person(tm) could have drawn the same conclusion about a FREE PROGRAM they give away.
My point is that two people on Slashdot who have promoted Napster recently never mentioned it's downside, and I'd bet these people would contend that Real shoulda done so. So, OK -- we "like" Napster because they make illegal activity easier. Whatever floats your boat, fine. I still say the double standard stinks.
First, let's get the KatzBash out of the way: "would you quit babelling on relentlessly about the 'tragedy' of 'technology'? Geez!"
OK, that said: All this tragedy and feeling sorry for ourselves about the lost dreams of old Walt have nothing to do with America's lost dreams. It has everything to do with the bottom line and thus the stock price of NYSE: DIS, and how operating and upgrading theme parks and especially high-overhead Disney theme parks has fallen out of favor lately.
And I would be willing to bet that the reason why technology representation at Disney theme parks has not kept up is, quite simply, it costs money to upgrade them.
No matter how much we cry about it, until we take some dollars out of our pockets and visit these places, and then communicate our wishes for upgrades to management, DIS the 'Biz will have no reason to upgrade their parks to better reflect today's technology.
Yes, good point. But, the install process for Napster isn't obviously clear about the fact that it will catalogue your MP3s, upload the catalog to a database, and then expose that database to other users.
A better idea would be to provide you an opportunity to build the catalog you want to expose yourself. Also, you as the "host" maintainer, do not have the option to control who connects to your PC and you don't even have the option of disconnecting currently connected users when you close down Napster. And the consent to this is not made clear anywhere in their install process except in their license agreement.
For it's part, I don't defend RealNetworks abhorrent actions. But, I must admit that installing Napster imposes the same "read the legalese" mentality that Real is using as their defense.
Napster takes a list of MP3 files on my hard drive, uploads the list to a server, and sets other users out downloading those files, and it's a must have.
Real networks takes a list of music-specific data files on my hard drive, and uploads the list to a server, along with some other access data, and they're a villain.
And the only difference between them is (a) Slashdot's word that I should download Napster, and (b) some legaleze in the license or usage agreements.
The article only briefly mentions this, but I think what's telling is that Cowpland claims he used the proceeds of the sale to pay off personal debt.
This could be a growing problem for employees of tech firms; you're recruited in with low wages but lots of stock options... the logical assumption being that you can use some of the options to make up for the lost income after a wildly successful IPO.
But, what the recruiters don't tell you is that once you're hired, you're an insider -- and any activity you undertake with your stock is watched and scrutinized by the regulatory agencies. Make a sale at the wrong time because you've got to pay off some loans you took out to get by in the pre-IPO era, and you could find yourself broke or worse, in jail.
Granted, Cowpland theoretically knew that they were about to release poor results numbers. Even if his intentions were golden, his timing based on his intricate knowlege of Corel's earnings sheds very bad light on his decision to sell when he did. BUT, what if the banks were literally banging on his door?
I see this as a growing problem. I hope employees of techie companies realize what they're getting themselves into with the low-pay/high-options employment plans.
I think a few points should be made about what Jobs didn't say. First off, he never mentioned NextStep - except for once as an aside.
Second, he didn't say a thing about Apple Enterprise.
I think it's very telling. Jobs is planning on selling consumer black-boxes, he's made that fairly clear. I don't think he can make it any clearer than he doesn't want to sell to corporate America. Odd, that -- his return to Apple was on the coat-tails of NEXT Software, which is now Apple Enterprise, which he didn't mention once in his interview...
Slashdot Mirror
As prophetic as one can be, writing on Sunday about something that happened last week.
>This is like cars that do 0-60 in 2.4
>milliseconds and can go up to 250mph.
No, it's not like that at all. Cars that can go 250MPh (show me one) are irrelevant because there is no speed limit that high. Unless I've missed something, there is no speed limit on processors.
>It just doesn't matter to most people, at least
>practically-speaking
To the unwashed masses, it doesn't matter; but that's not who the chipmakers are targetting in their first releases. I work for an investment bank whose traders won't be happy with 1GHz; faster math processing = faster trading = more profit.
Also, as someone else pointed out: how important was the PII to the "average person" when it first came out? Just as important as this speed bump, I'd say. Newer, faster technology at the top pushes prices down at the bottom and all the way up. When an even newer, faster technology comes out your "average joe" won't buy anything less than n-1 tier technology.
You're right, although I think it varies from state to state. But, I've taken advantage of that law a few times.
A perceptive person might have caught on to the fact that they had a prototype, and might have contacted their lawyer prior to / in anticipation of hearing from Microsoft (although the NYPD part would throw me too) and then, through their lawyer, demand that Microsoft pay them money (you insert ghastly amount here) in order to get their unsolicited shipment back. The lawyer could at least hold the NYPD and Microsoft lawyers at bay while the recipient had some fun at Microsoft's expense.
Ah, but I guess this guy was just too honest.
Actually, I don't know about California law, but in Illinois tresspassing implies that the owner of the private property has advised you that you are on private property, that you are not welcome, and that you are to leave poste-haste.
If this is the case in California, then a browser is welcome on their property without specific permission, until they are asked to leave and then after being asked to leave, any contact with their property is considered tresspassing.
So the point is, if eBay asked a deep indexer (or whatever they're called) to stop indexing and they continued despite that, maybe they have a case.
The more interesting question is: does trespassing law apply to a computer? I'm not physically standing in the computer room or on the computer, right? Hmm... good question. I wonder if I can Sue The Spammers on these grounds!
I hint a tone of, hmmm... concern? in this comment. I haven't seen anyone address that yet.
How far could this go? Maybe we should be concerned that sending our humor e-mails to a large list of recipients could end us up in court paying AOL heaps of money for tying up their servers, even when the recipients didn't mind receiving it. It doesn't just apply to this case -- one could argue anyone who sends large volumes of e-mail for any reason could be subject to penalties. I guess that's a concern, in a very convoluted way (although the spammers that were clipped here were guilty of much worse crimes...)
One way I've deal with this (my geographically wide-spread family sends each other a dozen or so humor e-mails per day) is by signing up for one of those free listserver/majordomo services. I'm not sure that they (e.g. OneList would defend me, but I do know that by subscribing to my list, I can show that the recipients were not just passive but took active steps to become involved in my list, therefore my weekly humor digest is not "spam". At least, that's my thinking.
I'm not happy with the spector of being abused by big business because I send a lot of e-mail to their subscribers, but on the other hand spam has gotten out of control. If direct-mail marketting companies operated like they do, they would have been locked up years ago. Sure, the "spam" snail-mail can come to you without an address; likewise you can throw it away unopened or even mail it back to them in their own post-paid envelopes. BUT, if direct-mail companies sent out snail-mail with someone else's return address on the envelope, you can bet they'd be clipped quickly. Why spammers think this helps their business case, I have no idea.
In my opinion, another thing that must be stopped are so-called "web bugs", effectively something we've already all talked about here (cookies in GIFs) but attached to HTML e-mails that automatically load on Outlook Express. I guess people who use OE get what they deserve, but this practice should be illegal. Unfortunately, I can't find the Web Bug FAQ link here, but those "1 X 1 GIFs" must go!
I dealt with RSI with some simple steps; I found that the worst of my RSI was caused not by computer work but by my poor driving habits. A few minor computer tools helped also.
First, I arranged my driver's seat so that I could comfortably grip the steering wheel without bending my wrists. I keep my hands at 10 and 2, wrists strait (but not rigid) and that helped a LOT.
Next, I added one of the afformentioned keyboard strips and had a great deal of response.
I did the wrist splint for a while, it might have helped but I stopped after the pain went away and I was doing the above things at the same time too.
My pain went away about seven years ago, and has not been back (I was diagnosed in 1980 or so, maybe '82 or '83...)
On the other hand, my mom (who works as an Op) had the surgury and complained a lot about it -- out of work for many weeks, couldn't drive for months, still had pain, etc.
We often attribute our wrist pain immediately to computers, without looking at what other wrist-related bad habits might be contributing as well. Essentially, you need to keep pressure off the wrist tunnel as much as possible; whether you're at the computer, driving, golfing, or channel-surfing!
Check with your doctor, but I think the popping is a sign of arthritis...
I was about to jump on the Litigious-Happy-Californians-Suck bandwagon, but that seems to be well covered here.
In fact, what I see are two different issues: One, that credit card companies allow online betting sites to accept their cards. Two, that web is not constrained by state or even federal geographic boundries.
It didn't say in the article, but I'm willing to bet that these gambling sites are not illegal outside of California; indeed, they might even be off-shore betting sites. I'm not sure that this issue (of accessing services around the globe that are illegal in your locality) has been addressed by the courts yet, but it'll probably come up if this case moves forward.
As far as credit card companies working with LEGAL casinos, this has been happening for a long time. You're not "purchasing" gambling; you're getting a cash advance (for which the credit card company usually charges you extra) and you're using that cash how you see fit; you can choose to walk away from the casino with all your money, or you can choose to bet it.
One possible scenario I see coming out of this: one way that the US Govt. has dealt with Child Porn coming over the Internet is to determine that this material essentially originates in the state in which it is downloaded (e.g. when someone downloads such material, the 'transaction' occurs in your location.)
Since this guy claims that he was encouraged to participate in "illegal gambling activity", couldn't the same rule be applied to him, and his computer be deemed the origination of such illegal gambling? As such, not only would he lose this case, but he would be guilty of a felony in California! Wouldn't that be justice...
:-)
Ooh, sign me up for this service! That's just what I want, someone who not only doesn't give a hoot about my wishes, but is willing to tell the press so much.
Sadly, I participated in one of these "naming" focus groups once; it was when I was doing about weekly "focus groups" for a market research company that paid me about $75 for 2 hours work a week. You get into these groups, they've just handed you (or are about to hand you) a good lump of cash, and then ask you how you feel about this-or-that. Frankly, I would have dis'd all the names I heard - that was my first thought - but I wanted to get invited back so I could keep making the bucks. So, I chose the least stupid name, sounded really excited about it, told them it conjured up all these images of [insert adjective or verb here], got my $75 bucks cash, and forgot about it. Yeah, and I can't even remember what names I picked! That's how effective those focus groups are.
Eventually, this self-aggrandizing attitude will catch up with them, I hope. There's just no room in this economy for more self-aggrandizing holier-than-thou business models. Once the fame and money wears thin, this crowd will be back doing real work somewhere.
My $0.02.
That's not the case at all. Catalog shopping has been around for a long time; in fact computer-based shopping member-only clubs (via a private dial-up number) came and went in the 80's with little success.
It's all about prices, IMHO. Oh, yeah... and skipping out on sales tax, but that goes to price also.
And, in fact, your friends and family will be much better off. I found that except for ONE item on my son's wish-list, all were cheaper at other toy sites and even at brick-and-mortar sites than at etoys.com.
Examples:
In my opinion, eToys is just capitalizing on the growing popularity of e-commerce without actually offering the benefit that e-commerce is supposed to provide: lower prices. They've got their gorilla advertising dollars to spend on T.V. ads to get people shopping there, but an intelligent consumer would soon quickly learn that their prices aren't the best.
>What would the world be like if the United States
>fell next....?
Hmm, that depends -- what do you mean by "fell"? It is less conceivable that the United States and it's government will cease to exist anytime in our lifetimes than, say, NATO or UN.
Is there really a United States Empire right now? Sure, the U.S. is the biggest customer of international goods; sure, the U.S. holds most of the wealth of the world. But, Japan dominated commerce in the '80's; Europe is growing in importance now in the banking/financial and technology sectors perhaps to the detriment of the U.S. Geographically, all of the Empires except one that you listed still exist as countries, and in fact several (British and German) are fairly powerful nations today.
The point is that it's a complicated world, and Jon Katz is trying to simplify it, albeit a bit too much. Marxism is no more the answer than Nihlism, technocratism, or Scientology (or lack thereof.)
We need to come to grips with an International commerce, social and political model. These are growing pains; I like to think that the growth will be "good" growth, not cancer. Reverting to old, dead dogmatic philosophies that are generally isolationist in nature does not solve the problem.
A few points about Stallman's remarks:
I think that Stallman is ignoring the FoF where his personal agenda isn't addressed by it.
Microsoft Corp., the world's largest software maker, has never included credits. The company has always considered its name to represent the work of all its internal teams, said company spokesman Adam Sohn.
I think that they overlooked some famous MS Easter Eggs of past that did, in fact, include a roster of credits for Windows (3.1? 95?) including some artistic renderings or pictures of some members, IIRC.
Yeah, here they are...
[Courtesy of http://www.htsoft.com/easter]
>Projects which have a low probability of
>succeeding will not, for the most part, get
>better results. Weird how that works.
If NASA had that attitude in the '60's, we would never have made it to the moon.
>From a earlier USA Today article, it didn't sound
>like NASA was supremely confident that this thing
>would work.
And sadly, that's been what has put us (US) behind in space exploration -- the loss of that "What the hell, it probably won't work but let's try it" attitude, an attitude that probably gets better results.
And, I don't mean that the US is "behind" in the traditional competitive sense of US vs. Them... I mean behind where we could be right now, given how far ahead we got in the '60's.
I pine for the days when we did things "Not because it is easy, but because it is hard." With all due respect to JFK.
Hey, I'm looking forward to the day when we can "Plug in to the old noodle", as a line from Brainstorm (1983, Douglas Trumbull directed it) puts it. I wonder if this technology can be reversed? That would be true VR, if the downside that was covered in the movie (military taking over the project) could be controlled.
(For those who haven't seen it, here's a link to the Internet Movie Database on Brainstorm: ) http://us.imdb.com/Title?0085271
There, I've said it. :-)
I don't disagree with you philosophically, but take Red Hat (please!): RPMs, directories in different places, etc. etc. Granted, not "kernel" mods, but "different" -- and significantly different (IMHO) than any other Linux distro. Yet, nobody but nobody has adopted their modifications. I'm not a kernel geek, but I'd be willing to bet that there are kernel differences too. Hey, maybe I'm wrong.
Anyway, I am not saying that what Red Hat is doing is a Bad Thing (tm), but at the same time clearly they (RH) has no intention of letting their mods die, and no one else has any intention of adopting them. What we end up with is a distro of Linux that you must know in order to administer; e.g. you can't be a Debian admin and just walk off the street and admin a Red Hat box. To me, that represents the Bad Thing (tm) in forking.
About 20 years ago, I was talking to a commercial artist about designing me a logo and he said that this idea, which is pure bunk, has been floating around for about 80 years.
Saying that there will be "no acceptable logos left" is like saying there will be no acceptable artwork after this piece is done, no acceptable music after this one, or on a less artistic plane no more inventions after this one. Please, any creative commercial artist worth his weight will always be able to come up with a new logo design that hasn't been protected yet. Please.
Actually I was purposely ignoring the obvious illegal intent of Napster for a reason.
First off, just to make sure I wasn't missing something in the install process, I checked with a few friends and confirmed that other than what's in the legalese in the license agreement you ascend to, Napster never warns you that it's going to harvest data on your hard drive or upload it to a central server. You may be able to figure it out, being a Smart Person(tm), but then Real could conceivably contend that the same Smart Person(tm) could have drawn the same conclusion about a FREE PROGRAM they give away.
My point is that two people on Slashdot who have promoted Napster recently never mentioned it's downside, and I'd bet these people would contend that Real shoulda done so. So, OK -- we "like" Napster because they make illegal activity easier. Whatever floats your boat, fine. I still say the double standard stinks.
First, let's get the KatzBash out of the way: "would you quit babelling on relentlessly about the 'tragedy' of 'technology'? Geez!"
OK, that said: All this tragedy and feeling sorry for ourselves about the lost dreams of old Walt have nothing to do with America's lost dreams. It has everything to do with the bottom line and thus the stock price of NYSE: DIS, and how operating and upgrading theme parks and especially high-overhead Disney theme parks has fallen out of favor lately.
And I would be willing to bet that the reason why technology representation at Disney theme parks has not kept up is, quite simply, it costs money to upgrade them.
No matter how much we cry about it, until we take some dollars out of our pockets and visit these places, and then communicate our wishes for upgrades to management, DIS the 'Biz will have no reason to upgrade their parks to better reflect today's technology.
Yes, good point. But, the install process for Napster isn't obviously clear about the fact that it will catalogue your MP3s, upload the catalog to a database, and then expose that database to other users.
A better idea would be to provide you an opportunity to build the catalog you want to expose yourself. Also, you as the "host" maintainer, do not have the option to control who connects to your PC and you don't even have the option of disconnecting currently connected users when you close down Napster. And the consent to this is not made clear anywhere in their install process except in their license agreement.
For it's part, I don't defend RealNetworks abhorrent actions. But, I must admit that installing Napster imposes the same "read the legalese" mentality that Real is using as their defense.
Let's see...
Napster takes a list of MP3 files on my hard drive, uploads the list to a server, and sets other users out downloading those files, and it's a must have.
Real networks takes a list of music-specific data files on my hard drive, and uploads the list to a server, along with some other access data, and they're a villain.
And the only difference between them is (a) Slashdot's word that I should download Napster, and (b) some legaleze in the license or usage agreements.
The article only briefly mentions this, but I think what's telling is that Cowpland claims he used the proceeds of the sale to pay off personal debt.
This could be a growing problem for employees of tech firms; you're recruited in with low wages but lots of stock options... the logical assumption being that you can use some of the options to make up for the lost income after a wildly successful IPO.
But, what the recruiters don't tell you is that once you're hired, you're an insider -- and any activity you undertake with your stock is watched and scrutinized by the regulatory agencies. Make a sale at the wrong time because you've got to pay off some loans you took out to get by in the pre-IPO era, and you could find yourself broke or worse, in jail.
Granted, Cowpland theoretically knew that they were about to release poor results numbers. Even if his intentions were golden, his timing based on his intricate knowlege of Corel's earnings sheds very bad light on his decision to sell when he did. BUT, what if the banks were literally banging on his door?
I see this as a growing problem. I hope employees of techie companies realize what they're getting themselves into with the low-pay/high-options employment plans.
I think a few points should be made about what Jobs didn't say. First off, he never mentioned NextStep - except for once as an aside.
Second, he didn't say a thing about Apple Enterprise.
I think it's very telling. Jobs is planning on selling consumer black-boxes, he's made that fairly clear. I don't think he can make it any clearer than he doesn't want to sell to corporate America. Odd, that -- his return to Apple was on the coat-tails of NEXT Software, which is now Apple Enterprise, which he didn't mention once in his interview...