Did Microsoft bring PCs more into the maintstream? Perhaps, but the reason that they were the ones to do so is because they were the only ones who were there. Why was no one else there? Because they had been scared away or driven from the market by Microsoft.
Did Microsoft make it easy for the average person to use a computer? Probably not. Computers today are hard to use, and it's only massive brainwashing efforts that convince people otherwise. Having watched lots of average people use MSware, I have to conclude that Microsoft products are not easy to use, at least not easy to use to accomplish anything halfway sophisticated.
Not everything that Microsoft has done is utter crap, but remember that one important reason why nobody has done anything better is that there is nobody else. It's easy to be the best when you're the only game in town. Who is to say that, had there been healthy competition over the past decade, there wouldn't be many more people using computers than there are today, and that these computers wouldn't be more powerful and easy to learn and use?
Microsoft didn't revolutionize the computer industry. They took what was probably going to happen anyway and monopolized it so that it looked like they were bringing technology to the masses. In reality, I suspect that they have hampered the development of real, consumer-friendly computers that work reliably and allow people to work effectively and efficiently. We'll never know for sure, of course. That's why it is important not to allow these sorts of situations to develop.
The crux of this argument rests on the assumption that removing one thing from history would create a void that wouldn't be filled. But, in the long run, the effects of these accidents of history are probably quite small.
The Earth-moon combination might be rare, but if there are are about a hundred billion stars in the galaxy, and about 1/2 of them are unary stars (IIRC, about 1/2 to 2/3 of stars are thought to be in binary systems), and most of these have planets (which is, I believe, widely suspected by astronomers), then we have 500 million stars with, say, an average of 9 planets each. Rare as an Earthlike planetary configuration might be, it seems likely that at least some of these 4.5 billion planets (give or take a few billion) orbiting single stars would have Earth-like conditions.
Sixty-five million years ago, a meteor caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other species. But mass extinctions are common. IIRC, an average every 200 million years or so some catastrophe or other drives most species (90% or so) to extinction. The first occurred when oxygen-excreting bacteria nearly suffocated themselves with their own waste gasses. That is to say, the chances of a random species surviving for more than 200 million years is quite small.
The development of intelligent life is something that may or may not happen as a matter of natural evolution. Remember, though, that there are other species besides humans that are highly intelligent, including some who form complex societies and who make tools. If humans didn't evolve, who is to say that, 10 million years from now, chimpanzees or dolphins wouldn't have developed a similar level of intelligence?
The black death may have promoted technological advancement, but it was hardly the only event. Other events and conditions have spurred technological change, both within Europe and without. Don't forget, too, the setbacks incurred, especially in Europe. Some of the technology and knowledge lost to Europeans after the fall of the Roman Empire was not regained until the 19th or 20th Century, yet this did not prevent us from achieving the level of technological advancement we now have. Technology would have advanced without the Black Plague; perhaps a little more slowly, but advance nonetheless.
The efforts of a few brilliant individuals are, IMO, overestimated. In the short term, their contributions are enormous, but someone else would have eventually come to the same conclusions. The Chinese invented printing centuries before Gutenburg developed his press, and he wasn't the only one in Europe working on that technology either. Calculus was invented simultaneously and independently by Newton and Leibnitz. Einstein was the first to figure out relativitiy, but suppose he had been run down by a bus in 1900. Would someone else have figured it out in the 1930s? 1970s? Maybe it would take until the year 2100, but probably someone would come up with something similar. To us, it is a big deal because we might not have nuclear weapons today if Einstein's ideas had to wait until 2100 to be discovered, but it probably won't make too much difference 10,000 years from now.
As fot a long period of time without a natural catastrophe, it has only been a few tens of millions of years. That's not especially long. I believe that life on Earth is generally thought to be about 3.5 billion years old, and with the Sun having a natural life of about 5 billion years more, that gives us a window of 8.5 billion years or so to have a mass extinction-free period long enough to allow intelligent life to prosper.
Don't confuse how things happened with how they need to happen; the accidents of Earth's development were sufficient to bring about a technological civilization, but it doesn't seem that these accidents were at all necessary causes.
According to the NYU FAQ, "the full cost of textbooks and manuals for four years of dental school is about $3000." They're offering the first year of VitalBook for $600, and each remaining year for $1200. So, for four years of dental school using VitalBook, you pay $4200, for a total savings of -$1200, less the cost of the Apple G3 Powerbook, if you don't happen to already have one for some reason. (NYU strongly recommends the one sold by, surprise surprise, the NYU Computer Store.)
Imagine that! You save -$1200, get to buy a tangerine-coloured laptop, and all you have to give up for this privilege is ownership of anything. Well, I guess you get to keep the powerbook.
This sounds like as much of a scam on NYU's part as on Vital Source's.
Interestingly, though, NYU says that participation in this is voluntary, while Vital Source's release to publishers indicates that it's partner universities mandate the use of their technologies. Someone seems to be lying.
It isn't quite that simple. It can be extremely difficult to raise kids. The skills involved in managing jobs, balancing budgets and providing a healthy, nurturing environment are considerable, and a lot of people are in difficult situations.
I believe that most parents do want to be good parents, but I believe that they also think they need help--and that they are right.
All of society has a vested interest in seeing its children raised well. Society has at least this interest, if not an outright responsibility, to help raise kids.
That doesn't justify censorware: blindfolding children doesn't help them -- it just prevents them from learning about things like sex, drugs and violence before they have to deal with them. The real answer is to be more, not less open with our kids. When they're interested in sex or drugs, encourage them to ask questions, and give them straightforward, honest answers. When your kid stumbles on to some Web porno, don't freak out and break out the NetNanny; either they're too young to really understand (or care about) what they're looking at, or they're curious about it, and are going to find out about it one way or the other; better it be from their parents. Let them know exactly what porno is and why it exists. Maybe even let them know that you would rather they not visit those sites until they're a bit older. (Personally, I don't think that a little porno is harmful for anyone. Besides, the writing is aimed squarely at 13-year olds with a willing suspension of disbelief.) At any rate, wouldn't it be better to steer them towards Penthouse than to have them find Hot Cheerleader Sluts on their own?
The real problem is not that parents aren't doing enough, but that there is a pervasive belief that if you simply deny children their curiosity, they'll never get into trouble. Ignorance is ultimately what kills.
You can't blame the poor admin. Show me where, in the MSCE training manuals, it tells you that having a null password is a bad thing.
Re:Linux rehashs 70s era OS.. wow, special.
on
A Praise To Unix
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I think that the future of computing lies closer to the Unix command interface of the 1970s than it does to the Macintosh GUI.
The Mac GUI may have made computers easier to use for a lot of new users (though this is arguable; I don't recall too many people complaining that command lines or BASIC interpreters were hard to use before the GUI became the standard interface) but it has also restricted the level of sophistication with which people can interact with their machines.
When people communicate with each other, they use complex languages that can take years to learn and a lifetime to master, but which are capable of expressing very complex, detailed, abstract ideas with a great deal of subtlety. By comparison, the Unix command shell is a primitive, simple language, but the Mac GUI is the linguistic equivalent of being restricted to pointing at things and making grunting noises. It only lets you deal with one object at a time, and it only lets you deal with actual objects (things that are right in front of you) as opposed to ideas.
Over the past 15 years or so, most "advances" in personal computers have been made in adding feature after feature to existing structures. Some have been of some incremental value, but many have been of little practical value, and the overall effect has been to create an incredible jumble that point-and-click, even when augmented with numerous cascading menus and even the command interfaces that P&C was supposed to replace, can't effectively deal with.
The Unix interface holds more promise as a base on which to build future interfaces which allow users to interact with computers in a way which is both sophisticated and which more closely models the way humans interact with one another.
Why just sex? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a.kil TLD for violent content, a.big TLD for bigoted or racist content, an.evl for cruel and sadistic content? Unlike sex, these things at least seem to be objectionable human behaviours.
Censoring pornography is done more for the comfort of the parent than the welfare of the child. Nobody really thinks seriously about how flawed it is to actively deny to a young child that sexuality, one of humanity's strongest impulses and most important aspects of soceity and culture, even exists. No attempt is made to distinguish between healthy expressions of sexuality and the truly sleazy or exploitative. It's much easier for the parent to pretend that it all doesn't exist and deny the child any exposure to sex until they're old enough to learn it from their friends.
How about paying artists in advance for the work they do. Instead of paying an artist, be it a musician, author, computer game developer, or whatnot, for the right to consume something they've already created, pay them to create something new for the benefit of yourself and the public; once created, others would be free to copy, use and make derivative works from the creation.
This could be accomplished in a number of ways. One way is to commission works from artists or developers. An individual or a coroporate body, such as a business or a fan club, would commission a work from an artist for a fixed sum of money. In return, the artist would supply one master copy of that item to the commissioner. The commissioner could keep the copy to itself, make and sell copies, or give them away, but anyone who happened to acquire a copy, either for free or for fee, would be free to use, copy, redistribute and make derivative works from it. The original artist might agree not to distribute further copies, or might be free to sell additional copies to others.
A second approach to this method would be to take something like the King approach. A new artist would create and release, for free, a work of art to the public in order to establish a reputation as an artist with something unique and desirable to offer. After this, the artist could announce a price and wait for that much money to be paid before creating a second work. The artist could accept input from those making payments. Third party brokers could play a role in this by collecting money and holding it in escrow until enough had been accumulated, and then transferring it to the artist (minus a service fee), ensuring that the artist wasn't cheating by pocketing the money and claiming that not enough was received. Once commissioned, the artist would be legally obliged to produce a product within a certain span of time, or else pay back all the money, with interest.
A third approach would be to develop fan clubs (either grassroots or sponsored by the artist or a third party fan club organization), where fans of a particular artist would join together to retain an artist. The artist would request a particular salary, and the fan club would charge dues equal to (salary + administrative costs) / members. If the artist demanded too high a salary or produced to little work of too low quality, fans would quit the club, driving up prices and either leaving a small core of very loyal fans willing to pay high prices for the artist's continued work, or else no one at all, forcing the artist to reduce salary demands, increase quality or quantity of output, or find another line of work. This structure would also give paying fans a much louder voice: dues-paying members could offer suggestions and expect that these suggestions will be given some weight.
There are others too, I'm sure. And none of them will be perfect or closed to all possible abuse. Ideas like these would need some refinement before they could be practically implemented, but commissioning or retaining artists is hardly a new or untested idea; the real challenge comes in getting the commissions or retainers payed collectively by fans instead of by a single wealthy patron. But even this isn't exactly a new problem; many projects have been carried out using the contributions of many anonymous individuals.
I don't mind software that's tied to a particular platform. While portability across platforms is a good thing, it isn't essential. I don't have any problem using software that's only available on one platform.
The problems, IMHO, are caused not by single-platform applications, but by single-application data formats. Software is just a tool for manipulating data. It doesn't especially matter which tool you use on which platform to manipulate a particular set of data, so long as you can transfer that same data to another platform and not be SOL. MS Office isn't bad because its only available for Windows, but because it works with data formats that aren't readily exportable to other platforms or applications.
Having said that, I do recognize the value of an application that runs across multiple hardware and software platforms. But, I don't see cross-platform software as being nearly as important as cross-platform data.
Many will herald it as a major victory for freedom lovers everywhere if Napster is successful in its defense. But think for a moment. The music industry at present is fuelled by large amount of cash. Sure, much of it is corporate gluttony, but can you imagine what would happen to music as an industry if musical copyright went flying right out the window?
It's forseeable that one can put together decent quality musical recordings on a slim budget. But what about promotions, tours, music videos, movie soundtracks, and everything else that makes the music industry hum while sating consumer appetites? Will any appreciable portion of the music we know and love continue on without the "protection" of copyright?
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the music industry generates billions of dollars a year. That means that people are willing to pay a lot of money to obtain musical recordings, see concerts, buy T-shirts, etc. In a free market economy, if you have a lot of people willing to pay a lot of money for a service that a lot of other people are willing to render, someone will find a way to make it happen. In fact, if you took the record industry out of the picture, it would free up a lot of cash that could be used to buy even more music.
I can't believe that people believe that, without copyright, the music and movie industries would die. Please remember, people, that Ron Popeil can make tons of money selling all kinds of crap. Someone got rich selling hair in a can! I can't believe that, somehow, making money selling movies and music--things people attach very high values to--copyright or no, is somehow harder than making people shell out $19.95 for a can of spray-on hai
Remember: not everything is obvious to all people. The people being duped by these kinds of scams aren't all illiterate trailer trash. They're normal people, and normal people routinely do things that require a lot more intelligence than some people like to give credit for.
The problem is not that people are dumb, but that the human animal has predictable behaviour traits. Psychologists and human behaviourists have studied us as a species for some time now, and they've learned a lot about how we work, what motivates us, and how we can be manipulated. They know our back doors.
Some unscrupulous people use this knowledge of human behaviour in the fields of confidence scams, telemarketing and shystering. In the corporate world, manipulating people into doing things (especially making purchases) that are against their own best interests is considered just part of doing business; there's no shame in using people's psychological makeup against themselves, so long as it results in increased profits for the business.
Attempts to mislead abound. Offers for "free" goods that in fact require substantial supplementary purchases to obtain. TV commercials where actors with stethoscopes and white lab coats pimp pain relievers and nicotene patches, never outright claiming to be doctors, but trying very hard to imply to the viewer that they are medical authorities. Music, perfumes and pheramones pumped into boutiques to put consumers into a state of mind where they are better disposed to making purchases. There is a giant industry dedicated to manipulating people into making purchases that they ordinarily wouldn't make, using a variety of methods both obvious and subtle.
Many of us realize that others are attempting to manipulate them, and so have trained ourselves to be suspicious when we hear trigger words like free. But we have trained ourselves to act against our basic nature. We can't expect that everyone is so disciplined as to completely abandon their basic human nature and treat everything they see and hear with suspicion. In fact, this is really undesirable; it's unconscionable to say that we have to give up being human just to protect ourselves from unscrupulous marketers. A better solution is to demand a higher ethical standard from marketers; to place limits on the kinds of scams they can try to pull.
A healthy dose of suspicion and skepticism is probably an essential defense mechanism in modern society, but that does not mean that we should sit by and allow advertisers to try to decieve, mislead and manipulate and then blame those who fall for it for failing to suppress their natural instincts as human beings.
There are two problems with hyperbole. The first is that it is brandished routinely and thoughtlessly: nothing is bad, it has to be the worst. The second is that someone always insists on taking it as an integral part of the argument and, in attacking it, ignores the real points being made. In the process, what could have been a fruitful discussion is lost amidst an angry, meaningless argument over a poor choice of words.
Personally, I don't buy your claim that they are unrelated. Either you believe that people have the right to some say on what is done with their intellectual work (copyright, GPL, whatever) or you don't and people can do whatever they want
Yes, with the relevant bit being some say. It is not an all-or-nothing affair. You can conceive of a system whereby authors have a say over what is done with their intellectual work that includes both copyright and GPL, both, or neither. There is nothing essential about accepting the premises of one in order to accept the premises of the other, nor is it necessary to accept the premises of either in order to give authors some control over their work. There is no particular reason why the type and level of control afforded to authors by the laws could not be greater or lesser or different in nature. Not copyright nor GPL nor the two together can be said with any certainty to strike the perfect balance between the interests of authors and the interests of the public.
Both copyright and GPL are arbitrary sets of rules. Copyright says, "I will make this work public, but I retain the sole right to make copies of the work. You can do whatever you like with it, except reproduce it." GPL says, "I will make this work public. You can do whatever you like with it, except redistribute it under any conditions other than the ones set forth in this license."
Mechanically, GPL uses copyright to work, but its essence is not predicated on current copyright law. you could, for example, replace copyright law entirely with the GPL. That is, the only legal control authors would have over their work is the right to restrict non-GPLed redistribution. This is less control than they have now. Others might advocate more control, including control over who may access the work, control over who may use the ideas contained within the work and how, and so forth. The point is, the question not only of whether, but of how much and what kind of control authors should have over their works is most definitely a subject open to debate, and it is most certainly not improper to draw moral or ethical distinctions between different kinds of control.
That being said, I am not making a particular argument in support of either GPL or copyright (or both or neither). I am, however, saying that legal and moral aren't the same things, and that we can make fine-grained distinctions, where appropriate, between what is right and what is wrong.
In the first place, I have to ask if there are any specific individuals who are doing this, or are you simply making the assumption that Slashdot poster ergo pro Napster et pro GPL?
Secondly, one fundamental difference between the two is that copyright is intended to enforce non-sharing while GPL is intended to enforce sharing. Though GPL purports to use copyright law as its legal foundation (one must use the tools that actually exist), it does not purport to do the same kind of thing as copyright. There is nothing inconsistent with supporting the principles of the GPL and not supporting the principles of copyright. (It is true that, legally speaking, the two go hand in hand, but that is a function of the laws of our society and not of the underlying rationales behind GPL and copyright.)
Thirdly, there is a big difference between Napster itself and the use of Napster to contravene copyright laws. Even if most users of Napster do use it to do things which are illegal if not unethical, it does not automatically mean that Napster itself, which is nothing more than an information sharing tool, is corrupt and indefensible.
One way to do it might be to publish the first few chapters on your Web site, and offer the full novel via email for a modest sum.
Alternatively, you could offer the entire novel for download, but post a notice that writing the book was hard work, and you expect a payment of about $X from anyone who reads the book and enjoys it. Note that if enough people enjoyed your work enough to send you $X (where X is maybe 1-3, since they're paying all of the printing and binding costs), it would encourage you to write additional works. You could, for example, set a base fee of $1, and ask for $2 if the reader found the novel to be very good and $3 if the reader found the novel to be excellent.
Alternatively, you could charge per download. That's the simplest, most straightforward and most traditional way to do it.
Don't forget that a printed novel will likely be (legally) read by many more people than copies of it are sold. People borrow novels from their friends and from their public libraries all the time. If you publish your novel electronically, soome people will undoubtedly make copies for their friends, but I don't think that this kind of copying will actually have a significant effect on sales, assuming that most of the people who receive "pirated" copies of your novel would have simply, legally, borrowed the original from their friend or the library had it been in print.
The only singificant threat to your power to control the distribution of your work is if someone posts the work publically. If you opt for the "pay per download or email" model, this may work against you, and you may want to be vigilant about enforcing your copyright. OTOH, if you choose the "please pay me if you enjoyed this" method, you are implicitly betting that people will reward you because they liked your work and want to show their appreciation and encourage further writings. In that case, it would be to your advantage to have your work as widely distributed as possible.
I can see it now: Microsoft buys Canada, lays off all of us, and changes the name of the country to "Microsoft Nation 2.0".
Nation 3.0 will follow the next year, but it will be bigger, buggier and more expensive than the original. We'll be forced to upgrade, though, because Nation 3.0 passports cannot be correctly parsed by Nation 2.0 immigration officials.
At least one thing won't change: whenever we complain to our government about social and economic problems, they'll tell us that a fix will be included in the next upgrade. And said fix will still break a bunch of other things that used to work just fine. I guess it won't be so different after al
If we had this kind of technology on D-Day in 1944, many Americans would be spending Memorial Day visiting grandpas instead of gravesites.
One of the main issues that Ignatieff raises is that this is not the case. In fact, the Allies did bomb the hell out of Germany, killing millions and gutting the German infrastructure far worse than anything done to Iraq or Bosnia. And yet, the tanks and troops still had to be brought in, because it was not sufficient to merely kill everyone in Europe and destroy all of its cities; Europe had to be liberated, not destroyed. Political change had to be effected; it was not enough to simply send the enemy running for cover and then leave them alone to regroup and to continue their practices on a limited scale. No one would have escaped the death camps were it not for Allied soldiers physically liberating them.
You can blow up a lot of tanks and destroy an country's infrastructure to the point where its leaders retreat to lick their wounds, but you can't force a lasting peace or real polticial change through the exclusive use cruise missiles and smart bombs.
If the objectives were different; if the Allies just wanted the Germans to disappear, then perhaps nuking all of them would have worked. (Bear in mind, though, that this would have involved obliterating Norther France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and many other places that were under the control of the Third Reich.) But there is a real difference between having the objective of destroying the enemy and having the objective of intervening on behalf of a victimized group and putting an end to the oppression or genocid
Re:Some copyright is good (heresy, heresy!)
on
At The Crossroads
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While it's true that copyright can and does create a financial incentive to both proactively and responsively create, that doesn't necessarily mean copyright is good. An analogy: smoking cigarettes can relieve stress, but does that mean that people should smoke at least a certain number of cigarettes? There are other, perhaps more effective, ways to relieve stress, many of which lack the harmful side effects that cigarette smoking has.
If it weren't for copyright, you may not be inclined to proactively write another book, meaning you might not be willing to write a book that nobody asked for and then trying to sell copies to people who would hopefully be interested. As long as people treat ideas as property: objects that can be traded, the lack of copyright may well prevent many people from writing. Many would continue to write for the personal satisfaction it gave them, but it is unlikely that very many would write full-time or invest money in a book that would not likely make a profit.
On the other hand, if you were to write a book for a paying audience (whether that be an individual or a collective), you'd be under contract and get paid for the service of using your creative talents to produce a work that people actually want, rather than creating a piece of ethereal "property" that nobody asked for, and then hoping that enough people want it that your "ownership" of the reproduction rights makes it worthwhile to have written.
That's a different model than people are used to, and a lot of people will say it's impractical or impossible. I find those arguments to be dismissive and defeatist; they ignore the incredible ingenuity that humans have used to solve much more difficult problems. The greatest barrier is the inertia in the current system. Those who have a vested interest in the current model will fight tooth and nail to keep it; even if, as I believe would be the case, a copyrightless society where creative people sold services rather than property, would be a richer and more productive one for nearly everyone. Since we have copyright, copyright owners have a vested interest in holding on to it and no interest in finding alternative solutions. If copyright were abolished, this situation would change very quickly, and the same energies that are now directed towards preserving and strengthening copyright protection would be turned towards finding an alternative model for creative people to earn a living.
Slashdot Mirror
Did Microsoft bring PCs more into the maintstream? Perhaps, but the reason that they were the ones to do so is because they were the only ones who were there. Why was no one else there? Because they had been scared away or driven from the market by Microsoft.
Did Microsoft make it easy for the average person to use a computer? Probably not. Computers today are hard to use, and it's only massive brainwashing efforts that convince people otherwise. Having watched lots of average people use MSware, I have to conclude that Microsoft products are not easy to use, at least not easy to use to accomplish anything halfway sophisticated.
Not everything that Microsoft has done is utter crap, but remember that one important reason why nobody has done anything better is that there is nobody else. It's easy to be the best when you're the only game in town. Who is to say that, had there been healthy competition over the past decade, there wouldn't be many more people using computers than there are today, and that these computers wouldn't be more powerful and easy to learn and use?
Microsoft didn't revolutionize the computer industry. They took what was probably going to happen anyway and monopolized it so that it looked like they were bringing technology to the masses. In reality, I suspect that they have hampered the development of real, consumer-friendly computers that work reliably and allow people to work effectively and efficiently. We'll never know for sure, of course. That's why it is important not to allow these sorts of situations to develop.
(My star count calculations, you will note, are too small by a factor of 100, so that's 450 billion potential Earths, not 4.5)
The crux of this argument rests on the assumption that removing one thing from history would create a void that wouldn't be filled. But, in the long run, the effects of these accidents of history are probably quite small.
The Earth-moon combination might be rare, but if there are are about a hundred billion stars in the galaxy, and about 1/2 of them are unary stars (IIRC, about 1/2 to 2/3 of stars are thought to be in binary systems), and most of these have planets (which is, I believe, widely suspected by astronomers), then we have 500 million stars with, say, an average of 9 planets each. Rare as an Earthlike planetary configuration might be, it seems likely that at least some of these 4.5 billion planets (give or take a few billion) orbiting single stars would have Earth-like conditions.
Sixty-five million years ago, a meteor caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other species. But mass extinctions are common. IIRC, an average every 200 million years or so some catastrophe or other drives most species (90% or so) to extinction. The first occurred when oxygen-excreting bacteria nearly suffocated themselves with their own waste gasses. That is to say, the chances of a random species surviving for more than 200 million years is quite small.
The development of intelligent life is something that may or may not happen as a matter of natural evolution. Remember, though, that there are other species besides humans that are highly intelligent, including some who form complex societies and who make tools. If humans didn't evolve, who is to say that, 10 million years from now, chimpanzees or dolphins wouldn't have developed a similar level of intelligence?
The black death may have promoted technological advancement, but it was hardly the only event. Other events and conditions have spurred technological change, both within Europe and without. Don't forget, too, the setbacks incurred, especially in Europe. Some of the technology and knowledge lost to Europeans after the fall of the Roman Empire was not regained until the 19th or 20th Century, yet this did not prevent us from achieving the level of technological advancement we now have. Technology would have advanced without the Black Plague; perhaps a little more slowly, but advance nonetheless.
The efforts of a few brilliant individuals are, IMO, overestimated. In the short term, their contributions are enormous, but someone else would have eventually come to the same conclusions. The Chinese invented printing centuries before Gutenburg developed his press, and he wasn't the only one in Europe working on that technology either. Calculus was invented simultaneously and independently by Newton and Leibnitz. Einstein was the first to figure out relativitiy, but suppose he had been run down by a bus in 1900. Would someone else have figured it out in the 1930s? 1970s? Maybe it would take until the year 2100, but probably someone would come up with something similar. To us, it is a big deal because we might not have nuclear weapons today if Einstein's ideas had to wait until 2100 to be discovered, but it probably won't make too much difference 10,000 years from now.
As fot a long period of time without a natural catastrophe, it has only been a few tens of millions of years. That's not especially long. I believe that life on Earth is generally thought to be about 3.5 billion years old, and with the Sun having a natural life of about 5 billion years more, that gives us a window of 8.5 billion years or so to have a mass extinction-free period long enough to allow intelligent life to prosper.
Don't confuse how things happened with how they need to happen; the accidents of Earth's development were sufficient to bring about a technological civilization, but it doesn't seem that these accidents were at all necessary causes.
According to the NYU FAQ, "the full cost of textbooks and manuals for four years of dental school is about $3000." They're offering the first year of VitalBook for $600, and each remaining year for $1200. So, for four years of dental school using VitalBook, you pay $4200, for a total savings of -$1200, less the cost of the Apple G3 Powerbook, if you don't happen to already have one for some reason. (NYU strongly recommends the one sold by, surprise surprise, the NYU Computer Store.)
Imagine that! You save -$1200, get to buy a tangerine-coloured laptop, and all you have to give up for this privilege is ownership of anything. Well, I guess you get to keep the powerbook.
This sounds like as much of a scam on NYU's part as on Vital Source's.
Interestingly, though, NYU says that participation in this is voluntary, while Vital Source's release to publishers indicates that it's partner universities mandate the use of their technologies. Someone seems to be lying.
It isn't quite that simple. It can be extremely difficult to raise kids. The skills involved in managing jobs, balancing budgets and providing a healthy, nurturing environment are considerable, and a lot of people are in difficult situations.
I believe that most parents do want to be good parents, but I believe that they also think they need help--and that they are right.
All of society has a vested interest in seeing its children raised well. Society has at least this interest, if not an outright responsibility, to help raise kids.
That doesn't justify censorware: blindfolding children doesn't help them -- it just prevents them from learning about things like sex, drugs and violence before they have to deal with them. The real answer is to be more, not less open with our kids. When they're interested in sex or drugs, encourage them to ask questions, and give them straightforward, honest answers. When your kid stumbles on to some Web porno, don't freak out and break out the NetNanny; either they're too young to really understand (or care about) what they're looking at, or they're curious about it, and are going to find out about it one way or the other; better it be from their parents. Let them know exactly what porno is and why it exists. Maybe even let them know that you would rather they not visit those sites until they're a bit older. (Personally, I don't think that a little porno is harmful for anyone. Besides, the writing is aimed squarely at 13-year olds with a willing suspension of disbelief.) At any rate, wouldn't it be better to steer them towards Penthouse than to have them find Hot Cheerleader Sluts on their own?
The real problem is not that parents aren't doing enough, but that there is a pervasive belief that if you simply deny children their curiosity, they'll never get into trouble. Ignorance is ultimately what kills.
You can't blame the poor admin. Show me where, in the MSCE training manuals, it tells you that having a null password is a bad thing.
I think that the future of computing lies closer to the Unix command interface of the 1970s than it does to the Macintosh GUI.
The Mac GUI may have made computers easier to use for a lot of new users (though this is arguable; I don't recall too many people complaining that command lines or BASIC interpreters were hard to use before the GUI became the standard interface) but it has also restricted the level of sophistication with which people can interact with their machines.
When people communicate with each other, they use complex languages that can take years to learn and a lifetime to master, but which are capable of expressing very complex, detailed, abstract ideas with a great deal of subtlety. By comparison, the Unix command shell is a primitive, simple language, but the Mac GUI is the linguistic equivalent of being restricted to pointing at things and making grunting noises. It only lets you deal with one object at a time, and it only lets you deal with actual objects (things that are right in front of you) as opposed to ideas.
Over the past 15 years or so, most "advances" in personal computers have been made in adding feature after feature to existing structures. Some have been of some incremental value, but many have been of little practical value, and the overall effect has been to create an incredible jumble that point-and-click, even when augmented with numerous cascading menus and even the command interfaces that P&C was supposed to replace, can't effectively deal with.
The Unix interface holds more promise as a base on which to build future interfaces which allow users to interact with computers in a way which is both sophisticated and which more closely models the way humans interact with one another.
Why just sex? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a .kil TLD for violent content, a .big TLD for bigoted or racist content, an .evl for cruel and sadistic content? Unlike sex, these things at least seem to be objectionable human behaviours.
Censoring pornography is done more for the comfort of the parent than the welfare of the child. Nobody really thinks seriously about how flawed it is to actively deny to a young child that sexuality, one of humanity's strongest impulses and most important aspects of soceity and culture, even exists. No attempt is made to distinguish between healthy expressions of sexuality and the truly sleazy or exploitative. It's much easier for the parent to pretend that it all doesn't exist and deny the child any exposure to sex until they're old enough to learn it from their friends.
How about paying artists in advance for the work they do. Instead of paying an artist, be it a musician, author, computer game developer, or whatnot, for the right to consume something they've already created, pay them to create something new for the benefit of yourself and the public; once created, others would be free to copy, use and make derivative works from the creation.
This could be accomplished in a number of ways. One way is to commission works from artists or developers. An individual or a coroporate body, such as a business or a fan club, would commission a work from an artist for a fixed sum of money. In return, the artist would supply one master copy of that item to the commissioner. The commissioner could keep the copy to itself, make and sell copies, or give them away, but anyone who happened to acquire a copy, either for free or for fee, would be free to use, copy, redistribute and make derivative works from it. The original artist might agree not to distribute further copies, or might be free to sell additional copies to others.
A second approach to this method would be to take something like the King approach. A new artist would create and release, for free, a work of art to the public in order to establish a reputation as an artist with something unique and desirable to offer. After this, the artist could announce a price and wait for that much money to be paid before creating a second work. The artist could accept input from those making payments. Third party brokers could play a role in this by collecting money and holding it in escrow until enough had been accumulated, and then transferring it to the artist (minus a service fee), ensuring that the artist wasn't cheating by pocketing the money and claiming that not enough was received. Once commissioned, the artist would be legally obliged to produce a product within a certain span of time, or else pay back all the money, with interest.
A third approach would be to develop fan clubs (either grassroots or sponsored by the artist or a third party fan club organization), where fans of a particular artist would join together to retain an artist. The artist would request a particular salary, and the fan club would charge dues equal to (salary + administrative costs) / members. If the artist demanded too high a salary or produced to little work of too low quality, fans would quit the club, driving up prices and either leaving a small core of very loyal fans willing to pay high prices for the artist's continued work, or else no one at all, forcing the artist to reduce salary demands, increase quality or quantity of output, or find another line of work. This structure would also give paying fans a much louder voice: dues-paying members could offer suggestions and expect that these suggestions will be given some weight.
There are others too, I'm sure. And none of them will be perfect or closed to all possible abuse. Ideas like these would need some refinement before they could be practically implemented, but commissioning or retaining artists is hardly a new or untested idea; the real challenge comes in getting the commissions or retainers payed collectively by fans instead of by a single wealthy patron. But even this isn't exactly a new problem; many projects have been carried out using the contributions of many anonymous individuals.
I don't mind software that's tied to a particular platform. While portability across platforms is a good thing, it isn't essential. I don't have any problem using software that's only available on one platform.
The problems, IMHO, are caused not by single-platform applications, but by single-application data formats. Software is just a tool for manipulating data. It doesn't especially matter which tool you use on which platform to manipulate a particular set of data, so long as you can transfer that same data to another platform and not be SOL. MS Office isn't bad because its only available for Windows, but because it works with data formats that aren't readily exportable to other platforms or applications.
Having said that, I do recognize the value of an application that runs across multiple hardware and software platforms. But, I don't see cross-platform software as being nearly as important as cross-platform data.
Many will herald it as a major victory for freedom lovers everywhere if Napster is successful in its defense. But think for a moment. The music industry at present is fuelled by large amount of cash. Sure, much of it is corporate gluttony, but can you imagine what would happen to music as an industry if musical copyright went flying right out the window?
It's forseeable that one can put together decent quality musical recordings on a slim budget. But what about promotions, tours, music videos, movie soundtracks, and everything else that makes the music industry hum while sating consumer appetites? Will any appreciable portion of the music we know and love continue on without the "protection" of copyright?
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the music industry generates billions of dollars a year. That means that people are willing to pay a lot of money to obtain musical recordings, see concerts, buy T-shirts, etc. In a free market economy, if you have a lot of people willing to pay a lot of money for a service that a lot of other people are willing to render, someone will find a way to make it happen. In fact, if you took the record industry out of the picture, it would free up a lot of cash that could be used to buy even more music.
I can't believe that people believe that, without copyright, the music and movie industries would die. Please remember, people, that Ron Popeil can make tons of money selling all kinds of crap. Someone got rich selling hair in a can! I can't believe that, somehow, making money selling movies and music--things people attach very high values to--copyright or no, is somehow harder than making people shell out $19.95 for a can of spray-on hai
Remember: not everything is obvious to all people. The people being duped by these kinds of scams aren't all illiterate trailer trash. They're normal people, and normal people routinely do things that require a lot more intelligence than some people like to give credit for.
The problem is not that people are dumb, but that the human animal has predictable behaviour traits. Psychologists and human behaviourists have studied us as a species for some time now, and they've learned a lot about how we work, what motivates us, and how we can be manipulated. They know our back doors.
Some unscrupulous people use this knowledge of human behaviour in the fields of confidence scams, telemarketing and shystering. In the corporate world, manipulating people into doing things (especially making purchases) that are against their own best interests is considered just part of doing business; there's no shame in using people's psychological makeup against themselves, so long as it results in increased profits for the business.
Attempts to mislead abound. Offers for "free" goods that in fact require substantial supplementary purchases to obtain. TV commercials where actors with stethoscopes and white lab coats pimp pain relievers and nicotene patches, never outright claiming to be doctors, but trying very hard to imply to the viewer that they are medical authorities. Music, perfumes and pheramones pumped into boutiques to put consumers into a state of mind where they are better disposed to making purchases. There is a giant industry dedicated to manipulating people into making purchases that they ordinarily wouldn't make, using a variety of methods both obvious and subtle.
Many of us realize that others are attempting to manipulate them, and so have trained ourselves to be suspicious when we hear trigger words like free. But we have trained ourselves to act against our basic nature. We can't expect that everyone is so disciplined as to completely abandon their basic human nature and treat everything they see and hear with suspicion. In fact, this is really undesirable; it's unconscionable to say that we have to give up being human just to protect ourselves from unscrupulous marketers. A better solution is to demand a higher ethical standard from marketers; to place limits on the kinds of scams they can try to pull.
A healthy dose of suspicion and skepticism is probably an essential defense mechanism in modern society, but that does not mean that we should sit by and allow advertisers to try to decieve, mislead and manipulate and then blame those who fall for it for failing to suppress their natural instincts as human beings.
There are two problems with hyperbole. The first is that it is brandished routinely and thoughtlessly: nothing is bad, it has to be the worst. The second is that someone always insists on taking it as an integral part of the argument and, in attacking it, ignores the real points being made. In the process, what could have been a fruitful discussion is lost amidst an angry, meaningless argument over a poor choice of words.
Personally, I don't buy your claim that they are unrelated. Either you believe that people have the right to some say on what is done with their intellectual work (copyright, GPL, whatever) or you don't and people can do whatever they want
Yes, with the relevant bit being some say. It is not an all-or-nothing affair. You can conceive of a system whereby authors have a say over what is done with their intellectual work that includes both copyright and GPL, both, or neither. There is nothing essential about accepting the premises of one in order to accept the premises of the other, nor is it necessary to accept the premises of either in order to give authors some control over their work. There is no particular reason why the type and level of control afforded to authors by the laws could not be greater or lesser or different in nature. Not copyright nor GPL nor the two together can be said with any certainty to strike the perfect balance between the interests of authors and the interests of the public.
Both copyright and GPL are arbitrary sets of rules. Copyright says, "I will make this work public, but I retain the sole right to make copies of the work. You can do whatever you like with it, except reproduce it." GPL says, "I will make this work public. You can do whatever you like with it, except redistribute it under any conditions other than the ones set forth in this license."
Mechanically, GPL uses copyright to work, but its essence is not predicated on current copyright law. you could, for example, replace copyright law entirely with the GPL. That is, the only legal control authors would have over their work is the right to restrict non-GPLed redistribution. This is less control than they have now. Others might advocate more control, including control over who may access the work, control over who may use the ideas contained within the work and how, and so forth. The point is, the question not only of whether, but of how much and what kind of control authors should have over their works is most definitely a subject open to debate, and it is most certainly not improper to draw moral or ethical distinctions between different kinds of control.
That being said, I am not making a particular argument in support of either GPL or copyright (or both or neither). I am, however, saying that legal and moral aren't the same things, and that we can make fine-grained distinctions, where appropriate, between what is right and what is wrong.
In the first place, I have to ask if there are any specific individuals who are doing this, or are you simply making the assumption that Slashdot poster ergo pro Napster et pro GPL?
Secondly, one fundamental difference between the two is that copyright is intended to enforce non-sharing while GPL is intended to enforce sharing. Though GPL purports to use copyright law as its legal foundation (one must use the tools that actually exist), it does not purport to do the same kind of thing as copyright. There is nothing inconsistent with supporting the principles of the GPL and not supporting the principles of copyright. (It is true that, legally speaking, the two go hand in hand, but that is a function of the laws of our society and not of the underlying rationales behind GPL and copyright.)
Thirdly, there is a big difference between Napster itself and the use of Napster to contravene copyright laws. Even if most users of Napster do use it to do things which are illegal if not unethical, it does not automatically mean that Napster itself, which is nothing more than an information sharing tool, is corrupt and indefensible.
One way to do it might be to publish the first few chapters on your Web site, and offer the full novel via email for a modest sum.
Alternatively, you could offer the entire novel for download, but post a notice that writing the book was hard work, and you expect a payment of about $X from anyone who reads the book and enjoys it. Note that if enough people enjoyed your work enough to send you $X (where X is maybe 1-3, since they're paying all of the printing and binding costs), it would encourage you to write additional works. You could, for example, set a base fee of $1, and ask for $2 if the reader found the novel to be very good and $3 if the reader found the novel to be excellent.
Alternatively, you could charge per download. That's the simplest, most straightforward and most traditional way to do it.
Don't forget that a printed novel will likely be (legally) read by many more people than copies of it are sold. People borrow novels from their friends and from their public libraries all the time. If you publish your novel electronically, soome people will undoubtedly make copies for their friends, but I don't think that this kind of copying will actually have a significant effect on sales, assuming that most of the people who receive "pirated" copies of your novel would have simply, legally, borrowed the original from their friend or the library had it been in print.
The only singificant threat to your power to control the distribution of your work is if someone posts the work publically. If you opt for the "pay per download or email" model, this may work against you, and you may want to be vigilant about enforcing your copyright. OTOH, if you choose the "please pay me if you enjoyed this" method, you are implicitly betting that people will reward you because they liked your work and want to show their appreciation and encourage further writings. In that case, it would be to your advantage to have your work as widely distributed as possible.
I can see it now: Microsoft buys Canada, lays off all of us, and changes the name of the country to "Microsoft Nation 2.0".
Nation 3.0 will follow the next year, but it will be bigger, buggier and more expensive than the original. We'll be forced to upgrade, though, because Nation 3.0 passports cannot be correctly parsed by Nation 2.0 immigration officials.
At least one thing won't change: whenever we complain to our government about social and economic problems, they'll tell us that a fix will be included in the next upgrade. And said fix will still break a bunch of other things that used to work just fine. I guess it won't be so different after al
One of the main issues that Ignatieff raises is that this is not the case. In fact, the Allies did bomb the hell out of Germany, killing millions and gutting the German infrastructure far worse than anything done to Iraq or Bosnia. And yet, the tanks and troops still had to be brought in, because it was not sufficient to merely kill everyone in Europe and destroy all of its cities; Europe had to be liberated, not destroyed. Political change had to be effected; it was not enough to simply send the enemy running for cover and then leave them alone to regroup and to continue their practices on a limited scale. No one would have escaped the death camps were it not for Allied soldiers physically liberating them.
You can blow up a lot of tanks and destroy an country's infrastructure to the point where its leaders retreat to lick their wounds, but you can't force a lasting peace or real polticial change through the exclusive use cruise missiles and smart bombs.
If the objectives were different; if the Allies just wanted the Germans to disappear, then perhaps nuking all of them would have worked. (Bear in mind, though, that this would have involved obliterating Norther France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and many other places that were under the control of the Third Reich.) But there is a real difference between having the objective of destroying the enemy and having the objective of intervening on behalf of a victimized group and putting an end to the oppression or genocid
While it's true that copyright can and does create a financial incentive to both proactively and responsively create, that doesn't necessarily mean copyright is good. An analogy: smoking cigarettes can relieve stress, but does that mean that people should smoke at least a certain number of cigarettes? There are other, perhaps more effective, ways to relieve stress, many of which lack the harmful side effects that cigarette smoking has.
If it weren't for copyright, you may not be inclined to proactively write another book, meaning you might not be willing to write a book that nobody asked for and then trying to sell copies to people who would hopefully be interested. As long as people treat ideas as property: objects that can be traded, the lack of copyright may well prevent many people from writing. Many would continue to write for the personal satisfaction it gave them, but it is unlikely that very many would write full-time or invest money in a book that would not likely make a profit.
On the other hand, if you were to write a book for a paying audience (whether that be an individual or a collective), you'd be under contract and get paid for the service of using your creative talents to produce a work that people actually want, rather than creating a piece of ethereal "property" that nobody asked for, and then hoping that enough people want it that your "ownership" of the reproduction rights makes it worthwhile to have written.
That's a different model than people are used to, and a lot of people will say it's impractical or impossible. I find those arguments to be dismissive and defeatist; they ignore the incredible ingenuity that humans have used to solve much more difficult problems. The greatest barrier is the inertia in the current system. Those who have a vested interest in the current model will fight tooth and nail to keep it; even if, as I believe would be the case, a copyrightless society where creative people sold services rather than property, would be a richer and more productive one for nearly everyone. Since we have copyright, copyright owners have a vested interest in holding on to it and no interest in finding alternative solutions. If copyright were abolished, this situation would change very quickly, and the same energies that are now directed towards preserving and strengthening copyright protection would be turned towards finding an alternative model for creative people to earn a living.
Or a science major taking a grammar test. ;-)