I agree with you that the user interface could be made more user friendly... but at the expense of power. This is the trade off.
Remember the good old pocket calculator? Remember how it used to just add and subtract, multiply and divide. Then it could do square roots, raise to the power... Now they can graph things etc. Problem is that as the number of functions that you want to accomplish increase and the number of variables that you want to change increase, you get ever increasing complexity.
Imagine if you will a washing machine that also was able to dry clothes, knit sweaters, pop popcorn, and wax the floors of your house. How on earth would you make something with such a diverse set of functions operate with a simple user interface that was intuitive for all users? What if grandma (or little johnny) just needed to have it knit sweaters? Could she learn how? Sure. But it would take some effort.
It is sad to see that we have become so ingrained with the fast food instant gratification lifestyle in America that we want someone to sell us an appliance (PC) that does exactly what we want without any thinking.
When I was growing up... I played with Legos, Lincoln Logs, Sticks Rocks -n- String and all sorts of great things. My first computer was a Commodore 64 and I didn't have a disk or tape drive. I turned it on and I programmed on it. Of course that was fairly simple becaues that was the only thing that I COULD do on it so that is what I learned to do on it.
Perhaps what we need is a way to not think of the PC as the Appliance. Think of the PC as an Appliance Storage Mechanism and each of the Applications as the Appliances. Each program is pretty easy to learn by itself. Once you have one down you can learn the next one... and some of the knowledge transfers.
Yeah... so lets see. I go out and buy a Nintendo Game for, what, $30.... then I go out and get the Link for $140+ and the Blank for $100+... and copy two games to it....just so that I can return the $60 worth of goods to Nintendo to screw them?
Ok... thats cost effective.
Lemme run out right now and become a pirate of Nintendo games. I'll save money.
The data would be split up and divided amongst hundreds of computers. In order to effectively change the balance of your bank account for example you would not just have to go to one location you would have to hack into 100s of computers simultaneously and find the right bits and then change them. If you didn't get a majority of the data (which BTW, is probably also stored at the Bank) then your corrupted data would get fixed when the computers put their heads together to find out what your balance was.
This can actually be more secure than current systems.
I think that this will be great, where can I sign up?
Heck, I would get additional computers that I never "used" directly and sign them up into the ISOS, make some money. Then when I wanted to do something compute intensive I would pay myself and have an instant home super computer. This home super computer would of course be available to everyone else when I wasn't doing anything.
Theft: a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property
So perhaps Theft is the wrong WORD.
Lets look up another one:
Purloin: to appropriate wrongfully and often by a breach of trust
Yeah, that one fits better.
Whatever word you use, if you use software where the author has not been appropriately compensated then you are acting in an untrustworthy manner.
If you also happen to write and sell software for a living and you don't want people copying your software then you are also a hypocrite.
Being killed in a car accident: one in 5,300
Being a drowning victim: one in 20,000
Choking to death: one in 68,000
Being killed in a bicycle accident: one in 75,000
Being killed by lightning: one in 2 million
Being killed by falling debris from a satellite: one in 4 million
Dying from a bee sting: one in 6 million
Winning the current Power Ball Jackpot of $10 million dollars: one in 80 million
You know what, i bet that something like this could be done really easily in Java. Suspend the VM, store its state, then when the system boots back up you restart the VM with an argument to restore the state. Would also be great for debugging purposes or sending in bug reports (Here's a copy of my VM state when it hung).
....
I'm starting to drool over the possabilities here.
Of course it all reads like legalese so here are a couple of key points:
Agencies shall maintain the storage and test areas for computer magnetic tapes containing permanent and unscheduled records at the following temperatures and relative humidities:
Constant temperature -- 62 to 68oF.
Constant relative humidity -- 35% to 45%
And
1234.34 Destruction of electronic records.
Electronic records may be destroyed only in accordance with a records disposition schedule approved by the Archivist of the United States, including General Records Schedules. At a minimum each agency shall ensure that:
(a) Electronic records scheduled for destruction are disposed of in a manner that ensures protection of any sensitive, proprietary, or national security information.
(b) Magnetic recording media previously used for electronic records containing sensitive, proprietary, or national security information are not reused if the previously recorded information can be compromised by reuse in any way.
(c) Agencies shall establish and implement procedures that specifically address the destruction of electronic records generated by individuals employing electronic mail.
According to the site, Yahoo plans to charge consumers between $1 and $4 to retrieve files from a specialized database of some 25 million research documents culled from 7,100 publications, including academic periodicals. Yahoo also expects to offer a "Premium Discount Search" option of 50 documents a month for $4.95.
Interesting that they go from $1 to $4 per document (or so it seems) to $4.95 for 50 documents in a month. This seems like a suckers discount.... "gee, nobody will pay us $4 for one document, but they might pay us $4.95 for a month in which they happen to get NO documents..."
The internet is a big leap in human technology, and it's made a lot of our laws unaplicable. That's okay, lots of the laws that the founders of this country thought were a good idea, but we don't have around anymore. Why? Because things change, and the laws have to change with them. Copyright (and eventually the pattent system), are over. Deal with it, and move on hardware manufacturers/music industry/everyone else.
You make some very good points.
But:
1) I'm sure that lots of individual horse farmers and buggy builders would have taken issue with losing their livelihood. There never was a mega-corporation with hundreds of lawyers employing tens of thousands of people to produce ONE brand of buggies or ONE herd of horses.
2) Artists whose works can be copied perfectly due to digital technology (music, movies etc...) stand to lose lots of money. I know that much of the money never makes it to the artists and that most of it gets into the hands of the mega-corporation. However without some form of copyright laws the artists would get nothing at all. As a result artists would either a) not make art, b) not share their art except at closely held screenings, c) start charging a whole lot more for the copies that you can get.
3) It is not possible to reproduce an oil painting perfectly for example (at least not that I'm aware of) without using a forger, oil paints, and lots of time. But if a technology came about that allowed you to copy an oil painting (just as one example) perfectly.... then the market for oil paintings would collapse. But there is something there in owning the original and not a copy so even then there would not be a total collapse of the market.
Without copyright laws I predict that we would have to pay a whole lot more to enjoy our music, our movies. We would go back in time to the age of Live Performances. Opera, Plays, Concerts would rise in prominence. You would need to hire musicians to ride in your car if you wanted to hear music there. Why?
Because there would be no incentive.
From an economics standpoint there would be INFINITE supply versus FINITE demand. NO MONEY COULD BE MADE.
I don't know if they are still doing this or not but SGI used to come to Va Tech (and other locations) with their Magic Bus, a giant, black, 18 wheeler, filled with SGI machines that did really cool graphics demos. You could walk through, test things out.
It was a draw the geeks out mobile attraction and if you search for "SGI Magic Bus" you will get tons of links to announcements from 1996-1997 about it.
The goal of the NEA is to foster creativity. Taking away the results of that creativity would serve to stifle it. People would hold back when exploring their art and the end result would be someone who got paid to put out something that wasn't their best work.
The NEA supports Artists so that they can focus on Art because it is viewed as important by the public to have Artists so that culture can progress.
The public funds scientific research because it is viewed as important to have scientists so that science and society can progress.
Lets assume that someone has invented the pill form cure for cancer. Are they going to make money? You bet. Will it make the world a better place? You bet. Does the public benefit? Yes, because now the public has to pay LESS to cover the medical costs of people who are being constantly treated for cancer and its various results and who cannot afford it themselves. The public pays for this through medical insurance. Sure the company will get rich, why shouldn't they?
I was offered two positions three years ago. One was from a large government contractor, the other from a startup. Both offers were for the same amount of money. Both were within a reasonable commute distance. The large government contractor had the need for a security clearance. This I had no problems with, I even filled out 27 plus pages of forms to get that process started. The other company offered stock options which may or may not have paid off.
I opted to go with my current company instead of the large government contractor and boy am I glad. A year after I joined I was saying to my co-workers.... "wow, here we are, stock is worth a bundle, and at the large government contractor I could still be waiting for my security clearance.
Despite all that has happened in the markets. I'm still very glad that I made the choice that I did.
The main reason I made the choice though was NOT money (same base salary) was NOT stock options (they are nice though) but was rather culture. I frankly didn't want to wear a suit to work. I still don't.
I'm happy in the fast paced commercial environment. And guess what? We are selling software to the Federal Government as well as Global 2000 and Fortune 500 companies AND to the large government contractor that I didn't take the job from.
"The opportunities for the consumer electronics, software and media industries have never been greater and this cycle of innovation has the potential to deliver valuable stimulus to the economy," Gates said in his prepared remarks.
Man, it must be nice to be able to say these kind of things with a straight face.
Slashdot Mirror
Engaged in copyright infringement (violation of 17 U.S.C. 501).
::DUCKING::
Wait, you mean someone at Microsoft downloaded an MP3?
I agree with you that the user interface could be made more user friendly... but at the expense of power. This is the trade off.
Remember the good old pocket calculator? Remember how it used to just add and subtract, multiply and divide. Then it could do square roots, raise to the power... Now they can graph things etc. Problem is that as the number of functions that you want to accomplish increase and the number of variables that you want to change increase, you get ever increasing complexity.
Imagine if you will a washing machine that also was able to dry clothes, knit sweaters, pop popcorn, and wax the floors of your house. How on earth would you make something with such a diverse set of functions operate with a simple user interface that was intuitive for all users? What if grandma (or little johnny) just needed to have it knit sweaters? Could she learn how? Sure. But it would take some effort.
It is sad to see that we have become so ingrained with the fast food instant gratification lifestyle in America that we want someone to sell us an appliance (PC) that does exactly what we want without any thinking.
When I was growing up... I played with Legos, Lincoln Logs, Sticks Rocks -n- String and all sorts of great things. My first computer was a Commodore 64 and I didn't have a disk or tape drive. I turned it on and I programmed on it. Of course that was fairly simple becaues that was the only thing that I COULD do on it so that is what I learned to do on it.
Perhaps what we need is a way to not think of the PC as the Appliance. Think of the PC as an Appliance Storage Mechanism and each of the Applications as the Appliances. Each program is pretty easy to learn by itself. Once you have one down you can learn the next one... and some of the knowledge transfers.
This is because there's no way to prove how much copying software affects companies' profits.
There is also no way to prove that a crime has been prevented. Only that fewer have taken place than a similar time period in the past.
"There are three kinds of falshoods in this world, Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics" --Unknown (to me anyway)
They wrote it.
They earned the right to sell it and protect it.
I'll still buy Blizzard games as long as they provide enough entertainment for the money.
Yeah... so lets see. I go out and buy a Nintendo Game for, what, $30 .... then I go out and get the Link for $140+ and the Blank for $100+ ... and copy two games to it....just so that I can return the $60 worth of goods to Nintendo to screw them?
Ok... thats cost effective.
Lemme run out right now and become a pirate of Nintendo games. I'll save money.
.... Alum-inum -or- Alu-mini-um ???
Tele Communications Protocol / Internet Proposal Standards tested today on Slashdot.
Will the first test be successful?
We are still waiting for the results.
The data would be split up and divided amongst hundreds of computers. In order to effectively change the balance of your bank account for example you would not just have to go to one location you would have to hack into 100s of computers simultaneously and find the right bits and then change them. If you didn't get a majority of the data (which BTW, is probably also stored at the Bank) then your corrupted data would get fixed when the computers put their heads together to find out what your balance was.
This can actually be more secure than current systems.
I think that this will be great, where can I sign up?
Heck, I would get additional computers that I never "used" directly and sign them up into the ISOS, make some money. Then when I wanted to do something compute intensive I would pay myself and have an instant home super computer. This home super computer would of course be available to everyone else when I wasn't doing anything.
Sign me up!
Joe H.
Theft: a : the act of stealing; specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it b : an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property
So perhaps Theft is the wrong WORD.
Lets look up another one:
Purloin: to appropriate wrongfully and often by a breach of trust
Yeah, that one fits better.
Whatever word you use, if you use software where the author has not been appropriately compensated then you are acting in an untrustworthy manner.
If you also happen to write and sell software for a living and you don't want people copying your software then you are also a hypocrite.
Here are some stats for comparison
Being killed in a car accident: one in 5,300
Being a drowning victim: one in 20,000
Choking to death: one in 68,000
Being killed in a bicycle accident: one in 75,000
Being killed by lightning: one in 2 million
Being killed by falling debris from a satellite: one in 4 million
Dying from a bee sting: one in 6 million
Winning the current Power Ball Jackpot of $10 million dollars: one in 80 million
You know what, i bet that something like this could be done really easily in Java. Suspend the VM, store its state, then when the system boots back up you restart the VM with an argument to restore the state. Would also be great for debugging purposes or sending in bug reports (Here's a copy of my VM state when it hung).
....
I'm starting to drool over the possabilities here.
The day that AOL includes Linux is the day that I start looking for a way to move to mars.
Can you imagine it now? "You've got root!"
Joe H.
Of course it all reads like legalese so here are a couple of key points:
And
According to the site, Yahoo plans to charge consumers between $1 and $4 to retrieve files from a specialized database of some 25 million research documents culled from 7,100 publications, including academic periodicals. Yahoo also expects to offer a "Premium Discount Search" option of 50 documents a month for $4.95.
Interesting that they go from $1 to $4 per document (or so it seems) to $4.95 for 50 documents in a month. This seems like a suckers discount.... "gee, nobody will pay us $4 for one document, but they might pay us $4.95 for a month in which they happen to get NO documents..."
No thanks, I'll stick to Google.
The question is, what was the bug in the headboard for?
"Awww, thats just pillow talk baby!" --Ash, housewares (Army of Darkness)
The internet is a big leap in human technology, and it's made a lot of our laws unaplicable. That's okay, lots of the laws that the founders of this country thought were a good idea, but we don't have around anymore. Why? Because things change, and the laws have to change with them. Copyright (and eventually the pattent system), are over. Deal with it, and move on hardware manufacturers/music industry/everyone else.
You make some very good points.
But:
1) I'm sure that lots of individual horse farmers and buggy builders would have taken issue with losing their livelihood. There never was a mega-corporation with hundreds of lawyers employing tens of thousands of people to produce ONE brand of buggies or ONE herd of horses.
2) Artists whose works can be copied perfectly due to digital technology (music, movies etc...) stand to lose lots of money. I know that much of the money never makes it to the artists and that most of it gets into the hands of the mega-corporation. However without some form of copyright laws the artists would get nothing at all. As a result artists would either a) not make art, b) not share their art except at closely held screenings, c) start charging a whole lot more for the copies that you can get.
3) It is not possible to reproduce an oil painting perfectly for example (at least not that I'm aware of) without using a forger, oil paints, and lots of time. But if a technology came about that allowed you to copy an oil painting (just as one example) perfectly.... then the market for oil paintings would collapse. But there is something there in owning the original and not a copy so even then there would not be a total collapse of the market.
Without copyright laws I predict that we would have to pay a whole lot more to enjoy our music, our movies. We would go back in time to the age of Live Performances. Opera, Plays, Concerts would rise in prominence. You would need to hire musicians to ride in your car if you wanted to hear music there. Why?
Because there would be no incentive.
From an economics standpoint there would be INFINITE supply versus FINITE demand. NO MONEY COULD BE MADE.
I don't know if they are still doing this or not but SGI used to come to Va Tech (and other locations) with their Magic Bus, a giant, black, 18 wheeler, filled with SGI machines that did really cool graphics demos. You could walk through, test things out.
It was a draw the geeks out mobile attraction and if you search for "SGI Magic Bus" you will get tons of links to announcements from 1996-1997 about it.
You made a roaming cafe!?! Out of a Delorean?
Seriously, this sounds really really cool. Wish I could have seen something like this in action.
Kudos
See Aunt Tillie
See Aunt Tillie Build Kernel
Build Aunt Tillie Build
The goal of the NEA is to foster creativity. Taking away the results of that creativity would serve to stifle it. People would hold back when exploring their art and the end result would be someone who got paid to put out something that wasn't their best work.
The NEA supports Artists so that they can focus on Art because it is viewed as important by the public to have Artists so that culture can progress.
The public funds scientific research because it is viewed as important to have scientists so that science and society can progress.
Lets assume that someone has invented the pill form cure for cancer. Are they going to make money? You bet. Will it make the world a better place? You bet. Does the public benefit? Yes, because now the public has to pay LESS to cover the medical costs of people who are being constantly treated for cancer and its various results and who cannot afford it themselves. The public pays for this through medical insurance. Sure the company will get rich, why shouldn't they?
I was offered two positions three years ago. One was from a large government contractor, the other from a startup. Both offers were for the same amount of money. Both were within a reasonable commute distance. The large government contractor had the need for a security clearance. This I had no problems with, I even filled out 27 plus pages of forms to get that process started. The other company offered stock options which may or may not have paid off.
I opted to go with my current company instead of the large government contractor and boy am I glad. A year after I joined I was saying to my co-workers.... "wow, here we are, stock is worth a bundle, and at the large government contractor I could still be waiting for my security clearance.
Despite all that has happened in the markets. I'm still very glad that I made the choice that I did.
The main reason I made the choice though was NOT money (same base salary) was NOT stock options (they are nice though) but was rather culture. I frankly didn't want to wear a suit to work. I still don't.
I'm happy in the fast paced commercial environment. And guess what? We are selling software to the Federal Government as well as Global 2000 and Fortune 500 companies AND to the large government contractor that I didn't take the job from.
And right now I'm wearing Jeans and a T-Shirt.
Wait-a-minute
We are not paying for them to build us a product. We are paying for them to do research. They get paid to *DO* something, not produce something.
Might as well ask artists who get money from the National Endowment of the Arts to hand over the rights to their art!
Better than home printable etching. When the magazine includes a kit that requires a board they can just include the board!!!!
You supply some soldering, a few chips to drive some things and a case and viola, instant techno-geek-thingy.
"The opportunities for the consumer electronics, software and media industries have never been greater and this cycle of innovation has the potential to deliver valuable stimulus to the economy," Gates said in his prepared remarks.
Man, it must be nice to be able to say these kind of things with a straight face.