The entire idea of patenting digital processes is completely silly, as I am sure that we all believe. While the truth of the matter is that when people patent a process they do not patent the result -- only the process. This is why Amazon.com and this smart cookie won't be able to get away. People can sue all that they want but frivolous lawsuits are still a mockery of the justice system and if I am not mistaken that can be deemed a fellony.
Just a lot of people are just trying to use the digital age to "get rich quick" off of our tax dollars...
Couldn't resist, actually it's sad that this is happening - I wonder if Global Star will survive. Same concept, a little cheaper (~2 bucks a minute vs. ~20).
The context of what he is saying is that they will make it impossible for Napster to have a business - which is also against the law. It's that little Anti-Trust thing, it's also that right to free enterprise thing. If Sony got with every backbone provider in the USA and blocked Napsters subnet and got with Cisco and filtered the Napster protocol - then they would be in error.
As much as Sony can complain about loosing IP and that Napster serves just to steal etc. they have absolutely no right to interfere with my personal software, hardware, make business contracts with my ISP, my ISP's ISP, phone companies, etc. They think that they are above the law which is exactally what they are saying Napster thinks. IMHO this proves that the big 8 are nothing more than monopolies that will stop at *nothing* to make sure that I do not do something that the exec. staff of RIAA say I can do.
And the service hasn't suffered one iotia. My experience with Cable has been horrid - where as with DSL & DSL hybrids (such as reflexcomm.com - my ISP) the service is absolutely great.
AT&T didn't call me back after calling them twice just for a price quote when I wanted a "special" package. Reflex got my hooked up in about 30 minutes - in fact when I was signing up I was on my cell phone and it was cutting out a few times... so they *69ed me. For some reason when they came to my building the door buzzer did not work - so when I called they sent someone out right away and was done in less than 35 minutes.
Personally I'm rather amused with people who say that a less than one year old market has failed. Most new markets are not profitable for 5 years -- let alone break even. This is astounding news really when thought about the circumstances. No standards in the entire market and about 100 different little pieces all fitting together to sort-of make a working product. In my case, I have a Voodoo Banshee (no laughing:P) - it takes Glide3x the CVS version of DRI (from dri.sourceforge.net) and Loki's "made sense of" version of Unreal (cheers to openut.sourceforge.net) JUST to get it to run at all. I am happy that Quake works though. With all these circumstances I'm certianly amazed, happy, and so forth that it has made a bloody red cent. I will continue to support Loki and ID and all these companies who spend time getting 3d & gaming models working.
Who is apart of the RIAA? - the major record labels. And who just got themselves sued by the states for price fixing? RIAA is doing this more out of necessity then willingness.
My question, to be direct is this: Does Unix suck? or Do Unix GUI's suck? I would tend to agree on the latter, however a great amount of innovation has been put into Unix - you seem to contradict yourself by your list of credentials. Don't get me wrong - as a Linux user I love gnome, I was using anononymous cvs to update it weekly only about a year and a half ago... it's come a long way really quick and to that I commend you and all the people who have developed GNOME and all the wonderful little apps that work with it. However I do not understand how you relate ftpd to Internet Explorer - I remember the next boxen which had the best of both worlds. I see desktop Unices occupying this space today. What is your vision?
Quick sidenote: I will admit to a wording snafu (fu*kup) this message was not meant to flame your credentials
PX: I heard little about Miguel prior to 3 years ago which leads me to believe that he has never really worked with too many UNIX systems.
I should practice what I preach by "thinking before I type".
Miguel has problems, plain and simple. He complains about how Operating Systems (UNIX) suck and yet doesn't address any of the issues of/why/ they suck except that they are not intuitive. I am especially irritated by a couple of his statements:
Under the "Unix Problem" Miguel tries his best in a few paragraphs to expose the history, and weaknesses of UNIX. I find this quick leadin not only completely flawed but mostly wrong.
He says that three years ago
"No innovation was happening". Which is odd because I remember running BSD and Linux in the early 90's - even before then my SGI hardware was bad ass and could whomp on whatever Macintosh, Amiga, or Atari ST could produce.
"No code reuse was happening". This is not only untrue, but downright weird to even think about. He states later that the systems developed (interfaces, abstraction, etc.) were flawed - even if they did reuse code - why would you want to? Code reuse is up to the program managers and programmers in a business model or the leaders of the project in the open source model. I do not see his point.
"There was a lack of basic facilities on the desktop". Well duh, you can't just say "here's a new OS - everyone support it". Linux has become popular and people run it, that's why there is support for it. Which leads into his next statement "The little innovation that was happening was proprietary.". If something is going to exist in a business model it must have support - this is why it was proprietary. More and more companies are being able to innovate in UNIXland because support is so wide - largely due to the open source model.
Later he complains about "Unix Components" - where they don't share "any code except for libc". This can be argued both ways. These sort of programs are as basic as format, fdisk, and tree. These are not designed to share code, they are designed to be small and singular. He makes the jump of ftpd to ghostview to Internet Explorer. This is not only unfair, but flawed logic. One is a service, which does not need a gui - one is a very old application (much like notepad in windows) and the other is an application that has taken a long time to kludge together.
My problem with this paper is that he just does not get it. He understands a *lot* about how to build GUI's and how to frame together a Rapid Application model. In this sense he is genius, yet in another he just doesn't seem to understand WHAT it is that he is building on top of. He complains about xlib, libc, services, and all the like. He doesn't look at the standards that were developed way back - such as POSIX and WHY they were developed, and *how* we got to where we are. He simply asserts that 3 years ago was "dark ages" and that today there is hope. I heard little about Miguel prior to 3 years ago which leads me to believe that he has never really worked with too many UNIX systems. If he wants to make a GUI, or even a GUI framework like X then great - more power to him! But I wish that Miguel would think more before he talks on subjects such as these because most people will simply flame him.
Thats IF AOL decides to market it. AOL bought Netscape more because of its Netcenter portal than because of the technology. And presently AOL is in a contract with MS that binds it to use IE in their AOL CDs
Have you ever known AOL *not* to market something that they spent even a dime on? Or didn't even develop? And as per the contract, I doubt that AOL will even bat an eye about it. Microsoft doesn't want any bad press about it, and if AOL makes the option then they are helping to expand the customer base beyond just windows.
And let me guess: this will happen Real Soon Now (C)
I'm lost - are you being cynical, bitter, or just downright elitist?
So what? IE had *NOTHING* and then Microsoft marketed the snot out of it. If you think AOL won't market the hell out of Netscape 6 when it is released then you probably have another thing coming. AOL will probably ship an AOL CD for every single platform that they can using Netscape 6 and it will be everywhere. It comes down to the amount of money, and the gain that the end user will get (or not) for going with a different browser. Sure I.E. is "there" for every Windows user, but even they don't want to HAVE to use it. Mac users are waiting for something better than IE to show up. And as for the rest of us Linux zealots -- well we can't seem to wait for an alternative.
When it comes down to it Netscape 6 will do big and wonderful things, but it will not be the Netscape we used to know and love - the days of 3x and early 4x are now very long gone.
Not that I claim to understand, agree, or otherwise with JonKatz - but I have listened to his rants now for quite some time. Over and over he notices the injustice in the world, what's wrong with it, and tells us that it is wrong. Yet does he ever offer any advise or wisdom, guidance or otherwise? He has a message, yet his message often times falls on deaf ears because it is incomplete. Just a simple "wake up call" is one thing - yet a weekly or biweekly wakeup call to the same damn thing for about a year gets old real fast. People understand Jon's views, yet often times they just don't understand because he doesn't give any real ideas of how to make it better. I have a question and some advice, my question is summed up by asking if you see any ray of hope in/anything/ you write? My advice to Jon is please give alternatives, expound on your multi-page essays, find solutions. Please try to change the world with your wit instead of just rant.
Sadly I must disagree with suck this once, one of the few times that has happened. It would seem extremely obvious that in this case he has no idea what he is talking about - the only truth here is that it "ain't no IE". Perhaps this is a good and a bad thing, but the only thing that keeps me from using it all the time is flakey (to none) java support - not that Netscape Communicator is much better. Yet even if Mozilla isn't prime then what *is* prime? Gnome? KDE? Star Office? Microsoft Anything? I'm so sick and tired of hearing people complaining about free software being "prime" - as if not paying for it makes you complain *MORE* than if you paid for it and it sucked. Sure, Mozilla is dead, and also very much alive by a different perspective. Perhaps we will see Mozilla go where we want it very soon and mabye not. But until mozilla.org goes down I don't think it's time for a death knell.
I noticed something earlier, according to Harry Bank (ceo of napster) the judges ruling will encompass the following:
The Judge's ruling is essentially this: that one-to-one non-commercial file sharing violates the law.
However, source code has already been deemed free speech - and is thus covered under the first amendment. In this case Mp3's are binary, however both are files. Does this mean that free software repositories such as amug, freesoftware.com, and kernel.org are breaking the law? Or can this case be appealed just on the basis of an extremely clueless ruling? Or is this simply hype by Harry Bank. -- If the judge does rule this way then private ftp, http, the GPL, and networks in general can be challenged in the US.
in defense, Napster needs to survive too
on
Two-Faced Napster?
·
· Score: 2
First a corporation must survive by being profitable, second every corporation must be constantly fending off the advances of some other companies or organizations legal department. Unfortunately many news reporters and even slashdotters have little to no experience in this department (IANAL). All this aside, Napster Inc. must preserve it's copyright, trademark, etc due to the legal context and other business arenas that they may be used in. Think about what would happen if a company that was conducting illegal activities happened to be using a Napster trademark? Napster/may/ be implicated during the trial. Even if they are found completely innocent of anything it's bad press and costs money.
I am a bit stymied about the harsh treatment of people who have made Napster clones, plugins, etc. that have caught wind of the above - most likely the statement mentioned in MSNBC was taken out of context (IMHO) as the media tends to do a lot. Napster should have a developer forum where the protocol would be published etc. The protocol should incorporate a profit model (banner ads, or whatever they may come up with --) that would make it advantageous for Napster Inc. to support such a model, because it is already happening - may as well take advantage of it.
I'm completely thrown back that president of Time Warner, an AOL sellout, a completely capiltalist media company would make the following comment:
"This isn't just about a bunch of kids stealing music. It's about an assault on everything that constitutes the cultural expression of our society. If we fail to protect and preserve our intellectual property system , the culture will atrophy. And corporations won't be the only ones hurt. Artists will have no incentive to create. Worst-case scenario: The country will end up in a sort of cultural Dark Ages."
First he assumes that capitalism is required for cultural development. Second he states and boldly so that we must protect our "intellectual property system" when most people know full well that in it's current state it is flawed at best. The IP laws on the books currently reflect a society where products were largely tangable. In todays society these products are not so. Music, Software, etc. Lastly I'm shocked that he would seem to make the statement that "we control your culture" - we meaning all media companies. The truth of the matter is that popular music, news, etc. are hardly a basis to grow our culture on. They are capitalist sell out rip offs of something that is truly creative.
Now my rant to these companies; For those who purchase music regardless of the medium we should have the right to do with it as we *damn* well please. I sure as hell know what happens to a CD, or an LP if I play it over and over -- it fucking gets scratched, warped, or otherwise. That is why I transfer files to mp3 format - guess what I use napster also! And I buy more music than anyone I know. As for movies the media companies must think that they control every possible media solution avaliable because if I happen to run Linux or BSD, or QNX -- anything BUT MacOS or Windows and I want to use a DVD disk you come down hard. To me this seems completely retroactive of what the consumer needs.
My end statement would be that you, the media companies out there & the "artist organizations such as MPAA and RIAA - you disgust me with your arrogant misunderstanding of the very people who you market to. I would love to see all of you replaced.
Is it just me or doesn't MacOSX have a fairly Anti-Mac interface? The extended finder which looks quite a bit like windows explorer or Nautilus. It would seem that even Apple is extending the original framework for the design of GUI's. For instance "Consistency" is important, however MacOSX is not quite as consistant as it's predecessor. The concept of "User Control" is going to be quite as much out of complete scope with OSX because BSD essentially is running in the background. All of the "Anti Mac" interface qualities seem obviously met - so perhaps Apple is taking this paper to heart.
I think this will probably fit right up there with PCXware in cost. Looking at their page it seems that they have some rather spendy products for the end user. If they have a variant for the "average" consumer then I may just be interested.
Slashdot Mirror
The entire idea of patenting digital processes is completely silly, as I am sure that we all believe. While the truth of the matter is that when people patent a process they do not patent the result -- only the process. This is why Amazon.com and this smart cookie won't be able to get away. People can sue all that they want but frivolous lawsuits are still a mockery of the justice system and if I am not mistaken that can be deemed a fellony.
Just a lot of people are just trying to use the digital age to "get rich quick" off of our tax dollars...
Couldn't resist, actually it's sad that this is happening - I wonder if Global Star will survive. Same concept, a little cheaper (~2 bucks a minute vs. ~20).
Perhaps the unholy octopoly -- like the trinity only different. All 8 in one going forward in union heh...
The context of what he is saying is that they will make it impossible for Napster to have a business - which is also against the law. It's that little Anti-Trust thing, it's also that right to free enterprise thing. If Sony got with every backbone provider in the USA and blocked Napsters subnet and got with Cisco and filtered the Napster protocol - then they would be in error.
This is why I say they have no right.
As much as Sony can complain about loosing IP and that Napster serves just to steal etc. they have absolutely no right to interfere with my personal software, hardware, make business contracts with my ISP, my ISP's ISP, phone companies, etc. They think that they are above the law which is exactally what they are saying Napster thinks. IMHO this proves that the big 8 are nothing more than monopolies that will stop at *nothing* to make sure that I do not do something that the exec. staff of RIAA say I can do.
And the service hasn't suffered one iotia. My experience with Cable has been horrid - where as with DSL & DSL hybrids (such as reflexcomm.com - my ISP) the service is absolutely great.
AT&T didn't call me back after calling them twice just for a price quote when I wanted a "special" package. Reflex got my hooked up in about 30 minutes - in fact when I was signing up I was on my cell phone and it was cutting out a few times... so they *69ed me. For some reason when they came to my building the door buzzer did not work - so when I called they sent someone out right away and was done in less than 35 minutes.
Just my view,
Brian
Agreed, however traditionally all the DSL providers do precisely not what @home has done.
Seems to me that all people who want to work from home via VPN now are going to have to switch to DSL - darn.
As bad as it sounds putting something ON the skin would create cultural havock. Think about "on the forehead or on the back of the palm".
Personally I'm rather amused with people who say that a less than one year old market has failed. Most new markets are not profitable for 5 years -- let alone break even. This is astounding news really when thought about the circumstances. No standards in the entire market and about 100 different little pieces all fitting together to sort-of make a working product. In my case, I have a Voodoo Banshee (no laughing :P) - it takes Glide3x the CVS version of DRI (from dri.sourceforge.net) and Loki's "made sense of" version of Unreal (cheers to openut.sourceforge.net) JUST to get it to run at all. I am happy that Quake works though. With all these circumstances I'm certianly amazed, happy, and so forth that it has made a bloody red cent. I will continue to support Loki and ID and all these companies who spend time getting 3d & gaming models working.
This is good news if anything
Who is apart of the RIAA? - the major record labels. And who just got themselves sued by the states for price fixing? RIAA is doing this more out of necessity then willingness.
See my response to miguel
Quick sidenote: I will admit to a wording snafu (fu*kup) this message was not meant to flame your credentials
PX: I heard little about Miguel prior to 3 years ago which leads me to believe that he has never really worked with too many UNIX systems.
I should practice what I preach by "thinking before I type".
Under the "Unix Problem" Miguel tries his best in a few paragraphs to expose the history, and weaknesses of UNIX. I find this quick leadin not only completely flawed but mostly wrong.
He says that three years ago
"No innovation was happening". Which is odd because I remember running BSD and Linux in the early 90's - even before then my SGI hardware was bad ass and could whomp on whatever Macintosh, Amiga, or Atari ST could produce.
"No code reuse was happening". This is not only untrue, but downright weird to even think about. He states later that the systems developed (interfaces, abstraction, etc.) were flawed - even if they did reuse code - why would you want to? Code reuse is up to the program managers and programmers in a business model or the leaders of the project in the open source model. I do not see his point.
"There was a lack of basic facilities on the desktop". Well duh, you can't just say "here's a new OS - everyone support it". Linux has become popular and people run it, that's why there is support for it. Which leads into his next statement "The little innovation that was happening was proprietary.". If something is going to exist in a business model it must have support - this is why it was proprietary. More and more companies are being able to innovate in UNIXland because support is so wide - largely due to the open source model.
Later he complains about "Unix Components" - where they don't share "any code except for libc". This can be argued both ways. These sort of programs are as basic as format, fdisk, and tree. These are not designed to share code, they are designed to be small and singular. He makes the jump of ftpd to ghostview to Internet Explorer. This is not only unfair, but flawed logic. One is a service, which does not need a gui - one is a very old application (much like notepad in windows) and the other is an application that has taken a long time to kludge together.
My problem with this paper is that he just does not get it. He understands a *lot* about how to build GUI's and how to frame together a Rapid Application model. In this sense he is genius, yet in another he just doesn't seem to understand WHAT it is that he is building on top of. He complains about xlib, libc, services, and all the like. He doesn't look at the standards that were developed way back - such as POSIX and WHY they were developed, and *how* we got to where we are. He simply asserts that 3 years ago was "dark ages" and that today there is hope. I heard little about Miguel prior to 3 years ago which leads me to believe that he has never really worked with too many UNIX systems. If he wants to make a GUI, or even a GUI framework like X then great - more power to him! But I wish that Miguel would think more before he talks on subjects such as these because most people will simply flame him.
Please Miguel, think before you type.
Thats IF AOL decides to market it. AOL bought Netscape more because of its Netcenter portal than because of the technology. And presently AOL is in a contract with MS that binds it to use IE in their AOL CDs
Have you ever known AOL *not* to market something that they spent even a dime on? Or didn't even develop? And as per the contract, I doubt that AOL will even bat an eye about it. Microsoft doesn't want any bad press about it, and if AOL makes the option then they are helping to expand the customer base beyond just windows.
And let me guess: this will happen Real Soon Now (C)
I'm lost - are you being cynical, bitter, or just downright elitist?
So what? IE had *NOTHING* and then Microsoft marketed the snot out of it. If you think AOL won't market the hell out of Netscape 6 when it is released then you probably have another thing coming. AOL will probably ship an AOL CD for every single platform that they can using Netscape 6 and it will be everywhere. It comes down to the amount of money, and the gain that the end user will get (or not) for going with a different browser. Sure I.E. is "there" for every Windows user, but even they don't want to HAVE to use it. Mac users are waiting for something better than IE to show up. And as for the rest of us Linux zealots -- well we can't seem to wait for an alternative.
When it comes down to it Netscape 6 will do big and wonderful things, but it will not be the Netscape we used to know and love - the days of 3x and early 4x are now very long gone.
Not that I claim to understand, agree, or otherwise with JonKatz - but I have listened to his rants now for quite some time. Over and over he notices the injustice in the world, what's wrong with it, and tells us that it is wrong. Yet does he ever offer any advise or wisdom, guidance or otherwise? He has a message, yet his message often times falls on deaf ears because it is incomplete. Just a simple "wake up call" is one thing - yet a weekly or biweekly wakeup call to the same damn thing for about a year gets old real fast. People understand Jon's views, yet often times they just don't understand because he doesn't give any real ideas of how to make it better. I have a question and some advice, my question is summed up by asking if you see any ray of hope in /anything/ you write? My advice to Jon is please give alternatives, expound on your multi-page essays, find solutions. Please try to change the world with your wit instead of just rant.
Sadly I must disagree with suck this once, one of the few times that has happened. It would seem extremely obvious that in this case he has no idea what he is talking about - the only truth here is that it "ain't no IE". Perhaps this is a good and a bad thing, but the only thing that keeps me from using it all the time is flakey (to none) java support - not that Netscape Communicator is much better. Yet even if Mozilla isn't prime then what *is* prime? Gnome? KDE? Star Office? Microsoft Anything? I'm so sick and tired of hearing people complaining about free software being "prime" - as if not paying for it makes you complain *MORE* than if you paid for it and it sucked. Sure, Mozilla is dead, and also very much alive by a different perspective. Perhaps we will see Mozilla go where we want it very soon and mabye not. But until mozilla.org goes down I don't think it's time for a death knell.
Yes, and when Apple aquired NeXT they also aquired all of the patents. It's quite amazing (all things considered) that Apple didn't sue Cobalt heh.
I noticed something earlier, according to Harry Bank (ceo of napster) the judges ruling will encompass the following:
The Judge's ruling is essentially this: that one-to-one non-commercial file sharing violates the law.
However, source code has already been deemed free speech - and is thus covered under the first amendment. In this case Mp3's are binary, however both are files. Does this mean that free software repositories such as amug, freesoftware.com, and kernel.org are breaking the law? Or can this case be appealed just on the basis of an extremely clueless ruling? Or is this simply hype by Harry Bank. -- If the judge does rule this way then private ftp, http, the GPL, and networks in general can be challenged in the US.
Any ideas on this?
Check out
http://www.linuxppc.com
http://www.linuxppc.org
http://www.penguinppc.org
First a corporation must survive by being profitable, second every corporation must be constantly fending off the advances of some other companies or organizations legal department. Unfortunately many news reporters and even slashdotters have little to no experience in this department (IANAL). All this aside, Napster Inc. must preserve it's copyright, trademark, etc due to the legal context and other business arenas that they may be used in. Think about what would happen if a company that was conducting illegal activities happened to be using a Napster trademark? Napster /may/ be implicated during the trial. Even if they are found completely innocent of anything it's bad press and costs money.
I am a bit stymied about the harsh treatment of people who have made Napster clones, plugins, etc. that have caught wind of the above - most likely the statement mentioned in MSNBC was taken out of context (IMHO) as the media tends to do a lot. Napster should have a developer forum where the protocol would be published etc. The protocol should incorporate a profit model (banner ads, or whatever they may come up with --) that would make it advantageous for Napster Inc. to support such a model, because it is already happening - may as well take advantage of it.
Sounds familiar doesn't it?
I'm completely thrown back that president of Time Warner, an AOL sellout, a completely capiltalist media company would make the following comment:
"This isn't just about a bunch of kids stealing music. It's about an assault on everything that constitutes the cultural expression of our society. If we fail to protect and preserve our intellectual property system , the culture will atrophy. And corporations won't be the only ones hurt. Artists will have no incentive to create. Worst-case scenario: The country will end up in a sort of cultural Dark Ages."
First he assumes that capitalism is required for cultural development. Second he states and boldly so that we must protect our "intellectual property system" when most people know full well that in it's current state it is flawed at best. The IP laws on the books currently reflect a society where products were largely tangable. In todays society these products are not so. Music, Software, etc. Lastly I'm shocked that he would seem to make the statement that "we control your culture" - we meaning all media companies. The truth of the matter is that popular music, news, etc. are hardly a basis to grow our culture on. They are capitalist sell out rip offs of something that is truly creative.
Now my rant to these companies; For those who purchase music regardless of the medium we should have the right to do with it as we *damn* well please. I sure as hell know what happens to a CD, or an LP if I play it over and over -- it fucking gets scratched, warped, or otherwise. That is why I transfer files to mp3 format - guess what I use napster also! And I buy more music than anyone I know. As for movies the media companies must think that they control every possible media solution avaliable because if I happen to run Linux or BSD, or QNX -- anything BUT MacOS or Windows and I want to use a DVD disk you come down hard. To me this seems completely retroactive of what the consumer needs.
My end statement would be that you, the media companies out there & the "artist organizations such as MPAA and RIAA - you disgust me with your arrogant misunderstanding of the very people who you market to. I would love to see all of you replaced.
Is it just me or doesn't MacOSX have a fairly Anti-Mac interface? The extended finder which looks quite a bit like windows explorer or Nautilus. It would seem that even Apple is extending the original framework for the design of GUI's. For instance "Consistency" is important, however MacOSX is not quite as consistant as it's predecessor. The concept of "User Control" is going to be quite as much out of complete scope with OSX because BSD essentially is running in the background. All of the "Anti Mac" interface qualities seem obviously met - so perhaps Apple is taking this paper to heart.
I think this will probably fit right up there with PCXware in cost. Looking at their page it seems that they have some rather spendy products for the end user. If they have a variant for the "average" consumer then I may just be interested.