Actually, I'd like to know if the patent system fulfills any of its original stated purpose by protecting inventors from idea theft. Don't most inventors work for these companies anyway?
Now that I've thought about it, of course they write a bunch of stuff, like RPM and all the various configuration utilities. And certainly they are great citizens in terms of contributing to development of various external projects which they then roll into their distributions-- and this is the crux. No matter how much of that stuff they help develop, they don't get to GPL/not-GPL it, they don't even own it, which the original post implied. And as for the stuff they do write, who in the Linux user community would stand for it if they wrapped an otherwise Free (as in speech) operating system and application set in a bunch of proprietary installers, package managers and minor config utilities? Would they be anything but laughed out of the market?
For a brilliant scientist like Hawking to just now be coming out with a serious proclamation that he is afraid of something called the "greenhouse effect" and for anyone to refer to the potential for this to be considered "visionary" proves that he no longer needs to be scientifically valid at all. He's obtained a sufficient cult of personality that his word is taken simply because he's an authority, not because he's right, or even timely in his conclusions. Scientists in large groups have been saying this stuff for years.
Thanks for the link. They don't look to have a lot I'd want to pay for-- and certainly not to commit to a 12 month sub, but this is exactly what I'm talking about. I don't care who makes the money, I care about my price as a consumer and my rights to fairly use my purchases. And this is exactly what Napster should at as an example of what they could offer to the record companies as a way of working.
This article, while tangentially related to Red Hat software, should really be in a category titled something like, "Let's start a flame war". Or are we supposed to think that Cmdr Taco doesn't realize that this will devolve into a Windows vs. Linux or Debian/Slack vs. Corporate Linux religious war before the "First Post" is moderated "offtopic", "flamebait", or "troll" (and really, how hard is it, moderators, to choose one of the above consistently for completely irrelevant posts)?
This is an especially salient point with respect to the case at issue in this article. The ISP here is AOL, which is certainly traditionally far more than a simple ISP. AOL has for years provided not just "internet" service, but their own network and supposedly value-added services. To be a common carrier and still an ISP, I'd assume that the ISP offered only PPP (or other transparent-seeming) connections to the internet, maybe a mailbox, and maybe disk space for a web page, but absolutely nothing else.
Fairtunes is a great idea, although personally I'd rather pay a per download fee or monthly subscription on a Napster-like service that cooperated with the production companies to provide more "legitimate" (read complete, well-digitized) copies of songs, that I could feel were ethically and legally okay. Right now, with less than $4K in "tips" to artists, Fairtunes is completely off the radar. But given the contracts that most bands have with their record companies, and the oddities involved, like advances, royalties, etc etc, I have to wonder that a tipping service isn't at least as fraught with potential legal complications as Napster-- especially if it can be shown that these "tips" are in fact payments for what would otherwise be considered pirated copies of songs.
Also, I'm a little skeptical of the need to cut out the record labels (or why I should care as a fan), if the bands themselves-- over and over again in the face of the obvious snow job they themselves are getting from the record companies-- won't refuse to sign with these jokers. There are so many small labels out there and the cost to produce a small run LP or CD is not that huge. Most of these bands seem perfectly willing to play the craps game that is rock & roll stardom. If they get screwed in that process, that's their problem. Maybe they should consider forming a union.
As a consumer, I'm only interested in Napster as a way to obtain rare tracks and sample or single tracks (and hopefully they can work out some legal way between a Napster-like service and the RIAA members for this to happen), although I suppose I'd get into downloading full CDs worth of tunes if available. But if I don't like the price of a new CD at the music retailer, I don't buy it. That's the underlying principle of capitalism, and in this case it's not like it deprives people of something important like housing, food, or their right to bear arms.
First, Connectix VGS and Bleem are separate, but similar products.
Second, Sony is probably correct that it didn't cost much more than $150,000 to develop VGS. Even if it cost $1 million, this is 1/500th the cost that Sony had to develop the machine, which at the time was a very advanced machine.
Third, the reason Sony sued Connectix was that they purported that VGS was only developed because Connectix literally copied the BIOS from a Playstation (a little like copying ROMs for MAME). I do not know that factuality of that statement. It appears that Connectix went through some serious hurdles to make sure they had a comletely from scratch replacement, but that they may not have been as rigid in doing so as to avoid a lawsuit.
Sony brings up the financial issue partly to distract from the real issue, but partly to demonstrate how easily this supposed copyright infringement (as opposed to outright reverse engineering) assisted Connectix in becoming a Playstation competitor.
We should all be very grateful to the 9th District court and the Supremes on this one, since it looks like this will ultimately cause the MPAA a lot of trouble as they continue to litigate against DeCSS, DivX, and any other DVD players, decoders, etc, which are not sanctioned by their lackeys, er, members.
While I like to own stock in companies that do the right thing (and I consider Red Hat to be one of the most visible companies of such a sort), as a shareholder I certainly hope you will put some effort in to concentrating on money. Also, as a person who runs Red Hat on several machines, I'd love to know which code in there is actually Red Hat (beyond the installer). Almost every bit I've looked at is actually someone else's BSD/GPL/Artistic-license code, to which you can claim few if any rights (legal or ethical) to NOT continue to participate in the Free Software/Open Source manner. In reading the annual report, I did not notice that unit sales of CDs containing Linux for any processor was intended to be a major revenue driver. In fact, it seemed that having a distribution was largely hoped to be a strong support for selling consulting services, support, and being considered an authority on Linux (which will help sell classes, trainings, and certifications). As such, I support the decision to discontinue distribution versions for Sparc processors. Those machines appear to include Solaris for free (at least the few workstations I priced out did) and there are at least a few other Linux distros for Sparc. Besides, I would suspect that this decision was made after comparing downloads and purchases of Red Hat for Sparc and considering that it is not considered the simplest install, a total lack of support calls for that platform. If there does not appear to be interest in Red Hat for Sparc, then by all means, stop doing it.
How is this "easier to break" than existing forgery methods? I mean, if you ask me, pen and paper forgery has got to be one of the simplest methods of committing fraud. Or how about the telephone or the mail or fabricated ID cards? As long as identification technology is hindered by those who fear progress based on the supposition that the crime of identity theft is somehow rampant and pernicious, we will be stuck with the simple tools (like photo cards, signatures, etc etc) which will always be easy to forge. The next step is ensuring that digital signatures are unique and tied to an individual in an inseparable way, like with a biometric method of some sort. Then security will be LESS of a concern as far as fear of criminals goes. Then we can get back to worrying about the government and corporations, like normal.
Interesting note on the waterbed idea. I'd never heard that before. A quick search on google turned up some evidence that even he wasn't the first to think it up. And a quick search at the USPTO web site turns up a multitude of waterbed patents, some that cite prior art far older than Heinlein. Typically a patent is a very explicit description of a process or construction, the type of specificity a science fiction story is likely to lack. This might make some ideas harder to patent, but given the "would you like fries and a drink with that patent?" attitude the USPTO seems to have these days...
it's not small enough to put in my pocket like a palm and yet it's not really a computer like i'm used to. What's so hard about making a laptop-sized machine with a flip-out keyboard (or attachable via cable) and a pen-sensitive screen (flipped over from the normal laptop orientiation, so that the device can be rested on a forearm and held by one hand and "written" on with the other) that runs on either x86 or ppc chips and natively supports either win9x/2k/nt/linux/mac os-- depending on architecture. Why does this have to look so dang ugly, and how many more of these vaporware announcements can I stand?
Maybe you already have PPC machines that run a less desirable OS. Maybe you think the PPC chip is the faster chip within given price ranges. Maybe you work in some graphics shop full of G4s and would like to dual boot or convert some machines. Maybe you like the nifty case design of the iMac, the G4s, and the Cube. Or maybe you are halfway crazy and just need a little help getting over the edge.
I think you are referring more to how difficult it is to explain the plot holes in the Matrix, as opposed to how long it takes to tell someone that SW Ep2 is filler between Ep1 and the original Star Wars, designed mostly to help move the warehouses full of Jar-Jar Binks junk Lucas still has laying around.
Who is this "Roddenburgh"? Do you mean Roddenberry, since you mention tricorders I'm wondering if you are attempting to equate writing the fiction called Star Trek with the serious business of inventing.:)
On that note, had he (or anyone) actually thought of the idea first, then all he needed to do was apply for a patent. This is what BT is claiming to have done, which is why this demo is important, it shows that they had nothing to do with inventing this idea, and that even if they did think it up in a vacuum, that they did so several years too late.
Re:The coolest thing is,
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considering that it runs on highly refined raw materials (crude oil -> polymers, ore -> metals, etc) I seriously doubt capitalism has anything to fear from this type of device. Especially when you consider that you need to further break any items back down if the raw material is not to remain inert. If there's an oil crunch worthy of the national reserves right now, just think how scarce the stuff would be when everyone starts to demand it so they can make their own Natalie Portman dolls.
No. He's absolutely right to criticize in this way. Mr. Katz is not soaring with this particular article. I had to stop reading, in fact, because I so severely disagree with his apparent premise. The idea that the people in the world who have "power" are afraid of technology or are somehow Luddite in nature is ludicrous. Saying that their endless moralizing is the same as criticizing technology for the mass destruction of a way of life is a bizarre leap. It's a patently false assertion, to boot. If there are people in power, they are heavily invested in using technology to preserve that power and to coerce others to do their bidding.
Examples: infrared scanning for hot buildings to locate illegal marijuana grow rooms, corporate surveillance of employees and customers, police departments using the internet to post the names, photos, and other info about people arrested (but not necessarily convicted) of prosititution-related offenses, drug screening, IRS electronic filing (and presumably increasingly automated audit scoring), nuclear weaponry, Carnivore. I could go on and on. But none of these smack at all of any fear or even a pretension of fear of technology. It is foolish to call those in power Luddite. It pollutes the meaning of the word and ignores the very real communities that exist who work to prevent this sort of technology from ruining their way of life. The only real difference between the Luddites past and those today is that today's Luddite knows better than to knee-jerk reject technology. They seem to have an understanding that it can have a role in preserving their way of life, and that their true opposition is a much different beast than the simple machine.
One. The welfare system is not relevant to the financial plight of the disabled. Those payments are typically made by Social Security, which in theory has a separate budget and revenue/expense stream from the rest of the Federal budget. There may be additional funding for assistance for the disabled through Federally funded welfare programs, but I see it as unlikely that this will cause a sudden massive downgrade in the support for people affected by tragic accidents-- far more likely that this will hit the budget for the "willfully unemployed" or for supplemental programs not related specifically to housing and food.
Two. The current DEA budget does not seem to be having a very positive impact on crack and heroin (not "heroine", that's a female hero) addiction. Further, if my child were addicted to either substance, how is the DEA going to be a positive influence? Last time I checked, their primary method of treatment involved violating the civil rights of drug users, throwing them in jail, and turning them into criminals. Suggestion: cut the DEA budget to zero immediately and give the money to NASA-- it can't be any more wasted there than it is at the DEA.
Does this mean that I want to increase the budget for NASA without exploring possible ways for private enterprise to get in the game? I think not. At least not until I have a much better understanding of all the things NASA is probably doing that don't get on the news. Things that I'm probably benefitting from without realizing it.
To me, this is the most interesting point in the whole article: "The money issue is important because to date, no company is turning a profit at providing backbone connections. And InterNap itself is still losing money -- the publicly traded company reported losses of $43.4 million on revenues of $22.5 million for the first six months of this year."
As the backbone providers ratchet rates up to alleviate this red ink, InterNap will start to make more money as demand rises for their colo service (since this means less traffic over the backbones), but I'm most curious how this sort of thing will play out when a business realizes that 90% of its customers are all on one node and why should they pay for backbone traffic at all if they can serve most of their customers without it?
I'm glad you almost guarantee it, because I'd almost like a different opinion. I mean, if it's a "good" salary, I damn well better be able to afford 32 CPUs in a single machine!
For the record, I don't think the linked page is a brag. I think it's notes to interested parties who are working on porting the Linux kernel to large multi-processor machines. The reason it got on/. is that machines like that make geeks drool. The fact that it compiled and booted is exciting in the same way that people who live in an area get excited when the local ball teams win games. It's not really rational, it's tribal bonding. Reports like this confirm the Slashdot tribal belief that while Linux may never be Grandma's desktop OS, it will continue to make inroads and eventually dominate the real computers of the world. This makes the Linux enthusiasts very happy, especially since financial rewards are secondary to the more important free-software geek reward of enhanced reputation (so saith ESR at least), and this is like reputation enhancement by mere association. "Sure I only run Red Hat on my aging P/75, but if I had 32 CPUs and a computer the size of an elephant, I could still run Linux. Let's see you do that with Windows 2000. Nyeah!"
Windows users generally ARE clueless newbies. That's kinda M$'s market no?
Given the sheer number of personal computers and smaller servers that exist in the world and run under Windows 9x/2k/NT/CE, I'd say that their target market is pretty much anyone and everyone who uses a computer for anything, ever. To try to equate "Windows users" with "clueless newbies" is nothing short of insulting to the computing population as a whole. I'm guessing I can count on one hand the number of computing professionals who, at some point, haven't been willingly involved in some way with MS products, including their foul GUI.
I say we all take a solemn vow to simply avoid Micros~1 products as much as possible and to stop treating them as though they were actually important in the world of computing.
Total nitpick, but the function described in this example is not exponential, it is a basic parabolic polynomial: y=.5x^2-.5x. In fact, each unit change in the x variable produces a increasingly smaller incremental change (percent-wise) in the y variable. For this function to be exponential the function should look something like y=2^x. In any case, unless I misunderstand Gnutella, the problem is not that each peer is connected directly to each other peer but that the network is made up of subnetworks which get choked off when one subnetwork is connected to another subnetwork via a connection which is too small (i.e. 56K modem). This is the same kind of problem one has when using a typical star schema and one attempts to make too many joins for the (i.e. the data is a little too normalized). In order to only have one connection, you would have to arrange this in a client-server fashion, which would defeat the whole purpose of decentralizing the search function. The internet itself is a star schema which works fairly well, but only because nobody puts a 56K modem as a router in between two T3s-- which according to the article is the problem with Gnutella right now.
Either way, they've handed you a piece of hardware, and without a lease agreement that you actually inked a signature on, they've got zero legal recourse to people who use in ways they've not intended. If they had a leg to stand on, there would be no drivers available for any device that were not specifically authorized by the corporation that made the device. Interpreting the output of this device using homegrown software is completely legitimate, whether it was scrambled or not. There is no parallel here to putting a descrambler at the end of your cable tv line to obtain free access to premium content. This device has no output to speak of until it is used to scan a barcode. The analogy would be a video camera that scrambled content onto VHS tapes, theoretically requiring a descrambling VCR. But there is no way the makers of the camera can prevent you from building or buying a descrambling VCR or other device of your own.
Even if it is a law it is still not common sense behavior. All these intellectual property laws are not working at all as intended. They create black and grey markets and turn otherwise good citizens into people whose ethics are questioned. This is the same battle on so many fronts. When software can no longer be owned (it is only "on loan" or "licensed"), only thieves will own software.
Re:So what are your definitions
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Just so you're aware of it, putting farmers and herders together in a group with hunter/gatherers is basically a nonsense aggregation. Farming and herding are intentional and controlled activities (in terms of resource usage), whereas hunting and gathering implies a sense that resources are not planned or controlled in any real way.
I'm not sure you're asking the right questions about the Namibian tribemembers either, the question is, "what does the modern world have that is of any value to them?" especially when you consider the likely trend in America for people to associate with those that they don't even like (i.e. the "isolates" in the article/book) simply because they get paid to do so-- the corporate family (if you can get people to subscribe to it) is no substitute for tribal or real family relationships which are lifelong and have deeper meaning to most participants. I certainly don't think characterizing their tribal lives as ruled by basic animal urges discerns at all between them and Americans. I can't think of a single human culture that is comparable to a group of non-human animals. Humans have language, mythology, advanced use of tools (even in the most basic societies), rituals, and many other things which put them in a different class entirely than, say, a band of chimps. The commonalities between human groups far outweigh the differences. I don't know that a Namibian tribe member is any more/less worried about where his/her next meal is coming from than you are. They may have a less efficient means of obtaining the meal, but whether they are worried about it is another issue. Finally, just because one is not a hunter/gatherer, or even a farmer/herder, there is no guarantee that the work will not be "sun-up to sun-down". Many geeks work hours at least this long, many middle-to-upper level managers work those sorts of hours. Factory workers rarely get to work just eight hours (which is actually longer than daylight where I live for several months a year), there is plenty of forced overtime to go around-- especially in a period of low unemployment like this.
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To continue the off-topic thread... I completely agree. While I occasionally find cookies to make life much better (Slashdot preferences, for examples) and occasionally find java(script) to be fundamentally cool on some sites (like superbad) and absolutely adore some of the Flash/Shockwave/Whatever-that-is animation I've seen, I find it completely annoying when the site breaks down because of dependence on these things-- a properly designed CGI backend should be able to check for browser version or a prefs cookie and build HTML for your needs. Unfortunately this isn't a standards issue. There is no standard that says that a site or page should be usable without cookies or javascript. The standards merely govern implementation of those things so that they are annoying in the same way on every site.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I'd like to know if the patent system fulfills any of its original stated purpose by protecting inventors from idea theft. Don't most inventors work for these companies anyway?
Now that I've thought about it, of course they write a bunch of stuff, like RPM and all the various configuration utilities. And certainly they are great citizens in terms of contributing to development of various external projects which they then roll into their distributions-- and this is the crux. No matter how much of that stuff they help develop, they don't get to GPL/not-GPL it, they don't even own it, which the original post implied. And as for the stuff they do write, who in the Linux user community would stand for it if they wrapped an otherwise Free (as in speech) operating system and application set in a bunch of proprietary installers, package managers and minor config utilities? Would they be anything but laughed out of the market?
For a brilliant scientist like Hawking to just now be coming out with a serious proclamation that he is afraid of something called the "greenhouse effect" and for anyone to refer to the potential for this to be considered "visionary" proves that he no longer needs to be scientifically valid at all. He's obtained a sufficient cult of personality that his word is taken simply because he's an authority, not because he's right, or even timely in his conclusions. Scientists in large groups have been saying this stuff for years.
Thanks for the link. They don't look to have a lot I'd want to pay for-- and certainly not to commit to a 12 month sub, but this is exactly what I'm talking about. I don't care who makes the money, I care about my price as a consumer and my rights to fairly use my purchases. And this is exactly what Napster should at as an example of what they could offer to the record companies as a way of working.
This article, while tangentially related to Red Hat software, should really be in a category titled something like, "Let's start a flame war". Or are we supposed to think that Cmdr Taco doesn't realize that this will devolve into a Windows vs. Linux or Debian/Slack vs. Corporate Linux religious war before the "First Post" is moderated "offtopic", "flamebait", or "troll" (and really, how hard is it, moderators, to choose one of the above consistently for completely irrelevant posts)?
This is an especially salient point with respect to the case at issue in this article. The ISP here is AOL, which is certainly traditionally far more than a simple ISP. AOL has for years provided not just "internet" service, but their own network and supposedly value-added services. To be a common carrier and still an ISP, I'd assume that the ISP offered only PPP (or other transparent-seeming) connections to the internet, maybe a mailbox, and maybe disk space for a web page, but absolutely nothing else.
Fairtunes is a great idea, although personally I'd rather pay a per download fee or monthly subscription on a Napster-like service that cooperated with the production companies to provide more "legitimate" (read complete, well-digitized) copies of songs, that I could feel were ethically and legally okay. Right now, with less than $4K in "tips" to artists, Fairtunes is completely off the radar. But given the contracts that most bands have with their record companies, and the oddities involved, like advances, royalties, etc etc, I have to wonder that a tipping service isn't at least as fraught with potential legal complications as Napster-- especially if it can be shown that these "tips" are in fact payments for what would otherwise be considered pirated copies of songs.
Also, I'm a little skeptical of the need to cut out the record labels (or why I should care as a fan), if the bands themselves-- over and over again in the face of the obvious snow job they themselves are getting from the record companies-- won't refuse to sign with these jokers. There are so many small labels out there and the cost to produce a small run LP or CD is not that huge. Most of these bands seem perfectly willing to play the craps game that is rock & roll stardom. If they get screwed in that process, that's their problem. Maybe they should consider forming a union.
As a consumer, I'm only interested in Napster as a way to obtain rare tracks and sample or single tracks (and hopefully they can work out some legal way between a Napster-like service and the RIAA members for this to happen), although I suppose I'd get into downloading full CDs worth of tunes if available. But if I don't like the price of a new CD at the music retailer, I don't buy it. That's the underlying principle of capitalism, and in this case it's not like it deprives people of something important like housing, food, or their right to bear arms.
First, Connectix VGS and Bleem are separate, but similar products.
Second, Sony is probably correct that it didn't cost much more than $150,000 to develop VGS. Even if it cost $1 million, this is 1/500th the cost that Sony had to develop the machine, which at the time was a very advanced machine.
Third, the reason Sony sued Connectix was that they purported that VGS was only developed because Connectix literally copied the BIOS from a Playstation (a little like copying ROMs for MAME). I do not know that factuality of that statement. It appears that Connectix went through some serious hurdles to make sure they had a comletely from scratch replacement, but that they may not have been as rigid in doing so as to avoid a lawsuit.
Sony brings up the financial issue partly to distract from the real issue, but partly to demonstrate how easily this supposed copyright infringement (as opposed to outright reverse engineering) assisted Connectix in becoming a Playstation competitor.
We should all be very grateful to the 9th District court and the Supremes on this one, since it looks like this will ultimately cause the MPAA a lot of trouble as they continue to litigate against DeCSS, DivX, and any other DVD players, decoders, etc, which are not sanctioned by their lackeys, er, members.
While I like to own stock in companies that do the right thing (and I consider Red Hat to be one of the most visible companies of such a sort), as a shareholder I certainly hope you will put some effort in to concentrating on money. Also, as a person who runs Red Hat on several machines, I'd love to know which code in there is actually Red Hat (beyond the installer). Almost every bit I've looked at is actually someone else's BSD/GPL/Artistic-license code, to which you can claim few if any rights (legal or ethical) to NOT continue to participate in the Free Software/Open Source manner. In reading the annual report, I did not notice that unit sales of CDs containing Linux for any processor was intended to be a major revenue driver. In fact, it seemed that having a distribution was largely hoped to be a strong support for selling consulting services, support, and being considered an authority on Linux (which will help sell classes, trainings, and certifications). As such, I support the decision to discontinue distribution versions for Sparc processors. Those machines appear to include Solaris for free (at least the few workstations I priced out did) and there are at least a few other Linux distros for Sparc. Besides, I would suspect that this decision was made after comparing downloads and purchases of Red Hat for Sparc and considering that it is not considered the simplest install, a total lack of support calls for that platform. If there does not appear to be interest in Red Hat for Sparc, then by all means, stop doing it.
How is this "easier to break" than existing forgery methods? I mean, if you ask me, pen and paper forgery has got to be one of the simplest methods of committing fraud. Or how about the telephone or the mail or fabricated ID cards? As long as identification technology is hindered by those who fear progress based on the supposition that the crime of identity theft is somehow rampant and pernicious, we will be stuck with the simple tools (like photo cards, signatures, etc etc) which will always be easy to forge. The next step is ensuring that digital signatures are unique and tied to an individual in an inseparable way, like with a biometric method of some sort. Then security will be LESS of a concern as far as fear of criminals goes. Then we can get back to worrying about the government and corporations, like normal.
Interesting note on the waterbed idea. I'd never heard that before. A quick search on google turned up some evidence that even he wasn't the first to think it up. And a quick search at the USPTO web site turns up a multitude of waterbed patents, some that cite prior art far older than Heinlein. Typically a patent is a very explicit description of a process or construction, the type of specificity a science fiction story is likely to lack. This might make some ideas harder to patent, but given the "would you like fries and a drink with that patent?" attitude the USPTO seems to have these days...
this device is yucky. icky. eww.
it's not small enough to put in my pocket like a palm and yet it's not really a computer like i'm used to. What's so hard about making a laptop-sized machine with a flip-out keyboard (or attachable via cable) and a pen-sensitive screen (flipped over from the normal laptop orientiation, so that the device can be rested on a forearm and held by one hand and "written" on with the other) that runs on either x86 or ppc chips and natively supports either win9x/2k/nt/linux/mac os-- depending on architecture. Why does this have to look so dang ugly, and how many more of these vaporware announcements can I stand?
Maybe you already have PPC machines that run a less desirable OS. Maybe you think the PPC chip is the faster chip within given price ranges. Maybe you work in some graphics shop full of G4s and would like to dual boot or convert some machines. Maybe you like the nifty case design of the iMac, the G4s, and the Cube. Or maybe you are halfway crazy and just need a little help getting over the edge.
I think you are referring more to how difficult it is to explain the plot holes in the Matrix, as opposed to how long it takes to tell someone that SW Ep2 is filler between Ep1 and the original Star Wars, designed mostly to help move the warehouses full of Jar-Jar Binks junk Lucas still has laying around.
Who is this "Roddenburgh"? Do you mean Roddenberry, since you mention tricorders I'm wondering if you are attempting to equate writing the fiction called Star Trek with the serious business of inventing. :)
On that note, had he (or anyone) actually thought of the idea first, then all he needed to do was apply for a patent. This is what BT is claiming to have done, which is why this demo is important, it shows that they had nothing to do with inventing this idea, and that even if they did think it up in a vacuum, that they did so several years too late.
considering that it runs on highly refined raw materials (crude oil -> polymers, ore -> metals, etc) I seriously doubt capitalism has anything to fear from this type of device. Especially when you consider that you need to further break any items back down if the raw material is not to remain inert. If there's an oil crunch worthy of the national reserves right now, just think how scarce the stuff would be when everyone starts to demand it so they can make their own Natalie Portman dolls.
No. He's absolutely right to criticize in this way. Mr. Katz is not soaring with this particular article. I had to stop reading, in fact, because I so severely disagree with his apparent premise. The idea that the people in the world who have "power" are afraid of technology or are somehow Luddite in nature is ludicrous. Saying that their endless moralizing is the same as criticizing technology for the mass destruction of a way of life is a bizarre leap. It's a patently false assertion, to boot. If there are people in power, they are heavily invested in using technology to preserve that power and to coerce others to do their bidding.
Examples: infrared scanning for hot buildings to locate illegal marijuana grow rooms, corporate surveillance of employees and customers, police departments using the internet to post the names, photos, and other info about people arrested (but not necessarily convicted) of prosititution-related offenses, drug screening, IRS electronic filing (and presumably increasingly automated audit scoring), nuclear weaponry, Carnivore. I could go on and on. But none of these smack at all of any fear or even a pretension of fear of technology. It is foolish to call those in power Luddite. It pollutes the meaning of the word and ignores the very real communities that exist who work to prevent this sort of technology from ruining their way of life. The only real difference between the Luddites past and those today is that today's Luddite knows better than to knee-jerk reject technology. They seem to have an understanding that it can have a role in preserving their way of life, and that their true opposition is a much different beast than the simple machine.
One. The welfare system is not relevant to the financial plight of the disabled. Those payments are typically made by Social Security, which in theory has a separate budget and revenue/expense stream from the rest of the Federal budget. There may be additional funding for assistance for the disabled through Federally funded welfare programs, but I see it as unlikely that this will cause a sudden massive downgrade in the support for people affected by tragic accidents-- far more likely that this will hit the budget for the "willfully unemployed" or for supplemental programs not related specifically to housing and food.
Two. The current DEA budget does not seem to be having a very positive impact on crack and heroin (not "heroine", that's a female hero) addiction. Further, if my child were addicted to either substance, how is the DEA going to be a positive influence? Last time I checked, their primary method of treatment involved violating the civil rights of drug users, throwing them in jail, and turning them into criminals. Suggestion: cut the DEA budget to zero immediately and give the money to NASA-- it can't be any more wasted there than it is at the DEA.
Does this mean that I want to increase the budget for NASA without exploring possible ways for private enterprise to get in the game? I think not. At least not until I have a much better understanding of all the things NASA is probably doing that don't get on the news. Things that I'm probably benefitting from without realizing it.
To me, this is the most interesting point in the whole article: "The money issue is important because to date, no company is turning a profit at providing backbone connections. And InterNap itself is still losing money -- the publicly traded company reported losses of $43.4 million on revenues of $22.5 million for the first six months of this year."
As the backbone providers ratchet rates up to alleviate this red ink, InterNap will start to make more money as demand rises for their colo service (since this means less traffic over the backbones), but I'm most curious how this sort of thing will play out when a business realizes that 90% of its customers are all on one node and why should they pay for backbone traffic at all if they can serve most of their customers without it?
I'm glad you almost guarantee it, because I'd almost like a different opinion. I mean, if it's a "good" salary, I damn well better be able to afford 32 CPUs in a single machine!
/. is that machines like that make geeks drool. The fact that it compiled and booted is exciting in the same way that people who live in an area get excited when the local ball teams win games. It's not really rational, it's tribal bonding. Reports like this confirm the Slashdot tribal belief that while Linux may never be Grandma's desktop OS, it will continue to make inroads and eventually dominate the real computers of the world. This makes the Linux enthusiasts very happy, especially since financial rewards are secondary to the more important free-software geek reward of enhanced reputation (so saith ESR at least), and this is like reputation enhancement by mere association. "Sure I only run Red Hat on my aging P/75, but if I had 32 CPUs and a computer the size of an elephant, I could still run Linux. Let's see you do that with Windows 2000. Nyeah!"
For the record, I don't think the linked page is a brag. I think it's notes to interested parties who are working on porting the Linux kernel to large multi-processor machines. The reason it got on
Windows users generally ARE clueless newbies. That's kinda M$'s market no?
Given the sheer number of personal computers and smaller servers that exist in the world and run under Windows 9x/2k/NT/CE, I'd say that their target market is pretty much anyone and everyone who uses a computer for anything, ever. To try to equate "Windows users" with "clueless newbies" is nothing short of insulting to the computing population as a whole. I'm guessing I can count on one hand the number of computing professionals who, at some point, haven't been willingly involved in some way with MS products, including their foul GUI.
I say we all take a solemn vow to simply avoid Micros~1 products as much as possible and to stop treating them as though they were actually important in the world of computing.
Total nitpick, but the function described in this example is not exponential, it is a basic parabolic polynomial: y=.5x^2-.5x. In fact, each unit change in the x variable produces a increasingly smaller incremental change (percent-wise) in the y variable. For this function to be exponential the function should look something like y=2^x. In any case, unless I misunderstand Gnutella, the problem is not that each peer is connected directly to each other peer but that the network is made up of subnetworks which get choked off when one subnetwork is connected to another subnetwork via a connection which is too small (i.e. 56K modem). This is the same kind of problem one has when using a typical star schema and one attempts to make too many joins for the (i.e. the data is a little too normalized). In order to only have one connection, you would have to arrange this in a client-server fashion, which would defeat the whole purpose of decentralizing the search function. The internet itself is a star schema which works fairly well, but only because nobody puts a 56K modem as a router in between two T3s-- which according to the article is the problem with Gnutella right now.
Either way, they've handed you a piece of hardware, and without a lease agreement that you actually inked a signature on, they've got zero legal recourse to people who use in ways they've not intended. If they had a leg to stand on, there would be no drivers available for any device that were not specifically authorized by the corporation that made the device. Interpreting the output of this device using homegrown software is completely legitimate, whether it was scrambled or not. There is no parallel here to putting a descrambler at the end of your cable tv line to obtain free access to premium content. This device has no output to speak of until it is used to scan a barcode. The analogy would be a video camera that scrambled content onto VHS tapes, theoretically requiring a descrambling VCR. But there is no way the makers of the camera can prevent you from building or buying a descrambling VCR or other device of your own.
Even if it is a law it is still not common sense behavior. All these intellectual property laws are not working at all as intended. They create black and grey markets and turn otherwise good citizens into people whose ethics are questioned. This is the same battle on so many fronts. When software can no longer be owned (it is only "on loan" or "licensed"), only thieves will own software.
Just so you're aware of it, putting farmers and herders together in a group with hunter/gatherers is basically a nonsense aggregation. Farming and herding are intentional and controlled activities (in terms of resource usage), whereas hunting and gathering implies a sense that resources are not planned or controlled in any real way.
I'm not sure you're asking the right questions about the Namibian tribemembers either, the question is, "what does the modern world have that is of any value to them?" especially when you consider the likely trend in America for people to associate with those that they don't even like (i.e. the "isolates" in the article/book) simply because they get paid to do so-- the corporate family (if you can get people to subscribe to it) is no substitute for tribal or real family relationships which are lifelong and have deeper meaning to most participants. I certainly don't think characterizing their tribal lives as ruled by basic animal urges discerns at all between them and Americans. I can't think of a single human culture that is comparable to a group of non-human animals. Humans have language, mythology, advanced use of tools (even in the most basic societies), rituals, and many other things which put them in a different class entirely than, say, a band of chimps. The commonalities between human groups far outweigh the differences. I don't know that a Namibian tribe member is any more/less worried about where his/her next meal is coming from than you are. They may have a less efficient means of obtaining the meal, but whether they are worried about it is another issue. Finally, just because one is not a hunter/gatherer, or even a farmer/herder, there is no guarantee that the work will not be "sun-up to sun-down". Many geeks work hours at least this long, many middle-to-upper level managers work those sorts of hours. Factory workers rarely get to work just eight hours (which is actually longer than daylight where I live for several months a year), there is plenty of forced overtime to go around-- especially in a period of low unemployment like this.
To continue the off-topic thread... I completely agree. While I occasionally find cookies to make life much better (Slashdot preferences, for examples) and occasionally find java(script) to be fundamentally cool on some sites (like superbad) and absolutely adore some of the Flash/Shockwave/Whatever-that-is animation I've seen, I find it completely annoying when the site breaks down because of dependence on these things-- a properly designed CGI backend should be able to check for browser version or a prefs cookie and build HTML for your needs. Unfortunately this isn't a standards issue. There is no standard that says that a site or page should be usable without cookies or javascript. The standards merely govern implementation of those things so that they are annoying in the same way on every site.