You are probably trolling but since this question comes up regularly, I'll answer anyhow.
There are good reasons why copyright as used to uphold the GPL is treated by most Slashdotters as a different thing from copyright as used to punish file traders. It has nothing to do with hypocrisy. People do not react out of an academic worship for the concept of copyright.
The question here is about freedom of information and our rights, as a community, to the cultural baggage that we believe, rightly or wrongly, collectively belongs to us.
I don't want to be boring, but there are real reasons why the concept of "property" is not a right but a gift from the community to an individual or organisation, and why communities reject those who seek to extend this gift into non-property domains by force.
Instinctively, and after some millenia of discipline, we accept that property rights can lead to better use of certain kinds of resource. Fundamentally, property rights protect unmoveable resources from being plundered. Moveable resources - like fish that move around the oceans, as compared to fish that remain in the same waters - are very hard to define as "property" and thus get plundered.
All notion of property is, however, a social contract between the community and the individual. The reason you "own" your house is because this is a good way of ensuring that cities remain healthy and vigorous. Community ownership of homes leads to under-investment and decay, as experiments in many countries have proven. Conversely, property rights that have no benefit to the community break the social contract and are eventually recognised as gangsterism. The right for individuals to own branches of government, for instance, is a "bad" thing, while the right for individuals to own entire corporations is "good" because the former causes harm to the community at large but the latter does not. (Big business may or may not be evil but in general, community-owned businesses are lousy while private businesses work a lot better. There are exceptions...)
Now, the question is whether and how copyrights benefit the community. Does the extension of copyright to 95 years benefit the community? No. Does the music industry, with its excessive structures, benefit the community? No. Does respect for copyright of music and film benefit the community? No, it does not. The community feeds on vast amounts of culture, and insofar as artists exist to spread their works, the community benefits from wider, cheaper distribution, not restriction and artificially high prices.
So, our collective reaction to copyrights on music and other digital media is somewhat skeptical when these copyrights are used to restrict our access and open our wallets. We do not like being asked to pay for culture. Culture is not water, not food, it is not a product to be divided, but a set of ideas to be shared and reused. Making culture into property is an abomination. Would you consider it right to have to pay to view the Mona Lisa, to listen to Mozart, or to look at the Pyramids? Yet this is the logical conclusion of those who would use copyright in this way: every cultural artifact would become pay-per-view property.
It is, simply put, a revolting concept, and every attempt to enforce it will create more revulsion as people understand just what is at stake.
How about the GPL? Does the GPL restrict distribution and attempt to make us pay for our culture?
Well, here is the funny thing. The GPL actually uses copyright to reinforce and protect the communal ownership of culture. I don't need to point you to the tens of thousands of works that are inviolably placed into the common domain thanks to the GPL, nor to the incredibly successful spread of certain key technologies that the GPL has enabled.
So, to sum up: copyright is just a tool, like patents. When the tools are abused, and the US-led drive to enshrine "intellectual property rights" across the world is an abuse of these tools, you will find that right-thinking people resist and complain. When the tools are used positively, you will find that right-thinking people applaud. This is not hypocrisy, just accuracy.
The showing-out-of-order and at-really-odd-times was either gross stupidity on behalf of Fox TV... and that is actually quite a convincing explanation... or it was a deliberate ploy to make the series look bad so that cancellation would not be an issue. Your reaction - "it sucked" is quite typical of those who watched it on TV. Watch it again on DVD, in order, and I'll bet you lunch that you will find it up there with the best stories you've ever watched.
Joss Whedon has done some remarkable things. Probably none of these are original, but he's combined them consistently, into packages which are only less precious (like some entire series of Buffy) because of the sheer volume.
- He mixes long story lines with short ones so you can enjoy both individual episodes and entire series. - He has unconditionally excellent camera work, with many long shots, excellent lighting, and hand-held effects that seem cheesy but actually work well. - He makes great use of music. - He develops stable groups of characters, bringing interesting social dynamics to the plots, and letting us identify with different characters. I'd like to be Spike, but I know I'm really Xander. - He stays semi-real, semi-fantasy, allowing him to explore dark subjects (death and loss) in different ways. - He brings big-screen production quality to every episode, so the DVDs are really worth having. - His dialogues are usually so good that in the few cases where the characters become formulaic stand out.
On the downside, his work tends to be very politically neutral, which makes it safe, but bland. Serenity was cancelled because it was slyly political, Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham style. The shocker is that it managed to get aired at all, on Fox TV, which is basically a mouthpiece for the Sheriff.
The unfinished Serenity first series, by the way, was fantastic. A wonderful cast, and every single aspect of the production deliberate and perfect, as far as I could tell. I don't normally make an effort to see specific films but I'm eagerly waiting to see Serenity.
Other places to put solar cells...
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Solar-powered Handbag
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· Score: 4, Interesting
- in the windows of cars parked in the sun, powering anti-theft alarms - in the fabric of sun shades for the beach, powering a beer cooler - on the backs of notebooks, adding to their pathetic battery life - on rucksacks, powering the old ipod - in the garden, keeping the gnomes warm
But for the handbag, why not simply make a material that is opaque from the outside and transparent from the inside, which lets light in but not out...?
Deafness is a useful adaption to the modern working environment. A touch of deafness blocks out the computer fans, the traffic noise, the endless airplanes flying overhead, the neighbour's kids, and the wife. The only problem is that it takes more and more volume to produce that "oh, yeah!"effect when listening to music. But that's someone else's problem.
Personally, I went partly deaf at the age of 16 from spending too much time on a firing range. But most of my peers went similarly deaf not from the iPod, but from the Sony Walkman.
This story is about 25 years too late. I guess each generation reinvents the "we went deaf because..." story.
- Vista Secure Edition: completely redesigned kernel and win32 libraries make this edition secure against virus, worm, trojan, spyware, and phish attacks!
- Vista Compact Edition: with just the software you need, including the much appreciated MSOfficeCompact, this edition runs on your P100 with 128Mb.
- Vista Instant Edition: bootable in so many ways, this is all the software you need to boot that recaltricant box and get it working again. Comes complete with legacy support for every known device.
- Vista Grandmother Edition: simple, fast, and based on all the best of Windows Secure, this is the software you wished you'd had when your parents asked, "How do I get onto the Internet?"
- Vista Open Edition: free, and packed to the hilt with first-class open source, all verified and tuned by MicrosoftOpenLabs for that smooth experience. Comes with full source code.
When a sliding company makes a bold and aggressive attack on the market leader, don't look for a direct link between that company and the attack.
Instead, look to other companies who would benefit most from such an attack.
Creative do many things, and attacking Apple in the player market is a very high risk gamble. If they lose they will basically have destroyed their player business - no-one is going to buy a product from a bunch of losers. If they win, they will still have a problem - people like Apply and attacking them like this just looks evil.
Cui bono? Who benefits?
Someone rich, who wants to take over the player market, and has a history of launching proxy wars to harass and intimidate its competitors, on feeble or completely false pretexts.
Someone who has been fighting hard to get software patents enabled in Europe, through proxy groups such as the BSA and C4C.
This opinion is simply a gut feeling. Are there any recent reports of deals between Microsoft and Creative Labs that indicate money flowing?
Seriously, I'm tired of hearing about some great new Google product and seeing the "System Requirements".
Is it so difficult to make portable software in 2005? Do we really have to keep a Wintendo box lying around just so we can use the newest gadgets?
I think Skype (and many others) have shown that the answer is, "it runs on your box, whatever that is", and I really hope Google pay attention to this. Unless they have a vested interest in reducing their market, they must deliver applications that run on Windows, Linux, and OS/X.
It took bar codes 50+ years to mature...
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The End of the Bar Code
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· Score: 4, Informative
Bar codes were invented in 1952 but only became really widely used in the last ten years, thanks to ink jet printers and laser scanning at many checkouts. It's going to take RFIDs decades to replace bar codes and probably it won't happen until a RFID chip can be literally micro-printed onto a paper receipt, onto an egg, or onto a newspaper.
Never trust journalism that seeks to promote conflict between parties. It is too easy to take words out of context, to ask people to make statements on subjects they would rather ignore, and to do what journalists are generally paid to do - fill the pages with controversy and "news".
Point 1: RMS is the genius behind the GPL, the FSF tools, and has dedicated his life to making Linux, however you call it, come true. Insulting RMS is a sign of ignorance, bad manners, or bad faith.
Point 2: Linux is a mark and a commodity technology. The goal of trademarking Linux and enforcing that mark through licensing is to protect the "brand" from those who seek to harm it. But that is a short-term logic, and it ignores the underlying fact: a commodity technology needs no name, no brand, because it does not compete on that basis. No-one ever trademarked "TCP/IP" (afaik) and it would have been both ridiculous and counter-productive to have tried.
So RMS is spot-on, even if he does not explain it quite the way I'd like to hear. The name you give Linux is only meaningful if you're one of the vendors supporting it today. It's what Linux is, and does, not its name, that guarantees its place as the commodity OS of the future.
No more unassisted human players, but networks of bots competing against each other, ultimately controlled by individuals, and creating a larger and more interesting game... Bots are just another tool, after all.
So Microsoft's latest strategy for smearing its competitors is to launch a FUD campaign in which... wait for it... their competitors get called "as evil as Microsoft?"
Hmmm. Something not quite right here. What could the MS spindroids be thinking?
"Hey, I just had an excellent idea for a fudwave..." "Yeah?" (puts down bimbo and cigar for a second) "Look.. we're evil, right?" "Damn right! I mean, unfortunately, yes...?" "I mean, we tried to fix that - the Foundation, pocket money for Africa, Bill even visited some schools..." "People always want a villain, I guess that's us..." "So, since Google refuse to compete fairly with us, here's the plan... We're going to redefine the meaning of 'evil'..." "uh?" "Lots of PR about 'Google is evil too, just like MS'" "Solid! And then, 'IBM is evil'" "Yup. Then, 'Linux is evil' and so on. Eventually people gonna start associating 'evil' with 'cool', and then we'll be there" "Sigh. Been a long time since we were cool." "OK, call in some favours. I think Perfect-10 still owe us for that time with the Senator." "Trollboys online?" "Yup. Ready to go!"...
What on earth has off-shoring got to do with this? People travel. People go on holiday. People work overseas. People exchange exotic diseases. It's hardly a feature of modern business practices.
The "Why Collaze is Different" page is no good... you're expressing your dissatisfaction with other tools, but you can't assume your readers share the same point of view.
Your explanation here is interesting and passionate and brings the whole concept to life. I'd tidy that up a little and use it. Perhaps in the form of a series of questions and answers...
"Why did you create Collaze?" "..."
"So, how does the site pay for itself?" "..."
"What is unique about Collaze?"...
"How would I use this to write a story?"
and so on. This auto-interview form can work very well to force you to explain things from your viewer's point of view.
And yes, a "Try it now!" option could work well. Since you're not taking subscription revenue, your goal is to get people to read the pages that have the adsense ads, and to make sure these ads are useful - or people won't click and you won't get any revenue.
For a demo, I'd avoid screen shots. If you want a passive demo, cut meaningful fragments from the screens so we get the idea. Whole screen shots are going to kill your bandwidth.
Good luck. I'll come back to Collaze some time and see how it's doing.
Collaze looks interesting. My first comment is that the site asks for registration before letting you browse. This is a problem. You lose 90% of your audience right there. Consider adding a "Guest" button so people can join and at least read if not contribute.
Secondly, I don't see the point of the site. By this I mean several things. First, writing (and reading) collaborative stories has never been much fun for me. Second, what is your business model? Literally, who is paying, and for what? I don't see ads - nice, but scary... does this mean I'll have to pay to use the site, or that you'll go broke in 6 months and I'll lose all my work.
Thirdly, online editing is painful unless it's short and sweet. Writing whole chapters is too painful. Maybe you have made this really fast - I did not sign in, so cannot tell.
Lastly, and most delicately... wikis, though chaotic in appearance, are very well suited to collaboration. There are many advantages in using them: you create a community, you get technology for free, the model suits the web... If you choose not to use wikis, you have to say more than "ain't a wiki".
I write, now and then, and I find it great that you have taken such an initiative. But I'm unsure I'd take part unless there was a community, a sound economic model, and a way for me to write using the tool I like best of all: a simple word processor.
There are many alternative explanations people have given in the past, most notably that psychopathy is a "disease of the mind". Which is just a neat way of saying, "we don't know, but take these pills". Kind of the same as calling it "posession by evil spirits".
The selection of inherited characteristics through selection is a mechanism that is subtle but powerful. I don't think using this tool to explain things gives anyone a bad name.
For figures, I'm sorry, but this is slashdot, not Scientific American. For predictions, ok, here are some. First, let's agree that we're discussing a set of related behaviours that range from the ability to lie well, to murder, and not a single identifiable behaviour:
- all human societies will have psychopaths. - the relative male/female distribution of will be the same in most societies. - in all societies, young boys who exhibit such behaviour will grow into men who exhibit the same behaviour, in similar proportions. - in violent societies, there will be more psychopaths. - in all societies, men will be more likely to adopt and learn psychopathic behaviour than women, given violent circumstances. - in any society, the higher one goes up the power pyramid (political, military, business), the higher the percentage of psychopaths. - in any society, you will find the most violent psychopaths in the military, and the most diplomatic psychopaths in the top levels of politics or management. - all societies have soldiers, politicians, and managers. - most soldiers, businessmen, and politicians are men.
etc. I could go on for ages but you get my drift. It's a complex genetic payload usually but not always triggered by environmental conditions, and overwhelmingly gender-linked to male genes.
Much of our history has been dominated by violence, and our ancestors are those who survived violent episodes. Either by being very smart, very cute, or very evil.
Psychopaths are overwhelmingly male and psychopathic behaviour is generally evidenced by the ability to hurt and harm others without the usual remorse and empathic pain that most people feel.
The reason why only a small fraction of people show this behaviour is because (a) it's quite counterproductive in stable societies, so quickly gets pushed into marginal genepools (the bad boys of any village), and (b) it has a large component of environmental triggering, meaning that many people (mainly men, again) can exhibit psychopathic behavour given the right circumstances.
Why are psychopaths so charming? Partly because it works well in conflict situations. Partly because it acts to deflect attention. Selection works at the gene level, and the charming psychopathic genes have survived civilisation much better than the pure violence ones.
1. If the Linux(tm) mark is not looked after, it will become junk.
2. "Looking after a mark" means getting a trademark and enforcing it.
3. Enforcing a trademark means preventing others from abusing it (using it for contradictory purposes, trying to trademark it themselves, etc.) All these abuses have happened with Linux.
4. This kind of enforcement costs money, and often quite a large amount of money.
5. It's normal that the people who use the Linux mark in their business should pay this, proportionally. They benefit from a well-protected mark.
Lincensing and paying money for things we're used to getting for free is a bit sad, but in the real world. people do mean and unkind things when money is involved. This means: if you like Linux, if your business depends on it, and if you want the word to mean anything at all, you should be willing to pay for this.
Ultimately, though, Linux will become (IMO) the commodity OS just as TCP/IP became the commodity networking protocol. Within 5-10 years, no-one will pay much attention to this.
From this perspective, asking licensing fees, even small ones, will slow down adoption. It creates one more barrier for people who have Linux-related business ideas.
What I would have done is to license the mark and pursue those who abuse it, but allow free licensing for those who comply with certain criteria - especially non-commercial open source projects.
Foundation vs. Corporation, 10 easy questions
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Mambo CMS Dev Team Splits
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Q1. But forking is bad!
A. No, not unless it splits the team, and even then competition is as good a driver as collaboration. Many of the most successful products come from forked versions that eventually out-evolved their ancestors. Homo Sapiens is a good example.
Q2. Is it legal to start a new fork like this?
A. The GPL guarantees this possibility. It's one of the better reasons for choosing GPL'd software - you are assured that if the product is good but the management is bad, the developers are free to continue their work.
Q3. What about the copyrights?
A. The copyright allows the owner to (a) define the license terms, (b) change these over time, e.g. from GPL to APL, etc., and (c) sell alternative licenses, e.g. commercial opt-out licenses for a GPL'd product.
Q4. So the copyright owner could sell opt-out licenses for a fork?
A. No! The forked code will now have multiple copyright owners - the new and the old code. The copyright owner can only license their own code.
Q5. What would have happened if Mambo was licensed under a BSD-style license originally?
A. Probably exactly the same, except that it would have forked earlier. The GPL discourages forking because it gives the copyright owners more incentive to "hold the work together" at some level.
Q6. Is this bad for Mambo?
A. Certainly not. It's good publicity, and a little fighting always strengthens team spirit, so long as the enemy is clear. Let's all kick the corporations!!!
Q7. How do you know all this stuff?
A. I don't, I'm just making it up as I go along.
Q8. You're kidding?
A. Yes. Gotcha!
Q9. Is that all?
A. Yes, I'm just trying to get to 10 questions. Maybe that was a bit ambitious. Should I go and change it to "7 easy questions"?
Yes, 24 years is a great run for a single design. But what I said, was: we are ending this programme with no successor or evolution. That means that the design might as well have lasted 1 month: the value of any technological feat is not the one-off but the incremental. NASA has managed great feats but not the only one that counts: a process for incremental improvements over the long term.
To give a simile: imagine a company that made one very good, very fast computer. Wonderful. But if they can't make a successor, and another, and so on for 30, 50 years, they have ultimately failed./not impressed
Slashdot Mirror
You are probably trolling but since this question comes up regularly, I'll answer anyhow.
There are good reasons why copyright as used to uphold the GPL is treated by most Slashdotters as a different thing from copyright as used to punish file traders. It has nothing to do with hypocrisy. People do not react out of an academic worship for the concept of copyright.
The question here is about freedom of information and our rights, as a community, to the cultural baggage that we believe, rightly or wrongly, collectively belongs to us.
I don't want to be boring, but there are real reasons why the concept of "property" is not a right but a gift from the community to an individual or organisation, and why communities reject those who seek to extend this gift into non-property domains by force.
Instinctively, and after some millenia of discipline, we accept that property rights can lead to better use of certain kinds of resource. Fundamentally, property rights protect unmoveable resources from being plundered. Moveable resources - like fish that move around the oceans, as compared to fish that remain in the same waters - are very hard to define as "property" and thus get plundered.
All notion of property is, however, a social contract between the community and the individual. The reason you "own" your house is because this is a good way of ensuring that cities remain healthy and vigorous. Community ownership of homes leads to under-investment and decay, as experiments in many countries have proven. Conversely, property rights that have no benefit to the community break the social contract and are eventually recognised as gangsterism. The right for individuals to own branches of government, for instance, is a "bad" thing, while the right for individuals to own entire corporations is "good" because the former causes harm to the community at large but the latter does not. (Big business may or may not be evil but in general, community-owned businesses are lousy while private businesses work a lot better. There are exceptions...)
Now, the question is whether and how copyrights benefit the community. Does the extension of copyright to 95 years benefit the community? No. Does the music industry, with its excessive structures, benefit the community? No. Does respect for copyright of music and film benefit the community? No, it does not. The community feeds on vast amounts of culture, and insofar as artists exist to spread their works, the community benefits from wider, cheaper distribution, not restriction and artificially high prices.
So, our collective reaction to copyrights on music and other digital media is somewhat skeptical when these copyrights are used to restrict our access and open our wallets. We do not like being asked to pay for culture. Culture is not water, not food, it is not a product to be divided, but a set of ideas to be shared and reused. Making culture into property is an abomination. Would you consider it right to have to pay to view the Mona Lisa, to listen to Mozart, or to look at the Pyramids? Yet this is the logical conclusion of those who would use copyright in this way: every cultural artifact would become pay-per-view property.
It is, simply put, a revolting concept, and every attempt to enforce it will create more revulsion as people understand just what is at stake.
How about the GPL? Does the GPL restrict distribution and attempt to make us pay for our culture?
Well, here is the funny thing. The GPL actually uses copyright to reinforce and protect the communal ownership of culture. I don't need to point you to the tens of thousands of works that are inviolably placed into the common domain thanks to the GPL, nor to the incredibly successful spread of certain key technologies that the GPL has enabled.
So, to sum up: copyright is just a tool, like patents. When the tools are abused, and the US-led drive to enshrine "intellectual property rights" across the world is an abuse of these tools, you will find that right-thinking people resist and complain. When the tools are used positively, you will find that right-thinking people applaud. This is not hypocrisy, just accuracy.
The showing-out-of-order and at-really-odd-times was either gross stupidity on behalf of Fox TV... and that is actually quite a convincing explanation... or it was a deliberate ploy to make the series look bad so that cancellation would not be an issue. Your reaction - "it sucked" is quite typical of those who watched it on TV. Watch it again on DVD, in order, and I'll bet you lunch that you will find it up there with the best stories you've ever watched.
Joss Whedon has done some remarkable things. Probably none of these are original, but he's combined them consistently, into packages which are only less precious (like some entire series of Buffy) because of the sheer volume.
- He mixes long story lines with short ones so you can enjoy both individual episodes and entire series.
- He has unconditionally excellent camera work, with many long shots, excellent lighting, and hand-held effects that seem cheesy but actually work well.
- He makes great use of music.
- He develops stable groups of characters, bringing interesting social dynamics to the plots, and letting us identify with different characters. I'd like to be Spike, but I know I'm really Xander.
- He stays semi-real, semi-fantasy, allowing him to explore dark subjects (death and loss) in different ways.
- He brings big-screen production quality to every episode, so the DVDs are really worth having.
- His dialogues are usually so good that in the few cases where the characters become formulaic stand out.
On the downside, his work tends to be very politically neutral, which makes it safe, but bland. Serenity was cancelled because it was slyly political, Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham style. The shocker is that it managed to get aired at all, on Fox TV, which is basically a mouthpiece for the Sheriff.
The unfinished Serenity first series, by the way, was fantastic. A wonderful cast, and every single aspect of the production deliberate and perfect, as far as I could tell. I don't normally make an effort to see specific films but I'm eagerly waiting to see Serenity.
- in the windows of cars parked in the sun, powering anti-theft alarms
- in the fabric of sun shades for the beach, powering a beer cooler
- on the backs of notebooks, adding to their pathetic battery life
- on rucksacks, powering the old ipod
- in the garden, keeping the gnomes warm
But for the handbag, why not simply make a material that is opaque from the outside and transparent from the inside, which lets light in but not out...?
Deafness is a useful adaption to the modern working environment. A touch of deafness blocks out the computer fans, the traffic noise, the endless airplanes flying overhead, the neighbour's kids, and the wife. The only problem is that it takes more and more volume to produce that "oh, yeah!"effect when listening to music. But that's someone else's problem.
Personally, I went partly deaf at the age of 16 from spending too much time on a firing range. But most of my peers went similarly deaf not from the iPod, but from the Sony Walkman.
This story is about 25 years too late. I guess each generation reinvents the "we went deaf because..." story.
- Vista Secure Edition: completely redesigned kernel and win32 libraries make this edition secure against virus, worm, trojan, spyware, and phish attacks!
- Vista Compact Edition: with just the software you need, including the much appreciated MSOfficeCompact, this edition runs on your P100 with 128Mb.
- Vista Instant Edition: bootable in so many ways, this is all the software you need to boot that recaltricant box and get it working again. Comes complete with legacy support for every known device.
- Vista Grandmother Edition: simple, fast, and based on all the best of Windows Secure, this is the software you wished you'd had when your parents asked, "How do I get onto the Internet?"
- Vista Open Edition: free, and packed to the hilt with first-class open source, all verified and tuned by MicrosoftOpenLabs for that smooth experience. Comes with full source code.
The incredible accuracy of this list of items that the backpack can power quite astounds me.
"Sorry sir, if you want to play WMAs you'll need the extended BackpackWindows version."
"Sorry sir, USB2.0 is not supported. Have you considered using BlueTooth?"
"Sorry sir, federal law requires you to wear night vision goggles while carrying this backpack. Yes, sir, I'm aware it's high noon. Regulations."
"Sorry sir, but is that GSM terminal in talk mode? It is? OK, just checking... some tourists think they can use stand-by mode."
When a sliding company makes a bold and aggressive attack on the market leader, don't look for a direct link between that company and the attack.
Instead, look to other companies who would benefit most from such an attack.
Creative do many things, and attacking Apple in the player market is a very high risk gamble. If they lose they will basically have destroyed their player business - no-one is going to buy a product from a bunch of losers. If they win, they will still have a problem - people like Apply and attacking them like this just looks evil.
Cui bono? Who benefits?
Someone rich, who wants to take over the player market, and has a history of launching proxy wars to harass and intimidate its competitors, on feeble or completely false pretexts.
Someone who has been fighting hard to get software patents enabled in Europe, through proxy groups such as the BSA and C4C.
This opinion is simply a gut feeling. Are there any recent reports of deals between Microsoft and Creative Labs that indicate money flowing?
Seriously, I'm tired of hearing about some great new Google product and seeing the "System Requirements".
Is it so difficult to make portable software in 2005? Do we really have to keep a Wintendo box lying around just so we can use the newest gadgets?
I think Skype (and many others) have shown that the answer is, "it runs on your box, whatever that is", and I really hope Google pay attention to this. Unless they have a vested interest in reducing their market, they must deliver applications that run on Windows, Linux, and OS/X.
Bar codes were invented in 1952 but only became really widely used in the last ten years, thanks to ink jet printers and laser scanning at many checkouts. It's going to take RFIDs decades to replace bar codes and probably it won't happen until a RFID chip can be literally micro-printed onto a paper receipt, onto an egg, or onto a newspaper.
USA vs. China
While the rest of the world chooses sides or tries to get out of the way...
Never trust journalism that seeks to promote conflict between parties. It is too easy to take words out of context, to ask people to make statements on subjects they would rather ignore, and to do what journalists are generally paid to do - fill the pages with controversy and "news".
Point 1: RMS is the genius behind the GPL, the FSF tools, and has dedicated his life to making Linux, however you call it, come true. Insulting RMS is a sign of ignorance, bad manners, or bad faith.
Point 2: Linux is a mark and a commodity technology. The goal of trademarking Linux and enforcing that mark through licensing is to protect the "brand" from those who seek to harm it. But that is a short-term logic, and it ignores the underlying fact: a commodity technology needs no name, no brand, because it does not compete on that basis. No-one ever trademarked "TCP/IP" (afaik) and it would have been both ridiculous and counter-productive to have tried.
So RMS is spot-on, even if he does not explain it quite the way I'd like to hear. The name you give Linux is only meaningful if you're one of the vendors supporting it today. It's what Linux is, and does, not its name, that guarantees its place as the commodity OS of the future.
No more unassisted human players, but networks of bots competing against each other, ultimately controlled by individuals, and creating a larger and more interesting game... Bots are just another tool, after all.
So Microsoft's latest strategy for smearing its competitors is to launch a FUD campaign in which... wait for it... their competitors get called "as evil as Microsoft?"
...
Hmmm. Something not quite right here. What could the MS spindroids be thinking?
"Hey, I just had an excellent idea for a fudwave..."
"Yeah?" (puts down bimbo and cigar for a second)
"Look.. we're evil, right?"
"Damn right! I mean, unfortunately, yes...?"
"I mean, we tried to fix that - the Foundation, pocket money for Africa, Bill even visited some schools..."
"People always want a villain, I guess that's us..."
"So, since Google refuse to compete fairly with us, here's the plan... We're going to redefine the meaning of 'evil'..."
"uh?"
"Lots of PR about 'Google is evil too, just like MS'"
"Solid! And then, 'IBM is evil'"
"Yup. Then, 'Linux is evil' and so on. Eventually people gonna start associating 'evil' with 'cool', and then we'll be there"
"Sigh. Been a long time since we were cool."
"OK, call in some favours. I think Perfect-10 still owe us for that time with the Senator."
"Trollboys online?"
"Yup. Ready to go!"
It might just work.
What on earth has off-shoring got to do with this? People travel. People go on holiday. People work overseas. People exchange exotic diseases. It's hardly a feature of modern business practices.
That'd be "phlock of phun-loving seagulls", I believe...
... submarine patents.
I'll place money on the emergence of one or more patent claims on this, if it becomes a new standard.
This is more like it!
...
The "Why Collaze is Different" page is no good... you're expressing your dissatisfaction with other tools, but you can't assume your readers share the same point of view.
Your explanation here is interesting and passionate and brings the whole concept to life. I'd tidy that up a little and use it. Perhaps in the form of a series of questions and answers...
"Why did you create Collaze?"
"..."
"So, how does the site pay for itself?"
"..."
"What is unique about Collaze?"
"How would I use this to write a story?"
and so on. This auto-interview form can work very well to force you to explain things from your viewer's point of view.
And yes, a "Try it now!" option could work well. Since you're not taking subscription revenue, your goal is to get people to read the pages that have the adsense ads, and to make sure these ads are useful - or people won't click and you won't get any revenue.
For a demo, I'd avoid screen shots. If you want a passive demo, cut meaningful fragments from the screens so we get the idea. Whole screen shots are going to kill your bandwidth.
Good luck. I'll come back to Collaze some time and see how it's doing.
Collaze looks interesting. My first comment is that the site asks for registration before letting you browse. This is a problem. You lose 90% of your audience right there. Consider adding a "Guest" button so people can join and at least read if not contribute.
Secondly, I don't see the point of the site. By this I mean several things. First, writing (and reading) collaborative stories has never been much fun for me. Second, what is your business model? Literally, who is paying, and for what? I don't see ads - nice, but scary... does this mean I'll have to pay to use the site, or that you'll go broke in 6 months and I'll lose all my work.
Thirdly, online editing is painful unless it's short and sweet. Writing whole chapters is too painful. Maybe you have made this really fast - I did not sign in, so cannot tell.
Lastly, and most delicately... wikis, though chaotic in appearance, are very well suited to collaboration. There are many advantages in using them: you create a community, you get technology for free, the model suits the web... If you choose not to use wikis, you have to say more than "ain't a wiki".
I write, now and then, and I find it great that you have taken such an initiative. But I'm unsure I'd take part unless there was a community, a sound economic model, and a way for me to write using the tool I like best of all: a simple word processor.
1. Make the look and layout of your site more appealing... pretty, even.
2. Narrow your scope and specialise in one interesting niche sector, then branch out slowly.
3. Place ads where people will see them and check that your content generates useful adsense ads. Double-check the ads, they are critical!
4. Cut your business costs, every day.
5. Find a more memorable name. I already forgot it. Also, a slogan, a logo, a mascot, a symbol. Anything to stand out a little.
6. Increase your traffic considerably: 200k unique visitors is not enough to live on.
7. Find sponsors systematically: for band width, for hosting, for special issues, whatever.
8. People will not pay to read tech news unless it is really, really, special. Make it so. Then charge for it.
9. Allow people to discuss articles and issues. Get your audience involved and clicking.
10. Find excellent writers/contributors. People will read the articles and come back, if the articles are very good.
There are many alternative explanations people have given in the past, most notably that psychopathy is a "disease of the mind". Which is just a neat way of saying, "we don't know, but take these pills". Kind of the same as calling it "posession by evil spirits".
The selection of inherited characteristics through selection is a mechanism that is subtle but powerful. I don't think using this tool to explain things gives anyone a bad name.
For figures, I'm sorry, but this is slashdot, not Scientific American. For predictions, ok, here are some. First, let's agree that we're discussing a set of related behaviours that range from the ability to lie well, to murder, and not a single identifiable behaviour:
- all human societies will have psychopaths.
- the relative male/female distribution of will be the same in most societies.
- in all societies, young boys who exhibit such behaviour will grow into men who exhibit the same behaviour, in similar proportions.
- in violent societies, there will be more psychopaths.
- in all societies, men will be more likely to adopt and learn psychopathic behaviour than women, given violent circumstances.
- in any society, the higher one goes up the power pyramid (political, military, business), the higher the percentage of psychopaths.
- in any society, you will find the most violent psychopaths in the military, and the most diplomatic psychopaths in the top levels of politics or management.
- all societies have soldiers, politicians, and managers.
- most soldiers, businessmen, and politicians are men.
etc. I could go on for ages but you get my drift. It's a complex genetic payload usually but not always triggered by environmental conditions, and overwhelmingly gender-linked to male genes.
The reason is quite simple.
Much of our history has been dominated by violence, and our ancestors are those who survived violent episodes. Either by being very smart, very cute, or very evil.
Psychopaths are overwhelmingly male and psychopathic behaviour is generally evidenced by the ability to hurt and harm others without the usual remorse and empathic pain that most people feel.
The reason why only a small fraction of people show this behaviour is because (a) it's quite counterproductive in stable societies, so quickly gets pushed into marginal genepools (the bad boys of any village), and (b) it has a large component of environmental triggering, meaning that many people (mainly men, again) can exhibit psychopathic behavour given the right circumstances.
Why are psychopaths so charming? Partly because it works well in conflict situations. Partly because it acts to deflect attention. Selection works at the gene level, and the charming psychopathic genes have survived civilisation much better than the pure violence ones.
By simple logic:
1. If the Linux(tm) mark is not looked after, it will become junk.
2. "Looking after a mark" means getting a trademark and enforcing it.
3. Enforcing a trademark means preventing others from abusing it (using it for contradictory purposes, trying to trademark it themselves, etc.) All these abuses have happened with Linux.
4. This kind of enforcement costs money, and often quite a large amount of money.
5. It's normal that the people who use the Linux mark in their business should pay this, proportionally. They benefit from a well-protected mark.
Lincensing and paying money for things we're used to getting for free is a bit sad, but in the real world. people do mean and unkind things when money is involved. This means: if you like Linux, if your business depends on it, and if you want the word to mean anything at all, you should be willing to pay for this.
Ultimately, though, Linux will become (IMO) the commodity OS just as TCP/IP became the commodity networking protocol. Within 5-10 years, no-one will pay much attention to this.
From this perspective, asking licensing fees, even small ones, will slow down adoption. It creates one more barrier for people who have Linux-related business ideas.
What I would have done is to license the mark and pursue those who abuse it, but allow free licensing for those who comply with certain criteria - especially non-commercial open source projects.
Q1. But forking is bad!
A. No, not unless it splits the team, and even then competition is as good a driver as collaboration. Many of the most successful products come from forked versions that eventually out-evolved their ancestors. Homo Sapiens is a good example.
Q2. Is it legal to start a new fork like this?
A. The GPL guarantees this possibility. It's one of the better reasons for choosing GPL'd software - you are assured that if the product is good but the management is bad, the developers are free to continue their work.
Q3. What about the copyrights?
A. The copyright allows the owner to (a) define the license terms, (b) change these over time, e.g. from GPL to APL, etc., and (c) sell alternative licenses, e.g. commercial opt-out licenses for a GPL'd product.
Q4. So the copyright owner could sell opt-out licenses for a fork?
A. No! The forked code will now have multiple copyright owners - the new and the old code. The copyright owner can only license their own code.
Q5. What would have happened if Mambo was licensed under a BSD-style license originally?
A. Probably exactly the same, except that it would have forked earlier. The GPL discourages forking because it gives the copyright owners more incentive to "hold the work together" at some level.
Q6. Is this bad for Mambo?
A. Certainly not. It's good publicity, and a little fighting always strengthens team spirit, so long as the enemy is clear. Let's all kick the corporations!!!
Q7. How do you know all this stuff?
A. I don't, I'm just making it up as I go along.
Q8. You're kidding?
A. Yes. Gotcha!
Q9. Is that all?
A. Yes, I'm just trying to get to 10 questions. Maybe that was a bit ambitious. Should I go and change it to "7 easy questions"?
Q. No, ten is a nice number.
A. Exactly.
Yes, 24 years is a great run for a single design. But what I said, was: we are ending this programme with no successor or evolution. That means that the design might as well have lasted 1 month: the value of any technological feat is not the one-off but the incremental. NASA has managed great feats but not the only one that counts: a process for incremental improvements over the long term.
/not impressed
To give a simile: imagine a company that made one very good, very fast computer. Wonderful. But if they can't make a successor, and another, and so on for 30, 50 years, they have ultimately failed.