May be the whole idea of unlimited access was never realistic. As the uses of the internet when from text, to static images,..., to streaming high def video, the providers need to thicken the pipe at ever point in the net. The question is who will pay for the upgrade. The existing users or the new users. Why should I pay to for upgrades for someone unlimited need bandwidth?
>>Nevertheless, the email was a portent of things to come. Today, spam makes up 80 to 90% of all emails sent - around 120 billion messages per day - and is a multi-billion dollar industry.>>
Steel and textiles, those are industry. The waste e-mail activity is not an industry.
I meant that we could listen to users, particularly the users who are not developers. Learning to engage users, learning what their needs are and nagotiating a solution is a skill that needs practice. My experince has been that we could do better listening to people.
The development I had hoped to see in Open Source but never did: Exploit the fact that Open Source projects (potentially) have a lot more ears then closed source.
You understand that the whole idea of New Coke was change the type of sugar without people noticing/complaining? They took the original off the selves. When original code was reintroduced, it was not exactly the same.
Thanks for the the good work. I've enjoy this site since about 2000.
One thing, have you thought about spreading the slashdot approach to forums? All is see is blogs. In my opinion more users moderated forums would be a very good thing.
This reminds me of something my taiwanese sister in law used to say. She claimed that the chinese form of writing is more efficient because a person can glance at a large amount of information and just "get it". Maybe I should not have been so dismissive. Maybe by distilling an idea into just two graphic 'characters' you have something dense that you can concentrate on/focus on. For all the flexibility of western language, it spreads things out. Just my thoughts,
At last, I hoped someone you mention that the key is not letting cleaning distract you. If your head is where it should be, on your work, you will not notice a minor mess. When your reach some milestone and can relax, you notice things that could dusted, put away, etc. etc. IMHO
You're right, the author did say that language is "possessed by no one", but he went further: "not even by society as a whole". You haven't address the posability that a language can be owned by a society.
Can a society own something? Concider a hunting party. Such a party owns the game as a whole until it is divided.
"The world of art and culture is a vast commons, one that is salted through with zones of utter commerce yet remains gloriously immune to any overall commodification. The closest resemblance is to the commons of a language: altered by every contributor, expanded by even the most passive user. That a language is a commons doesn't mean that the community owns it; rather it belongs between people, possessed by no one, not even by society as a whole"
I would take issue with this statement. The society is the author of language and it does have rights. Charity is how we pay our debit to society. The debit is real and it should be payed.If a society does not demand payment, is it not completely functional.
"Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony. The citations that go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read; they are quotations without inverted commas. The kernel, the soul--let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances--is plagiarism"
No, using ones culture properly is not plagiarism. plagiarism is the word we use for improper use of the work of others that is not yet in the public domain.
I'm not so sure it is that simple. You see a lot of the same thing. Everyone calls it "spam" and you think that it is all the same and there are no border areas where care needs to be taken.
Consider this: You have a small business that you need to promote. You search for prospective clients that have exposes some contact information, like e-mail address. No prior contact, commercial, but is it what you want to eliminate? I don't think so. It seems to me like a legitimate business contact.
That is why the idea of justice was invented. Maybe you believe that you have been damaged by "spam" and you believe that anyone who has been called a spammer must be a spammer. But there is more then one way of looking at things. SH can make a mistake. In this case, it may be right, but we should be alert to the possibility that they may be wrong and provide a means for detecting the mistake and correcting it. IMHO.
Does SH have some special gift so that they never make a mistake? It does matter if their list is optional. If enough people use it, it can kill a users ability to use the internet.
An appeal process is needed. This court and this suit may not be the right process. But a process is needed. IMHO.
I'm a bit outraged that goods ideas, and I think parent is a good idea, are not being picked up. You can give all the rationals you like, but we need working communications inside buildings. There is a solution. Who gets to pick which one will be pursued? Each city counsel? Each govenor? the sales reps? The NIST?
How you make decisions depends on how well you are wired for the domain. Consider all the type so problem that you have to solve on a regular basis. You solve those problem right away, don't you?
Now you get your self in an unfamiliar situation. You don't have the patterns worked out. If you give your brain a moment to rearrange, you have a chance of making a good choice.
David Simon, chief patent counsel at Intel, testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this week and said, "Let me state at the outset that the patent law is not broken. The law is fundamentally sound and works well." However, Simon called for reforms or improvements in the areas of patent quality, training and funding for U.S. Patent and Trademark Office staff, access to prior art, harmonization and litigation abuses, among others.
"More recently, the PTO, with Jim Rogan [former director of the PTO] and John Dudas [current PTO director] providing the political leadership, decided that now was the time to change the fundamental premise on which the PTO would judge whether or not it was really making a contribution to supporting industry by shifting away from what had predominantly been a production-based mentality"--how many patent issues could be generated per staff year of effort"--to attempting to import into the PTO as many different quality improvement techniques and practices as possible," said Brad Huther, a director at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and former president and CEO for the International Intellectual Property Institute.
At this week's hearing, Dudas said that the patent law should be changed to award a patent to the first person to file a claim. The current rules allow patents to be granted to the first person who devised the invention.
Is there a reason no one is talking about this? Giving the patent to the first to file seems like a bad idea to me. What if you have an idea, implement it as software, release it, and someone else sees a patentable idea in it and chooses to file? It was your idea, but some else can effectively steal it from you.
Individuals do reuse solutions, but for the most part, the world of software developers does not. Personally, I think we have enough tools and languages that could take the repetition out of writing software.
The problem is not the tools, but the smell factor. Your house, your car, your code takes on a nice familiar smell after you've lived in/driven/massaged it for a while. Someone else's code just isn't the same. Number one reason for our failure to reuse code (IMHO).
Ok, maybe we could gain some efficiencies of scope, to use the author's term. How about this? We pick one university in each state to hold the software awards for their area. Let the U decides which categories will be judged each year. Anyone can play. The winner doesn't get any money, but the next best thing, recognition and we hope they get contracts for the same type of work from all over. Sounds like a plan?
ps
Don't you maintain some skepticism when a paper is based on one source of information? Is software still being written the same as ten years ago? Is hand crafting the rule with only a few exceptions? It seems likely that delving into what the rats are doing in the privacy of their cubicles is not so easily done.
I'm not saying it is. I'm saying that more focus needs to be put on feeding the developers. For a developers in adeveloping country I sure that is more on an issue.
As usual, the article does not address the issue of sustainability of Open Source projects. If the market in Iraq is small, and there is little money for anything, all the more reason for promoting respect for IP. The way to stay alive may not be fat contracts but decent residuals.
I would think the best thing about FOSS is that each project doesn't have to start from zero.
It sounds like most of their projects are marginal as far a revenue. Having something close from to start from would be big plus.
Second point. Do the developers realy need a go between to connect them with users? Maybe they need tech fairs for getting the geeks and the non-geeks togeather.
Third point. If there is little money for anything in thier market, all the more reason for promoting respect for IP. The way to stay alive may not be fat contracts but decent residuals.
Why should one organization bother making their devices talk to others, when a backlash from privacy advocates could make the effort costly, disgraceful, and futile?
If you're a privacy advocate, the current somewhat insular world of independent devices is best. Our refrigerators do not talk to our phones. We have some control over our lives.
However, there are some times when I wish some of those devices were more 'open'. My grocery store UPC checkout counter knows a lot about me. Since I don't eat out any more, it knows exactly what I eat (eventually). That information would be most valuable when seeing a doctor or dietitian.
I get a paper receipt for each purchase, why can't I do that record keeping myself? Because I'm to darn disorganized and it takes to much effort. So I have just a fuzzy idea of how much sugar, fat, red meat and carbohydrates I consume. And I have no idea how I compare to the average forty-year-old American male.
My store has a dietitian managing the healthfood department. I asked about the value of having a complete record of purchases for the customers she sees. While she acknowledged the value, she couldn't get past the privacy issue.
I suggested she talk to other dietitians and her management about making scanner data available. But why should she? Opening up the system would cost money with no sure payback. Then there are privacy advocates who, out of principal, would attack such a breach.
By myself, I can do nothing. The only thing I can do is make an appeal. If your are privacy advocate, make clear what you do and do not oppose. Support data sharing that has more value then cost. Support data sharing principals that would lead to successful project and that respect individual rights. The first such principal is that the collector (grocery store) and the individual have joint ownership of customer data. The second is that the individual has a right to access his/her own data. The third is that when individual data is shared between organization, it must pass through the individuals hands or the right waived. The fourth is knowledge of who has access to individual data must be available to the individual.
If we as a society agree on data sharing, the people in a position to advocate projects can have more confidence that their efforts will be successful. When a project is suggested that would violate agreed principals, whistle blowers would also have confidence in raising the alarm.
I don't understand your points a,b, and c. Each state or sets it's own tax rate and gives out the benefits of government. Some of those benefits go to each party. When New Yorkers sell to New Yorkers, all the benefits and all the taxes go to New Yorkers. But when the parties only meet on a server, who gets the tax. I say both.
About Article I, Section 9. Are we really talking about an export duty or dividing up the taxable transaction that occurred 'on the border'?
Would this bill read a lot better if things like commerce and minor were define in some official library of congress dictionary?
It seems like they are saying that for three years, no tax authority can impose additional tax on providing network access or commerce on networks. But there are so many words, I'm not sure.
One more thing, Since every legal seller and every legal buyer has an address, why shouldn't the half the value of the transaction be taxed as if the sale occurred at the sellers address and half at the buyers address?
Slashdot Mirror
Do you know how the internet works?
May be the whole idea of unlimited access was never realistic. As the uses of the internet when from text, to static images, ..., to streaming high def video, the providers need to thicken the pipe at ever point in the net. The question is who will pay for the upgrade. The existing users or the new users. Why should I pay to for upgrades for someone unlimited need bandwidth?
>>Nevertheless, the email was a portent of things to come. Today, spam makes up 80 to 90% of all emails sent - around 120 billion messages per day - and is a multi-billion dollar industry.>>
Steel and textiles, those are industry. The waste e-mail activity is not an industry.
What we should be doing is shuting it down.
I meant that we could listen to users, particularly the users who are not developers. Learning to engage users, learning what their needs are and nagotiating a solution is a skill that needs practice. My experince has been that we could do better listening to people.
:-(
Wish I could email argent.
The development I had hoped to see in Open Source but never did:
Exploit the fact that Open Source projects (potentially) have a lot more ears then closed source.
You understand that the whole idea of New Coke was change the type of sugar without people noticing/complaining? They took the original off the selves. When original code was reintroduced, it was not exactly the same.
Thanks for the the good work. I've enjoy this site since about 2000.
One thing, have you thought about spreading the slashdot approach to forums? All is see is blogs. In my opinion more users moderated forums would be a very good thing.
Thanks,
This reminds me of something my taiwanese sister in law used to say. She claimed that the chinese form of writing is more efficient because a person can glance at a large amount of information and just "get it". Maybe I should not have been so dismissive. Maybe by distilling an idea into just two graphic 'characters' you have something dense that you can concentrate on/focus on. For all the flexibility of western language, it spreads things out.
Just my thoughts,
At last, I hoped someone you mention that the key is not letting cleaning distract you. If your head is where it should be, on your work, you will not notice a minor mess. When your reach some milestone and can relax, you notice things that could dusted, put away, etc. etc.
IMHO
The Debian society has my best wishes. I just wish they learned to listen to non-developers better.
You're right, the author did say that language is "possessed by no one", but he went further: "not even by society as a whole". You haven't address the posability that a language can be owned by a society.
Can a society own something? Concider a hunting party. Such a party owns the game as a whole until it is divided.
"The world of art and culture is a vast commons, one that is salted through with zones of utter commerce yet remains gloriously immune to any overall commodification. The closest resemblance is to the commons of a language: altered by every contributor, expanded by even the most passive user. That a language is a commons doesn't mean that the community owns it; rather it belongs between people, possessed by no one, not even by society as a whole"
I would take issue with this statement. The society is the author of language and it does have rights. Charity is how we pay our debit to society. The debit is real and it should be payed.If a society does not demand payment, is it not completely functional.
"Any text is woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony. The citations that go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read; they are quotations without inverted commas. The kernel, the soul--let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances--is plagiarism"
No, using ones culture properly is not plagiarism. plagiarism is the word we use for improper use of the work of others that is not yet in the public domain.
I'm not so sure it is that simple. You see a lot of the same thing. Everyone calls it "spam" and you think that it is all the same and there are no border areas where care needs to be taken.
Consider this: You have a small business that you need to promote. You search for prospective clients that have exposes some contact information, like e-mail address. No prior contact, commercial, but is it what you want to eliminate? I don't think so. It seems to me like a legitimate business contact.
That is why the idea of justice was invented. Maybe you believe that you have been damaged by "spam" and you believe that anyone who has been called a spammer must be a spammer. But there is more then one way of looking at things. SH can make a mistake. In this case, it may be right, but we should be alert to the possibility that they may be wrong and provide a means for detecting the mistake and correcting it. IMHO.
Does SH have some special gift so that they never make a mistake? It does matter if their list is optional. If enough people use it, it can kill a users ability to use the internet.
An appeal process is needed. This court and this suit may not be the right process. But a process is needed. IMHO.
I'm a bit outraged that goods ideas, and I think parent is a good idea, are not being picked up. You can give all the rationals you like, but we need working communications inside buildings. There is a solution. Who gets to pick which one will be pursued? Each city counsel? Each govenor? the sales reps? The NIST?
How you make decisions depends on how well you are wired for the domain. Consider all the type so problem that you have to solve on a regular basis. You solve those problem right away, don't you?
Now you get your self in an unfamiliar situation. You don't have the patterns worked out. If you give your brain a moment to rearrange, you have a chance of making a good choice.
Setting up a block on a road is not very effective, you can detour. What you do is block a brige a river. That has been done on the Rhine.
David Simon, chief patent counsel at Intel, testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this week and said, "Let me state at the outset that the patent law is not broken. The law is fundamentally sound and works well." However, Simon called for reforms or improvements in the areas of patent quality, training and funding for U.S. Patent and Trademark Office staff, access to prior art, harmonization and litigation abuses, among others.
"More recently, the PTO, with Jim Rogan [former director of the PTO] and John Dudas [current PTO director] providing the political leadership, decided that now was the time to change the fundamental premise on which the PTO would judge whether or not it was really making a contribution to supporting industry by shifting away from what had predominantly been a production-based mentality"--how many patent issues could be generated per staff year of effort"--to attempting to import into the PTO as many different quality improvement techniques and practices as possible," said Brad Huther, a director at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and former president and CEO for the International Intellectual Property Institute.
At this week's hearing, Dudas said that the patent law should be changed to award a patent to the first person to file a claim. The current rules allow patents to be granted to the first person who devised the invention.
Is there a reason no one is talking about this?
Giving the patent to the first to file seems like a bad idea to me. What if you have an idea, implement it as software, release it, and someone else sees a patentable idea in it and chooses to file? It was your idea, but some else can effectively steal it from you.
Individuals do reuse solutions, but for the most part, the world of software developers does not. Personally, I think we have enough tools and languages that could take the repetition out of writing software.
The problem is not the tools, but the smell factor. Your house, your car, your code takes on a nice familiar smell after you've lived in/driven/massaged it for a while. Someone else's code just isn't the same. Number one reason for our failure to reuse code (IMHO).
Ok, maybe we could gain some efficiencies of scope, to use the author's term. How about this? We pick one university in each state to hold the software awards for their area. Let the U decides which categories will be judged each year. Anyone can play. The winner doesn't get any money, but the next best thing, recognition and we hope they get contracts for the same type of work from all over. Sounds like a plan?
ps
Don't you maintain some skepticism when a paper is based on one source of information? Is software still being written the same as ten years ago? Is hand crafting the rule with only a few exceptions? It seems likely that delving into what the rats are doing in the privacy of their cubicles is not so easily done.
I'm not saying it is. I'm saying that more focus needs to be put on feeding the developers. For a developers in adeveloping country I sure that is more on an issue.
As usual, the article does not address the issue of sustainability of Open Source projects. If the market in Iraq is small, and there is little money for anything, all the more reason for promoting respect for IP. The way to stay alive may not be fat contracts but decent residuals.
I would think the best thing about FOSS is that each project doesn't have to start from zero.
It sounds like most of their projects are marginal as far a revenue. Having something close from to start from would be big plus.
Second point. Do the developers realy need a go between to connect them with users? Maybe they need tech fairs for getting the geeks and the non-geeks togeather.
Third point. If there is little money for anything in thier market, all the more reason for promoting respect for IP. The way to stay alive may not be fat contracts but decent residuals.
Why should one organization bother making their devices talk to others, when a backlash from privacy advocates could make the effort costly, disgraceful, and futile?
If you're a privacy advocate, the current somewhat insular world of independent devices is best. Our refrigerators do not talk to our phones. We have some control over our lives.
However, there are some times when I wish some of those devices were more 'open'. My grocery store UPC checkout counter knows a lot about me. Since I don't eat out any more, it knows exactly what I eat (eventually). That information would be most valuable when seeing a doctor or dietitian.
I get a paper receipt for each purchase, why can't I do that record keeping myself? Because I'm to darn disorganized and it takes to much effort. So I have just a fuzzy idea of how much sugar, fat, red meat and carbohydrates I consume. And I have no idea how I compare to the average forty-year-old American male.
My store has a dietitian managing the healthfood department. I asked about the value of having a complete record of purchases for the customers she sees. While she acknowledged the value, she couldn't get past the privacy issue.
I suggested she talk to other dietitians and her management about making scanner data available. But why should she? Opening up the system would cost money with no sure payback. Then there are privacy advocates who, out of principal, would attack such a breach.
By myself, I can do nothing. The only thing I can do is make an appeal. If your are privacy advocate, make clear what you do and do not oppose. Support data sharing that has more value then cost. Support data sharing principals that would lead to successful project and that respect individual rights. The first such principal is that the collector (grocery store) and the individual have joint ownership of customer data. The second is that the individual has a right to access his/her own data. The third is that when individual data is shared between organization, it must pass through the individuals hands or the right waived. The fourth is knowledge of who has access to individual data must be available to the individual.
If we as a society agree on data sharing, the people in a position to advocate projects can have more confidence that their efforts will be successful. When a project is suggested that would violate agreed principals, whistle blowers would also have confidence in raising the alarm.
I don't understand your points a,b, and c. Each state or sets it's own tax rate and gives out the benefits of government. Some of those benefits go to each party. When New Yorkers sell to New Yorkers, all the benefits and all the taxes go to New Yorkers. But when the parties only meet on a server, who gets the tax. I say both.
About Article I, Section 9. Are we really talking about an export duty or dividing up the taxable transaction that occurred 'on the border'?
Would this bill read a lot better if things like commerce and minor were define in some official library of congress dictionary?
It seems like they are saying that for three years, no tax authority can impose additional tax on providing network access or commerce on networks. But there are so many words, I'm not sure.
One more thing, Since every legal seller and every legal buyer has an address, why shouldn't the half the value of the transaction be taxed as if the sale occurred at the sellers address and half at the buyers address?