Actually, a really interesting bit of information is that one of the sucessful finishers was an unmodified human-powered stock tandem tricycle made by Greenspeed of Australia. Check them out.
www.greenspeed.com.au
Note- I am not affiliated with them, just a trike enthusiast hoping to get some geek attention for trikes in general.:)
Obtain a copy of a well-known work of print fiction, a film novelization (something obvious, like "Star Wars", or similar) in a foreign language (it should be one that the major players in the courtroom, including the 2600 defense team, cannot read; e.g., Swahili, Polish, Japanese). This work should be scanned into an ordinary textfile. Obtain a copy of the same work as a DVD.
Obtain the services of a person who reads and speaks the langauge of the print work.
"Your Honors , this is an encrypted work, in that, as far as I know, no-one in this courtroom can read and understand it; It was deliberately chosen for this property." [display and pass around book]. "It is exactly similar to a DVD in the following respects: it is a work of art; it is published in a format that is not, without deliberately applied translation, usable to its current intended audience, in a word and for purposes of this demonstration, encrypted; It has been sold (not licensed) to its current possesser; It is protected by copyright. In short, it is functionally equivalant to this DVD." [display and pass around DVD] "The DVD in your hand contains the work. It is owned by me, not licensed to me. It cannot be viewed without deliberately applied translation (it could be read, as-is, from the disc, but doing this would result in no meaningful pictures or sounds being displayed upon the viewing device)." [If possible, demonstrate this by playing the DVD without decrypting it]. "It is also protected, even absent the DMCA, by copyright."
"The attorneys for the MPAA and the US AG would have you believe that decryption facilitates, or may even be a requirement for, piracy. This can easily be disproved. This file contains a complete and accurate rendition of this text." [demonstrate contents of file] "I will now procedd to demonstrate piracy." [have assistant begin making copies of the work on to floppies/zip-disks/whatever, and hand them to judges] "Your honors, pease note that, while none of these copies are in anyway decrypted, they are still saleable. I don't have to decode them to make them or sell them. In exactly that way pirates will make as many copies of the DVD as they like without being able to decrypt them. These exact copies will be just as saleable and more importantly, _just_as_useful_ as the original."
"Up to now, we have completely demonstrated the piracy and copyright infringement cycle of piracy from start to finish (excepting the actual exchange of cash for bootleg copy) without once even _mentioning_ DeCSS. The questions arise, therefore, What _is_ DeCSS (in other words, what does it do) and how does the DMCA affect it? The sections of the DMCA that are relevant to this program and this case do not once mention the copying of a work, merely its decryption. DeCSS and similar programs (including the ones licensed by the MPAA) merely allow the intelligible reading of the work. That is the sum total of their function." [introduce translator] "For the purposes of this copy of the work, this is DeCSS." [translator should translate a small piece of the work aloud] "Now, Your Honors, assume for a moment that this particular language was the only language in which fiction was published. This is exactly the situation with DVD's. All DVD's use the same encryption; And we have previously demonstrated that decryption is totally unneccessary for piracy. In fact, such decryption might very well decrease the utility (and thus the value) of the DVD, but this is an issue a bit off to the side at the moment. To return to the point at hand: assume that the language of this book is the only language that fiction is published in. Assume further that- a) it is a language that the publishing houses created specifically for this purpose, b) that publishing houses have made the posession of a license a condition of the learning or use (even as far as reading to onesself is concerned) of this language. In short, it is illegal to have this text translated to you by any other than a licensed translator, it is illegal for you to learn the language yourself to translate for yourself or anyone else without a license, and the license is revocable at the whim and pleasure of the publishing company. This means that, although you may buy the book, you may not learn to read it yourself, nor may anyone publish a translation dictionary of the language. This is DeCSS. This is the DMCA."
Yeah, it could use some work as a script, but the idea is there. Maybe the defense and judges will find it helpful. I hope so. This is getting out of hand...
Do a Google search on "lunchbox PC". This will get you a carryable case designed to fit full-blown desktop internal components that has a built-in LCD screen and keyboard. You populate it with ordinary desktop motherboard, drives, cards, etc., pick it up and go. The card interfaces are on the side, so hook-up at the site is easy, and they usually come with a video driver setup that will work with the built-in screen or out to the monitor of your choice.
It seems to me that this whole hoo-haw is happening because a small group of artists who create some of the more easily distributable art forms seem to have bought into the delusion promulgated by the unscrupulous business types that are their middlemen. These artists have forgotten one of the most exciting things about art: An artist never knows whether his/her next work will make any money. The aforementioned middlemen have convinced them that they are some kind of magical geniuses who never make art the somebody doesn't like, and that there's some kind of intrinsic, not-to-be-disputed "value" to each and every piece of work that comes from them.
Well, gang, tough. You "label" recording musicians, and "best-seller" novelists and Hollywood movie actors are no different than the poor yutz who stands on a streetcorner making noise on his guitar with the case open in front of him, hoping that passers-by (like me) will drop a tad of cash in. Me standing there listening, whether it's for 5 seconds or three hours, does not constitute "piracy" if I don't toss in some cash. Me humming/singing the songs later, to myself or to others, does not constitute piracy, or infringement or anything. Me telling friends about "Slouching Tired, Wide and Dragging" does not constitute infringement, piracy or any other heinous act. Oh, sure, it can be legislated so, but that doesn't make it so, nor will that stop it in the long run. The mere fact that one artist or another has a somewhat larger corner to play on (say an entire cinema chain's screens) doesn't change the fact that they're still just a busker, and have the same economic situation as one on the streetcorner.
The point of this reminder, artists, is to advise you all to, as far as possible (and that's quite a bit farther than you think right now (with the probable exception of Courtney Love; She has definitely thought this through)) get the middleman out of your way and get back into touch with your audience. Set up that Busker's Square on the 'net. Do it _yourself_. Don't let some cheesy-ass middleman set it up and charge you to use it, and legislate you out of all your take in the process. Form a coalition and do it yourselves, with _hired_ technical labor, that _you_ control. The cinema folks did it at least once in history (anybody remember how United Artists got started and who did it?). The key will be to make sure that _you_ own Busker's Square. Let your tech people have a stake in it, but if you do that, make it a closely-held corporation or a co-op, even better. Keep the agents (parasites) and lawyers (bigger parasites) out of ownership positions.
Think about it.... can't hurt, and you'll probably end up making lots more friends (hint, hint, Lars)
See, now, I don't know that I agree with this basic "employees are hot-swappable mass-produced parts" idea as expressed here. That's the whole cause of this situation.
Take for analogy the following situation: I'm WidgetCo, the only maker of widgets in the market. There's a market for widgets out there, and I've been selling all my output to GadgetCo for the last several years. Now WhatsitCorp sees my widgets and thinks they're just what they need, so they make me an offer of 50% more than GadgetCo's been paying. When I inform GadgetCo, they promptly sue me to prevent this, even though we have no outstanding deliverables, since GadgetCo's been buying them as I produce them and hasn't contracted in advance. The court, however, rules that I'm not allowed to sell to anyone but GadgetCo for five years to prevent effective competition in the marketplace.
There isn't a company in existence that would accept such a situation vis a vis its market. I see no difference between a fictitious entity and its market and product (a company and its products for sale) and a real entity and _its_ products and market (a person and his/her work and skills).
Now, in the case of an NDA, we employees need to start insisting that the market contract in advance for goods it wants to reserve; For instance, how about and NDA written with the following clauses: The NDA is void if the employment is terminated within 1 year (regardless of which side terminates), and, in order for any non-compete clauses to remain in force, the company must continue compensation of the employee for the duration of the clause at the employee's maximum rate for the duration of the NDA. Simple enough, if the company wants control of a resource, it pays for said control, and the "maximum rate" clause keeps them honest.
See, a business can't do very well by screwing its vendors over any more than it can be screwing its customers. If you hose your vendors, especially the quality ones, your raw materials start to drop in quality, causing either your product quality to drop or your costs to rise or both. Net result, end of business. An employee is, more ad more, becoming a vendor. Especially in the tech world.
"All we've really done is said: "Look, the DMCA allows us to prevent you from proving that people are
breaking the law", and that's a really good point proving that the DMCA goes much too far. It doesn't make
obtaining songs without paying for them any more legal than before, and that's got nothing to do with the DMCA."
True. What it _does_ do, however (and all to the good, IMNSHO) is put
the enforcement requirement back to where it ought to have been in the first place:
The RIAA/MPAA/etc. have to go back to prosecuting the _actual_infringer_,
not "taxing" my purchase of blank media because I _might_ use
it to infringe. This, granted, _is_ a Herculean task, but so
is any kind of thought policing. They'll get what they deserve. And we'll be
entertained watching....
Folks, we're overlooking who we are. We are the people who make information happen. Information is power, if used correctly. A dot-com tech workers auction site (tech workers auctioning their services to employers) in close conjunction with a F*cked-companies type site is the thing. The real ly neccesary thing about the auction board is that it needs to be open bidding (all bids public) and all resumes public (except for personal info- name, address, etc.). This is how it works in a physical auction, from Sotheby's to a farm auction in Amish country. The potential bidders get to look at the item (the CV's are openly published) and the bids are repeated aloud by the auctioneer (openly published on the site). As long as workers post followup info to both sites ("Yeah, i took this offer here, and it is as advertised and the company is just great" or "I took this offer and got hosed this way and that way") and followup if the worker and company part ways, the system should work fairly well. Early adopters on the worker side are going to have a bit of a hard go, but so do all early adopters. Might work, yes?
Hmmm. Maybe that "many little programs" thread up above holds the answer? Truly not trying to be sarcastic or smartassed. I realize it may be quite a bit of work to re-organize the code (38500 lines _is_ quite a bit, after all), but perhaps, maybe? Isolating the comm protocol into a stand-alone called from the main program (and holding that as closed source) would seem to address even the moral concerns of the GPL (going by RMS's behavior in the matter for a "gold standard", anyway).
Actually, the suspension is not a problem. From the top down, you have: body/chassis, 4 independent (_truly_ independent) suspensions, one for each engine saddle and then the balls. This would work no matter what the vehicle. Parallel parking becomes trivial with the ability to move the car sideways. Now all one needs is to design the ball so the there are deployable 'paddles' and one has a lovely amphibian (assuming the balls are bouyant enough to float the vehicle):)
"Sure, the scientists developing nanotech are qualified to make the technical decisions necessary to achieve their goals: building better technology -- it's what they do, and it's what they get paid for. But as we've learned from the atomic revolution of the mid 20th century, we can't leave these important decisions to scientists alone. They may not intend to produce monsters, but their focus on development without regard to consequences makes them often ill-suited to decide how to go about doing so. It's why managers and ethics boards exist, and it's good to see some fresh academic blood here."
Um.. I will vehemently disagree with you, Ma'am. I will point out the letter from Einstein, et. al., to the political powers-that-were during the development of the A-bomb. They (the Manhattan Project scientists) were _quite_ aware of the possible consequences, far more so than the politicos (I will recommend a perusal of the SF literature of pre-WWII for references, but Lester del Rey's _Nerves_ comes to mind just off the top of my head). Science is all too often silent, but that is for political reasons (e.g., they'll lose funding, be arrested, etc.) rather than from ignorance. And, all too often, when science warns, it is ignored.
Most of the time it is, in fact, the political/legal/commercial/military establishments that have been in abysmal ignorance (in fact, a good deal of the time in the cases of the legal/commercial establisments the ignorance has not only been abysmal but _deliberate_) of the wider consequences of science and technology. Napster is a lovely example of this. It caught the commercial/legal worlds _flatfooted_, but the folks who have been actually working with the technology wouldn't have noticed anything unusual or unexpected about it at all, simply because it was as natural as an oak growing from an acorn. But, I forget, this country (and, to a lesser extent, this culture) gets its ideas about how technology works from the heirs of Gene Roddenberry, which is like getting one's ideas about how relationships work from "The Young and The Restless". -sigh- No, Fernando, one doesn't come up with a new framistan just be "retuning the left-handed cyclic pollinator circuits in the holodeck projectors". It's a shade more involved than that.
At one place, taking the pager got us no extra flat rate, but we were supposed to charge calls at a two-hour mnimum, and since most calls were 1 hr or less, ad we carried a company cell-phone and such accoutrements along with the pager, this usually worked out OK.
At another place, well, it was just part of the deal, no ups, no extras.
Falline says:
"Tell me something, if invention/innovation were merely a spark of inspiration. Where are all the great inventions from China? Russia? Or even, to a lesser extent, Europe? They're few and far between... and it's not for want of education or minds. You think it's just a coincidence that the word business is that much further from their vocabulary? What's more, where do you think most academics/scientists are ultimately deriving their funding from? Without real life products like the internal combustion engine, the telephone, the car, the microprocessor, etc....where would our economy be? Where does all the money come from that allows these "scientists" to research? Do you think it's any coincidence that most early inventors were aristocrats or part of an emerging middle class?
"
Well, let's see. There are problems with this little rant. _Which_ inventions are the "great" ones? The wheel, maybe? Afro-European in origin, IIRC. Arithmetic/mathematics? Same. Organized culture? Afro-European or Chinese. The chair? Same. "Great inventions". Interesting phrase. Should it perhaps be "most lucrative inventions"? Or perhaps "inventions that, through patent controls, resulted in the greatest concentration of monetary capital into one socio-economic entity"?
"Where would our economy be?" The plaintive cry of the capitalist greed-monger. Our economy would be here in the US, just like always. The infrastructure of that economy might be (no, would be) very different if it did not include the wide-spread use of the IC engine, the telephone, etc. But our economy was doing very nicely at the turn of the last century (1900, for those, like me, that still haven't made that adjustment *G*), when such factors were not in existence yet. Some folks wouldn't be nearly as unnecessarily wealthy as they are, but so what? When, in all of history, has an insane concentration of monetary capital in the hands of a few (or worse, one) individual benefitted the culture in which it happened? Never, and you know it. "The benefit of the few who have the wealth" is _not_ equivalent to "the benefit of the culture". As a matter of fact, a simple overview of history (no deep digging needed) will show that the generalized distribution of capital resources is far more benificent to a culture than concentration. Take the China you attempt to use as a counter-example to vaunted America: The concentration of its resources in the hands of the Party, the concentration of its ideas in the hands of the Party. As opposed to _early_ America (not nowadays, no). Much more even wealth distribution, limited patents (Mr. Edison, et. al. for instance, had a 14 year(?) patent. He knew he couldn't rest on the laurels of his invention because the patent would expire, so he had to keep inventing more things to be prepared-from an economic point of view, of course; Edison was an enterpreneur, not a hacker-type; The hacker-type inventors in the last century are probably largely unknown, as enterpreneurs bought the idea and took the credit, whereas prior to that they probably simply were not recorded at all.)
So, anyway, Sure, let's go the patent and restrictive IP laws route. That'll work. We'll end up with the corporations controlling thought instead of the government (the corps'll just use the gummint as a front for the controls - "Don't blame _me_, that's just the way the laws are!". Sure.)
Like hell. I'll oppose you, in print, in the voting booth, with my bank account, any way I can. And I'll hope that most folks reading this will, too.
Re:Humor and sanity . . .
on
3D Printers
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· Score: 1
Dig around at your local second-hand book store in the SF section. There's an author named George O. Smith did a collection of short stories called "The Complete Venus Equilateral". One of the story sequences had to do with the cultural ramifications of replicators. Very well thought-out, excellent reading. Three of the stories in the sequence cover
a) the legal/technical aspects of the new technology (the DeCSS/Napster defense teams should read this one),
b) what happens when the replicator gets immediately marketed w/o easing it into the culture, and
c) what goes on after the widget is finally integrated into the culture.
It's a lot like what's going on now with the Internet...
On a serious note, I work at a fairly busy web site in the data warehousing/business reporting section. We simply don't have _time_ to fake enough server log entries to make it worth our while, we're too busy processing the _legit_ stuff and filtering out such non-reportables as crawler hits.
As to the discrepancies between inside and outside numbers, well, I can _guess_ about what Mars looks like from some telescopic photos, but nothing beats going and looking. Understand I'm not shooting at those outside companies for the differences in said numbers, but one must be aware that different methods can produce different numbers, and that using statistical methods to arrive at metrics.... well, that's how the US Census works.... and if you live in the right neighborhood you're going to find an awful lot of _dark_-skinned 'Caucasians';>
Ummm, baby-doll, I realize that was just a troll, but-
If I own a legally purchased CD/Tape/whatever, then downloading an MP3 copy of anything on it is _legal_, sweetcheeks. It's called 'time-shifting'/'space-shifting' in the copyright laws and is protected, OK?
The thing to realize here is that the legality/illegality of a given copy of a given work may only be determined on a case-by-case basis. _I_, owning, say, a CD of the soundtrack for "The Greatest Hits of the Teletubbies", could legally d/l a copy of any track I want. Joe Blow, lacking said original, however, is guilty as hell of the legal definition of copyright infringement, _unless_, of course, he's d/l-ing it for some protected fair use such as, say, a review. And if we had nothing better to do for several hours/days, I'm sure we could drum up a heaping list of further exception, too. I don't seem to be as bored with life as you are, though, so, I'll just stick to the simple possibilities above.
Given the above, then, one might infer that _you_ have, contrary to a goodly number of the rest of us, stolen every piece of audio you possess, then?
Since _I_, for one, probably _could_ find several legal things there, maybe even Metallica files, who knows? I think we do have some older Lars-thing albums in our collection, after all, and somebody just might have them posted. If Lars wants to bitch at my collection of Metallica files, let him. I _hope_ he takes me to court on them. I'll countersue his ass to hamburger for defamation, etc. He, and all those other bands _have_no_legal_leg_ in regards to Napster, anymore than Random House has a bitch with Xerox or Canon copiers. Their bitch is _with_Napster's_users_, on an _individual_ level. Frankly, I'd suggest they start with _you_ since, by your own admission you "can't find anything legal under napster". I'd bet that, in spite of net being able to find anything legal, you've d/l'd a few files from Napster, eh? Of course, the costs associated with suing you won't be recouped from your wallet, I'd wager. And they don't have the option of suing the general class of "MP3 file copiers". But it _would_ be an interesting trial.....
Anyway, a word of advice- just for fun, try avoiding such blanket silliness in future, ok? Especially AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS/KEYBOARD, right?
Um, actually, I don't support copyright violation. I _also_ don't support the supression of a legitimate means of data replication and transfer simply because _some_ people are using it thusly.
When the RIAA forgoes that little hidden piracy fee on audio tapes and actively starts to enforce copyright on recorded music by going after the individual violators, then they have an ethical leg to stand on. While they're attempting it this way, they can go hang.
Remember, Xeroxes aren't illegal, jut some uses of them. No matter _how_many_ xerox users are using them for print "piracy", xeroxes remain legal. Period. The same argument applies to Napster.
Ummm. I think you need to recheck your logic train here...
Recieving a book in the mail (solicited or not) gives me the right to do anything with it I like except reproduce its contents in print/readable form without permission of the copyright holders. I may burn it, read it sliently, read it aloud (even in public if I don't charge for it; Remember story-hour at your local library?), grind it up and use it as cat-box filler, anything.
Recieving or not recieving, or the possession/lack thereof of a DVD has no bearing whatsoever on the dissemination of DeCSS. That will end up a constitutional law issue. I can have zero DVD's and (currently) have no right to disseminate DeCSS, or I can own a million legit DVDs and still have no "right" to do so.
As to cracking DC "encryption", that, AFAICS, would not apply because the data encrypted is not _created_ by the CC, merely read from another source. If the transcription of the bar-code and subsequent encryption of it by CC renders that data DC's Innaleckshual Propertee, then I'm going to go out, grab a copy of Windows2k, transcribe-and-encrypt it myself (probably rot _fourteen_, just to make it difficult *G*) and start selling my new IP at CD-production-cost-plus-mailing-cost-plus $5. I'll be rich. I'll call it "WIN2K Enterpreneurial Suite".
Now, if DC want's to claim that the encryption algorithm _itself_ is the IP, well, I think that there's probably considerable prior art, so patenting is out of the question. Copyright? Be serious. That only leaves Trade Secret, and that's already been discussed to death elsewhere.
At this stage, I'd say (just off the top of my head, you understand) DC is out in the cold. The USPS regs look like they put the final nail in the coffin as far as just who owns the widget once they email it to me unsolicited. Me to DC: "Mine! Piss off!"
Now, as to DC's _actual_ IP: The software they send with the gadget. So far, the only part of that they've lost is the "encryption" algorithm discussed above. And the loss came through legitimate means (specifically, reverse engineering of a Trade Secret). No other part of their IP has been recreated. Unless they want to try and patent "shopping by bar-code scanner". I think they'd have considerable difficulty there, considering the sheer number of big department stores that use bc scanners to help folks in bridal registries. That's a similar enough application that there could be considerable trouble getting such a patent.
These folks really need to re-examine what's up, and be prepared to cut losses and bail out.
Note to Venture Capitalists: From DC's little saga, I'd think several times before investing in any subsequent businasses that these clowns attempt (once DC tanks, as seems inevitable at this point).
Network 23 lives, folks. It looks just like that. Is it gonna be that bad in 2020? Maybe not, but I'll bet it gets worse before it gets better. We don't have enough of a good start (lawyers/bottom of the sea) yet.
"Copyright law and the U.S. Supreme Court's 1984 "Betamax" decision provide for "fair use" of copyrighted material. For example, scholars and critics can quote lines from a book in a review without fear of incurring copyright liability. Or, a soap opera fan can tape an over the air TV show during the day to watch later that night -- under the Betamax decision, an unscrambled broadcast can be copied for this type of "time shift" personal use.
BUT "fair use" is not an open-ended concept. It does not justify any action an individual may take with a copyrighted work, whether they have purchased the copy or not. It is a right to use what is available, not a right of access to works for fair use purposes. For example, the law has always recognized that a show sent by scrambled pay-per-view signal may not be viewed or copied through the use of an unauthorized, illegal descrambler. The owner of the signal has - and has always had -- a legal right to scramble the signal to prevent unauthorized access to the signal for viewing or to make copies of the show."
Another lovely attempt to divert, Valenti. It _is_, however, perfectly legal for me to videotape (for non-commercial purposes such as timeshifting) a paid-for pay-per-view broadcast. IANAL, but if I pushed the little button and tape the broadcast so that I can time-shift or space-shift it, where's the violation? If all I'm paying for when I buy a DVD is the right to buy a liscenced viewer if and when somebody puts it out, thanks, I'll stick to videocassettes.
Apply the MPAA's logic to a book. I buy the book, but you wrote it in Spanish, so I'm required to hire or permanently retain an MPAA-licensed Spanish translator to come over and read it to me, even though I have a handy spanish primer and expect to have the language learned in a day or two. Pardon, no. As long as I don't make commercial copies of the work or copy it excessively I may access that information in any way I choose. Note also that the DCMA provides (IIRC) that the owner of the key liscencemay revoke said key at will, so, just like in the UCITA, I've only liscenced the use of the particular DVD player for as long as the MPAA wills. So, to complete the analogy, I have a book in Pig Latin (I understand that the encryption was about that strong), that I am not allowed to translate myself and keep a copy of said translation, but must hire an MPAA liscenced translator to come to my house and read it to me each time I want it read, which the MPAA may recall at will. Right.
If this (Digital TV) is the mandatory broadcast standard (I've heard by 2006, IIRC), looks like I'll be getting all my entertainment the old-fashioned way. Books, learning a musical instrument, whatever. But I _sure_ as hell won't be buying digital TV widgetry (unless, of course, somebody is selling hacked ones). If it comes in over my cable and I've paid for it, end of story; If I like it and want to, I'm recording it, because I bought it. RIAA and TV networks, if you don't like it, don't broadcast it, keep it in a theatre. The sooner most of you are off the air and out of business, the happier I'll be, less tripe out there that way.
Or, try the Conrad Stargard series by Leo Frankowski. A modern engineer finds himself accidentally time-jumped to 12th century Poland just 10 years before the Mongols arrive. How to turn a medieval economy into a modern military power in 10 easy lessons.:)
>>"One of the points he made was that you need to >>use your own product on a daily basis; not only >>does this give you incentive to improve it, but >>if you if you can't use it, then you know it's >>not very good.
>
>Dogshit.
>
>This may be perfectly fine if you want to have a >small and declining market share. "
Oh, no, I must disagree with this. If one manufactures a product that is also useful in the conduct of one's own business (say, for example, a company that munfactured shipping containers) using them oneself is not only good marketing, but good economics, since one can obtain said items cheaper my using ones own than by buying from another( e.g. shipping out groups of smaller containers in a larger one).
I once worked for a company that was a financial systems VAR (they sold/sell a complete software package for running Credit Unions). They not only sold it but used it daily. All accounting functions were handled on the system; Budgeting, A/R, A/P, Payroll, everything. Getting direct deposit through them was really easy, since their software generated and processed such things. You waked down to the accounting office and asked. Companies going thru an outside payroll firm had to fill out forms and wait twelve years, and do the rain dance, and so on, etc. Buying an outside package wuold have been silly, because their product _works_. This is the difficulty here with the Boys From Redmond. They market the all-around computer solution, yet according to the referenced article (which I read hardcopy), their attempts to migrate _failed_. Not "they didn't do it because it would have been economically unviable", but "they tried and failed". Big difference. That would be like that other company I worked for selling/marketing its package, and still using excel and access for its own processing. I don't think so. In this case, expecting them to "eat their own cooking" is entirely fair. Somewhat along the line of "you cooked it, _you_ eat it first. Then, if you don't die, I'll have some."
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Actually, a really interesting bit of information is that one of the sucessful finishers was an unmodified human-powered stock tandem tricycle made by Greenspeed of Australia. Check them out.
:)
www.greenspeed.com.au
Note- I am not affiliated with them, just a trike enthusiast hoping to get some geek attention for trikes in general.
A bit theatrical, I admit, but here goes:
Obtain a copy of a well-known work of print fiction, a film novelization (something obvious, like "Star Wars", or similar) in a foreign language (it should be one that the major players in the courtroom, including the 2600 defense team, cannot read; e.g., Swahili, Polish, Japanese). This work should be scanned into an ordinary textfile. Obtain a copy of the same work as a DVD.
Obtain the services of a person who reads and speaks the langauge of the print work.
"Your Honors , this is an encrypted work, in that, as far as I know, no-one in this courtroom can read and understand it; It was deliberately chosen for this property." [display and pass around book]. "It is exactly similar to a DVD in the following respects: it is a work of art; it is published in a format that is not, without deliberately applied translation, usable to its current intended audience, in a word and for purposes of this demonstration, encrypted; It has been sold (not licensed) to its current possesser; It is protected by copyright. In short, it is functionally equivalant to this DVD." [display and pass around DVD] "The DVD in your hand contains the work. It is owned by me, not licensed to me. It cannot be viewed without deliberately applied translation (it could be read, as-is, from the disc, but doing this would result in no meaningful pictures or sounds being displayed upon the viewing device)." [If possible, demonstrate this by playing the DVD without decrypting it]. "It is also protected, even absent the DMCA, by copyright."
"The attorneys for the MPAA and the US AG would have you believe that decryption facilitates, or may even be a requirement for, piracy. This can easily be disproved. This file contains a complete and accurate rendition of this text." [demonstrate contents of file] "I will now procedd to demonstrate piracy." [have assistant begin making copies of the work on to floppies/zip-disks/whatever, and hand them to judges] "Your honors, pease note that, while none of these copies are in anyway decrypted, they are still saleable. I don't have to decode them to make them or sell them. In exactly that way pirates will make as many copies of the DVD as they like without being able to decrypt them. These exact copies will be just as saleable and more importantly, _just_as_useful_ as the original."
"Up to now, we have completely demonstrated the piracy and copyright infringement cycle of piracy from start to finish (excepting the actual exchange of cash for bootleg copy) without once even _mentioning_ DeCSS. The questions arise, therefore, What _is_ DeCSS (in other words, what does it do) and how does the DMCA affect it? The sections of the DMCA that are relevant to this program and this case do not once mention the copying of a work, merely its decryption. DeCSS and similar programs (including the ones licensed by the MPAA) merely allow the intelligible reading of the work. That is the sum total of their function." [introduce translator] "For the purposes of this copy of the work, this is DeCSS." [translator should translate a small piece of the work aloud] "Now, Your Honors, assume for a moment that this particular language was the only language in which fiction was published. This is exactly the situation with DVD's. All DVD's use the same encryption; And we have previously demonstrated that decryption is totally unneccessary for piracy. In fact, such decryption might very well decrease the utility (and thus the value) of the DVD, but this is an issue a bit off to the side at the moment. To return to the point at hand: assume that the language of this book is the only language that fiction is published in. Assume further that- a) it is a language that the publishing houses created specifically for this purpose, b) that publishing houses have made the posession of a license a condition of the learning or use (even as far as reading to onesself is concerned) of this language. In short, it is illegal to have this text translated to you by any other than a licensed translator, it is illegal for you to learn the language yourself to translate for yourself or anyone else without a license, and the license is revocable at the whim and pleasure of the publishing company. This means that, although you may buy the book, you may not learn to read it yourself, nor may anyone publish a translation dictionary of the language. This is DeCSS. This is the DMCA."
Yeah, it could use some work as a script, but the idea is there. Maybe the defense and judges will find it helpful. I hope so. This is getting out of hand...
Do a Google search on "lunchbox PC". This will get you a carryable case designed to fit full-blown desktop internal components that has a built-in LCD screen and keyboard. You populate it with ordinary desktop motherboard, drives, cards, etc., pick it up and go. The card interfaces are on the side, so hook-up at the site is easy, and they usually come with a video driver setup that will work with the built-in screen or out to the monitor of your choice.
It seems to me that this whole hoo-haw is happening because a small group of artists who create some of the more easily distributable art forms seem to have bought into the delusion promulgated by the unscrupulous business types that are their middlemen. These artists have forgotten one of the most exciting things about art: An artist never knows whether his/her next work will make any money. The aforementioned middlemen have convinced them that they are some kind of magical geniuses who never make art the somebody doesn't like, and that there's some kind of intrinsic, not-to-be-disputed "value" to each and every piece of work that comes from them.
Well, gang, tough. You "label" recording musicians, and "best-seller" novelists and Hollywood movie actors are no different than the poor yutz who stands on a streetcorner making noise on his guitar with the case open in front of him, hoping that passers-by (like me) will drop a tad of cash in. Me standing there listening, whether it's for 5 seconds or three hours, does not constitute "piracy" if I don't toss in some cash. Me humming/singing the songs later, to myself or to others, does not constitute piracy, or infringement or anything. Me telling friends about "Slouching Tired, Wide and Dragging" does not constitute infringement, piracy or any other heinous act. Oh, sure, it can be legislated so, but that doesn't make it so, nor will that stop it in the long run. The mere fact that one artist or another has a somewhat larger corner to play on (say an entire cinema chain's screens) doesn't change the fact that they're still just a busker, and have the same economic situation as one on the streetcorner.
The point of this reminder, artists, is to advise you all to, as far as possible (and that's quite a bit farther than you think right now (with the probable exception of Courtney Love; She has definitely thought this through)) get the middleman out of your way and get back into touch with your audience. Set up that Busker's Square on the 'net. Do it _yourself_. Don't let some cheesy-ass middleman set it up and charge you to use it, and legislate you out of all your take in the process. Form a coalition and do it yourselves, with _hired_ technical labor, that _you_ control. The cinema folks did it at least once in history (anybody remember how United Artists got started and who did it?). The key will be to make sure that _you_ own Busker's Square. Let your tech people have a stake in it, but if you do that, make it a closely-held corporation or a co-op, even better. Keep the agents (parasites) and lawyers (bigger parasites) out of ownership positions.
Think about it.... can't hurt, and you'll probably end up making lots more friends (hint, hint, Lars)
See, now, I don't know that I agree with this basic "employees are hot-swappable mass-produced parts" idea as expressed here. That's the whole cause of this situation.
Take for analogy the following situation: I'm WidgetCo, the only maker of widgets in the market. There's a market for widgets out there, and I've been selling all my output to GadgetCo for the last several years. Now WhatsitCorp sees my widgets and thinks they're just what they need, so they make me an offer of 50% more than GadgetCo's been paying. When I inform GadgetCo, they promptly sue me to prevent this, even though we have no outstanding deliverables, since GadgetCo's been buying them as I produce them and hasn't contracted in advance. The court, however, rules that I'm not allowed to sell to anyone but GadgetCo for five years to prevent effective competition in the marketplace.
There isn't a company in existence that would accept such a situation vis a vis its market. I see no difference between a fictitious entity and its market and product (a company and its products for sale) and a real entity and _its_ products and market (a person and his/her work and skills).
Now, in the case of an NDA, we employees need to start insisting that the market contract in advance for goods it wants to reserve; For instance, how about and NDA written with the following clauses: The NDA is void if the employment is terminated within 1 year (regardless of which side terminates), and, in order for any non-compete clauses to remain in force, the company must continue compensation of the employee for the duration of the clause at the employee's maximum rate for the duration of the NDA. Simple enough, if the company wants control of a resource, it pays for said control, and the "maximum rate" clause keeps them honest.
See, a business can't do very well by screwing its vendors over any more than it can be screwing its customers. If you hose your vendors, especially the quality ones, your raw materials start to drop in quality, causing either your product quality to drop or your costs to rise or both. Net result, end of business. An employee is, more ad more, becoming a vendor. Especially in the tech world.
"All we've really done is said: "Look, the DMCA allows us to prevent you from proving that people are
breaking the law", and that's a really good point proving that the DMCA goes much too far. It doesn't make
obtaining songs without paying for them any more legal than before, and that's got nothing to do with the DMCA."
True. What it _does_ do, however (and all to the good, IMNSHO) is put
the enforcement requirement back to where it ought to have been in the first place:
The RIAA/MPAA/etc. have to go back to prosecuting the _actual_infringer_,
not "taxing" my purchase of blank media because I _might_ use
it to infringe. This, granted, _is_ a Herculean task, but so
is any kind of thought policing. They'll get what they deserve. And we'll be
entertained watching....
So, is there any group that's seriously working on magnetic mass-drivers for the surface-to-space segment of things?
Folks, we're overlooking who we are. We are the people who make information happen. Information is power, if used correctly. A dot-com tech workers auction site (tech workers auctioning their services to employers) in close conjunction with a F*cked-companies type site is the thing. The real ly neccesary thing about the auction board is that it needs to be open bidding (all bids public) and all resumes public (except for personal info- name, address, etc.). This is how it works in a physical auction, from Sotheby's to a farm auction in Amish country. The potential bidders get to look at the item (the CV's are openly published) and the bids are repeated aloud by the auctioneer (openly published on the site). As long as workers post followup info to both sites ("Yeah, i took this offer here, and it is as advertised and the company is just great" or "I took this offer and got hosed this way and that way") and followup if the worker and company part ways, the system should work fairly well. Early adopters on the worker side are going to have a bit of a hard go, but so do all early adopters. Might work, yes?
Hmmm. Maybe that "many little programs" thread up above holds the answer? Truly not trying to be sarcastic or smartassed. I realize it may be quite a bit of work to re-organize the code (38500 lines _is_ quite a bit, after all), but perhaps, maybe? Isolating the comm protocol into a stand-alone called from the main program (and holding that as closed source) would seem to address even the moral concerns of the GPL (going by RMS's behavior in the matter for a "gold standard", anyway).
Actually, the suspension is not a problem. From the top down, you have: body/chassis, 4 independent (_truly_ independent) suspensions, one for each engine saddle and then the balls. This would work no matter what the vehicle. Parallel parking becomes trivial with the ability to move the car sideways. Now all one needs is to design the ball so the there are deployable 'paddles' and one has a lovely amphibian (assuming the balls are bouyant enough to float the vehicle) :)
"Sure, the scientists developing nanotech are qualified to make the technical decisions necessary to achieve their goals: building better technology -- it's what they do, and it's what they get paid for. But as we've learned from the atomic revolution of the mid 20th century, we can't leave these important decisions to scientists alone. They may not intend to produce monsters, but their focus on development without regard to consequences makes them often ill-suited to decide how to go about doing so. It's why managers and ethics boards exist, and it's good to see some fresh academic blood here."
Um.. I will vehemently disagree with you, Ma'am. I will point out the letter from Einstein, et. al., to the political powers-that-were during the development of the A-bomb. They (the Manhattan Project scientists) were _quite_ aware of the possible consequences, far more so than the politicos (I will recommend a perusal of the SF literature of pre-WWII for references, but Lester del Rey's _Nerves_ comes to mind just off the top of my head). Science is all too often silent, but that is for political reasons (e.g., they'll lose funding, be arrested, etc.) rather than from ignorance. And, all too often, when science warns, it is ignored.
Most of the time it is, in fact, the political/legal/commercial/military establishments that have been in abysmal ignorance (in fact, a good deal of the time in the cases of the legal/commercial establisments the ignorance has not only been abysmal but _deliberate_) of the wider consequences of science and technology. Napster is a lovely example of this. It caught the commercial/legal worlds _flatfooted_, but the folks who have been actually working with the technology wouldn't have noticed anything unusual or unexpected about it at all, simply because it was as natural as an oak growing from an acorn. But, I forget, this country (and, to a lesser extent, this culture) gets its ideas about how technology works from the heirs of Gene Roddenberry, which is like getting one's ideas about how relationships work from "The Young and The Restless". -sigh- No, Fernando, one doesn't come up with a new framistan just be "retuning the left-handed cyclic pollinator circuits in the holodeck projectors". It's a shade more involved than that.
Just my $0.02...
At one place, taking the pager got us no extra flat rate, but we were supposed to charge calls at a two-hour mnimum, and since most calls were 1 hr or less, ad we carried a company cell-phone and such accoutrements along with the pager, this usually worked out OK.
At another place, well, it was just part of the deal, no ups, no extras.
Falline says:
"Tell me something, if invention/innovation were merely a spark of inspiration. Where are all the great inventions from China? Russia? Or even, to a lesser extent, Europe? They're few and far between... and it's not for want of education or minds. You think it's just a coincidence that the word business is that much further from their vocabulary? What's more, where do you think most academics/scientists are ultimately deriving their funding from? Without real life products like the internal combustion engine, the telephone, the car, the microprocessor, etc....where would our economy be? Where does all the money come from that allows these "scientists" to research? Do you think it's any coincidence that most early inventors were aristocrats or part of an emerging middle class?
"
Well, let's see. There are problems with this little rant. _Which_ inventions are the "great" ones? The wheel, maybe? Afro-European in origin, IIRC. Arithmetic/mathematics? Same. Organized culture? Afro-European or Chinese. The chair? Same. "Great inventions". Interesting phrase. Should it perhaps be "most lucrative inventions"? Or perhaps "inventions that, through patent controls, resulted in the greatest concentration of monetary capital into one socio-economic entity"?
"Where would our economy be?" The plaintive cry of the capitalist greed-monger. Our economy would be here in the US, just like always. The infrastructure of that economy might be (no, would be) very different if it did not include the wide-spread use of the IC engine, the telephone, etc. But our economy was doing very nicely at the turn of the last century (1900, for those, like me, that still haven't made that adjustment *G*), when such factors were not in existence yet. Some folks wouldn't be nearly as unnecessarily wealthy as they are, but so what? When, in all of history, has an insane concentration of monetary capital in the hands of a few (or worse, one) individual benefitted the culture in which it happened? Never, and you know it. "The benefit of the few who have the wealth" is _not_ equivalent to "the benefit of the culture". As a matter of fact, a simple overview of history (no deep digging needed) will show that the generalized distribution of capital resources is far more benificent to a culture than concentration. Take the China you attempt to use as a counter-example to vaunted America: The concentration of its resources in the hands of the Party, the concentration of its ideas in the hands of the Party. As opposed to _early_ America (not nowadays, no). Much more even wealth distribution, limited patents (Mr. Edison, et. al. for instance, had a 14 year(?) patent. He knew he couldn't rest on the laurels of his invention because the patent would expire, so he had to keep inventing more things to be prepared-from an economic point of view, of course; Edison was an enterpreneur, not a hacker-type; The hacker-type inventors in the last century are probably largely unknown, as enterpreneurs bought the idea and took the credit, whereas prior to that they probably simply were not recorded at all.)
So, anyway, Sure, let's go the patent and restrictive IP laws route. That'll work. We'll end up with the corporations controlling thought instead of the government (the corps'll just use the gummint as a front for the controls - "Don't blame _me_, that's just the way the laws are!". Sure.)
Like hell. I'll oppose you, in print, in the voting booth, with my bank account, any way I can. And I'll hope that most folks reading this will, too.
Dig around at your local second-hand book store in the SF section. There's an author named George O. Smith did a collection of short stories called "The Complete Venus Equilateral". One of the story sequences had to do with the cultural ramifications of replicators. Very well thought-out, excellent reading. Three of the stories in the sequence cover
a) the legal/technical aspects of the new technology (the DeCSS/Napster defense teams should read this one),
b) what happens when the replicator gets immediately marketed w/o easing it into the culture, and
c) what goes on after the widget is finally integrated into the culture.
It's a lot like what's going on now with the Internet...
"Joe Bob says - Check it out!"
On a serious note, I work at a fairly busy web site in the data warehousing/business reporting section. We simply don't have _time_ to fake enough server log entries to make it worth our while, we're too busy processing the _legit_ stuff and filtering out such non-reportables as crawler hits. As to the discrepancies between inside and outside numbers, well, I can _guess_ about what Mars looks like from some telescopic photos, but nothing beats going and looking. Understand I'm not shooting at those outside companies for the differences in said numbers, but one must be aware that different methods can produce different numbers, and that using statistical methods to arrive at metrics.... well, that's how the US Census works.... and if you live in the right neighborhood you're going to find an awful lot of _dark_-skinned 'Caucasians' ;>
Well, whenever _I_ visit a site, I leave a post-it thumbtacked to the upper right corner of the page just so they'll know it was me.... *G*
Ummm, baby-doll, I realize that was just a troll, but-
If I own a legally purchased CD/Tape/whatever, then downloading an MP3 copy of anything on it is _legal_, sweetcheeks. It's called 'time-shifting'/'space-shifting' in the copyright laws and is protected, OK?
The thing to realize here is that the legality/illegality of a given copy of a given work may only be determined on a case-by-case basis. _I_, owning, say, a CD of the soundtrack for "The Greatest Hits of the Teletubbies", could legally d/l a copy of any track I want. Joe Blow, lacking said original, however, is guilty as hell of the legal definition of copyright infringement, _unless_, of course, he's d/l-ing it for some protected fair use such as, say, a review. And if we had nothing better to do for several hours/days, I'm sure we could drum up a heaping list of further exception, too. I don't seem to be as bored with life as you are, though, so, I'll just stick to the simple possibilities above.
Given the above, then, one might infer that _you_ have, contrary to a goodly number of the rest of us, stolen every piece of audio you possess, then?
Since _I_, for one, probably _could_ find several legal things there, maybe even Metallica files, who knows? I think we do have some older Lars-thing albums in our collection, after all, and somebody just might have them posted. If Lars wants to bitch at my collection of Metallica files, let him. I _hope_ he takes me to court on them. I'll countersue his ass to hamburger for defamation, etc. He, and all those other bands _have_no_legal_leg_ in regards to Napster, anymore than Random House has a bitch with Xerox or Canon copiers. Their bitch is _with_Napster's_users_, on an _individual_ level. Frankly, I'd suggest they start with _you_ since, by your own admission you "can't find anything legal under napster". I'd bet that, in spite of net being able to find anything legal, you've d/l'd a few files from Napster, eh? Of course, the costs associated with suing you won't be recouped from your wallet, I'd wager. And they don't have the option of suing the general class of "MP3 file copiers". But it _would_ be an interesting trial.....
Anyway, a word of advice- just for fun, try avoiding such blanket silliness in future, ok? Especially AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS/KEYBOARD, right?
Um, actually, I don't support copyright violation. I _also_ don't support the supression of a legitimate means of data replication and transfer simply because _some_ people are using it thusly.
When the RIAA forgoes that little hidden piracy fee on audio tapes and actively starts to enforce copyright on recorded music by going after the individual violators, then they have an ethical leg to stand on. While they're attempting it this way, they can go hang.
Remember, Xeroxes aren't illegal, jut some uses of them. No matter _how_many_ xerox users are using them for print "piracy", xeroxes remain legal. Period. The same argument applies to Napster.
Ummm. I think you need to recheck your logic train here...
Recieving a book in the mail (solicited or not) gives me the right to do anything with it I like except reproduce its contents in print/readable form without permission of the copyright holders. I may burn it, read it sliently, read it aloud (even in public if I don't charge for it; Remember story-hour at your local library?), grind it up and use it as cat-box filler, anything.
Recieving or not recieving, or the possession/lack thereof of a DVD has no bearing whatsoever on the dissemination of DeCSS. That will end up a constitutional law issue. I can have zero DVD's and (currently) have no right to disseminate DeCSS, or I can own a million legit DVDs and still have no "right" to do so.
As to cracking DC "encryption", that, AFAICS, would not apply because the data encrypted is not _created_ by the CC, merely read from another source. If the transcription of the bar-code and subsequent encryption of it by CC renders that data DC's Innaleckshual Propertee, then I'm going to go out, grab a copy of Windows2k, transcribe-and-encrypt it myself (probably rot _fourteen_, just to make it difficult *G*) and start selling my new IP at CD-production-cost-plus-mailing-cost-plus $5. I'll be rich. I'll call it "WIN2K Enterpreneurial Suite".
Now, if DC want's to claim that the encryption algorithm _itself_ is the IP, well, I think that there's probably considerable prior art, so patenting is out of the question. Copyright? Be serious. That only leaves Trade Secret, and that's already been discussed to death elsewhere.
At this stage, I'd say (just off the top of my head, you understand) DC is out in the cold. The USPS regs look like they put the final nail in the coffin as far as just who owns the widget once they email it to me unsolicited. Me to DC: "Mine! Piss off!"
Now, as to DC's _actual_ IP: The software they send with the gadget. So far, the only part of that they've lost is the "encryption" algorithm discussed above. And the loss came through legitimate means (specifically, reverse engineering of a Trade Secret). No other part of their IP has been recreated. Unless they want to try and patent "shopping by bar-code scanner". I think they'd have considerable difficulty there, considering the sheer number of big department stores that use bc scanners to help folks in bridal registries. That's a similar enough application that there could be considerable trouble getting such a patent.
These folks really need to re-examine what's up, and be prepared to cut losses and bail out.
Note to Venture Capitalists: From DC's little saga, I'd think several times before investing in any subsequent businasses that these clowns attempt (once DC tanks, as seems inevitable at this point).
Network 23 lives, folks. It looks just like that. Is it gonna be that bad in 2020? Maybe not, but I'll bet it gets worse before it gets better. We don't have enough of a good start (lawyers/bottom of the sea) yet.
Also from the MPAA FAQ:
"Copyright law and the U.S. Supreme Court's 1984 "Betamax" decision provide for "fair use" of copyrighted material. For example, scholars and critics can quote lines from a book in a review without fear of incurring copyright liability. Or, a soap opera fan can tape an over the air TV show during the day to watch later that night -- under the Betamax decision, an unscrambled broadcast can be copied for this type of "time shift" personal use.
BUT "fair use" is not an open-ended concept. It does not justify any action an individual may take with a copyrighted work, whether they have purchased the copy or not. It is a right to use what is available, not a right of access to works for fair use purposes. For example, the law has always recognized that a show sent by scrambled pay-per-view signal may not be viewed or copied through the use of an unauthorized, illegal descrambler. The owner of the signal has - and has always had -- a legal right to scramble the signal to prevent unauthorized access to the signal for viewing or to make copies of the show."
Another lovely attempt to divert, Valenti. It _is_, however, perfectly legal for me to videotape (for non-commercial purposes such as timeshifting) a paid-for pay-per-view broadcast. IANAL, but if I pushed the little button and tape the broadcast so that I can time-shift or space-shift it, where's the violation? If all I'm paying for when I buy a DVD is the right to buy a liscenced viewer if and when somebody puts it out, thanks, I'll stick to videocassettes.
Apply the MPAA's logic to a book. I buy the book, but you wrote it in Spanish, so I'm required to hire or permanently retain an MPAA-licensed Spanish translator to come over and read it to me, even though I have a handy spanish primer and expect to have the language learned in a day or two. Pardon, no. As long as I don't make commercial copies of the work or copy it excessively I may access that information in any way I choose. Note also that the DCMA provides (IIRC) that the owner of the key liscencemay revoke said key at will, so, just like in the UCITA, I've only liscenced the use of the particular DVD player for as long as the MPAA wills. So, to complete the analogy, I have a book in Pig Latin (I understand that the encryption was about that strong), that I am not allowed to translate myself and keep a copy of said translation, but must hire an MPAA liscenced translator to come to my house and read it to me each time I want it read, which the MPAA may recall at will. Right.
If this (Digital TV) is the mandatory broadcast standard (I've heard by 2006, IIRC), looks like I'll be getting all my entertainment the old-fashioned way. Books, learning a musical instrument, whatever. But I _sure_ as hell won't be buying digital TV widgetry (unless, of course, somebody is selling hacked ones). If it comes in over my cable and I've paid for it, end of story; If I like it and want to, I'm recording it, because I bought it. RIAA and TV networks, if you don't like it, don't broadcast it, keep it in a theatre. The sooner most of you are off the air and out of business, the happier I'll be, less tripe out there that way.
Or, try the Conrad Stargard series by Leo Frankowski. A modern engineer finds himself accidentally time-jumped to 12th century Poland just 10 years before the Mongols arrive. How to turn a medieval economy into a modern military power in 10 easy lessons. :)
>>"One of the points he made was that you need to >>use your own product on a daily basis; not only >>does this give you incentive to improve it, but >>if you if you can't use it, then you know it's >>not very good.
>
>Dogshit.
>
>This may be perfectly fine if you want to have a >small and declining market share. "
Oh, no, I must disagree with this. If one manufactures a product that is also useful in the conduct of one's own business (say, for example, a company that munfactured shipping containers) using them oneself is not only good marketing, but good economics, since one can obtain said items cheaper my using ones own than by buying from another( e.g. shipping out groups of smaller containers in a larger one).
I once worked for a company that was a financial systems VAR (they sold/sell a complete software package for running Credit Unions). They not only sold it but used it daily. All accounting functions were handled on the system; Budgeting, A/R, A/P, Payroll, everything. Getting direct deposit through them was really easy, since their software generated and processed such things. You waked down to the accounting office and asked. Companies going thru an outside payroll firm had to fill out forms and wait twelve years, and do the rain dance, and so on, etc. Buying an outside package wuold have been silly, because their product _works_. This is the difficulty here with the Boys From Redmond. They market the all-around computer solution, yet according to the referenced article (which I read hardcopy), their attempts to migrate _failed_. Not "they didn't do it because it would have been economically unviable", but "they tried and failed". Big difference. That would be like that other company I worked for selling/marketing its package, and still using excel and access for its own processing. I don't think so. In this case, expecting them to "eat their own cooking" is entirely fair. Somewhat along the line of "you cooked it, _you_ eat it first. Then, if you don't die, I'll have some."