Never, unless of course you meant security for anyone except the computers owner. Then it makes plenty of sense to make the computer a remote-controlled slave terminal...
This didn't hit me as something that any sane person would want until I realized that this is how cable networks control your local cable provider. They scramble their networks at the control room and authorize cable operators remotely. If the cable operator doesn't pay their bill (or what have you) then the boxes on their end won't descramble the signal--they're controlled remotely, at the cable network's authorization center.
I can imagine Bill Gates walking into one of these cable network installations and seeing what kind of power they have over the local cable providers and thinking to himself that this is an insanely great idea (which means he had to come up with some way of making software subscription based, 'natch)...
On another note, what is responsible for the recent surge of anti-free software propaganda? I'm sure that some could present a viable argument that nefarious sources (SCO/Microsoft/whoever) are essentially astroturfing on a media-wide scale (not like they haven't done it before), but things like this, plus the Forbes article and other critiqued rants that have been posted on Slashdot before, have me a bit worried about how the worldwide computer-using community is perceiving free software, especially when peoples' critiques contain such glaring factual errors as this particular one does.
It's not just MS friendly mags like Forbes that is spreading this kind of crap, but also supposedly neutral sources like the Association for Computing Machinery. I was more than a little surprised to find an article in the latest Communications by Robert L. Glass (A Sociopolitical Look at Open Source) that on the surface claimed to be an objective look at the Open Source movement but which really was nothing more than thinly disguised FUD.
What's telling about the Communications article is that Mr. Glass seems to think that the Open Source movement is simply some kind of recent utopian movement that will flame out in time. However, he fails to recognize that Open Source has been the rule from the beginning of the computing era and that this epoch of closed source is the recent phenomena. Maybe I shouldn't be too surprised, since Communications seems lately to be more and more oriented towards business than Computer Science.
3. The third is that digital content has no value. In other words, digital theft is not theft because bits and bytes have no value. (Assumption of the file swappers.)
That little statement has an underlying assumption that copying is equal to theft (it makes no difference if you call it "digital theft" or not) and that is a false assumption. Copying is not theft no matter how much you or the *AA want it to be.
If you had simply left your statement as "digital content has no value" then you might have had the basis for an intelligent discussion (vis-a-vis bits have value, but can be duplicated for no appreciable cost).
It was because there was no other interface to the thing (other than a dip switch) and the output had to be readable at each step of execution (it had two 7-segment displays and the dip switch selected which register to display). So the short answer is because of the inherent design limitations of the computer itself didn't lend itself to an automatically clocked design.
Not that long ago we had to build a functioning RISC computer from logic ICs at Cal Poly Pomona. And not as a part of an EE program either--it was a part of the CS curriculum!
In all the time I spent there, that was one of the most interesting things I've ever done. Luckily for us, we didn't have to design and etch the boards, but we did have to come up with the microcode and burn it into EPROMs as well as solder a bunch of components and IC sockets onto said board. We also had to write an assembler for it as well and of course the whole thing had to work if you wanted to pass the course!
It was only capable of handling 4 bits at a time and was manually clocked (keep flipping faster! I need those spreadsheet values by tomorrow!) but by God the thing actually worked. And you could actually understand how it worked.
Even though you could conceivably expand the thing to 32 or 64 bits, I can't imagine why anyone would. Except of course if you're living in a post-apocalyptic (or post NGSCB) world where you can't walk into a store and buy one...
The monopoly is legal. Of course this is rather obvious from the fact that it still exists. Were Microsoft found to have an illegal monopoly the courts would have broken it up.
This is a non-sequitur. It doesn't follow that just because MS was not broken up that they don't have an illegal monopoly. Criminals of all stripes get away with their crimes and go unpunished all the time--look at O.J. Simpson for a very high profile example.:-)
The following is just one example of the many, many credible sources you can find regarding MS and their illegal monopoly:
In the separate lawsuit filed by the Justice Department (news - web sites) and 18 states, the court had found that Microsoft acted as an illegal monopoly based on its dominance in desktop operating systems.
If that isn't enough, then this amicus brief submitted by Eben Moglen on behalf of the FSF might be. Or you could simply read the findings of fact for yourself, where they clearly state that MS used their monopoly illegally. Play all the word games you want, it doesn't change the fact that MS had (and still has in more than a few areas) an illegal monopoly.
Like I said before, whatever. IHBT, IHL, and IUHAND.:-)
Normally I wouldn't waste my time replying to such an obvious troll, but you must be smoking some prime grade A crack. You are living in a fantasy world where the anti-trust trial never happened, and the conviction didn't read that they illegally used their monopoly to leverage the market.
the executives of microsoft have donated more REAL, physical dollars to various causes around the world then you ever will.
Look at the Gates foundation sometime. You are a nobody in the world of philanthropy, comparatively, regardless of what pseudo-intellectual way you want to measure it.
Talk about psuedo-intellectualism. Yeah, so they're giving away billions of dollars, hoohah. You are (as well as the usual MS astroturfers here) conveniently forgetting that billg and company got those billions by utilizing an illegal monopoly.
It's like praising a bank robber for stealing money from a bank who then goes and gives away a part of the stolen money to charity.
They're owned/operated by scientologists. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing; you just gotta keep your eyes open. Here, BTW, is a link to someone who applied for a job there...
... to be posting this, but in reading through the discussion something struck me. What this woman is advocating is a complete reversal of roles of the people and the government.
It seems pretty clear to me that in order to have a truly free country the citizens of said country should be shielded from abuses from the government of that country while the government itself should be completely transparent to the people who have given their consent to be governed.
This person wants to turn that relationship on its head--what she wants is the Panopticon! Thanks, but no...
... over there in the Isles. What with this and surveillance cameras in the cities. Could gov't mandated doublespeak be far behind? That would be doubleplus ungood...
I'm not gloating. Really. Were not that far behind you here in the States y'know. Sigh
I hate to break it to you, but Steven Levy is nothing more than a cheerleader for Microsoft. He is about as biased a writer as you're likely to come by when it comes to issues like "intellectual property".
I lost all respect for the man when he published an article that was a play on the 'first they came for X and I did nothing... then they came for me.' idea (he was comparing himself as a victim of copyright infringement to a victim of the holocoust).
As my children are required by law to attend school, and by the school to use the library, it is not as if I have the option of keeping my children out of the library.
This statement is so filled with irony that it's not funny. The function of forced government schooling is antithetical to the function of a library. That they would even be entagled in people's minds in this way is tragic.
On the one hand, the function of forced schooling is to create people who can't think for themselves, who are dependent of authority to make decisions for them (you can read more about it here). On the other hand, you have a place where literally tons of material is available to everyone who wants to find out about just about anything. There are no bells telling you to move on like in schools, no teacher standing over you telling you that the material you want to study is too advanced for you. It is one of the last places on this planet where you can go to find information that isn't being filtered by someone else's agenda, where you can find your own cirriculum.
As for your assertion that children generally don't have enough life experience to make good decisions, I would say that is far from a universally accepted fact.
-- Shamus
Things have been looking brighter ever since I gave up hope
The second I know it's a telemarketer on the line, I simply hang up--no explanations needed, wanted, or given. Sure it's mean and cruel, but hey, they're the ones who are intruding on my time, trying to sell me junk that I don't want or need.
The strange thing is that I think that they're starting to get the hint. The number of telemarketing calls I've gotten in the past few months has fallen off dramatically...
In short, who needs laws to take care of this when it's so simple to take care of yourself? Have we become such a nation of docile sheep that we'll take anything that anyone dishes out at us? I certainly hope not!
-- Shamus
Things have been looking brighter ever since I gave up hope
... and they can't buy that with any amount of money: the old Napster user base. Without that, they have nothing.
Unless, of course, they're changing it into a whole different 'service' (i.e. no longer p2p but direct downloads from Bertelsmann's servers), in which case it's no longer Napster.
This is great news--Bertelsmann is throwing a ton of money down a rat hole!
You're missing the point. If shrink-wrapped, COTS went away tomorrow, would software engineers be out of work for good?
Not likely. Companies will still have to pay programmers to write programs--that they want. Back before Bill Gates appeared on the scene to turn software into intellectual property, guess what? People got paid for writing software. Incredible, but true.
Would programmers still make six figure salaries? Probably not. But it wouldn't be the end of the world as you depict it, either.
Isn't this what has already happened in the pr0n industry with the so-called adult verification systems? I wonder how successful they've been at it and who gets a piece of the action, so to speak...
Interesting that you should mention this. There is already in place something similar to what you’re talking about: FreeDevelopers.net.
The basic idea is that if they got even a tiny sliver of what is spent on commercial software by the Fed, they could fund lots of people to work on free (speech) software full time—not a shabby way to go about it.
I don’t know if they’ve gotten anywhere, but it looks like a workable idea.
I want to stress this: at no time did the NT architects say "We are Microsoft, you do what we tell you to." Instead, they (and we) argued exclusively the technical merits of our positions.
I'd have to agree with you, that the SEs over at MS probably wouldn't say such a thing. That sort of hubris is strictly the realm of those in charge (Ballmer, Gates, et. al.) and that is what makes MS so dangerous.
They (Ballmer, Gates, & co.) are bullies (geek bullies! Imagine that!) and are in need of a good spanking
Err, no, it's not. There are better systems, and have been around for 3 million years. Look here if you don't believe me.
BTW, to say that capitalism is the most successful economic system in history shows that you don't know much about it. Especially when 90% of the population is enslaved to the other 10% under such a system.
How much time do you have to devote to your wealth building? Eight hours a day? I would guess that it's probably a lot more than that.
All I have to say to you is congratulations on your ascent to the top. You're a better person than I am. But don't think for a minute that your story is the rule and not an exception.
So what? All you're doing is parroting their party line, whether or not it makes any sense from a logical standpoint.
Besides which, you're missing the point that I'm refuting that biased point of view. Taking your ridiculous point of being "out of the loop" WRT watching some show that HBO owns, who's to say that I didn't see AND didn't pay for it (whatever the means that I managed to do that)? Once again, the premise is faulty as is most of the crap that you hear spouted from the IP cartels.
I get that you're trying to show their perspective, but it's a old and tired perspective, well known, and logically unsupportable. Why spread and support their lies?
Slashdot Mirror
I can imagine Bill Gates walking into one of these cable network installations and seeing what kind of power they have over the local cable providers and thinking to himself that this is an insanely great idea (which means he had to come up with some way of making software subscription based, 'natch)...
-- Shamus
Bleah!
What's telling about the Communications article is that Mr. Glass seems to think that the Open Source movement is simply some kind of recent utopian movement that will flame out in time. However, he fails to recognize that Open Source has been the rule from the beginning of the computing era and that this epoch of closed source is the recent phenomena. Maybe I shouldn't be too surprised, since Communications seems lately to be more and more oriented towards business than Computer Science.
-- Shamus
Bleah!
If you had simply left your statement as "digital content has no value" then you might have had the basis for an intelligent discussion (vis-a-vis bits have value, but can be duplicated for no appreciable cost).
-- Shamus
Bleah!
Overheard in the halls of the Gentoo foundation, to the developers of Zynot:
"Fork you!"
-- Shamus
Bleah!
It was because there was no other interface to the thing (other than a dip switch) and the output had to be readable at each step of execution (it had two 7-segment displays and the dip switch selected which register to display). So the short answer is because of the inherent design limitations of the computer itself didn't lend itself to an automatically clocked design.
-- Shamus
This space for rent! EZ terms!
Not that long ago we had to build a functioning RISC computer from logic ICs at Cal Poly Pomona. And not as a part of an EE program either--it was a part of the CS curriculum!
In all the time I spent there, that was one of the most interesting things I've ever done. Luckily for us, we didn't have to design and etch the boards, but we did have to come up with the microcode and burn it into EPROMs as well as solder a bunch of components and IC sockets onto said board. We also had to write an assembler for it as well and of course the whole thing had to work if you wanted to pass the course!
It was only capable of handling 4 bits at a time and was manually clocked (keep flipping faster! I need those spreadsheet values by tomorrow!) but by God the thing actually worked. And you could actually understand how it worked.
Even though you could conceivably expand the thing to 32 or 64 bits, I can't imagine why anyone would. Except of course if you're living in a post-apocalyptic (or post NGSCB) world where you can't walk into a store and buy one...
-- Shamus
This space for rent! EZ terms!
The following is just one example of the many, many credible sources you can find regarding MS and their illegal monopoly: If that isn't enough, then this amicus brief submitted by Eben Moglen on behalf of the FSF might be. Or you could simply read the findings of fact for yourself, where they clearly state that MS used their monopoly illegally. Play all the word games you want, it doesn't change the fact that MS had (and still has in more than a few areas) an illegal monopoly.
Like I said before, whatever. IHBT, IHL, and IUHAND.
-- Shamus
This space for rent. EZ terms!
Whatever.
-- Shamus
This space for rent. EZ terms!
It's like praising a bank robber for stealing money from a bank who then goes and gives away a part of the stolen money to charity.
-- Shamus
Bleah!
... is how long will it be before someone wants to unlock their legally purchased AAC music and writes "unfuckAAC"?
<Speculation>But then again, maybe most Macheads won't care...</Speculation>
-- Shamus
Bleah!
They're owned/operated by scientologists. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing; you just gotta keep your eyes open. Here, BTW, is a link to someone who applied for a job there...
-- Shamus
Bleah!
... to be posting this, but in reading through the discussion something struck me. What this woman is advocating is a complete reversal of roles of the people and the government.
It seems pretty clear to me that in order to have a truly free country the citizens of said country should be shielded from abuses from the government of that country while the government itself should be completely transparent to the people who have given their consent to be governed.
This person wants to turn that relationship on its head--what she wants is the Panopticon! Thanks, but no...
-- Shamus
Bleah!
... over there in the Isles. What with this and surveillance cameras in the cities. Could gov't mandated doublespeak be far behind? That would be doubleplus ungood...
I'm not gloating. Really. Were not that far behind you here in the States y'know. Sigh
-- Shamus
Bleah!
I hate to break it to you, but Steven Levy is nothing more than a cheerleader for Microsoft. He is about as biased a writer as you're likely to come by when it comes to issues like "intellectual property".
... then they came for me.' idea (he was comparing himself as a victim of copyright infringement to a victim of the holocoust).
I lost all respect for the man when he published an article that was a play on the 'first they came for X and I did nothing
-- Shamus
Bleah!
This statement is so filled with irony that it's not funny. The function of forced government schooling is antithetical to the function of a library. That they would even be entagled in people's minds in this way is tragic.
On the one hand, the function of forced schooling is to create people who can't think for themselves, who are dependent of authority to make decisions for them (you can read more about it here). On the other hand, you have a place where literally tons of material is available to everyone who wants to find out about just about anything. There are no bells telling you to move on like in schools, no teacher standing over you telling you that the material you want to study is too advanced for you. It is one of the last places on this planet where you can go to find information that isn't being filtered by someone else's agenda, where you can find your own cirriculum.
As for your assertion that children generally don't have enough life experience to make good decisions, I would say that is far from a universally accepted fact.
-- Shamus
Things have been looking brighter ever since I gave up hope
Just hang up.
The second I know it's a telemarketer on the line, I simply hang up--no explanations needed, wanted, or given. Sure it's mean and cruel, but hey, they're the ones who are intruding on my time, trying to sell me junk that I don't want or need.
The strange thing is that I think that they're starting to get the hint. The number of telemarketing calls I've gotten in the past few months has fallen off dramatically...
In short, who needs laws to take care of this when it's so simple to take care of yourself? Have we become such a nation of docile sheep that we'll take anything that anyone dishes out at us? I certainly hope not!
-- Shamus
Things have been looking brighter ever since I gave up hope
... and they can't buy that with any amount of money: the old Napster user base. Without that, they have nothing.
Unless, of course, they're changing it into a whole different 'service' (i.e. no longer p2p but direct downloads from Bertelsmann's servers), in which case it's no longer Napster.
This is great news--Bertelsmann is throwing a ton of money down a rat hole!
-- Shamus
Bleah!
So, basically you're saying that this is bullshit? Mr. Parish certainly seems reasonable to me, but, then again, IANAA (I am not an accountant).
-- Shamus
Bleah!
You're missing the point. If shrink-wrapped, COTS went away tomorrow, would software engineers be out of work for good?
Not likely. Companies will still have to pay programmers to write programs--that they want. Back before Bill Gates appeared on the scene to turn software into intellectual property, guess what? People got paid for writing software. Incredible, but true.
Would programmers still make six figure salaries? Probably not. But it wouldn't be the end of the world as you depict it, either.
-- Shamus
Bleah!
Isn't this what has already happened in the pr0n industry with the so-called adult verification systems? I wonder how successful they've been at it and who gets a piece of the action, so to speak...
-- Shamus
Bleah!
Interesting that you should mention this. There is already in place something similar to what you’re talking about: FreeDevelopers.net.
The basic idea is that if they got even a tiny sliver of what is spent on commercial software by the Fed, they could fund lots of people to work on free (speech) software full time—not a shabby way to go about it.
I don’t know if they’ve gotten anywhere, but it looks like a workable idea.
— Shamus
Bleah!
They (Ballmer, Gates, & co.) are bullies (geek bullies! Imagine that!) and are in need of a good spanking
-- Shamus
Bleah!
Now that means we'll soon have new life forms that can be banned as circumvention devices under the DMCA...
-- Shamus
Bleah!
Err, no, it's not. There are better systems, and have been around for 3 million years. Look here if you don't believe me.
BTW, to say that capitalism is the most successful economic system in history shows that you don't know much about it. Especially when 90% of the population is enslaved to the other 10% under such a system.
How much time do you have to devote to your wealth building? Eight hours a day? I would guess that it's probably a lot more than that.
All I have to say to you is congratulations on your ascent to the top. You're a better person than I am. But don't think for a minute that your story is the rule and not an exception.
-- Shamus
Bleah!
So what? All you're doing is parroting their party line, whether or not it makes any sense from a logical standpoint.
Besides which, you're missing the point that I'm refuting that biased point of view. Taking your ridiculous point of being "out of the loop" WRT watching some show that HBO owns, who's to say that I didn't see AND didn't pay for it (whatever the means that I managed to do that)? Once again, the premise is faulty as is most of the crap that you hear spouted from the IP cartels.
I get that you're trying to show their perspective, but it's a old and tired perspective, well known, and logically unsupportable. Why spread and support their lies?
-- Shamus
Insert Quarter