MS needs a browser based OS to maintain market share in the world of sub-$500 internet devices.
That makes no sense at all. Microsoft needs to continue lock people into things like.NET to maintain market share. If everything goes browser based, there's no reason for anyone to pay for Windows... even a WebOS version. The only way it would work is if they make their "web apps" incompatible with other browser. But then, what's the point? You might as well just invent a better technology besides HTTP/HTML that will give you good thin client functinality without all the drawbacks of the browser.
Likewise Google has to have a mobile OS to continue to collect information.
What would a "Firefox OS" do that running FIrefox fullscreen won't? If you want to make your web browser your only application, DON'T RUN ANY OTHER PROGRAMS. Jesus Christ people, there's nothing innovative or novel about a system that will only run a web browser. It is a crippled system and a stupid idea.
A better question in that case is - would the industry as a whole be more advanced than now, or would it be less advanced?
I don't think we know.
Without government protection of intellectual property, how would the companies protect their stuff?
Maybe they wouldn't. If it was generally accepted that nobody can own an idea, maybe companies would shamlessly copy each other and all advancement would be based on that. You'd be driven by making someone else's idea better and then they would in turn build on your innovations. I saw an interesting lecture (TED, maybe?) about how this works in the fashion industry. In fashion, designs are not protected and what happens is that you develop a culture where you build off of other people rather than trying to "protect your stuff." I could see technology moving just as fast if not faster if companies couldn't rest on their laurels... if they always had to be innovating to stay one step a head of the copy-cats. And you certainly wouldn't have mega corps/monopolies like MSFT because they rely so heavily on intellectual property rights to maintain their dominance.
On the downside, I think the world would look a lot like Linux, extremely fragmented despite plenty of open standards. You wouldn't have any one company providing a coherent vision. JUst a bunch of smaller groups vying for dominance or at least a small piece of mind share.
Either way, I think the technology landscape would be very different. And it isn't valid to try to take the existing landscape and simply apply the new rules to it because obviously many companies would flat out fail without intellectual property protection. The question is: What if intellectual property had never been enforced in the first place?
A shit-load of DRM?
Sure, companies could implement some protections as they do now against copying. It might go against the above mentioend culture shift, but it is not outside of their rights. I think you'd see more software become a service rather than a product.
No open standards?
The opposite. Technology would be based on open standards. THere might be more, redundant standards, but they'd be open. Look at Linux packages, for example. All open, but no one to rule them all.
Enforcing intellectual property "rights" is enforcing artificial scarcity and that is antithetical to capitalism, if you think it. It is a government sanctioned monopoly, temporary as it may be.
Oh whatever. You can cherry pick a few powerful people who were well read and gloss over the majority who were dumb slobs with some charisma. Things haven't changed in that regard.
If social status isn't granted without literacy, then it motivates people to be literate. It's a Pygmalion (Shaw) situation: money doesn't make one good enough, the top tiers of society should require sophistication as well. I don't like the term 'social progress' because it implies a destination, some perfect utopian state that can be achieved. I'd call it 'social betterment.'
The problem with using literacy as an indicator of social class is that it depends on scarcity. It is only a motivating factor up to a point where literacy and education are common. Then the upper class finds some other measure which only they can live up to. Ultimately it is about feeling superior to those around you.
Regardless, even reading trash keeps the mind engaged and active in a way that TV does not. It's easy to zone out into the TV and still get what's going on. You can't do that with books.
Oh bullshit. People zone out to trashy novels all the time. They're just mindless entertainment.
How am I supposed to put into words at 10 years old what the Sea Wolf was like to me?
You should have been able to make a film about it.
Inherently no differrent?
You need to work on reading comprehension, ironically enough. I never said movies and books are not different. I said "better." ALmost every fault you can find with movie adaptations of books can be boiled down to movies being condensed for various reasons including production costs. You can find modern TV series that are quite expansive and detailed.
The day we lose the written word, is the day we start slipping into a Dark Age, or more likely Idiocracy realized complete.
Depends on what is being written. I can't honestly say that the world is a better place for the LOTR books having been written. It comes down to entertainment. WHile you might have personally enjoyed the books more than the movies, I can't say that one is inherently better than the other in terms of benefit to society.
On the other hand, a girl who read books on linear algebra wouldn't even notice your existence.
Because she's out of my league or because she's socially retarded? Probably more the latter.
Books are quite different from video. If you go watch a movie, what you see is what it is, literally. Not a bit more, not a bit less.
The question isn't how they're different. The question is how they're better or more intellectual. Any moron can tell you how they're different.
You are fed the whole story; there is no gaps for your own imagination to fill. You consume, then the movie is over and it's out of your memory before you leave the theater.
No, you're "fed" information through multiple senses. It is more efficient that way. A good story is just as deep and thought provoking regardless of how you tell it. You can forget a book just as easily as a movie.
On the other hand, a book may tell you that the forest was dark and spooky, but you have to use your own imagination, your own memories and your own fears to "color" that picture. One book can tell as many stories as many readers it has. The book doesn't walk you, like an infant, through every bit of the story.
Right, because people watching movies *never* have different interpretations and experiences. What a bunch of nonsense.
There are other differences too. How many people watch a DVD in 10-15 minute increments? I think not many. But a book can be read this way; most fiction books are read like that.
A DVD is not necessarily the best comparison. Consider a series like Lost. You get weekly 41 minute doses of a single story line over the course of several YEARS. Say what you will about the quality of the story, but you have to admit that there were a lot of details to keep track of. It was enough to spawn whole communities of people dedicated to documented all the details in order to decipher various puzzles. These long running story lines are becoming much more common. Gone are the days when every TV show and movie was a single, self contained story arc.
Did they ever? That's the question. And even if they did, can we say that doing so was a virtue? What makes reading a book inherently better than any other form of entertainment? Can you not read trashy literature? I dated someone who went through boxes of trashy novels and was never a better person for it.
But we haven't really established that there is a movement away from reading vs. other forms of entertainment. You've merely stated some reasons for why there MIGHT be some trend in that direction. And even if there was such a trend, what does it mean? Is reading a trashy novel really any different than watching a silly Hollywood action movie?
So what is your point? I'm not sure it is any better to use literacy to get or maintain social status. Either way, I'm unconvinced that reading, in and of itself, is any indicator social progress. You can fill books with the same kind of garbage we fill Hollywood movies with.
But my point is that you can set up text books and course work in such a way that torrenting is not sufficient to get what you need. You can get a copy of the materials if you really want to, but what happens when the instructor reqires that you pay for an online account to access to online portion of the same materials? This exact thing happened to me with a Spanish course I took last year. I had an older edition of the book but I still had to pay for the online class because the instructor had to track my progress/reading.
Also, I'd like to point out that most of what the average person would read probably wouldn't be considered quality literature anyway. So I wonder if there is any net effect if people begin to gravitate towards other media for entertainment. I remember when I was 18 I dated this girl who read nothing but trashy romance novels. She read them by the box full. In no way would I say she benefited intellectually from reading these books vs. watching the same stories as films (porn for women, IMO). If you look at it objectively, there's really nothing inherently better about books vs. other forms of entertainment. The only real benefit of books is that it is easier to fill them with useful information if you choose to. But you can also fill them with garbage that appeals to the masses and serves as little more than entertainment.
Really? So 1991 was some kind of golden age for the written word. I'd like to see the statistics on that one. Perhaps you are confusing US political trends with global literacy?
You did imply there there is some trend away from reading books and learning for the sake of learning. If that wasn't the implication of your comment, what was the point?
Meh, DRM will always be subvertable. I do fear a world where sharing and reselling legitimately obtained books is a crime, but I don't think DRM will stop it from happening. At some point they're going to settle on some DRM standard, but like DVD's CSS, there will be a fairly straight forward way to get around it even if it is technically illegal. No matter how the corporations try to stop it, copying information just gets easier and easier. That's just a historical fact. Encryption, legal threats, and DRM have all failed to put any real dent in the free sharing of information. The only real way to combat this is to make the legitimate sources more convenient than the illegitimate sources. For example, I have no moral problem downloading movies and TV shows via bittorrent, but I will pay for a service that is more convenient, like Netflix. I'd much rather pay $8 per month to stream movies to my PS3 than muck with torrents and storing the files. The only reason I do still torrent content is because Netflix doesn't have everything I want. Or the Netflix version is not high enough quality. Same with games. Sometimes buying something on Steam is just more convenient than downloading the torrent and and messing with cracks.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it isn't because it isn't a "package" and won't run on every Linux system because you haven't included the dependencies.
Governments and data-mining corporations are pushing it for obvious reasons.
Far from obvious. What does the government care what OS or apps you run?
MS needs a browser based OS to maintain market share in the world of sub-$500 internet devices.
That makes no sense at all. Microsoft needs to continue lock people into things like .NET to maintain market share. If everything goes browser based, there's no reason for anyone to pay for Windows... even a WebOS version. The only way it would work is if they make their "web apps" incompatible with other browser. But then, what's the point? You might as well just invent a better technology besides HTTP/HTML that will give you good thin client functinality without all the drawbacks of the browser.
Likewise Google has to have a mobile OS to continue to collect information.
This much is true.
Chrome is not a bad OS.
It isn't really "good" either.
What would a "Firefox OS" do that running FIrefox fullscreen won't? If you want to make your web browser your only application, DON'T RUN ANY OTHER PROGRAMS. Jesus Christ people, there's nothing innovative or novel about a system that will only run a web browser. It is a crippled system and a stupid idea.
No conspiracy. Skype 5.x just blows.
A better question in that case is - would the industry as a whole be more advanced than now, or would it be less advanced?
I don't think we know.
Without government protection of intellectual property, how would the companies protect their stuff?
Maybe they wouldn't. If it was generally accepted that nobody can own an idea, maybe companies would shamlessly copy each other and all advancement would be based on that. You'd be driven by making someone else's idea better and then they would in turn build on your innovations. I saw an interesting lecture (TED, maybe?) about how this works in the fashion industry. In fashion, designs are not protected and what happens is that you develop a culture where you build off of other people rather than trying to "protect your stuff." I could see technology moving just as fast if not faster if companies couldn't rest on their laurels... if they always had to be innovating to stay one step a head of the copy-cats. And you certainly wouldn't have mega corps/monopolies like MSFT because they rely so heavily on intellectual property rights to maintain their dominance.
On the downside, I think the world would look a lot like Linux, extremely fragmented despite plenty of open standards. You wouldn't have any one company providing a coherent vision. JUst a bunch of smaller groups vying for dominance or at least a small piece of mind share.
Either way, I think the technology landscape would be very different. And it isn't valid to try to take the existing landscape and simply apply the new rules to it because obviously many companies would flat out fail without intellectual property protection. The question is: What if intellectual property had never been enforced in the first place?
A shit-load of DRM?
Sure, companies could implement some protections as they do now against copying. It might go against the above mentioend culture shift, but it is not outside of their rights. I think you'd see more software become a service rather than a product.
No open standards?
The opposite. Technology would be based on open standards. THere might be more, redundant standards, but they'd be open. Look at Linux packages, for example. All open, but no one to rule them all.
Enforcing intellectual property "rights" is enforcing artificial scarcity and that is antithetical to capitalism, if you think it. It is a government sanctioned monopoly, temporary as it may be.
Since SPARC is an open spec, why should Oracle care?
Yay, how useful it must be to have a dozen different velvety words for "vagina" and sexy ways to describe an erect penis.
Pfft, my ex girlfriend sleepwalked through boxes of trashy novels. It was porn, plain and simple.
Oh whatever. You can cherry pick a few powerful people who were well read and gloss over the majority who were dumb slobs with some charisma. Things haven't changed in that regard.
If social status isn't granted without literacy, then it motivates people to be literate. It's a Pygmalion (Shaw) situation: money doesn't make one good enough, the top tiers of society should require sophistication as well. I don't like the term 'social progress' because it implies a destination, some perfect utopian state that can be achieved. I'd call it 'social betterment.'
The problem with using literacy as an indicator of social class is that it depends on scarcity. It is only a motivating factor up to a point where literacy and education are common. Then the upper class finds some other measure which only they can live up to. Ultimately it is about feeling superior to those around you.
Regardless, even reading trash keeps the mind engaged and active in a way that TV does not. It's easy to zone out into the TV and still get what's going on. You can't do that with books.
Oh bullshit. People zone out to trashy novels all the time. They're just mindless entertainment.
How am I supposed to put into words at 10 years old what the Sea Wolf was like to me?
You should have been able to make a film about it.
Inherently no differrent?
You need to work on reading comprehension, ironically enough. I never said movies and books are not different. I said "better." ALmost every fault you can find with movie adaptations of books can be boiled down to movies being condensed for various reasons including production costs. You can find modern TV series that are quite expansive and detailed.
The day we lose the written word, is the day we start slipping into a Dark Age, or more likely Idiocracy realized complete.
Depends on what is being written. I can't honestly say that the world is a better place for the LOTR books having been written. It comes down to entertainment. WHile you might have personally enjoyed the books more than the movies, I can't say that one is inherently better than the other in terms of benefit to society.
On the other hand, a girl who read books on linear algebra wouldn't even notice your existence.
Because she's out of my league or because she's socially retarded? Probably more the latter.
Books are quite different from video. If you go watch a movie, what you see is what it is, literally. Not a bit more, not a bit less.
The question isn't how they're different. The question is how they're better or more intellectual. Any moron can tell you how they're different.
You are fed the whole story; there is no gaps for your own imagination to fill. You consume, then the movie is over and it's out of your memory before you leave the theater.
No, you're "fed" information through multiple senses. It is more efficient that way. A good story is just as deep and thought provoking regardless of how you tell it. You can forget a book just as easily as a movie.
On the other hand, a book may tell you that the forest was dark and spooky, but you have to use your own imagination, your own memories and your own fears to "color" that picture. One book can tell as many stories as many readers it has. The book doesn't walk you, like an infant, through every bit of the story.
Right, because people watching movies *never* have different interpretations and experiences. What a bunch of nonsense.
There are other differences too. How many people watch a DVD in 10-15 minute increments? I think not many. But a book can be read this way; most fiction books are read like that.
A DVD is not necessarily the best comparison. Consider a series like Lost. You get weekly 41 minute doses of a single story line over the course of several YEARS. Say what you will about the quality of the story, but you have to admit that there were a lot of details to keep track of. It was enough to spawn whole communities of people dedicated to documented all the details in order to decipher various puzzles. These long running story lines are becoming much more common. Gone are the days when every TV show and movie was a single, self contained story arc.
Did they ever? That's the question. And even if they did, can we say that doing so was a virtue? What makes reading a book inherently better than any other form of entertainment? Can you not read trashy literature? I dated someone who went through boxes of trashy novels and was never a better person for it.
But we haven't really established that there is a movement away from reading vs. other forms of entertainment. You've merely stated some reasons for why there MIGHT be some trend in that direction. And even if there was such a trend, what does it mean? Is reading a trashy novel really any different than watching a silly Hollywood action movie?
No problem at all. I'm just saying it isn't unreasonable to predict that printed books will be rare in the not so distant future.
So what is your point? I'm not sure it is any better to use literacy to get or maintain social status. Either way, I'm unconvinced that reading, in and of itself, is any indicator social progress. You can fill books with the same kind of garbage we fill Hollywood movies with.
But my point is that you can set up text books and course work in such a way that torrenting is not sufficient to get what you need. You can get a copy of the materials if you really want to, but what happens when the instructor reqires that you pay for an online account to access to online portion of the same materials? This exact thing happened to me with a Spanish course I took last year. I had an older edition of the book but I still had to pay for the online class because the instructor had to track my progress/reading.
Also, I'd like to point out that most of what the average person would read probably wouldn't be considered quality literature anyway. So I wonder if there is any net effect if people begin to gravitate towards other media for entertainment. I remember when I was 18 I dated this girl who read nothing but trashy romance novels. She read them by the box full. In no way would I say she benefited intellectually from reading these books vs. watching the same stories as films (porn for women, IMO). If you look at it objectively, there's really nothing inherently better about books vs. other forms of entertainment. The only real benefit of books is that it is easier to fill them with useful information if you choose to. But you can also fill them with garbage that appeals to the masses and serves as little more than entertainment.
Really? So 1991 was some kind of golden age for the written word. I'd like to see the statistics on that one. Perhaps you are confusing US political trends with global literacy?
You did imply there there is some trend away from reading books and learning for the sake of learning. If that wasn't the implication of your comment, what was the point?
Meh, DRM will always be subvertable. I do fear a world where sharing and reselling legitimately obtained books is a crime, but I don't think DRM will stop it from happening. At some point they're going to settle on some DRM standard, but like DVD's CSS, there will be a fairly straight forward way to get around it even if it is technically illegal. No matter how the corporations try to stop it, copying information just gets easier and easier. That's just a historical fact. Encryption, legal threats, and DRM have all failed to put any real dent in the free sharing of information. The only real way to combat this is to make the legitimate sources more convenient than the illegitimate sources. For example, I have no moral problem downloading movies and TV shows via bittorrent, but I will pay for a service that is more convenient, like Netflix. I'd much rather pay $8 per month to stream movies to my PS3 than muck with torrents and storing the files. The only reason I do still torrent content is because Netflix doesn't have everything I want. Or the Netflix version is not high enough quality. Same with games. Sometimes buying something on Steam is just more convenient than downloading the torrent and and messing with cracks.
But is this new? Go back 100 years. How many under-20 people had their own book collections?
Was there a time when the average person read so many books and "learned for its own sake?" Methinks you may be romanticizing the past.