Would be nice to have some statistics how each scientific field differs in the approach of allowing free access to online publications.
Could it be that this is dependent on how much R&D dollars are spent to come up with a result worth to be published by an established scientific journal in the first place ? The higher the research costs the less likely it might be to access the results inexpensively online ? I would guess (Bio)Chemical Sciences and Mathematical and Computer Sciences would differ. Any ideas that's so ?
yes, and that cleverness is so pretty obvious to the enduser that he will be appalled.
If the list is really comprehensive and good the maintainers could ask for a small subscription fee and return profits back to the authors proportionally to the frequency an author's software was downloaded.
To me that list would be very helpful for newcomers and endusers to open source code software.
A secure e-commerce server for the masses ?
on
Ask Robert Young
·
· Score: 1
RedHat recently announced its engagement to develop a strong e-commerce platform. The press release said RH will integrate Akopia's popular Interchange e-commerce platform into Red Hat's solutions portfolio that includes Interchange, the Stronghold Secure Web Server and CCVS e-commerce payment system for a comprehensive e-commerce solution stack.
Considering the dot com failures for exclusively online retail outlets and the high costs of implementing and maintaining an e-commerce site for existing small brick and mortar business owners, do you consider packaging together a securely pre-configured e-commerce server, geared toward the non-technical end user, a potential profit making "product" ?
Or do you envision the ongoing e-commerce platform development resulting in a complex, flexible platform, which will generate income to RedHat by providing mainly e-commerce stite building consulting services to large companies? Or do you envision both and if so, which track do you think will more likely generate income for RedHat ?
Do you feel that the slow down in the dot com economy will be of advantage for your open source e-commerce product in competing against similar commercial platforms ? Or do you consider it as being a loosing battle ?
Basically, do you see a future for secure, e-commerce server for the masses of end-users, who can't afford high consultancy fees, but would need a low-cost solution in form of a shrink wrapped package with some basic technical support from RedHat like automatic upgrades and security fixes ?
No, I would display it in the Library of Congress as a symbol for what the advancement of freedom of speech and anonymity on an open forum on the internet has brought to mankind.
A good picture says always more than thousand words...
"Everything is determined...by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the start. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust - we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper."
Albert Einstein, Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929, Quoted in clark, Einstein
I don't understand the answer. I didn't say the USPTO should keep patents sealed.
An open source code developer by definition has already released his code to the public. The code is not sealed away. The patent application from a proprietary software company will also not be sealed from the public anymore in future. The patent, after having been granted, was never sealed away from the public either.
The question just remains who is obliged to scan a database specifically designed to provide the USPTO an easy tool of scanning open source code software-based business methods, which might represent prior art to proprietary software-based
business method patent application.
In my opinion it should be the duty of the USPTO and not the duty of the open software developer to do the job for the USPTO. Therefore it should be the USPTO who should support and provide the funds for this sort of open source code prior art database. I made this statement in my previous post in opposition to the current offer to provide the implementation of such database by a commercial company.
I am not clear why you understood my post as saying I want the USPTO seal patents. Patents were always given out to make an invention publicly known and to protect the inventor's monetary interests in the invention.
Prior art, in form of open source code, carries no monetary interest of the inventor/developer, which needs to be protected, nor does it need specifically to be made publicly known, because as open source software it already is public.
What needs though to be protected is the open source code-based implementation of a business method from being stolen by a proprietary software company for purposes of patenting said business method based on proprietary software.
It is not logic, why the USPTO protects only proprietary software developer's interests and not open source code software developer's interests.
Open source code is a donation to the public. That donation deserves protection from being misused by companies who use the open source software for their own "inventions" for which they seek protection of their monetary interests.
You (and this hysterical "mother") are another example of people who just don't get it. You fail to comprehend what the technology is and how it can be used and the realities that come with it. Then when it doesn't work the way that you feel it should you rail against it as if it were your personal playground. It's not your playground. It's not your child's playground. It's not a playground at all, and it certainly doesn't need to be censored, cleaned up, or otherwise nerfed for the "children's sake."
OH, well, our guru speaks from his heart. He understands what the technology is all about, how it can be used and the realities that come with it. It's not a playground, indeed.
If it's not our playground, why do you INSIST on keeping the playground OPEN, PUBLIC, UNCENSORED and ACCESSIBLE to mankind ? Wow, you even ask to pay the kids playing on it to PAY YOU ?
Wouldn't it be good enough, you alone play with your technolgoical toys then ? Please don't pest us with your technology. Because WE are just too dumb to play with it safely. Too hysterical to continue to provide you with your next salary as your playground user.
BTW, your statistical risk analysis stinks. Even if the likelyhood to be struck by a car is greater than the likelyhood to get kidnapped by a stalker (kidnapping is the issue here ?) , that doesn't mean that people haven't agreed some traffic security regulations to make getting struck by a car less likely and provide means, if the car's driver speeds away, to trace him down via the car's license plate.
And who are you to decide, what the acceptable risk level is and what the absolute value a "statistically insignificant" ocurrence of an event should be. Guess what, the dumb, hysterical idiot users will demand a democratic vote on that one, and you can bet, that the dumb-a** of the world will NOT let the technological intelligentia determine that. The times were gurus can hide out behind the phony "benevolent dictatorship" argument are over. Do you have any proof that your dictatorship is benevolent ?
*plonk*
---------
I made one mistake in my life - when I signed that letter to President Roosevelt advocating that the bomb should be built. But perhaps I can be forgiven for that because we all felt that there was a high probability that the Germans were working on this problem and they might succeed and use the atomic bomb to become the master race.
-- Albert Einstein to Linus Pauling, recorded in Pauling's diary.
-- Who will be the next master race ? The technological guru ? --
Then her behaviour comes under the same legal scrutiny as the person, who she believed to be a stalker of her child.
You just make an argument which feed those, who are against anonymity on the net.
Why couldn't there be two separated www networks, one where anonymity is allowed, one where is not. People who have something to say, they can stand behind, don't need anonymity. Adults can connect to either network.
Lame answer, so obvious that it's a shame to even mention it. Dumb yourself down, not the audience. Play the little victim card of the misunderstood geek/. pervert. Is there anywhere someone out, who thought everyone online IS a pedophile ?
That's utter nonsense, bloody dumb and of course moderated at score 4. Why ? As if it even were the subject. Actually, I would rate this post, if I wouldn't just ignore it, as off-topic.
Yes, but do you think it is the role of the Open software developer to continuously search the USPTO for new patent applications just to see if he might not have accidentically already developed the same thing before the applicant ?
It it the USPTO who needs not only to expose patent applications, it also needs to provide the database for Open Source developers to defensively post their potential prior art code at no cost, as well it should be the USPTO's role to search those database.
It's not that simple as to return the responsibility to search prior art to the potential prior art providers, the developers.
That would just mean you want the developer do the job which should be done by the USPTO.
Patenting Open source is -- well, patently stupid. By nature, Open Source is published, and it has no direct profit motive. A patent on Open Source does not promote innovation, because innovation exists in Open Source by default!
Yes, and because it has no direct profit motive, Open Source may simply die out (and the default innovational power it represents), if it is not subsidized by the government. Basically it will return to where it came from. It's the tax paying and voting population represented by the government, who will decide to finance Open Source, so that the inherent innovational power of Open Source can be used to its potential and for the good of the people.
What I don't understand, why another government agency is is not exactly providing the Open Source Prior Art Database at no cost to the people. Why is it just another commercial company ?
It can't be that expensive and difficult to implement it.
Village Voice and the author can only be praised for writing the article. The most significant sentences I found in the main article and in Salon's article are these:
"There is a simple explanation for why this happens," says a supervisor at America Online who does not wish to be identified. "People are able to completely transcend what they are in real life
and live a different life entirely.
This IS a simple explanation and it IS a simple truth. It is also a very simple RISK.
Just put this statement side by side to the following observations. I took a call. A woman frantically explained her catastrophe. Her young son had been chatting online, and when she went to get him for dinner, she found his room empty. A last instant message was posted on the screen: "See you soon, can't wait." She begged me for the name and address of the person behind the dangling screen name. I had the information right in front of me, but I couldn't give it to her.
Put this side by side with this paragraph from Salon's article:
After a flurry of exchanged photos -- "I want pictures of faces and bodies. Dicks if I can get them" -- Steve arranges a rendezvous. "Your place or mine?" is a refrain reverberating all over AOL's servers. It usually takes Steve 45 minutes from the time he starts his computer till he hears a knock on the door. His record? Five minutes. "I logged on, clicked into a room, exchanged GIFs and bam, I was out the door."
There is very little doubt that when "people transcend from their real life to a different life entirely (online)" they also bring back their entirely different (online) life into real life, if they can do so without repercussions.
If the human desires, expressed online only, that are as basic as making money for survival and finding sex, the desire to play out the online personality in real life is as strong as the desire to transcend from your real life personality to your online one. It transcends over within seconds, if two consenting desires meet. I can't imagine a stronger "drug" than this and a more dangerous technical tool for exploiting the "addictive nature" of human sexuality. This is by no means a moral condemnation, just a simple acknowledgement of our biological nature.
For those who dumb down the issue by referring to the personal responsibility with regards to any compulsive usage of a dangerous tool (be it guns or online porn), I just like to mention that it is off the point. We will not end the oldest trade of the world, but AFAIK there has been no society which hasn't established norms and seeked to enforce them, in order to prevent humans to become enslaved and exploited.
The denial of corporate leaders to talk about the scale of profitability of their business through income generated directly out of the exploitation of people's sexual impulses is just proof of the nature of this "business model". A simple drug dealing business based on "addiction", if you can call the need to have sex as an addiction.
Just continue with the conclusion: What had started as a job wide with possibilities had narrowed to a pinhole through which I could see the messy corners and anguished moments of so many ordinary lives From a strictly evolutionary perspective, the eggs that hatch online, in the imagination, grow wings and claws behind the closed doors of real houses.
Well said, real house's miseries, real human life's exploitations, real business' profits, real community's political issues - all unsolved and talked down by a population in denial of getting mentally enslaved by their own technological tools.
--------
The greatest weakness of the democracies is economic fear. -- Albert Einstein
The idea of community can be an inclusive or exclusive thing. For example, the 'melting pot' theory of America is an inclusive model.
I think in Nature any community aims instinctively towards exclusiveness. If people would fight for being all inclusive, they would loose the community's role in itself, namely a home for soul mates. There is no coherent world community. And if there were, people would try their best to flee it and build their own local ones. I think the problem is that people are genetically designed to live locally and are not capable of caring for more than just their immediate environment necessary for survival. Therefore, in the end, the worldwide network will either turn into the most oppressive technological "slave master" or it will become a decentralized connection of local network communities, who will end up to care as little as they always did, as little as they can afford to just get by.
Just because we will be able to read and understand all the different view points worldwide to a political problem, will not help us to actually solve the problem any better, faster and more reasonable than fifty years ago.
It is an illusion to believe that information access to better *analyze* a problem, will automatically lead to better *solve* a problem.
Just think about the problem of a depressed person, who sees a shrink. You can sit for years and analyze and understand your problems. What actually makes the person change from being depressed to being hopeful and active is for the most part a mystery. Statistics show that spontaneous self-healing and analytical psychotherapy for mental health problems are successful on average at the same rate. Most political problems are mental health problems of communities.
----
"What really interests me is wether God could have created the world any differently; in other words, wether the demand for logical simplicity leaves any freedom at all." -- Albert Einstein to Ernst Strauss, on the question of wether God had any choice in the design of the world.
It can be trusted, but it's not a newspaper, it's a weekly magazine. The story though is very untypically short for "The Spiegel". That can't be all, I am sure there will be a follow-up when time comes. I think most of you are completely overreacting here.
One-click is mostly valuable to frequent customers. Maybe Amazon was the first to have enough repeat buyers to make one-click pay off.
No, I don't believe so. Porn sites had already enough repeat customers and that is why in 1997 only porn sites had the one-click order procedure implemented. Now, are you willing to search through the porn archives to prove it, in order to provide evidence of prior art ?
As ethical questions are not relevant anyway, why is the open source community not open enough to prove something, what they are never tired to argue about in defense of the programmer, who test their software with help of porn sites. That you can learn something from the porn industry and if it were not for the porn industry, we wouldn't have "all this advancements in web technology". I am sure they are the first to implement one-time, prepaid credit cards, so that customer's anonymity is protected.
I mean any spider can search for a couple of thousands or millions porn sites in seconds, but strangely enough they can't search these sites for implementations of the one-click ordering feature.
Can it get more pathetic than this ?
Aren't porn sites the only ones, which surely make profit, need to be anonymous, because they are target of frequent and repeated usage by customers, who really won't bother typing their personal information over and over ?
Case closed.
MiniVend - Submission 16 to Bounty Quest
on
One-Click Reprise
·
· Score: 3
I find the entry number 16 of the submission to the one-click BountyQuest very interesting. See here
Tim O'Reilly says the following (quote):
"16. Online Minivend Reference Guide "MiniVend -multi-catalog shopping cart and mall," March 14, 1997. Mike Heins, the creator of the MiniVend system (now owned by Red Hat under the name "Interchange") provided some great art. He showed us how to very easily configure his open-source system to perform single-click buying. In writing the system, he put considerable effort into saving customer session information, so that buyers would not have to reenter their information to make purchases.
However, the submission is not a winner, because we don't have evidence that someone made those simple changes and implemented 1-Click shopping in the proper fashion before our Prior To date."
(end of quote)
The last sentence is, IMHO, really MORE THAN ANNOYING ! Not that I blame Tim O'Reilly for it, but I simply don't believe it.
I have been reading the minivend mailing list since it started out beginning of 1997. Mike Heins posted to his minivend mailing list as a response to someone who asked exactly for something that represents the implementation of the one-click ordering feature, that this feature CAN be implemented AND THAT IT HAS BEEN DONE. This was on May 13th, 1997 and clearly before the cut-off date of Sept. 27th, 1997.
Please read the short thread of the post on "Retaining user information" here
I am aware of the fact, that Mike Heins might have been under restrictions to release any more information of who had done it at that time, but obviously he knew so much, that he confidently could mention on the mailing list, that it "has been done". I can say, that what later became known as the "famous" one-click feature, was something that was an option to be implemented easily for a programmer who could understand the software, i.e. a person skilled in the trade, and users of MiniVend were aware of it. I am sure several people have thought and played with setting it up, but might not have gone through with it, because many customer didn't like it at that time. It was considered just too mysterious and considered not "slow and clear" enough.
But quite frankly I could very well imagine that in certain industries that feature might have been welcome and that it was implemented. I simply think that the ones, who did it, don't want to come forward for whatever reasons.
Now, may be it is really impossible to find the person or site, who implemented it and prove that it was done, but this is an appeal for whoever it was to COME FORWARD.
So, even if Tim O'Reilly throws the towel, that doesn't mean that the battle is lost.
Would be interesting to know if the site could be found and retrieved in the Alexa archive, which of course now is conveniently owned by Amazon.com itself. What a coincidence.
For more on Alexa archives look here and here . The archives have now 16 terabytes of text, audio and graphical files, accumulated from April 1996 on.
Well it is so decent, that it is meanwhile standard e-commerce platform for the upcoming e-commerce solutions services from RedHat.
It's now called RedHat Interchange TM, a product which represents a merger of the former Tallyman software and the former MiniVend software, which occurred last fall into the product Akopia Interchange[TM] and last month was taken over by RedHat.
Hi NineNine, what do you think about a new
GPL, the Girl's Public License for porn sites ? Don't you want to talk about it with RMS ?
It really would be a nice contribution to the free software community, don't you think ?
Slashdot Mirror
"The truth is more important than the facts" -- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959).
The fact is, that we are all created equal, but the truth is, that as soon as we are born, we are not. Right ?
Would be nice to have some statistics how each scientific field differs in the approach of allowing free access to online publications.
Could it be that this is dependent on how much R&D dollars are spent to come up with a result worth to be published by an established scientific journal in the first place ? The higher the research costs the less likely it might be to access the results inexpensively online ? I would guess (Bio)Chemical Sciences and Mathematical and Computer Sciences would differ. Any ideas that's so ?
yes, and that cleverness is so pretty obvious to the enduser that he will be appalled. If the list is really comprehensive and good the maintainers could ask for a small subscription fee and return profits back to the authors proportionally to the frequency an author's software was downloaded. To me that list would be very helpful for newcomers and endusers to open source code software.
RedHat recently announced its engagement to develop a strong e-commerce platform. The press release said RH will integrate Akopia's popular Interchange e-commerce platform into Red Hat's solutions portfolio that includes Interchange, the Stronghold Secure Web Server and CCVS e-commerce payment system for a comprehensive e-commerce solution stack.
Considering the dot com failures for exclusively online retail outlets and the high costs of implementing and maintaining an e-commerce site for existing small brick and mortar business owners, do you consider packaging together a securely pre-configured e-commerce server, geared toward the non-technical end user, a potential profit making "product" ?
Or do you envision the ongoing e-commerce platform development resulting in a complex, flexible platform, which will generate income to RedHat by providing mainly e-commerce stite building consulting services to large companies? Or do you envision both and if so, which track do you think will more likely generate income for RedHat ?
Do you feel that the slow down in the dot com economy will be of advantage for your open source e-commerce product in competing against similar commercial platforms ? Or do you consider it as being a loosing battle ?
Basically, do you see a future for secure, e-commerce server for the masses of end-users, who can't afford high consultancy fees, but would need a low-cost solution in form of a shrink wrapped package with some basic technical support from RedHat like automatic upgrades and security fixes ?
Let's just hope that this here will not eat up their future profits. I want RH to succeed.
No, I would display it in the Library of Congress as a symbol for what the advancement of freedom of speech and anonymity on an open forum on the internet has brought to mankind.
A good picture says always more than thousand words...
very good comment
"Everything is determined...by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the start. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust - we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper."
Albert Einstein, Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929, Quoted in clark, Einstein
Thanks for the answer.
yes, I do. Just so that he doesn't get too depressed with you guys. :-)
Amen
I don't understand the answer. I didn't say the USPTO should keep patents sealed.
An open source code developer by definition has already released his code to the public. The code is not sealed away. The patent application from a proprietary software company will also not be sealed from the public anymore in future. The patent, after having been granted, was never sealed away from the public either.
The question just remains who is obliged to scan a database specifically designed to provide the USPTO an easy tool of scanning open source code software-based business methods, which might represent prior art to proprietary software-based
business method patent application.
In my opinion it should be the duty of the USPTO and not the duty of the open software developer to do the job for the USPTO. Therefore it should be the USPTO who should support and provide the funds for this sort of open source code prior art database. I made this statement in my previous post in opposition to the current offer to provide the implementation of such database by a commercial company.
I am not clear why you understood my post as saying I want the USPTO seal patents. Patents were always given out to make an invention publicly known and to protect the inventor's monetary interests in the invention.
Prior art, in form of open source code, carries no monetary interest of the inventor/developer, which needs to be protected, nor does it need specifically to be made publicly known, because as open source software it already is public.
What needs though to be protected is the open source code-based implementation of a business method from being stolen by a proprietary software company for purposes of patenting said business method based on proprietary software.
It is not logic, why the USPTO protects only proprietary software developer's interests and not open source code software developer's interests.
Open source code is a donation to the public. That donation deserves protection from being misused by companies who use the open source software for their own "inventions" for which they seek protection of their monetary interests.
OH, well, our guru speaks from his heart. He understands what the technology is all about, how it can be used and the realities that come with it. It's not a playground, indeed.
If it's not our playground, why do you INSIST on keeping the playground OPEN, PUBLIC, UNCENSORED and ACCESSIBLE to mankind ? Wow, you even ask to pay the kids playing on it to PAY YOU ?
Wouldn't it be good enough, you alone play with your technolgoical toys then ? Please don't pest us with your technology. Because WE are just too dumb to play with it safely. Too hysterical to continue to provide you with your next salary as your playground user.
BTW, your statistical risk analysis stinks. Even if the likelyhood to be struck by a car is greater than the likelyhood to get kidnapped by a stalker (kidnapping is the issue here ?) , that doesn't mean that people haven't agreed some traffic security regulations to make getting struck by a car less likely and provide means, if the car's driver speeds away, to trace him down via the car's license plate.
And who are you to decide, what the acceptable risk level is and what the absolute value a "statistically insignificant" ocurrence of an event should be. Guess what, the dumb, hysterical idiot users will demand a democratic vote on that one, and you can bet, that the dumb-a** of the world will NOT let the technological intelligentia determine that. The times were gurus can hide out behind the phony "benevolent dictatorship" argument are over. Do you have any proof that your dictatorship is benevolent ?
*plonk*
---------
I made one mistake in my life - when I signed that letter to President Roosevelt advocating that the bomb should be built. But perhaps I can be forgiven for that because we all felt that there was a high probability that the Germans were working on this problem and they might succeed and use the atomic bomb to become the master race.
-- Albert Einstein to Linus Pauling, recorded in Pauling's diary.
-- Who will be the next master race ? The technological guru ? --
You just make an argument which feed those, who are against anonymity on the net.
Why couldn't there be two separated www networks, one where anonymity is allowed, one where is not. People who have something to say, they can stand behind, don't need anonymity. Adults can connect to either network.
That's utter nonsense, bloody dumb and of course moderated at score 4. Why ? As if it even were the subject. Actually, I would rate this post, if I wouldn't just ignore it, as off-topic.
Or are slashdotters secretly technophobes too?
No, but openly dumbdown-o-philes.
It it the USPTO who needs not only to expose patent applications, it also needs to provide the database for Open Source developers to defensively post their potential prior art code at no cost, as well it should be the USPTO's role to search those database.
It's not that simple as to return the responsibility to search prior art to the potential prior art providers, the developers.
That would just mean you want the developer do the job which should be done by the USPTO.
Yes, and because it has no direct profit motive, Open Source may simply die out (and the default innovational power it represents), if it is not subsidized by the government. Basically it will return to where it came from. It's the tax paying and voting population represented by the government, who will decide to finance Open Source, so that the inherent innovational power of Open Source can be used to its potential and for the good of the people.
What I don't understand, why another government agency is is not exactly providing the Open Source Prior Art Database at no cost to the people. Why is it just another commercial company ?
It can't be that expensive and difficult to implement it.
Why can't the government provide a service like that on tax payer's money ?
"There is a simple explanation for why this happens," says a supervisor at America Online who does not wish to be identified. "People are able to completely transcend what they are in real life and live a different life entirely.
This IS a simple explanation and it IS a simple truth. It is also a very simple RISK.
Just put this statement side by side to the following observations.
I took a call. A woman frantically explained her catastrophe. Her young son had been chatting online, and when she went to get him for dinner, she found his room empty. A last instant message was posted on the screen: "See you soon, can't wait." She begged me for the name and address of the person behind the dangling screen name. I had the information right in front of me, but I couldn't give it to her.
Put this side by side with this paragraph from Salon's article:
After a flurry of exchanged photos -- "I want pictures of faces and bodies. Dicks if I can get them" -- Steve arranges a rendezvous. "Your place or mine?" is a refrain reverberating all over AOL's servers. It usually takes Steve 45 minutes from the time he starts his computer till he hears a knock on the door. His record? Five minutes. "I logged on, clicked into a room, exchanged GIFs and bam, I was out the door."
There is very little doubt that when "people transcend from their real life to a different life entirely (online)" they also bring back their entirely different (online) life into real life, if they can do so without repercussions.
If the human desires, expressed online only, that are as basic as making money for survival and finding sex, the desire to play out the online personality in real life is as strong as the desire to transcend from your real life personality to your online one. It transcends over within seconds, if two consenting desires meet. I can't imagine a stronger "drug" than this and a more dangerous technical tool for exploiting the "addictive nature" of human sexuality. This is by no means a moral condemnation, just a simple acknowledgement of our biological nature.
For those who dumb down the issue by referring to the personal responsibility with regards to any compulsive usage of a dangerous tool (be it guns or online porn), I just like to mention that it is off the point. We will not end the oldest trade of the world, but AFAIK there has been no society which hasn't established norms and seeked to enforce them, in order to prevent humans to become enslaved and exploited.
The denial of corporate leaders to talk about the scale of profitability of their business through income generated directly out of the exploitation of people's sexual impulses is just proof of the nature of this "business model". A simple drug dealing business based on "addiction", if you can call the need to have sex as an addiction.
Just continue with the conclusion:
What had started as a job wide with possibilities had narrowed to a pinhole through which I could see the messy corners and anguished moments of so many ordinary lives From a strictly evolutionary perspective, the eggs that hatch online, in the imagination, grow wings and claws behind the closed doors of real houses.
Well said, real house's miseries, real human life's exploitations, real business' profits, real community's political issues - all unsolved and talked down by a population in denial of getting mentally enslaved by their own technological tools.
--------
The greatest weakness of the democracies is economic fear. -- Albert Einstein
I think in Nature any community aims instinctively towards exclusiveness. If people would fight for being all inclusive, they would loose the community's role in itself, namely a home for soul mates. There is no coherent world community. And if there were, people would try their best to flee it and build their own local ones. I think the problem is that people are genetically designed to live locally and are not capable of caring for more than just their immediate environment necessary for survival. Therefore, in the end, the worldwide network will either turn into the most oppressive technological "slave master" or it will become a decentralized connection of local network communities, who will end up to care as little as they always did, as little as they can afford to just get by.
Just because we will be able to read and understand all the different view points worldwide to a political problem, will not help us to actually solve the problem any better, faster and more reasonable than fifty years ago.
It is an illusion to believe that information access to better *analyze* a problem, will automatically lead to better *solve* a problem.
Just think about the problem of a depressed person, who sees a shrink. You can sit for years and analyze and understand your problems. What actually makes the person change from being depressed to being hopeful and active is for the most part a mystery. Statistics show that spontaneous self-healing and analytical psychotherapy for mental health problems are successful on average at the same rate. Most political problems are mental health problems of communities.
----
"What really interests me is wether God could have created the world any differently; in other words, wether the demand for logical simplicity leaves any freedom at all." -- Albert Einstein to Ernst Strauss, on the question of wether God had any choice in the design of the world.
It can be trusted, but it's not a newspaper, it's a weekly magazine. The story though is very untypically short for "The Spiegel". That can't be all, I am sure there will be a follow-up when time comes. I think most of you are completely overreacting here.
No, I don't believe so. Porn sites had already enough repeat customers and that is why in 1997 only porn sites had the one-click order procedure implemented. Now, are you willing to search through the porn archives to prove it, in order to provide evidence of prior art ?
As ethical questions are not relevant anyway, why is the open source community not open enough to prove something, what they are never tired to argue about in defense of the programmer, who test their software with help of porn sites. That you can learn something from the porn industry and if it were not for the porn industry, we wouldn't have "all this advancements in web technology". I am sure they are the first to implement one-time, prepaid credit cards, so that customer's anonymity is protected.
I mean any spider can search for a couple of thousands or millions porn sites in seconds, but strangely enough they can't search these sites for implementations of the one-click ordering feature. Can it get more pathetic than this ?
Aren't porn sites the only ones, which surely make profit, need to be anonymous, because they are target of frequent and repeated usage by customers, who really won't bother typing their personal information over and over ?
Case closed.
Tim O'Reilly says the following (quote):
"16. Online Minivend Reference Guide "MiniVend -multi-catalog shopping cart and mall," March 14, 1997. Mike Heins, the creator of the MiniVend system (now owned by Red Hat under the name "Interchange") provided some great art. He showed us how to very easily configure his open-source system to perform single-click buying. In writing the system, he put considerable effort into saving customer session information, so that buyers would not have to reenter their information to make purchases.
However, the submission is not a winner, because we don't have evidence that someone made those simple changes and implemented 1-Click shopping in the proper fashion before our Prior To date." (end of quote)
The last sentence is, IMHO, really MORE THAN ANNOYING ! Not that I blame Tim O'Reilly for it, but I simply don't believe it.
I have been reading the minivend mailing list since it started out beginning of 1997. Mike Heins posted to his minivend mailing list as a response to someone who asked exactly for something that represents the implementation of the one-click ordering feature, that this feature CAN be implemented AND THAT IT HAS BEEN DONE. This was on May 13th, 1997 and clearly before the cut-off date of Sept. 27th, 1997.
Please read the short thread of the post on "Retaining user information" here
I am aware of the fact, that Mike Heins might have been under restrictions to release any more information of who had done it at that time, but obviously he knew so much, that he confidently could mention on the mailing list, that it "has been done". I can say, that what later became known as the "famous" one-click feature, was something that was an option to be implemented easily for a programmer who could understand the software, i.e. a person skilled in the trade, and users of MiniVend were aware of it. I am sure several people have thought and played with setting it up, but might not have gone through with it, because many customer didn't like it at that time. It was considered just too mysterious and considered not "slow and clear" enough.
But quite frankly I could very well imagine that in certain industries that feature might have been welcome and that it was implemented. I simply think that the ones, who did it, don't want to come forward for whatever reasons.
Now, may be it is really impossible to find the person or site, who implemented it and prove that it was done, but this is an appeal for whoever it was to COME FORWARD.
So, even if Tim O'Reilly throws the towel, that doesn't mean that the battle is lost.
Would be interesting to know if the site could be found and retrieved in the Alexa archive, which of course now is conveniently owned by Amazon.com itself. What a coincidence. For more on Alexa archives look here and here . The archives have now 16 terabytes of text, audio and graphical files, accumulated from April 1996 on.
Well it is so decent, that it is meanwhile standard e-commerce platform for the upcoming e-commerce solutions services from RedHat.
It's now called RedHat Interchange TM, a product which represents a merger of the former Tallyman software and the former MiniVend software, which occurred last fall into the product Akopia Interchange[TM] and last month was taken over by RedHat.
http://developer.akopia.com
Hi NineNine, what do you think about a new GPL, the Girl's Public License for porn sites ? Don't you want to talk about it with RMS ? It really would be a nice contribution to the free software community, don't you think ?