We're talking peer-to-peer. If you share the directory to which you download, everyone else on the network can access the files, and you don't have to lift a finger.
Anybody who thinks that the corporations won't find a way to capitalize on P2P is fucking kidding themselves.
Besides, the cat is out of the bag. Eventually, after the MP3 hoopla dies down, the real work will begin. Every machine a server, like Al Gore intended.
Then, every demented twelve year old can run his own personal Stile Project.
Dear potential Class Action Lawsuit participant,
Thank you for your recent purchase. As you are aware, our Market-droids recently came up a plan for ripping-off our customers without them being aware of it. As we are desperately out of touch with public opinion, and woefully ignorant of illegal trading practices, we decided to implement their plan. Unfortunately someone spotted this and we're now in some really deep shit.
In an effort to place some spin on this situation, we're refunding the money that we ripped you off for. Not only that, but we promise that if you notice us ripping you off in the future, we'll refund that money too.
We value your business and appreciate your trust; after all, without your complete and total trust we'd never have a hope of pulling off anything as underhanded as this. We hope that you will continue shopping with us. Really. We need your business, 'cos we're hemorrhaging cash faster than we can possibly hope to sustain and sooner or later our Venture Capitalists are going to notice.
Hugs and kisses, Amazon.com
P.S. You're not using any '1-Click' technology in any of your software, are you?
The broader problem, be it with France, Germany (remember Germany and CompuServe?) or anywhere else, is that we seem to confuse a belief in the goodness of freedom of the exchange of information and ideas between individuals with the freedom of commercial services to propagate anything they wish regardless of national laws, cultures or sensibilities.
Germany in particular has some rather strong legislation against promulgating any images or items that are Nazi or Nazi-like. The French have strong feelings on this score as well, perhaps because they're still torn between the romanticized Resistance and Vichy's roundup and handover of France's Jews to Hitler.
Whatever the cause, an online venue becomes a "place," and apparently the French don't want certain kinds of "places" on their cybersoil.
Unlike these countries, in the USA we have fairly wide liberties (albeit threatened), because as a people we can be controlled and manipulated by passive consumption of television and whatever else passes for mass entertainment, like spectator sports. Notice that the people the big corporations are challenging are outfits like 2600 who don't and won't fit into the groove. American culture is sort of a universal solvent - it gives one a sense of empowerment but mainly empowerment to consume information, ideas, and opinions delivered by corporate boardrooms - unless you choose to step outside the box, and at that point things get uncomfortable.
Other societies vest other authorities as arbiters of what's right or wrong in their cultures. Would I prefer some Left-Bank deconstructionist 's views on culture to those of Steve Case? That's what we're up against these days. So yeah, we do have a problem, Houston, but it's deeper than laws and enforcement.
This leads to a much bigger question - Whom do you trust? Do you trust the FDA to keep your personal health as the highest priority... above that of a corporation's pressure to get their product on the market in a hurry. Or the political pressures of congressmen representing their district?
Do you trust your software to be free from defects, or if defects are found that the vendor will respond in a timely and effective manner?
Do you trust that your government and it's law enforcement are acting in your best interests - to protect you from harm and allow you to excercise the maximum freedom afforded to you under the constitution?
Is the WIPO the problem... or a symptom of the problem?
Look, despite Microsoft claims to the contrary, C# is not a new idea. C# is Cool Jr. Cool was a set of prototype C++ extensions that were meant to be an out-and-out Java killer. Well, that idea didn't fly.
So, they took some old Cool ideas, a dash of XML, and added the promise of being easily interoperable with Microsoft.Net. Yippee!
OK, so let's say you love developing for Windows and that Cool, excuse me C#, sounds good to you. Let's say you're ready and eager to develop in it, then by all means, go for it. But, let's get real. C# only real purpose is to keep people away from Java until Microsoft comes up with a real alternative. I don't know about you, but I want to be developing programs, not taking sides in an idiotic programming language religious war.
If we look at NASA's recent history, we find a lot of distressing items (the Mars observer being lost comes to mind). The fact that they had all of the shuttles at the Cape when Floyd was about to hit wasn't a great idea (who in the world thought to have all of the shuttles in one place...).
HOWEVER, if we look a little farther back, we find the Apollo missions. This is quite possibly the United States' crowning achievement. We reached the moon. No one else has ever done anything like this before or since (from our planet ). What has changed?
What has changed is that the fire has gone away at NASA. People are treating it as their jobs, not as "I'm so lucky to be here. I'm going to do the best I can." Maybe by taking the space program private would help in this regard. But, I'm not entirely sure. If people really, really truly love space, they will work for any amount of money to be close to their dream. One thing privatization achieves is the fact that they could lure "better" people with their better pools of money.
OTOH, if the private companies find people who want to work in space-related fields for about what NASA is paying them, with their high financial resources, they could very well spend more on the actual missions (i.e. state-of-the-art equipment).
IMHO, our government needs to boost funding to NASA so that they can return to their peak. Private industry is shaky in this aspect. A unified space project is the only way to go.
This situation bothered me a bit, as well, during a recent job search. Then I realized something: Organizations that rely on such "generic" HR resources to select new employees are going to get employees that match their efforts: people who throw around buzzwords in attempts to impress management types, not people who actually know what's going on. Eventually, these organizations will be at a competitive disadvantage as the highly skilled information workers end up other companies - their engineering efforts and products will suffer, and their more highly skilled competitors will move into dominant positions.
Yes, it's frustrating now - the environment is changing and the situation has not yet evolved to meet the new environment. This is an annoyance, yes, but a temporary one - the history of the world is driven by the resolution of such evolutionary tension.
As Linux receives more press, more users try it out and experiment with it. Unfortunately, this creates a culture clash in the Linux community. Windows users (as most of these new converts are) pay for software and expect tech support; there is no other interaction with the developer. You give them money, they give you help. The protocol is part of the DOS/Windows culture. Even in shareware, most authors will only provide tech support to registered, paying users. The Linux community does not work that way.
Linux (and all associated software) originally was written by programmers for other programmers. Since nearly all of the users were also developers in some way or another, the community was ideal for the free (think beer and speech) exchange of ideas. Programmers are used to digging through sparse documentation and cryptic source code files to find the answers to their questions. When completely stumped, they can at least phrase their question precisely in terms meaningful to other programmers, making it much easier to answer. Thus, everyone was able to use each other's tools with little or no burden on the developer, and in turn, made their own programs available.
The shifting profile of the Linux user now upsets the balance. No longer a Unix programmer, the new Linux user has a pretty good sense of how computers work, learned about computers on a Windows machine, and does not know how to program fluently. Such a user is probably baffled by the confusion and chaos that surrounds Linux development.
Writing the code for an embedded product under Linux provides one huge benefit. The embedded OS does not depend on the plans of an outside company for porting to the next hardware platform you choose. And the application should port easily as long as you avoid, or isolate, hardware dependent code. For companies for whom the OS they deliver their product on is a commodity item, open source OSs offer them a measure of control over the future of their product. Any hardware they choose can run the OS if the port is worth the effort. If having Linux run on your next hardware platform is worth enough to pay a few good programmers to do it, Linux will run on that hardware. No one can say no to you.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, they should be proud that they beat the mad rush of candidates flooding Roblimo's inbox with their responses.
--
--
--
We're talking peer-to-peer. If you share the directory to which you download, everyone else on the network can access the files, and you don't have to lift a finger.
Bandwidth, though...
--
Bzzt.
Not in a P2P network. If I rip the latest MC Hammer CD & save it to my hard drive, then it's available for anybody on the network to download.
OTOH, download/upload are misnomers in this setup.
--
Anybody who thinks that the corporations won't find a way to capitalize on P2P is fucking kidding themselves.
Besides, the cat is out of the bag. Eventually, after the MP3 hoopla dies down, the real work will begin. Every machine a server, like Al Gore intended.
Then, every demented twelve year old can run his own personal Stile Project.
I can't wait!
--
1. They are lazy
2. They are afraid.
The penalty for possessing copyrighted material is much less than that for distributing it.
--
--
--
C'mon moderators, there's a link in that comment!
Where's my obligatory 'Informative' rating?
--
Dear potential Class Action Lawsuit participant, Thank you for your recent purchase. As you are aware, our Market-droids recently came up a plan for ripping-off our customers without them being aware of it. As we are desperately out of touch with public opinion, and woefully ignorant of illegal trading practices, we decided to implement their plan. Unfortunately someone spotted this and we're now in some really deep shit. In an effort to place some spin on this situation, we're refunding the money that we ripped you off for. Not only that, but we promise that if you notice us ripping you off in the future, we'll refund that money too. We value your business and appreciate your trust; after all, without your complete and total trust we'd never have a hope of pulling off anything as underhanded as this. We hope that you will continue shopping with us. Really. We need your business, 'cos we're hemorrhaging cash faster than we can possibly hope to sustain and sooner or later our Venture Capitalists are going to notice. Hugs and kisses, Amazon.com P.S. You're not using any '1-Click' technology in any of your software, are you?
--
Who chose the questions he was asked?
Three of them were rated 4, but I count eighteen comments that got modded up to 5 from the original article.
It would seem that somebody decided we should hear about something other than that which we are most interested.
I guess we just got censored.
Weeee!!! Now I get to be modded into oblivion.
--
User #12211: Because there is a rational belief that as China moves into the 21st century, the government and the people will have to change.
User #7608: Umm, last I looked it up, they crossed into the 21st century almost 20 hours before we did.
As much as I'd like to see you two flame each other to death, I feel compelled to let you know that the 21st century begins January 1, 2001.
Good day.
Read the fucking article.
--
It just locked up, no reason
After reading this ridiculous statement, I have decided to Troll you relentlessly.
I will begin next week.
The broader problem, be it with France, Germany (remember Germany and CompuServe?) or anywhere else, is that we seem to confuse a belief in the goodness of freedom of the exchange of information and ideas between individuals with the freedom of commercial services to propagate anything they wish regardless of national laws, cultures or sensibilities.
Germany in particular has some rather strong legislation against promulgating any images or items that are Nazi or Nazi-like. The French have strong feelings on this score as well, perhaps because they're still torn between the romanticized Resistance and Vichy's roundup and handover of France's Jews to Hitler.
Whatever the cause, an online venue becomes a "place," and apparently the French don't want certain kinds of "places" on their cybersoil.
Unlike these countries, in the USA we have fairly wide liberties (albeit threatened), because as a people we can be controlled and manipulated by passive consumption of television and whatever else passes for mass entertainment, like spectator sports. Notice that the people the big corporations are challenging are outfits like 2600 who don't and won't fit into the groove. American culture is sort of a universal solvent - it gives one a sense of empowerment but mainly empowerment to consume information, ideas, and opinions delivered by corporate boardrooms - unless you choose to step outside the box, and at that point things get uncomfortable.
Other societies vest other authorities as arbiters of what's right or wrong in their cultures. Would I prefer some Left-Bank deconstructionist 's views on culture to those of Steve Case? That's what we're up against these days. So yeah, we do have a problem, Houston, but it's deeper than laws and enforcement.
This leads to a much bigger question - Whom do you trust? Do you trust the FDA to keep your personal health as the highest priority... above that of a corporation's pressure to get their product on the market in a hurry. Or the political pressures of congressmen representing their district?
Do you trust your software to be free from defects, or if defects are found that the vendor will respond in a timely and effective manner?
Do you trust that your government and it's law enforcement are acting in your best interests - to protect you from harm and allow you to excercise the maximum freedom afforded to you under the constitution?
Is the WIPO the problem... or a symptom of the problem?
C, C++, C#, Object Pascal, and Java are all working the same general territory.
Exactly.
Once again a troll has missed my point entirely.
.Net. Yippee!
Look, despite Microsoft claims to the contrary, C# is not a new idea. C# is Cool Jr. Cool was a set of prototype C++ extensions that were meant to be an out-and-out Java killer. Well, that idea didn't fly.
So, they took some old Cool ideas, a dash of XML, and added the promise of being easily interoperable with Microsoft
OK, so let's say you love developing for Windows and that Cool, excuse me C#, sounds good to you. Let's say you're ready and eager to develop in it, then by all means, go for it. But, let's get real. C# only real purpose is to keep people away from Java until Microsoft comes up with a real alternative. I don't know about you, but I want to be developing programs, not taking sides in an idiotic programming language religious war.
If you don't believe it's a viable business model, here is a list of 'Space Advertisements''
If we look at NASA's recent history, we find a lot of distressing items (the Mars observer being lost comes to mind). The fact that they had all of the shuttles at the Cape when Floyd was about to hit wasn't a great idea (who in the world thought to have all of the shuttles in one place...).
HOWEVER, if we look a little farther back, we find the Apollo missions. This is quite possibly the United States' crowning achievement. We reached the moon. No one else has ever done anything like this before or since (from our planet ). What has changed?
What has changed is that the fire has gone away at NASA. People are treating it as their jobs, not as "I'm so lucky to be here. I'm going to do the best I can." Maybe by taking the space program private would help in this regard. But, I'm not entirely sure. If people really, really truly love space, they will work for any amount of money to be close to their dream. One thing privatization achieves is the fact that they could lure "better" people with their better pools of money.
OTOH, if the private companies find people who want to work in space-related fields for about what NASA is paying them, with their high financial resources, they could very well spend more on the actual missions (i.e. state-of-the-art equipment).
IMHO, our government needs to boost funding to NASA so that they can return to their peak. Private industry is shaky in this aspect. A unified space project is the only way to go.
This situation bothered me a bit, as well, during a recent job search. Then I realized something: Organizations that rely on such "generic" HR resources to select new employees are going to get employees that match their efforts: people who throw around buzzwords in attempts to impress management types, not people who actually know what's going on. Eventually, these organizations will be at a competitive disadvantage as the highly skilled information workers end up other companies - their engineering efforts and products will suffer, and their more highly skilled competitors will move into dominant positions.
Yes, it's frustrating now - the environment is changing and the situation has not yet evolved to meet the new environment. This is an annoyance, yes, but a temporary one - the history of the world is driven by the resolution of such evolutionary tension.
As Linux receives more press, more users try it out and experiment with it. Unfortunately, this creates a culture clash in the Linux community. Windows users (as most of these new converts are) pay for software and expect tech support; there is no other interaction with the developer. You give them money, they give you help. The protocol is part of the DOS/Windows culture. Even in shareware, most authors will only provide tech support to registered, paying users. The Linux community does not work that way.
Linux (and all associated software) originally was written by programmers for other programmers. Since nearly all of the users were also developers in some way or another, the community was ideal for the free (think beer and speech) exchange of ideas. Programmers are used to digging through sparse documentation and cryptic source code files to find the answers to their questions. When completely stumped, they can at least phrase their question precisely in terms meaningful to other programmers, making it much easier to answer. Thus, everyone was able to use each other's tools with little or no burden on the developer, and in turn, made their own programs available.
The shifting profile of the Linux user now upsets the balance. No longer a Unix programmer, the new Linux user has a pretty good sense of how computers work, learned about computers on a Windows machine, and does not know how to program fluently. Such a user is probably baffled by the confusion and chaos that surrounds Linux development.
Writing the code for an embedded product under Linux provides one huge benefit. The embedded OS does not depend on the plans of an outside company for porting to the next hardware platform you choose. And the application should port easily as long as you avoid, or isolate, hardware dependent code. For companies for whom the OS they deliver their product on is a commodity item, open source OSs offer them a measure of control over the future of their product. Any hardware they choose can run the OS if the port is worth the effort. If having Linux run on your next hardware platform is worth enough to pay a few good programmers to do it, Linux will run on that hardware. No one can say no to you.