The result of this case sets the prescident that companies who wish to use GPL'd code can do so without releasing the bulk of the application in which the code is used, simply by partitioning their application and releasing under the FPL only the small partition of their app.
The Vidomi result seems fair (and was accepted by the FSF) but how small a piece of code can constitue an application for purposes of release under the GPL? Can I take GPL'd code and write a couple wrapper functions and release that piece of code and call it a plugin to my main application which would not be released under the GPL? Does the part of my code distributed under the GPL actually have to be useful or can it simply be a set of wrappers?
Conversely, if I can't release only a GPL'd plugin to my main closed source application, can I a s a developer use GPL'd code inside a plugin I write for a 3rd party commercial application such as Photoshop?
The Vidomi resolution raises a great many questions along these lines - certainly more issues than it resolves...
So, everyone knows that it doesn't help to press buttons hartder cuz you won't shoot any faster, but that never stops anyone. I wonder how many units with cracked LCDs will get shipped back to the manufacturer...
Perhaps a warning on the box... Not intended for easily excitable players. Risk of severe thumb abrasions from sharp shards of plastic.
True. It isn't new, but it has to be said now and again to remind people of just how arogant and tactless technical people can be (myself included). I tend to agree with Rob though, Most of the people who do the heavy work in Linux are good folks with good intentions and good manners.
Its an attitude that many people have: The "You Owe Me" attitude. Certainly I'm not exempt from this attitude. If I pay for a device, dammit I want specs.
Rob's comment is accurate, but I find it's more often the non-developer type users of Linux who are the offenders in this area. I have on occasion railed against Microsoft and Hardware Manufacturers for causing carious system inconveniences I've encountered, but I can't in good concience, get so worked up as to scream at support reps for not providing specs, bacause in all honesty, I'm not prepared to sit down and write the nessecery driver, even if I do get the specs. I'm a reasonably sharp guy. I code the things I need to code, but I have never written a device driver and probably wouldn't have time to get up to speed anyway.
As the popularity of Linux increases, a continually larger portion of the user base will be even less and less technical. It is these users who will be frustrated with lack of hardware support and other such issues, and will not be in a position to do much about it except vent at support reps. As Rob says, this is the drag on adoption by vendors. It isn't the developers who have made great contributions to Linux, that are the offenders here. It's those who lack either the motivation, or slikk to contribute to the development who see postings like 'Linux Driver Unavailable' and have no other recourse but to object loudly and sometimes offensively, that are at fault here.
It really is a catch-22. As the non-technical userbase of linux grows, the incidents of this sort of thing will become more frequent, and as these incidents become fore frequent, the hardware manufacturers will look at their cost benefit analysys and not bother withlinux, in turn reducing the speed of Linux adoption. At some point, however there will be an equilibrium reached, where the speed with which the userbase is growing, will become constant, and eventually the userbase will be of sufficient size to warrant development of Linux drivers for hardware, by vendors of that hardware. Infortunately, the progress to that end might be slowed to a snails pace by the type of behavior that Rob mentions. I disagree, however, that Linux will Never become mainstream. It's progress to that end will simply become extremely slow perhaps to the point where it's influence will become insignificant. I certainly hope this prediciton doesn't come to pass though...
Please understand that I'm not defending the DMCA, however, all it is doing is defining what constitutes 'burgulary tools' with respect to software. This doesn't make it any more legal or fair or just, however, there is prescident for these kinds of definitions.
This is the difference between all the burgulatry tools laws and the DMCA. The DMCA makes it illegal to distribute (software) burgulary tools. In my reading of the DMCA(pdf there is no requirement to prove intent, and distribution itself is the crime. The question then becomes, how is it that the DMCA has been violated if the software in question was never distributed inside the United states?
Hydrofoils are nothing new but I have to say, this thing looks pretty slick. I'd love to take it out for a spin.
I have to question though, why is is being posted on/. It's not something I'd have associated with the/. crowd. Perhaps I need to reconsider the site demographics...
About the hydrfoil... it's a nice evolutionary step, building on an established technology. Not quite as inspiring at the earlier article on the newest entrant in the cement canoe race.
Effective June 8th, 1995, the term of plant and utility patents is 20 years from the date of filing. Patents filed prior to June 8th 1995 last the longer of 17 years from the date of issue, or 20 years from the date of filing.
Extensive detail regarding these changes can be found.
--CTH
--
Reduction in availability of varied information
on
Search Engine Payola
·
· Score: 2
They claim that non-business content (for which, the Looksmart network, for example says it will index without you forking over the green) will eventually be indexed (I think the estimate at excite was 8 weeks to index new non-business content) but I havn't seen it happen for my site...
Consider, for a moment, that the internet is a vary large library of information (techies excude the simplistic metaphor). We have ecentially turned over the library card catalogs (usually managed by libraries which are non-profit institutions) over to corporations who's goal is to make a proffit. This is an interesting choice to say the least. These companies make no commitment to index any particular content, or to index new content within a particular period... (with a few exceptions) introducing the potential to have valuable scolarly work lost amidst the noise of the internet. It's nice to have more information, but it introduces the possibility that truly valuable information is lost in the frey.
This brings into question the use of the internet as an information resource, is couneter-intuitive since this is one of it's primary and highly touted uses.
--CTH
--
splintering of OSS vendors/developers
on
MySQL & Nusphere
·
· Score: 2
Perhaps we need Mundie to continue his assault on Open Source, so that all the leaders of the big projects are compelled to join hands and play nice to battle back the godzilla of the industry once again.
Back then Mundie first started his attack - on Microsoft's behalf - he provided a great service to the OSS comunity by creating a cohesive force by providing a common enemy. Now we're beginning to see the in-fighting we saw before Mundie attacked OSS in his series of ill-thought out speaches.
It's a shame that the OSS comunity can't remain more united even in the aftermath... Oh, well
searches for N'Synch and Ricky Martin yeilded results when artists like Tom Waits were blocked.
One has to wonder if the companies were keeping some searches unblocked, just to see how it affected their sales.
This is a vary interesting point. We've already seen the RIAA explore online music distribution for their own ends (whilst screwing the artists)so now that they have thuroughly stomped all over Napster, I'm not suprosed to see them manipulating it for their own market research before they roll out their own music sharing solution. It's much cheaper to exploit the infastructure of your dead rival than to build your own for market research...
I never thought I'd be arguing in favor of a subscription model but if this is the alternative, then let customers subscribe to indevidual sites to recieve their content. I don't see how any ISP could be expected to subscribe to all the sites it's customers might demand access to.
The net is far too varied and there are far too many specialty sites which might only appeal to a few customers from each ISP (but a large population overall...
A PAyPal micropayment based subscription solution on a per site basis would be much better. An earlier poster pointed out the problem of an 'ISP content subscription committee'. It would be the same problem as seen on cable services (only the most universally popular content would be available for subscription) but substancially magnified since there is so much more content available on the net.
I could however, see a mechanism where a clearinghouse might act as a group buying club for subscription based content, where, perhaps members of this group buying club might access the web through the club's proxy servers which would manage subscription content delivery for members where the price of subscription to particular content would be a function of how many other members have also chosen to have a portion of their membership fees go to that particular content subscription. This aleviates the issues discussed, relating to the 'content subsscription committee' where the ISP would be responsible for selecting content to which it would subcribe.
My solution would probably require special content licensing much as the Tric AB solution, but it would take the ISP out of the picture, eliminating the bottleneck that would have created. Instead, embers of the group buying club would be alble to vote for the content to which the clubshould subscribe, on a monthly basis....
It's great to see this new miniseries, but why would you adapt TWO stories into one series, rather than preserving the second (actually third) story for an additional miniseries...Strange
Is sci-fi actually imune from the television media marketing engine? You can only sell half the ads if you have half the content, so why would they have decided to combine the stories into only one miniseries...
In many municipalities it's illegal to posess 'burgulary tools' which condist of such things as vary large screw drivers, and other comonly available items. Generally the laws are envorced in cases where a specific selection of multiple burgulary tools are posessed by one person.
Does this mean that I can posess BackOrafice but if I posess backOrafice and an installation of Snort or something, then I'm a hacker rather than a System Administrator? Where would such a line be drawn?
It's great the we might be able to do sequencing in a matter of hours rather than years, but the real question is, what does that get us?
Every drug company has a Genomics division these days, to analize the existing data from the Human Genome Project. Now that new data can be gathered at such increadible speeds, are we any closer to improving the quality of life based on this work. Probably not, and the cause is a double edged sword.
The problem is the restrictions through international treadies and government regulation, on gentic engineering of humans. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of such modification of the human genome, howeer, this leaves only one recourse. They can create medications that the sufferer of a genetic defect can take every day for their entire lives to prevent the ocurrance of an illness that they are genetically predisposed to. This is a boon for drug companies. If they can generate long term revenue streams by creating medications which reduce the chances of developing illnesses to which certain people are genetically predisposed to, and clain that they are doing this, instead of developing ways to repair a gene at birth - not because it's more proficable to do it this way but - because this is the only avenue they're allowed to pursue due to federal and international regulations against messing with the human genome; then who are the regulations truly serving? the population, or the drug companies?
Along the same lines, there will always be countries which are not signatories to the afore mentioned international regulations - in which drug companies can deelop the gene theropies which could truly benefit sufferers of gentic diseases and defects. That said, there will always be a black market for these theropies, once deeloped.
The question becomes which is a better world to live in: one where we have a drug dependant population, or one where we have a genetically altered population.
At this point I'll conclude my analysis because any further speculation will lead to the realm of Gattica style science-fiction. There is, however a great deal to consider...
OK, so it's true huh? Well in that case, this AC really should have pursued the issue regarding the contract clause. It certainly would have made a better story.
the AC mentions that he now has Verizon DSL. FYI: the gateway Verizon provides becomes the property of the customer, (per my contract, anyway). My contract was signed almost two years ago so new contracts may be different.
In the event this is adopted for American curency:
Do we really want a company in a foreign country to produce such a critical element for our currency?
Alternatively, should we require that the RF tags be produced (licended to) by an American company, or multiple companies?
In that event, it would be come impossible to prevent the creation of a black market for the RF tags. With that in mind, should anyone ever consider using such a technology im their currency (in America or elseware)?
An earlier poster mentioned that for the truly paranoid, cash transactions can already be tracked. I would suggest that using RF tags opens the possibility to 'hack' your cash. A skilled indevidual might be able to ajust the signal transmitted by their cash, in such a way as to thwart tracking attempts.
Every introduction of new technology, or replacement of a low tech solution with a high tech solution has the logical result of creating a new opening for hackers. People who truly want to avoid being tracked can always do so. It's just a matter of the degree of effort they're willing to / forced to go to.
This technology will make counterfitting more difficult but it will also make successful counterfits (those containing the chip) almost impossible to detect - because with the introduction of any new technology, there suddenly appears a black market for that technology as well as the afore mentioned expansion of hacking potential.
I love it. Microsoft decided that instead if selling off windows desktop space (like they have in the past to the likes of AOL and software vendors such as Quicken), which is a limited comodity since it had dimentions defined by screen resolution, they would be better off preferred connectivity options, which represents a residual revenue stream. This represents a more or less unlimited resource that Microsoft can license repeatedly, and more importantly, can alter in realtime on internet-connected desktops, for eample, if one vendor wished to terminate it's agreement with Microsoft, the company can (in realtime) pull that vendor's listing from within Windows, much as a web publisher would pull the vendor's ads from a website. On one level it's vary sleezy. On another, it's just good business.
It's a characteristic of the new and ever-changing marketplace that Kodak could not have foreseen such a thing and explicitly forbidden it within their written partnership agreement. On the other hand, it has bacome a hallmark of Microsoft to actively seek out cuch loopholes and make extensive use of them in business dealings with partners.
The msot profitable thing a consultant can do is write a book. Most write books about some aspect of the field in which they are consulting. Vary few have the audacity to write a book about how to be a successful consultant.
The previos poster is correct. I did forget about Stargate-SG1. That is an exceptional show, but I think it's in it's sixth season. I was talking about shows started in the past 5 years.
And I respectfully disagree with the other earlier poster about Farscape. I do not consider that a piece of quality sci-fi, but to be fair, that's just a personal judgement and more or less imaterial to my argument.
Their business plan was not quite as stupid as that of Digital Convergence. At least these guys were smart enough to charge for their hardware (and thus they didn't go under quite as quickly). They did screw up their license agreement in a similar way, and a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/17/ 1538216&mode=nested">underestimate the inginuity of their more technical users in the same way...
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see the B5 universe back, but please forgive me a moment:
<Rant>
Yah! let's bring back more old TV series. Oh, and churn out a bunch of series that Gener Rodenbury didn't get around to bringing to television... And then make a bunch of movies based on old TV shows... Yah! This industry is going great guns.
</Rant>
oK. I feel nuch better now that I got that out of my system. You have to wonder though, why havn't we seen any truly new sci-fi in the last 5 years...? It's vary disappointing...
The GPL is not anti-big-business so much as it enforces a particular alternative business model which is inconsistant with current practices. If the GPL is truly anti-business then Redhat would never have turned a profit. The fact that lord Bill just doesn't like the idea of altering Microsoft's business model to come into the 21st century isn't an excuse.
And Microsoft has little presence there, [...] yes, it's japan
Interesting how Microsoft's primary business trategy has a dependance on the social norms and values of western culture.
I don't know enough about far eastern culture to be able to suggest any changes that would have to occur in America to cause Microsoft to have to shift it's business strategy, although Microsoft has adopted the concept of a Keiretsu from Japanese corporate culture. Perhaps we need to adopt the purchasing habits of Japanese consumers...
The test is known as the MMPI-2 (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory).Developed as a specialized psychological test for the measurement of psychopathology
I guess it's good to first establish that your computer is not a psychopath...
What does it say about the designers of the personality, that they feel they first nered to insure they havn't created a psychopath...?
Slashdot Mirror
The result of this case sets the prescident that companies who wish to use GPL'd code can do so without releasing the bulk of the application in which the code is used, simply by partitioning their application and releasing under the FPL only the small partition of their app.
The Vidomi result seems fair (and was accepted by the FSF) but how small a piece of code can constitue an application for purposes of release under the GPL? Can I take GPL'd code and write a couple wrapper functions and release that piece of code and call it a plugin to my main application which would not be released under the GPL? Does the part of my code distributed under the GPL actually have to be useful or can it simply be a set of wrappers?
Conversely, if I can't release only a GPL'd plugin to my main closed source application, can I a s a developer use GPL'd code inside a plugin I write for a 3rd party commercial application such as Photoshop?
The Vidomi resolution raises a great many questions along these lines - certainly more issues than it resolves...
--CTH
--
So, everyone knows that it doesn't help to press buttons hartder cuz you won't shoot any faster, but that never stops anyone. I wonder how many units with cracked LCDs will get shipped back to the manufacturer...
Perhaps a warning on the box... Not intended for easily excitable players. Risk of severe thumb abrasions from sharp shards of plastic.
--CTH
--
As the popularity of Linux increases, a continually larger portion of the user base will be even less and less technical. It is these users who will be frustrated with lack of hardware support and other such issues, and will not be in a position to do much about it except vent at support reps. As Rob says, this is the drag on adoption by vendors. It isn't the developers who have made great contributions to Linux, that are the offenders here. It's those who lack either the motivation, or slikk to contribute to the development who see postings like 'Linux Driver Unavailable' and have no other recourse but to object loudly and sometimes offensively, that are at fault here.
It really is a catch-22. As the non-technical userbase of linux grows, the incidents of this sort of thing will become more frequent, and as these incidents become fore frequent, the hardware manufacturers will look at their cost benefit analysys and not bother withlinux, in turn reducing the speed of Linux adoption. At some point, however there will be an equilibrium reached, where the speed with which the userbase is growing, will become constant, and eventually the userbase will be of sufficient size to warrant development of Linux drivers for hardware, by vendors of that hardware. Infortunately, the progress to that end might be slowed to a snails pace by the type of behavior that Rob mentions. I disagree, however, that Linux will Never become mainstream. It's progress to that end will simply become extremely slow perhaps to the point where it's influence will become insignificant. I certainly hope this prediciton doesn't come to pass though...
--CTH
--
Please understand that I'm not defending the DMCA, however, all it is doing is defining what constitutes 'burgulary tools' with respect to software. This doesn't make it any more legal or fair or just, however, there is prescident for these kinds of definitions.
Many states have laws against posession of burgulary tools however, most states require that these tools are posesses with intent to commit a superceding crime (usually the top count of an engeightment). It is NOT illegal to sell or distribute burgulary tools.
This is the difference between all the burgulatry tools laws and the DMCA. The DMCA makes it illegal to distribute (software) burgulary tools. In my reading of the DMCA(pdf there is no requirement to prove intent, and distribution itself is the crime. The question then becomes, how is it that the DMCA has been violated if the software in question was never distributed inside the United states?
--CTH
--
Hydrofoils are nothing new but I have to say, this thing looks pretty slick. I'd love to take it out for a spin.
/. It's not something I'd have associated with the /. crowd. Perhaps I need to reconsider the site demographics...
I have to question though, why is is being posted on
About the hydrfoil... it's a nice evolutionary step, building on an established technology. Not quite as inspiring at the earlier article on the newest entrant in the cement canoe race.
--
Well, It's about time for me to upgrade my home theater... This time around I wanted a monitor rather than a TV anyway...
I guess all I'd need is to install LiVid. Which would be the most impressive to see, Ronin or Titanic... hmmm. Definately Ronin.
Imagine playing Quake on this bad boy!
--
--CTH
--
They claim that non-business content (for which, the Looksmart network, for example says it will index without you forking over the green) will eventually be indexed (I think the estimate at excite was 8 weeks to index new non-business content) but I havn't seen it happen for my site...
Consider, for a moment, that the internet is a vary large library of information (techies excude the simplistic metaphor). We have ecentially turned over the library card catalogs (usually managed by libraries which are non-profit institutions) over to corporations who's goal is to make a proffit. This is an interesting choice to say the least. These companies make no commitment to index any particular content, or to index new content within a particular period... (with a few exceptions) introducing the potential to have valuable scolarly work lost amidst the noise of the internet. It's nice to have more information, but it introduces the possibility that truly valuable information is lost in the frey.
This brings into question the use of the internet as an information resource, is couneter-intuitive since this is one of it's primary and highly touted uses.
--CTH
--
Perhaps we need Mundie to continue his assault on Open Source, so that all the leaders of the big projects are compelled to join hands and play nice to battle back the godzilla of the industry once again.
Back then Mundie first started his attack - on Microsoft's behalf - he provided a great service to the OSS comunity by creating a cohesive force by providing a common enemy. Now we're beginning to see the in-fighting we saw before Mundie attacked OSS in his series of ill-thought out speaches.
It's a shame that the OSS comunity can't remain more united even in the aftermath... Oh, well
--CTH
--
--CTH
--
I never thought I'd be arguing in favor of a subscription model but if this is the alternative, then let customers subscribe to indevidual sites to recieve their content. I don't see how any ISP could be expected to subscribe to all the sites it's customers might demand access to.
The net is far too varied and there are far too many specialty sites which might only appeal to a few customers from each ISP (but a large population overall...
A PAyPal micropayment based subscription solution on a per site basis would be much better. An earlier poster pointed out the problem of an 'ISP content subscription committee'. It would be the same problem as seen on cable services (only the most universally popular content would be available for subscription) but substancially magnified since there is so much more content available on the net.
I could however, see a mechanism where a clearinghouse might act as a group buying club for subscription based content, where, perhaps members of this group buying club might access the web through the club's proxy servers which would manage subscription content delivery for members where the price of subscription to particular content would be a function of how many other members have also chosen to have a portion of their membership fees go to that particular content subscription. This aleviates the issues discussed, relating to the 'content subsscription committee' where the ISP would be responsible for selecting content to which it would subcribe.
My solution would probably require special content licensing much as the Tric AB solution, but it would take the ISP out of the picture, eliminating the bottleneck that would have created. Instead, embers of the group buying club would be alble to vote for the content to which the clubshould subscribe, on a monthly basis....
Just my 2 cents
--CTH
--
It's great to see this new miniseries, but why would you adapt TWO stories into one series, rather than preserving the second (actually third) story for an additional miniseries...Strange
Is sci-fi actually imune from the television media marketing engine? You can only sell half the ads if you have half the content, so why would they have decided to combine the stories into only one miniseries...
--CTH
--
In many municipalities it's illegal to posess 'burgulary tools' which condist of such things as vary large screw drivers, and other comonly available items. Generally the laws are envorced in cases where a specific selection of multiple burgulary tools are posessed by one person.
Does this mean that I can posess BackOrafice but if I posess backOrafice and an installation of Snort or something, then I'm a hacker rather than a System Administrator? Where would such a line be drawn?
--CTH
--
It's great the we might be able to do sequencing in a matter of hours rather than years, but the real question is, what does that get us?
Every drug company has a Genomics division these days, to analize the existing data from the Human Genome Project. Now that new data can be gathered at such increadible speeds, are we any closer to improving the quality of life based on this work. Probably not, and the cause is a double edged sword.
The problem is the restrictions through international treadies and government regulation, on gentic engineering of humans. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of such modification of the human genome, howeer, this leaves only one recourse. They can create medications that the sufferer of a genetic defect can take every day for their entire lives to prevent the ocurrance of an illness that they are genetically predisposed to. This is a boon for drug companies. If they can generate long term revenue streams by creating medications which reduce the chances of developing illnesses to which certain people are genetically predisposed to, and clain that they are doing this, instead of developing ways to repair a gene at birth - not because it's more proficable to do it this way but - because this is the only avenue they're allowed to pursue due to federal and international regulations against messing with the human genome; then who are the regulations truly serving? the population, or the drug companies?
Along the same lines, there will always be countries which are not signatories to the afore mentioned international regulations - in which drug companies can deelop the gene theropies which could truly benefit sufferers of gentic diseases and defects. That said, there will always be a black market for these theropies, once deeloped.
The question becomes which is a better world to live in: one where we have a drug dependant population, or one where we have a genetically altered population.
At this point I'll conclude my analysis because any further speculation will lead to the realm of Gattica style science-fiction. There is, however a great deal to consider...
--CTH
--
OK, so it's true huh? Well in that case, this AC really should have pursued the issue regarding the contract clause. It certainly would have made a better story.
the AC mentions that he now has Verizon DSL. FYI: the gateway Verizon provides becomes the property of the customer, (per my contract, anyway). My contract was signed almost two years ago so new contracts may be different.
--CTH
--
In the event this is adopted for American curency:
Do we really want a company in a foreign country to produce such a critical element for our currency?
Alternatively, should we require that the RF tags be produced (licended to) by an American company, or multiple companies?
In that event, it would be come impossible to prevent the creation of a black market for the RF tags. With that in mind, should anyone ever consider using such a technology im their currency (in America or elseware)?
--CTH
--
An earlier poster mentioned that for the truly paranoid, cash transactions can already be tracked. I would suggest that using RF tags opens the possibility to 'hack' your cash. A skilled indevidual might be able to ajust the signal transmitted by their cash, in such a way as to thwart tracking attempts.
Every introduction of new technology, or replacement of a low tech solution with a high tech solution has the logical result of creating a new opening for hackers. People who truly want to avoid being tracked can always do so. It's just a matter of the degree of effort they're willing to / forced to go to.
This technology will make counterfitting more difficult but it will also make successful counterfits (those containing the chip) almost impossible to detect - because with the introduction of any new technology, there suddenly appears a black market for that technology as well as the afore mentioned expansion of hacking potential.
--CTH
--
I love it. Microsoft decided that instead if selling off windows desktop space (like they have in the past to the likes of AOL and software vendors such as Quicken), which is a limited comodity since it had dimentions defined by screen resolution, they would be better off preferred connectivity options, which represents a residual revenue stream. This represents a more or less unlimited resource that Microsoft can license repeatedly, and more importantly, can alter in realtime on internet-connected desktops, for eample, if one vendor wished to terminate it's agreement with Microsoft, the company can (in realtime) pull that vendor's listing from within Windows, much as a web publisher would pull the vendor's ads from a website. On one level it's vary sleezy. On another, it's just good business.
It's a characteristic of the new and ever-changing marketplace that Kodak could not have foreseen such a thing and explicitly forbidden it within their written partnership agreement. On the other hand, it has bacome a hallmark of Microsoft to actively seek out cuch loopholes and make extensive use of them in business dealings with partners.
--CTH
--
The msot profitable thing a consultant can do is write a book. Most write books about some aspect of the field in which they are consulting. Vary few have the audacity to write a book about how to be a successful consultant.
--
The previos poster is correct. I did forget about Stargate-SG1. That is an exceptional show, but I think it's in it's sixth season. I was talking about shows started in the past 5 years.
And I respectfully disagree with the other earlier poster about Farscape. I do not consider that a piece of quality sci-fi, but to be fair, that's just a personal judgement and more or less imaterial to my argument.
--CTH
--
Their business plan was not quite as stupid as that of Digital Convergence. At least these guys were smart enough to charge for their hardware (and thus they didn't go under quite as quickly). They did screw up their license agreement in a similar way, and a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/17/ 1538216&mode=nested">underestimate the inginuity of their more technical users in the same way...
Some people never learn...
--
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to see the B5 universe back, but please forgive me a moment:
<Rant>
Yah! let's bring back more old TV series. Oh, and churn out a bunch of series that Gener Rodenbury didn't get around to bringing to television... And then make a bunch of movies based on old TV shows... Yah! This industry is going great guns.
</Rant>
oK. I feel nuch better now that I got that out of my system. You have to wonder though, why havn't we seen any truly new sci-fi in the last 5 years...? It's vary disappointing...
--
The GPL is not anti-big-business so much as it enforces a particular alternative business model which is inconsistant with current practices. If the GPL is truly anti-business then Redhat would never have turned a profit. The fact that lord Bill just doesn't like the idea of altering Microsoft's business model to come into the 21st century isn't an excuse.
--CTH
--
I don't know enough about far eastern culture to be able to suggest any changes that would have to occur in America to cause Microsoft to have to shift it's business strategy, although Microsoft has adopted the concept of a Keiretsu from Japanese corporate culture. Perhaps we need to adopt the purchasing habits of Japanese consumers...
--CTH
--
What does it say about the designers of the personality, that they feel they first nered to insure they havn't created a psychopath...?
--CTH
--