Yes but quantum computing Sounds So Much Cooler....
In all seriousness, this is the sort of situation where the Internet is more a hinderence than a help. Over time discussions such as this will polarize the lay community either for or against a particular area of research, wher two areas of research strive to achieve similar goals.
Public Opinion greatly influences funding of research, so I hope that premature dabates of which technology is superior, won't shape decisions to fund one or the other, since ther is the possibility that one or the other area of research might hit a brick wall at some time in the future, at which point it wll be nessecery to pursue the other area of study. It would be bennefitial to all to have continued both areas of research in parrelel.
Don't get me wrong. I don't believe that discussions like this alone will influence the course of research, but merely that the colaborative enviroment the Internet offers will promote (suprisingly) colaboration to the point where only one research path will be pursued by both teams, working together, rather than competing, as it were.This is an area whewre competition is a positive thing in academic research. I merely question the degree to which the Internet actually contributes to this.
I'm glad to hear it. It'm not a big fan of MS Exchange, and it's good to know that Groupwise is beind dusted off and revamped. My first experience with GroupWise was probably 5 or 6 years ago, and then it disappeared from my radar until a friend of mine took a job as a place the uses it. He's not real impressed, as I wasn't back when I was using it. I'm glad to see that it may come into the spotlight again. It's important that there be a corporate groupware alternative to Microsoft's solution (independant of all the snazzy OpenSource solutions I've seen).
The thing is, it's like those MasterCard Commencials that are currently runnning (in the US) where the slogan is "Credit Management tools for the slightly smarter consumer"
Well, the fact is, the slightly smarter consumer can manage their credit wothout being provided with credit management tools.
Perl is extremely flexible and powerful. Good perl programmers can manage their code in such a way as to make it readable in 6 months and 9 months and 12 months. It's a matter of dicipline. Code management should not have to be built into the language. We're not talking about COBOL here, after all. If you need code and structure management, lay it out nicely, get a good editor, etc. Perl is intended to provide results and fill a need, which it does vary well As Larry says "It makes the easy jobs easy and the hard jobs possible". I fully agree. Without Perl, I'd me doing admin work in awk and sed, cuz C would just be a waste of time in that context.
Program and code management should be on the back of the programmer not the interpreter/compiler, regardless of what language you're using. Flexibility is power and power is good. the trick is to find disciplined programmers who can manage it without special tools provided to them as if they weren't expected to be capable in their own right.
Is AOL mail really a corporate calibre product? It doesn't seem so. It is targeted tward the technical novice, providing few features and poor integration with scheduling and other groupware features. A Time magazine employee summed it up best, in the NY Times Article itself:
even employees who acknowledge that their previous e-mail system "isn't very good" are not convinced that America Online is the best choice for a corporate e-mail program. "AOL got popular because it's really simple and easy to use," said a writer at a Time Inc. magazine. "But when you're in a workplace, it's just not very full featured."
Another concern is security. Well it seems that they have that one covered, although SecurID is a cumbersome system. It's neat for the geek in all of us, to have a card with a rotating numerical pin for security, but it is no more secure than many of the more recent advances in this field, and it's tremendously inconvenient. Again, from the article:
Another issue is the added level of security that will be required for employees to retrieve their e-mail. Rather than logging on to the network by typing in a name and password, employees will also need to type in a number that appears on a digital card. Because the number changes every few seconds, the device adds a level of security to the e-mail system, but it also creates headaches for employees.
Unfortunately, they don't seem to realize how much of a 'headache for employees' it really is. At my ompany, a large telecom equipment manufacturer, we chose do do away with securid (implementing other solutions) because the inconvenience outweighed the benefit.
As much as it pains me to say this, Microsoft has one of the best Enterprise email systems right now. Granted, it doesn't scale vary well and it's tremendously expensive when compared to SMTP based systems, but it does have comprehensive groupware features. The other possibilities would have been Lotus CC:Mail or Novel Groupwise which are both far past their prime and either in need of being severely overhauled, or End-Of-Lifed by their companies.
The final class of mail system are those new.com outsourced enterprise mail solutions such as was offered by Mail.com and others, although I believe that company has just gone through some restructuring, where the enterprise email services were re-branded and spun off from the free personal email service (If someone can enlighten me here I'd appreciate it).
In any case, AOL has chosen the worst of a set of halfway decent possibilities - Oh, an I almost forgot IPlanet.com which offers what used to be the Netscape mail and calendar products -. There is something to be said for promoting your own products (at my company we use the telephones we produce, and the switching systems we produce) but in cses where use of your own company's product will impact your productivity, or otherwise negitively impact the work of your employees, it would be a severely misguided decision.
On the face of it, OSS projects should be able to survive the transition of management from the project initiator to another group of interested developers, but it's not that simple. OSS projects are more than the source code. There is a great deal of infastructure required in order to manage decentralized development efforts. Thanks to SourceForge for providing a great deal of that infastructure. The other componant needed in an OSS project is a leader, weather that is one person or a group of people. This leader is the visionary and driving force behind the project and unless projects can find new leaders for developers to gravitate around, the project will unboubtedly slide into mediocrity and disrepair.
Much luck to the projects left stranded by the demise of Easel. It appears that the project leaders are taking steps to find the ptojects new homes, with varying degrees of success.
Regardless of the legitimacy ore reasonableness of copyright law, It's truly ineffective if it isn't adopted worldwide. I'm neither promoting nor critisizing the current state of legislation, but it's useless without worldwide standardization.
For me, a good month is a month when I can get one week of project work done, where I'm not constantly being called away to put out fires.
It's disappointing to see that as time goes by, more and more of my work putting out fires. It reflects badly on the management of the organization as a whole, but that's the nature of IT. You don't hear from people unless thay have a problem. Crisis week once in a while huh? Try having crisis week three times per month.
There is actually a whole class of censorship which in my oppinion is far more ominous. That is the 'unintentional' censorship which is the direct result of the coming together of media outlets and publishing houses. Although the internet provides access to austensibly a wide variety of information, it is already becoming restrictive in it's diseminated content
Please bear with me while I rant a moment:
With deregulation of the comunications industry, media outlets have been allowed to merge and grow so large that in some areas they are one of the only sources of information in certain markets. For example, when students these days want to leard about WWII, they watch the history hannel, or A&E, rather than go to a library, where there are varied works by different authors discussing different aspects of the topic. Today, people are relying on television, and there is no variety in the information presented there. A&E and ther History Channel are owned by the same company, snd will generally promote material with the slant the management of that company might have. This may not be intentional censorship but it has the same effect.
Well, you might say, the internet provides information in vast quantities to millions of users... Maybe, maybe not. If I do primary source research and produce a scolarly work, I have two choices. I can have it printed in a scolarly journal, or publish it on the internet. IF I publish it on the net, I then need to publicize it's existance. How do I do that? well, rencently search engines have begun to charge several hundred doollars in order to include new sites in their indexes. They claim that non-business content 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.
We have ecentially turned over the 'library card catalogs of the internet' 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... 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.
Also, there is the possibility that information stored on the internet will disappear after sponsorship of that information disappears. In order for information to appear on the internet, someone needs to pay for the bandwidth and arrange for hosting of the material. What if Galileo or Aristottle has published their works onthe internet? Their ideas weren't widely recognized or accepted until after they died, and as soon as they died, the their sponsorship of the material would disappear. This raises the question, what happens to truly valuable information which is not recognized as such until years after the death of the originator of that information? Does it simply disappear off the net? Information nowadays is not nearly as static as it once was.
While not blatently censorship, these issues should be of great concern to all, and because thay are not blatently censorship, they don't raist the ire and heated discussions that blatent cencosrhip does. For that reason, this non-blatent cencorship is even more dangerous than the more obvious types.
I completely agree. Professional services is the way to go. Web developers would have a tough time because their work in not location dependant. Post sales enginering and other such professional services jobs are quite commonly aailable and will typically aford you the opportunity to travel to several countries in the span of a couple years. It's always an interesting ecperience; weather you end up enjoying it or hating it's always interesting...
Aparently 'Purple Book' is or will become an open standard. As far as I know, ONLY sony and philips have embraced it (as the co-authors, they'd better embrace it). The key to the success of this drive will be adoption of the standard. It really won't be much use without cross-vendor support (unless you want to use it within a closed system as backup media, which seems like a waste to me).
I have not yet seen any other vendors developing drives to this standard, which means mass adoption by users is still a long way off. Let's hope for Sony's sake that they timed the introduction of this product well enough that it will not imediately be suplanted with lower cost DVD-ROM drives which should be coming out soon.
As it is, this new drive seems to be the Ink Jet printer of the CD-ROM universe. Vary cheap hardware, on which the vendor either brakes even or takes a loss, then vary expensive media on which the manufacturer makes a killing.
You're right that Podesta is a staffer and it's disappointing that you'll generally find staffers are more knowlegable in specific areas - such as tech issues - than the politicians they work for.
More disturbing than this, is the fact that the lobyists I've had the misfortune to talk to are even more knowlegable. This of course, shouldn't suprise anyone. The problem is, in the tech arena, more so than in others, knowlegable indeviduals exert far greater influence, than someone who might be speaking authoritatively on something like enviromental issues. This is a function of the technology industry's extensive use of jargon (which is a whole othrt discussion), but this use of jargon makes the technology insustry especially ceceptable to allowing marginally knowlegable indeviduals, masquerade as experts (also not an infrequent occurance) and due to the extensive use of jargon in the industry, come off more easily as expert than would be possible in industries in which a less extensive jargon vocabulary exists.
--CTH
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Re:Well.. Ignorance of the law and due diligence
on
Is Law Copyrighted?
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· Score: 3
Remember "Ignorance of the law is no excuse". I used to think that was a perfectly reasonable thing, but if privare organizations are now taking steps to actively prevent my access and disrupt my attempts to reduce my ignorance, I have a BIG problem with that.
I wonder what effect this will have on due diligence. Can I demonstrate that I excercised due diligence in researching the law (with respect to, say, a business dealing) if I stop short of spending $750 to obtain a copy of the california building codes?
There is something to be said for this position (that drug companies can't make money on curing diseases but rather by selling drugs that treat symptoms), however it is a somewhat alarmist position, at least the way it has been expressed here. I don't know why it would be suprising to see a company invest in technology that will generate future profits.
What bothers me about this issue is the futile attempts the federal government has made to attempt to regulate biological research with respect to use of the Genome Project data to assist in such morally ambiguous areas as human cloning. The attempts to regulate this field of resesearch are futile, as they are being handled now, since the industry high profit potential, that virtually unlimited funds will be expended to house research facilities in places beyond the borders of countries that choose to regulate this field of research.
While on the subject, I'd like to aplaud the genobe project researchers for enbracing the concept of 'Open Source' science. There were a number of firms that actively tried to gather together and copyright genome project data.
Well done gentlemen!
you have allowed the creation of an entirely new field of science. The openness of the research data will reduce the percieved moral ambiguity of the derivative works based on that data.
Agreed. Interesting interview but I would be interested to hear more about Davidoff's take on CPRM. CPRM is frightening as a technology, but I'm not suprised at it's introduction.
Davidoff touches on this only periferally, but CPRM is another example of a society responding to technology, rather than adapting to it or making efficient use of it.
Please bear with me as I rant for a moment:
It's vary interesting to watch as society (as seen threough legislation that defines that society) scrambles to catch up with technology, where a half century ago, we drempt of what it would be like in the 21st century where we'd have flying cars and other astonishing technologies. I whonder if anyone - as part of the dream - envisioned tire manufacturers joining the enviromental lobby to put together legislation to prevent the introductions of cars that didn't roll along on tires.
The MPAA isn't the only industry association to be staunchly protecting a business model that doesn't apply in a new milenium. Look at how long it has taken for gasoline-electric cars to be introduced. Even today, there are only a few out there. The technology exists, and it works but hasn't been widely adopted. What oil company would be in favor of such a technology?
According to Davidoff:
CPRM, is just the most notorious, or the most emblematic of a number of schemes that make the open personal computer into an limited and tightly-controlled playback device. Controlled, effectively, by the entertainment industry
...
"I don't think people are aware of it, in spite of what you and others are writing about. It hasn't made it into the public consciousness," he says. "I didn't hear about the DMCA until after it had been passed."
This is yet another eample of the same phenomenon. Most disturbind, is that he's completely correct, the public is simply unaware of many of these issues.
In the 1950s we were dreaming of new technologies, without concern for how sociaty would react. Now, we have - then unimaginable - new technologies (although no flying cars yet) but society is fighting introduction of those technologies. New areas of law are created efery day as new problems are created, adressed, then others created.
We need progressive lawmakers with insight into these technologies to make far more informed decisions. This, however is the catch-22. There will not be lawmakers who can make informed decisions with regard to a technology, unless that technology is widely available, such thet they are familiar with it, and yet, if archaic law is what is preventing the technology from proliferating through society, we will have created for ourselves a techno-evolutionary cul-de-sac from which itwill become increasingly difficult to extricate ourselves.
This is great news for the linux community. It's interestingthat commercial software vendors (vs OSS vendors) seem to think things like this for linux are not viable. Strange. Seems to work for me. Security by closed source is a variant on security through obscurity and we all know what a falacy this is.
My company - a large Telecom equipment maker - has begun to shift development and product documentation from a proprietary system, to a combination of ClearCase, a popular commercial version control system, and MS SourceSafe.
For ease of use and based on cost I'd have to say, for your application (as much as it pains me) Microsoft SourceSave would be a good choice.
No self respecting business man would let a franchise like star trek end while it's on top. The marginal revenues generated are still far too substancial. With the introduction of new series' the producers expect to keep on the top of the revenue curve, and they've succeeded so far. It's just sad that they aren't as forward looking as to see that the residuals from continues syndication (if the shows go out on top) will be greater than if they drive the franchise into the ground with shows based on half baked story ideas, and one dimentional characters.
It's actually more than that. I would propose that not only are being a good business man and being a good human being are different, but they are Mutually Exclusive. This is not to say that in order to be a good business man you must first be an auful human being, but rather that in striving to become a good businessman you will tend to become a progressively less good human being.
This too has a critical point, which Bill Gates and others such as Ted Turner have long surpassed. This critical point is the point beyond which your wealth and power allows you to establish and maintain a facade of being a good human being. For Bill Gates this is established through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, For Ted Turner it is accomplished by donating one billion dollars to the UN. Even these activities are not done for philanthropic but PR value. CEOs are often synonymous with their companies. Their behavior reflects on their company much as their values and morees are often those of their company.
Agreed. Red Mars was auful, but the majority of the books in this serieq are quite enguaging. IF this newest addition is as good as the rest, It's going to be added to my list (which is quite long already...) so I might get a chance to read it some time next spring...
The response is vary short and vary concise. The important item is:
"Roxio believes this unfounded claim was made by Gracenote in response to our selection of their competition as our preferred provider," said Bill Growney, Director of Legal Affairs at Roxio, Inc. "Gracenote has apparently made this claim in a weak and ineffective attempt to damage Roxio's reputation."
The validity of these statements is bolstered by the comments of GraceNote's general counsel, who says:
"We hope to engage in productive discussions with Roxio to review and quickly resolve the matter in the best interest of everyone involved. However, our intellectual property is at stake," said Dave Marglin, General Counsel for Gracenote.
These comments seem to suggest that GraceNote is looking for binding arbitration and a closed settlement - presumably because their case wouldn't hold up in court - rather than to drag Roxio through a long drawn out legal battle, designed to exhaust the Roxio's corporate resources. Sometimes it's more effective to simply damage a company's reputation by announcing that there was a closed settlement and that the complainant is 'vary satisfied' with the result. Legal strategy is an amazing thing...
"...it is about doing nothing in the time normally allotted for doing something. "Due time must be allowed for the machine not to run," say Graeme Mitchison
A simplistic comment to be sure, but the article also touches on the clasic example of Schrödinger's cat:
Quantum systems can exist in two incompatible states at once, a condition known as 'superposition'. The most famous example is Schrödinger's cat, which can be both alive and dead if its fate is determined by a quantum superposition of two possible outcomes.
Certainly one of the more trotesque example of quantum mechanics, out there, but I guess the value is you'll never forget it. I guess that makes a difference
It's good to see some variety in OSS licenses, although there needs to be somewhat more stringent standards in defining exactly what Open Source is. I'm just waiting for there to appear on the scene, the 'Microsoft Open Source License'
Everything microsoft sells under it's developer license is actually Open Source right? Sure... But that's OK because we all know that (in the bill gates universe) Open Source is Bad. But in all seriousness, the BSD license is more 'free' and less 'Open Source' than the GPL. It is far more conducive to centralized corporate development of a product where the company seeks to solicit the 'assistance' of the OSS comunity. One of the nice things about the GPL is that it's stringent requirements for distribution, have the effect of reducing code forking (which whas one of the big MS objections to OSS) by forcing a closer colaboration of the developmwnt comunity. Part of the beauty of the GPL is that it is as much a social contract as a legal one. It's legal provisions foster comunity growth, through it's code distribution and attribution requirements.
I'm sure Jamie Zawinskiis thrilled about this. It seemed that he took it as a personal failure that Mozilla.org didn't take off in it's first year of operation. In the last 6 months it seems to have been holding it's own and here's one of the proofs of that theory. Keep up the good work guys.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes but quantum computing Sounds So Much Cooler....
In all seriousness, this is the sort of situation where the Internet is more a hinderence than a help. Over time discussions such as this will polarize the lay community either for or against a particular area of research, wher two areas of research strive to achieve similar goals.
Public Opinion greatly influences funding of research, so I hope that premature dabates of which technology is superior, won't shape decisions to fund one or the other, since ther is the possibility that one or the other area of research might hit a brick wall at some time in the future, at which point it wll be nessecery to pursue the other area of study. It would be bennefitial to all to have continued both areas of research in parrelel.
Don't get me wrong. I don't believe that discussions like this alone will influence the course of research, but merely that the colaborative enviroment the Internet offers will promote (suprisingly) colaboration to the point where only one research path will be pursued by both teams, working together, rather than competing, as it were.This is an area whewre competition is a positive thing in academic research. I merely question the degree to which the Internet actually contributes to this.
--CTH
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I'm glad to hear it. It'm not a big fan of MS Exchange, and it's good to know that Groupwise is beind dusted off and revamped. My first experience with GroupWise was probably 5 or 6 years ago, and then it disappeared from my radar until a friend of mine took a job as a place the uses it. He's not real impressed, as I wasn't back when I was using it. I'm glad to see that it may come into the spotlight again. It's important that there be a corporate groupware alternative to Microsoft's solution (independant of all the snazzy OpenSource solutions I've seen).
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The thing is, it's like those MasterCard Commencials that are currently runnning (in the US) where the slogan is "Credit Management tools for the slightly smarter consumer"
Well, the fact is, the slightly smarter consumer can manage their credit wothout being provided with credit management tools.
Perl is extremely flexible and powerful. Good perl programmers can manage their code in such a way as to make it readable in 6 months and 9 months and 12 months. It's a matter of dicipline. Code management should not have to be built into the language. We're not talking about COBOL here, after all. If you need code and structure management, lay it out nicely, get a good editor, etc. Perl is intended to provide results and fill a need, which it does vary well As Larry says "It makes the easy jobs easy and the hard jobs possible". I fully agree. Without Perl, I'd me doing admin work in awk and sed, cuz C would just be a waste of time in that context.
Program and code management should be on the back of the programmer not the interpreter/compiler, regardless of what language you're using. Flexibility is power and power is good. the trick is to find disciplined programmers who can manage it without special tools provided to them as if they weren't expected to be capable in their own right.
--CTH
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As much as it pains me to say this, Microsoft has one of the best Enterprise email systems right now. Granted, it doesn't scale vary well and it's tremendously expensive when compared to SMTP based systems, but it does have comprehensive groupware features. The other possibilities would have been Lotus CC:Mail or Novel Groupwise which are both far past their prime and either in need of being severely overhauled, or End-Of-Lifed by their companies.
The final class of mail system are those new
In any case, AOL has chosen the worst of a set of halfway decent possibilities - Oh, an I almost forgot IPlanet.com which offers what used to be the Netscape mail and calendar products -. There is something to be said for promoting your own products (at my company we use the telephones we produce, and the switching systems we produce) but in cses where use of your own company's product will impact your productivity, or otherwise negitively impact the work of your employees, it would be a severely misguided decision.
--CTH
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On the face of it, OSS projects should be able to survive the transition of management from the project initiator to another group of interested developers, but it's not that simple. OSS projects are more than the source code. There is a great deal of infastructure required in order to manage decentralized development efforts. Thanks to SourceForge for providing a great deal of that infastructure. The other componant needed in an OSS project is a leader, weather that is one person or a group of people. This leader is the visionary and driving force behind the project and unless projects can find new leaders for developers to gravitate around, the project will unboubtedly slide into mediocrity and disrepair.
Much luck to the projects left stranded by the demise of Easel. It appears that the project leaders are taking steps to find the ptojects new homes, with varying degrees of success.
--CTH
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Regardless of the legitimacy ore reasonableness of copyright law, It's truly ineffective if it isn't adopted worldwide. I'm neither promoting nor critisizing the current state of legislation, but it's useless without worldwide standardization.
--CTH
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For me, a good month is a month when I can get one week of project work done, where I'm not constantly being called away to put out fires.
It's disappointing to see that as time goes by, more and more of my work putting out fires. It reflects badly on the management of the organization as a whole, but that's the nature of IT. You don't hear from people unless thay have a problem. Crisis week once in a while huh? Try having crisis week three times per month.
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There is actually a whole class of censorship which in my oppinion is far more ominous. That is the 'unintentional' censorship which is the direct result of the coming together of media outlets and publishing houses. Although the internet provides access to austensibly a wide variety of information, it is already becoming restrictive in it's diseminated content
Please bear with me while I rant a moment:
With deregulation of the comunications industry, media outlets have been allowed to merge and grow so large that in some areas they are one of the only sources of information in certain markets. For example, when students these days want to leard about WWII, they watch the history hannel, or A&E, rather than go to a library, where there are varied works by different authors discussing different aspects of the topic. Today, people are relying on television, and there is no variety in the information presented there. A&E and ther History Channel are owned by the same company, snd will generally promote material with the slant the management of that company might have. This may not be intentional censorship but it has the same effect.
Well, you might say, the internet provides information in vast quantities to millions of users... Maybe, maybe not. If I do primary source research and produce a scolarly work, I have two choices. I can have it printed in a scolarly journal, or publish it on the internet. IF I publish it on the net, I then need to publicize it's existance. How do I do that? well, rencently search engines have begun to charge several hundred doollars in order to include new sites in their indexes. They claim that non-business content 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.
We have ecentially turned over the 'library card catalogs of the internet' 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... 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.
Also, there is the possibility that information stored on the internet will disappear after sponsorship of that information disappears. In order for information to appear on the internet, someone needs to pay for the bandwidth and arrange for hosting of the material. What if Galileo or Aristottle has published their works onthe internet? Their ideas weren't widely recognized or accepted until after they died, and as soon as they died, the their sponsorship of the material would disappear. This raises the question, what happens to truly valuable information which is not recognized as such until years after the death of the originator of that information? Does it simply disappear off the net? Information nowadays is not nearly as static as it once was.
While not blatently censorship, these issues should be of great concern to all, and because thay are not blatently censorship, they don't raist the ire and heated discussions that blatent cencosrhip does. For that reason, this non-blatent cencorship is even more dangerous than the more obvious types.
--CTH
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On the bright side, the collected work of the patent database wasn't copyrighted (I wonder if it could have been...)
I wonfer about copyrighting the layout and display characteristics of a patent search engine...
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I completely agree. Professional services is the way to go. Web developers would have a tough time because their work in not location dependant. Post sales enginering and other such professional services jobs are quite commonly aailable and will typically aford you the opportunity to travel to several countries in the span of a couple years. It's always an interesting ecperience; weather you end up enjoying it or hating it's always interesting...
--CTH
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Aparently 'Purple Book' is or will become an open standard. As far as I know, ONLY sony and philips have embraced it (as the co-authors, they'd better embrace it). The key to the success of this drive will be adoption of the standard. It really won't be much use without cross-vendor support (unless you want to use it within a closed system as backup media, which seems like a waste to me).
I have not yet seen any other vendors developing drives to this standard, which means mass adoption by users is still a long way off. Let's hope for Sony's sake that they timed the introduction of this product well enough that it will not imediately be suplanted with lower cost DVD-ROM drives which should be coming out soon.
As it is, this new drive seems to be the Ink Jet printer of the CD-ROM universe. Vary cheap hardware, on which the vendor either brakes even or takes a loss, then vary expensive media on which the manufacturer makes a killing.
--CTH
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You're right that Podesta is a staffer and it's disappointing that you'll generally find staffers are more knowlegable in specific areas - such as tech issues - than the politicians they work for.
More disturbing than this, is the fact that the lobyists I've had the misfortune to talk to are even more knowlegable. This of course, shouldn't suprise anyone. The problem is, in the tech arena, more so than in others, knowlegable indeviduals exert far greater influence, than someone who might be speaking authoritatively on something like enviromental issues. This is a function of the technology industry's extensive use of jargon (which is a whole othrt discussion), but this use of jargon makes the technology insustry especially ceceptable to allowing marginally knowlegable indeviduals, masquerade as experts (also not an infrequent occurance) and due to the extensive use of jargon in the industry, come off more easily as expert than would be possible in industries in which a less extensive jargon vocabulary exists.
--CTH
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Remember "Ignorance of the law is no excuse". I used to think that was a perfectly reasonable thing, but if privare organizations are now taking steps to actively prevent my access and disrupt my attempts to reduce my ignorance, I have a BIG problem with that.
I wonder what effect this will have on due diligence. Can I demonstrate that I excercised due diligence in researching the law (with respect to, say, a business dealing) if I stop short of spending $750 to obtain a copy of the california building codes?
--CTH
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There is something to be said for this position (that drug companies can't make money on curing diseases but rather by selling drugs that treat symptoms), however it is a somewhat alarmist position, at least the way it has been expressed here. I don't know why it would be suprising to see a company invest in technology that will generate future profits.
What bothers me about this issue is the futile attempts the federal government has made to attempt to regulate biological research with respect to use of the Genome Project data to assist in such morally ambiguous areas as human cloning. The attempts to regulate this field of resesearch are futile, as they are being handled now, since the industry high profit potential, that virtually unlimited funds will be expended to house research facilities in places beyond the borders of countries that choose to regulate this field of research.
While on the subject, I'd like to aplaud the genobe project researchers for enbracing the concept of 'Open Source' science. There were a number of firms that actively tried to gather together and copyright genome project data.
Well done gentlemen!
you have allowed the creation of an entirely new field of science. The openness of the research data will reduce the percieved moral ambiguity of the derivative works based on that data.
--CTH
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Davidoff touches on this only periferally, but CPRM is another example of a society responding to technology, rather than adapting to it or making efficient use of it.
Please bear with me as I rant for a moment:
It's vary interesting to watch as society (as seen threough legislation that defines that society) scrambles to catch up with technology, where a half century ago, we drempt of what it would be like in the 21st century where we'd have flying cars and other astonishing technologies. I whonder if anyone - as part of the dream - envisioned tire manufacturers joining the enviromental lobby to put together legislation to prevent the introductions of cars that didn't roll along on tires.
The MPAA isn't the only industry association to be staunchly protecting a business model that doesn't apply in a new milenium. Look at how long it has taken for gasoline-electric cars to be introduced. Even today, there are only a few out there. The technology exists, and it works but hasn't been widely adopted. What oil company would be in favor of such a technology?
According to Davidoff: This is yet another eample of the same phenomenon. Most disturbind, is that he's completely correct, the public is simply unaware of many of these issues.
In the 1950s we were dreaming of new technologies, without concern for how sociaty would react. Now, we have - then unimaginable - new technologies (although no flying cars yet) but society is fighting introduction of those technologies. New areas of law are created efery day as new problems are created, adressed, then others created. We need progressive lawmakers with insight into these technologies to make far more informed decisions. This, however is the catch-22. There will not be lawmakers who can make informed decisions with regard to a technology, unless that technology is widely available, such thet they are familiar with it, and yet, if archaic law is what is preventing the technology from proliferating through society, we will have created for ourselves a techno-evolutionary cul-de-sac from which itwill become increasingly difficult to extricate ourselves.
--CTH
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This is great news for the linux community. It's interestingthat commercial software vendors (vs OSS vendors) seem to think things like this for linux are not viable. Strange. Seems to work for me. Security by closed source is a variant on security through obscurity and we all know what a falacy this is.
Great Work Guys!
--CTH
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My company - a large Telecom equipment maker - has begun to shift development and product documentation from a proprietary system, to a combination of ClearCase, a popular commercial version control system, and MS SourceSafe.
For ease of use and based on cost I'd have to say, for your application (as much as it pains me) Microsoft SourceSave would be a good choice.
Just my 2 cents
--CTH
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No self respecting business man would let a franchise like star trek end while it's on top. The marginal revenues generated are still far too substancial. With the introduction of new series' the producers expect to keep on the top of the revenue curve, and they've succeeded so far. It's just sad that they aren't as forward looking as to see that the residuals from continues syndication (if the shows go out on top) will be greater than if they drive the franchise into the ground with shows based on half baked story ideas, and one dimentional characters.
--CTH
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It's actually more than that. I would propose that not only are being a good business man and being a good human being are different, but they are Mutually Exclusive. This is not to say that in order to be a good business man you must first be an auful human being, but rather that in striving to become a good businessman you will tend to become a progressively less good human being.
This too has a critical point, which Bill Gates and others such as Ted Turner have long surpassed. This critical point is the point beyond which your wealth and power allows you to establish and maintain a facade of being a good human being. For Bill Gates this is established through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, For Ted Turner it is accomplished by donating one billion dollars to the UN. Even these activities are not done for philanthropic but PR value. CEOs are often synonymous with their companies. Their behavior reflects on their company much as their values and morees are often those of their company.
--CTH
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Agreed. Red Mars was auful, but the majority of the books in this serieq are quite enguaging. IF this newest addition is as good as the rest, It's going to be added to my list (which is quite long already...) so I might get a chance to read it some time next spring...
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--CTH
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A simplistic comment to be sure, but the article also touches on the clasic example of Schrödinger's cat: Certainly one of the more trotesque example of quantum mechanics, out there, but I guess the value is you'll never forget it. I guess that makes a difference
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It's good to see some variety in OSS licenses, although there needs to be somewhat more stringent standards in defining exactly what Open Source is. I'm just waiting for there to appear on the scene, the 'Microsoft Open Source License'
Everything microsoft sells under it's developer license is actually Open Source right? Sure... But that's OK because we all know that (in the bill gates universe) Open Source is Bad. But in all seriousness, the BSD license is more 'free' and less 'Open Source' than the GPL. It is far more conducive to centralized corporate development of a product where the company seeks to solicit the 'assistance' of the OSS comunity. One of the nice things about the GPL is that it's stringent requirements for distribution, have the effect of reducing code forking (which whas one of the big MS objections to OSS) by forcing a closer colaboration of the developmwnt comunity. Part of the beauty of the GPL is that it is as much a social contract as a legal one. It's legal provisions foster comunity growth, through it's code distribution and attribution requirements.
--CTH
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It's good to see the lag time reduced for delivery on 1U ready hardware. Competition does great things.
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I'm sure Jamie Zawinskiis thrilled about this. It seemed that he took it as a personal failure that Mozilla.org didn't take off in it's first year of operation. In the last 6 months it seems to have been holding it's own and here's one of the proofs of that theory. Keep up the good work guys.
--CTH
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