I bought 1 year subscriptions for my RH 7.3 server and RH 9.0 desktops. They have decided to stop supplying the service less than 1 year after the date I purchased the subscriptions. Read their press releases Red hat Network support for Red Hat Linux ends 12/31/2003 for Red Hat 7.3 and in April for RH 9.0.
The price you quote for RHEL WS is the *yearly* price for the support service. So, in the first years RHEL costs $179 and Windows XP costs $200. The second year I still have WIndows XP but I have to pay another $179 for RHEL. So, from an expense point of view over the next several years Windows XP looks to be cheaper than RHEL WS. Not to mention the sad sad fact that it is easier to install and upgrade OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, GIMP, and even GCC on Windows than it is on RHL.
The thing that really makes me mad is that I decided that going with a paid service from Red Hat was safer than using Debian and counting on volunteers to provide patches.
What an Idiot I am. Debian is still there and sure looks like it is the easier, cheaper, and more reliable choice. So, Debian wins.
At this point I'm planning to switch to Debian too. RH sold me a support contract that was good for a year. Turns out it was only good for 6 months. The offer of an "upgrade" is of little value to me. In fact, under the new rules it would cost me less to by a copy of Windows XP for each of my machines than to upgrade to RHEL.
The real answer is, of course, that they lied once, and kept the money. So, what possible reason do I have to ever trust them again?
Is orbital angular momentum (OAM) a bit of energy added to the photon, or is it just a redistribution of the "normal" energy of the photon? If it is a redistribution then does a photon with OAM have a different wavelength than a photon with the same energy but no OAM?
Does generating a photon with OAM transfer angular momentum from the generator to the photon? That is does emitting an OAM beam cause the source to spin?
My understanding is that the US courts have held that US law applies everywhere. But, they admit that it is difficult to enforced everywhere.
OTOH the US has been known to use military forces to enforce US law outside of it's territory. Think Tripoly in 1790 for the first example that I can think of and, oddly enough Iraq right now as the most recent example. A better example might be that air strike in Yemen a few months ago. But, we don't do that very often.
If he sets foot inside of US territory, even if he is kidnapped and brought onto US territory, he can be arrested, held, tried, and jailed.
On the third hand, if Italy has a similar law he could be charged and tried their. Gamespy can file charges against him in his home contry.
In my life I have worn out 2 excercise bicycles, a tread mill, a nordic track, a cross coutry bicycle, and I have a nice weight rack in my living room. Hours and hours of boaring dreadful excercise tied to years of eating the low fat, high carbohydrate diet my Dr. perscribed... What did it get me? High blood pressure, sky high cholesteral, and 120 lbs over weigth, and eventually type 2 diabetes.
I started on a low carb diet when I was diagnosed as a "pre-diabetic". Six months on a low carb diet and my cholesteral was down below normal, I had lost 30 pounds, and my blood pressure was normal. I eventually lost all the weight. I have 3 Drs who have told me that the low card diet delayed the onset of full blown type 2 diabetes by at least 4 years.
When you lose control of your blood sugar the low carb diets stops working. My weight went up. I got on medication to control the blood sugar, and the weight went down. My Drs fully support my staying on a low carb diet.
BTW, low card does not imply high fat or low fiber. I eat what my ancestors (mostly northern European) ate and I do fine with it.
I went through all of this while excercising in Dr approved ways and Dr approved amounts. I'm sure the excercise is important, very important. But, the diet is as important, IMHO more important. A diet that doesn't suit *you* will kill you. We are all individuals.
I did finally find a form of excercise that is not just painfully boring and a group of people who don't brow beat you for not being a perfect physical specimen. An excercise experience unlike anything I have ever encountered in any setting at any time in my life.
Shaolin-Do http://www.shaolin-do.com/
Mentally and physically challenging. Oddly enough, where I live most of the students are geeks. Tons of computer people, mathematicians, engineers, and so on. And, they don't tolerate bullies.
In the late '80s I started working with a headhunter who was a retired developer. He understood what I wanted to do and he was able to track jobs that I would be interested in and qualified for. He worked with me for a couple of years and finally found a job I really liked.
That company went under, and when I tried to contact him again the phone number didn't work and mail was returned as undeliverable.
So, I talked to several headhunters and found one who at least acted honest. He also had a background as a developer and helped me find a job I really liked.
That company went under. So, I tried to contact that headhunter. No such luck. I could not find the guy again.
That was in about '93. I haven't encountered an honest headhunter since then. I'm not sure the last 3 I talked to are even human.
What I wonder about is what has already been developed that we don't know about. Not that long ago a company came up with a new kind of paint that was super reflective. It contained tiny glass spheres. They tried to patent it. But, could not.
It turns out there was already a classified patent for a similar material. But, because of the sizes of the spheres that paint absorbed radar. It was a secret stealth technology.
Turns out it was discovered in the '60s. The quantum physics of how it works was figured out at a national lab many years later. And none of that, the fact that it existed nor the physics of how it works, had ever been published.
Another case is the uranium salt water reactor and the nuclear rocket that can be built using it. Both concepts were invented at Los Alamos during WWII and patented. They were reinvented in the '80s. The fellow who reinvented it found out about the original invention and patent only after his patent was denied.
How much of the "future" we expected was invented and supressed by national governments? What wonders are waiting to be found in the records of classified research and patents?
IMHO the best science fiction of the past was always of the one-step-beyond variety. It took what we know, and looked one step farther out. It guessed about the new situations that people would face in that world, and wrote stories that showed what it would be like to live in that world.
The problem with doing that now, is that one step beyond is beyond what people *can believe*.
We are faced with the real possibility of physical immortality. People do not believe that.
We are faced with the complete restructuring of the economy and redefinition of the value of the individual due to the development of robots. This problem was first described and dicussed in R.U.R, the book in which the word "robot" was first used as we use it today. But, now it is just one step beyond. Very few people are even aware that the change is coming or how fast it will happen when it does.
We are faced with nanotechnology. The first discussion of the topic happened (AFAIK) in the second half of the 20th century and wasn't seriously dicussed until the late '80s. But, nanotech is already showing up. The majority of people have not yet even heard of nanotechnology.
I could go on and on.
One step beyond is now so far out that most people, even SF fans, can no longer accept it.
About 15 years ago I wrote to complain to the editor of my favorite science fiction magazine because one of the stories was not science fiction. It was about everyday things like a guy using email to interact with other people to solve a problem with a robotic assembly cell.
15 years ago the editor thought my letter was astounding. To him, everything in the story was pure science fiction. Stuff he didn't ecpect to every see.
You seem to be jumbling things up a bit. I never said anything about a lawyer or judge not being interested. You seem to be responding to your own assumptions rather than to anything I ever said.
BTW, the manager was not reached through the call center, but through the corporate problem resolution line. I sent a long set of questions to them and he was reading from the reply he got from the corporate lawyers.
Anyway, it seems you feel that I must be lying because I could sue them. I find that hard to understand.
That is the first time I've been accused of lying on slashdot. I guess that means that what I said strongly violates your view of reality. Could it be that you have a bell shaped head?
I have DSL service from SBC. Do I need to say more?
They advertise the service as a being target at SOHOs (Small Office Home Office) and advertise that it is ideal for running servers. But, the end use contract specifically forbids you from running *any* *server* *at* *all*. This is a service that includes a set of static IPs, why would you pay for static IPs if you can't run a server?
Of course, there is no link nor any mention of that agreement on the page advertising the service. You don't see it until you try to register as a user. If you don't register you can not use their email or usenet servers. Not to mention that the customer service people refuse to talk to you if you aren't registered.
I escalated the problem as high as I could. I was told on the phone that they knew about the contradiction between the contract and the advertising. And they didn't care. They admitted that it was fraud, but it was there to let them mess with people who don't understand the law. I could chose to not use the service (and pay the termination fee) or I could sue them. Otherwise, "stop wasting my time."
BTW, they told me that if I did file a complaint or sue them they would disconnect all telephone wires to my home for a minimum of 5 years.
I will be switching carriers at the end of my contract. At that time I will switch my telephone service to another carrier. And, I will never do business with SBC again.
What can I say, at lest Dell is willing to take the computer back.
Of course what I said was simplistic. I have only a few paragraphs to make my point.
Let me concentrate on the power of Bill Gate to create buggy software. You say that one man cannot... You are correct, one man cannot do much at all. But, Gates commands an army. He sets the policies, he set the procedures, and he choses the commanders under him. When he decided that MS had to take on the Internet it took only a matter of months for MS to pivote and charge. Gates, order his commanders to go in a different direcetion. He got rid of the onces who balked and he hired new ones that understood what he wanted. The army moved.
The top commander in an army or a corporation has enourmous power because his decisions are carried out by thousands of people. If gates said to do a complete line by line code inspection of every bit of Windows code, it would be done. And, I bet it would only take a few month to do it.
It is the fact that Gates has always put quality and reliability as the lowest priority that Windows and the other MS apps are the way they are. He sets the standards so he gets the blame.
In any history book you will read of battles. You will read about the decisions of the Generals who won and the Generals who lost. No one mentions the decisions of the soldiers (except in truly heroic situations) because their decisions only affect a small part of the battle. The decisions of the general effect the entire battle. And, at the end. It is the commanding generals who get the credit and the blame.
It is the same in busines. The top guys make the broad stroke decisions and everyone else marches in step. The CEOs, Presidents, and BPs get the credit, the big bucks, and when they pull an ENRON, they get the blame and they go to jail.
Gates has been the top decision maker in MS since the beginning of the company. His decisions, his blame.
Many other people have taken criminal actions to exploit Gates' errors. They deserve punishment. But, there is a legal theory called "depraved indifference". It is a few step beyond negligence.
In my opinion releasing new versions of Windows with a complete code inspection is depraved indifference for the welfare of the entire world.
Hey Ted! It has been a long time since you nearly got me with that "package" up at the old UoU. I'm not surprised to see you working for Bill, but that is the kind of organization that would appreciate your special talents.
I was really hoping to never hear from you again. Now, where is the FBI's phone number...
I understand you and even agree with you on some points.
The difference is that if you are using Red Hat you know that reasonable precautions have been taken to make the OS secure against known threats. If you are using MS you have no such assurance.
I'm willing to hang the idiots who authorized using Windows for applications where life and limb are on the line. I'm willing to hang the virus writer too.
But, as you pointed out. MS refused to supply security patches for systems that could not be readily upgraded. So, they clearly put profit ahead of the public safety. Microsoft, and Bill Gates, are criminally liable for all damages that resulted from that decision. They must be prosecuted for those crimes.
I said: 100% of the blame for all of this damage rests on Bill Gates.
And you replied: So the virus writer is completely off the hook. 100% on Bill Gates? You really want to pin 100% of the blame on ONE man? That's assanine and very narrow sighted.
I expected this response. Once, when I was in college I owned an old truck. After I had it for a while one of the door locks broke. This didn;t bother me because I didn't keep anything of value in the truck and the truck had so little resale value that no one was ever going to steal it.
One Saturday night someone found the broken lock, put the truck in gear and coasted it down the hill and onto someone's lawn. It caused some damage. No big deal. I figured it was a one time thing and did nothing.
A couple of weeks later that same thing happened. More damage was done to the neighbors yard. After the third time I fixed the lock. Even though I was not legally at fault, at some point I become responsible for the damage done. Without the broken lock, the damage would not have been done.
Over the last decade Bill Gates has authorized selling hundreds of millions of "broken" locks. Software with severe security problems. These are problems that any reasonable development or testing process would not have let out the door.
Good grief, I was warned about the dangers of buffer over runs in my first programming class in 1972. This isn't rocket science. It is criminal neglect.
The virus writer is like the idiot who kept parking my truck on the neighbors lawn. He could not have done it if I had take the reasonable action of fixing the lock.
I said: The accumulated wealth of Bill Gates and Microsoft should be used to compensate the victims of his crimes
Any you replied: That's just a little communist don't you think?
You really have no contact with reality do you? Read the US legal code on collecting damages for harm done. If I harm you or your property you are entitled to compensation. That legal principle predates communism by many thousands of years. The concept of an-eye-for-an-eye is pretty well understood and has been carried forward from the dawn of time and lives on in our current legal code.
100% of the blame for all of this damage rests on Bill Gates.
Bill Gates sets the standards for software development at Microsoft. Bill Gates decides what is, and is not, accpetable in the design, coding, and testing phases of Microsoft products. Over a year ago Bill Gates came up with the "trusted computing" fraud.
Microsoft makes much of its income by selling bug fixes for software they shipped knowing it was no damn good. What do you think new release is? Mostly just bug fixs plus new window dressing used to add more bugs. Bill Gates has made his fortune by deliberately selling inferior software.
If I owned a company that sold ladders that have the same failure rate as Windows does, it would have been sued into bankruptcy and I would most likely been put in jail the first time a ladder failure was linked to so much as a broken leg. Yet, Bill Gates is the wealthiest man in the world. Free to continue his crime spree.
The magnitude of the fraud that has been perpetrated by Bill Gates & company is so huge as to constitute a crime against humanity. He has done more damage than all the terrorists who ever attacked the US. It is beyond treason. He should be tried for his crimes. If one person has died as a result of known bugs in Windows then he, and the entire management chain below him should be hung.
The latest attacks on world infratructure facilitated by Windows must be the last. It is time to prosecute the man whose greed and disregard for humanity enabled all of this damage. The accumulated wealth of Bill Gates and Microsoft should be used to compensate the victims of his crimes.
Yes, it could become just as you say, and I hope it does.
I won't argue about whether or not the result is socialism. I think the result is much closer to the goal of socialism, the ideal, rather than what people have called socialism in the past. I think it is important to come up with a name that is more socially acceptable than either "socialism" or "Sustainable Hedonism". Maybe we could call it some thing like "Freedom from want"?
First off, this is not new. These predictions have been made many times over the last 40 years. Anyone who understands Moore's law can do it. I have seen the same predictions, with the same dates (plus or minus 5 years) several times since the late '70s.
Personally, I think the guy is a pessimist. The robots could be taking large numbers of jobs in as few as 5 years.
The Soviet Union (remember them?) was so worried about automated systems taking jobs away form people that they banned the development of that technology. Kept them 20 years behind the west for decades. That one decision could have been the nail in the coffin that lead to its down fall...
So what happens? Speaking as someone how has now lost three (3) jobs because it was cheaper to do them in India, I can tell you that change happens. When it happens it happens quickly. Those companies that adapt survive. Those that don't die. A technology like humanoid robots can reduce labor costs by 90% (or more) and once those jobs are taken by robots they will be gone forever.
Sure, a few people and a few new companies will get very very very rich implementing this technology. But many many people will lose everything to the robots.
So what happens? People get upset when they can't eat and in the US the starving can vote. Expect to see rising taxes placed on the robots. Property taxes, value added taxes, even an out right labor tax. (The increase in taxes will slow the adoption of robots by artificialy increasing there cost, but it won't stop it.)
The tax money will at first be used by governments to offset lost income tax revenue. Then, it will be used for "retraining" programs and extended unemployment benefits. Eventually, large parts of the tax money will be sent directly and indirectly to people who can't find jobs. We could easily get down to where less than 10% of the population is able to find a traditional job. The rest of us will be paid to keep us from rioting and burning the robots.
At that point the closest thing possible to "true" socialism will have arrived. A few of us will do all the brain work, robots will do all the physical work, and the rest of us will watch TV and do drugs at the expense of the robot owners. The RoboCapitalists will be the only ones with lots of money.
The next phase is physical immortality and the rise of the megaminds....
For many of the same reasons everyone else has mentioned, plus the fact that Shaolin-do covers so many different styles. It is not only physically challenging it is mentally challenging.
I'm a fairly normal over 50 while male US citizen. I do not care at all what you do to your body.
OTOH, I was *taught* by my parents to look down on people who had tatoos, odd colored hair, hair of the wrong length, and piercings. (In those days only saw piercings on people from India or Africa, or in the National Geographic.) I was *taught* that only people of the wrong class, the wrong race(s), and without education did those sorts of things.
What happened to me is pretty much what happened to everyone I grew up with and most of them did the same thing to their children.
Even though I have over come my feelings about hair (it has been too long and the wrong style my whole adult life) and beards (I have worn one almost constatly since I was 16) I have only now gotten over looking down on people with tatoos. (Though I haven't gotten up the nerve to get one.) And, I still find piercings to be horrifying rather than interesting....
That is the way I was raised.
I have been turned down for more than one job because of my long hair and beard. I have seen people fired for showing up to work with bright blue hair (the manager was 20 years younger than I am and the blue haired fellow worked for me.)
I can at least claim that I am aware of my bigotry. Most people can not, they just react according to the way they were raised.
If you want to advance in the corporate world. Learn to were what ever the job requires. Wear your hair the same way the CEO does. And do not even consider dying your hair, getting a tatoo, or any sort of piercing. (Ok, women can have pierced ears, one hole in each side, no more.)
Or, you can tell them to piss of and start your own business. If enough of us do that then those of us who don't wear suits, who have blue hair (I like metallic blue hair) who have tatoos and piercings can create our own economy and force the suits wearing asshole to conform to US!
To the best of my knowledge there are 9 known genetic mutations that are implicated in ADHD. There is only 1 (and a possible second) mutation implicated in ADD. The ADD mutation is not implicated in ADHD.
Some of the symptoms are similar, and the treatments are similar, but they are genetically distinct differences.
I know the article title is highly misleading, but the key issue here is that it is the patent on Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) compression that is expiring. The GIF format uses LZW compression. GIF is not (AFAIK) patented in anyway, just the compression algorithm.
The important thing is that this powerful compression technique will soon be in the public domain. Yes, in the public domain, not GPLed, or LGPLed, or BSDed, or any other license. It will soon be the property of every living being capable of making use of it. You will be free to use LZW in a compression utility. You will be free to distribute a library that implements LZW. You will be free to add LZW compression to PNG. Or to use it as the basis of a file system. Of, to print it on your T-shirts and toilet paper if you want to wear it or... with it.
LZW is now ours.
This is the whole point of patents by the way, the inventor gets a monopoly for a while (to damned long in most cases) so they can cover the cost of development, but then the patented item becomes public domain.
I got laid off so I got a business license and started trying to make a little money on the side. (Any one want a Mexican Samuri Sword?)
About a week after I got my license I got a nasty letter from the BSA. It made a lot of threats. Said that they had the right to inspect my place of business (my home) and gave be a "chance" to get all my software license up to date before they came to tear my compters apart.
My reaction was fairly normal. I ignored them. A couple of weeks later I got another nasty letter. This time I made sure my door locks were solid. I made sure I could find my ammunition and guns in the dark. And, I took every bit of software that I had from BSA members and threw it out. I am now 100% pure open source software.
After reading through a couple of BSA letters and discussing them with a lawyer it becomes obvious that most small business can't afford to *own* software made by BSA members. The legal liability for missplacing a software license is greater than the value of the business. Misplace a license, lose your house, your savings, your kids college fund, your ability to buy perscription drugs...
Slashdot Mirror
I bought 1 year subscriptions for my RH 7.3 server and RH 9.0 desktops. They have decided to stop supplying the service less than 1 year after the date I purchased the subscriptions. Read their press releases Red hat Network support for Red Hat Linux ends 12/31/2003 for Red Hat 7.3 and in April for RH 9.0.
The price you quote for RHEL WS is the *yearly* price for the support service. So, in the first years RHEL costs $179 and Windows XP costs $200. The second year I still have WIndows XP but I have to pay another $179 for RHEL. So, from an expense point of view over the next several years Windows XP looks to be cheaper than RHEL WS. Not to mention the sad sad fact that it is easier to install and upgrade OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, GIMP, and even GCC on Windows than it is on RHL.
The thing that really makes me mad is that I decided that going with a paid service from Red Hat was safer than using Debian and counting on volunteers to provide patches.
What an Idiot I am. Debian is still there and sure looks like it is the easier, cheaper, and more reliable choice. So, Debian wins.
Stonewolf
At this point I'm planning to switch to Debian too. RH sold me a support contract that was good for a year. Turns out it was only good for 6 months. The offer of an "upgrade" is of little value to me. In fact, under the new rules it would cost me less to by a copy of Windows XP for each of my machines than to upgrade to RHEL.
The real answer is, of course, that they lied once, and kept the money. So, what possible reason do I have to ever trust them again?
Stonewolf
Restated to take the gloves off:
Q: I put my butt, my balls, and my mortgage on the line to get my boss to pay for your service. Are you really going to pay me back by ripping me off?
A: You poor stupid trusting person. Not only am I ripping you off... now, where did I put the KY...
I too paid for services that I will never recieve. Nice to know the true nature of the thief who now runs Red Hat.
Yeah, yeah, mod me down... The truth hurts. One of the greatest companies in the Free Software Universe is stealing from its customers.
Stonewolf
Is orbital angular momentum (OAM) a bit of energy added to the photon, or is it just a redistribution of the "normal" energy of the photon? If it is a redistribution then does a photon with OAM have a different wavelength than a photon with the same energy but no OAM?
Does generating a photon with OAM transfer angular momentum from the generator to the photon? That is does emitting an OAM beam cause the source to spin?
Many questions that boggle my mind.
Stonewolf
I Am Not A Lawyer....
My understanding is that the US courts have held that US law applies everywhere. But, they admit that it is difficult to enforced everywhere.
OTOH the US has been known to use military forces to enforce US law outside of it's territory. Think Tripoly in 1790 for the first example that I can think of and, oddly enough Iraq right now as the most recent example. A better example might be that air strike in Yemen a few months ago. But, we don't do that very often.
If he sets foot inside of US territory, even if he is kidnapped and brought onto US territory, he can be arrested, held, tried, and jailed.
On the third hand, if Italy has a similar law he could be charged and tried their. Gamespy can file charges against him in his home contry.
The law has loooong arms.
Stonewolf
Amen brother....
In my life I have worn out 2 excercise bicycles, a tread mill, a nordic track, a cross coutry bicycle, and I have a nice weight rack in my living room. Hours and hours of boaring dreadful excercise tied to years of eating the low fat, high carbohydrate diet my Dr. perscribed... What did it get me? High blood pressure, sky high cholesteral, and 120 lbs over weigth, and eventually type 2 diabetes.
I started on a low carb diet when I was diagnosed as a "pre-diabetic". Six months on a low carb diet and my cholesteral was down below normal, I had lost 30 pounds, and my blood pressure was normal. I eventually lost all the weight. I have 3 Drs who have told me that the low card diet delayed the onset of full blown type 2 diabetes by at least 4 years.
When you lose control of your blood sugar the low carb diets stops working. My weight went up. I got on medication to control the blood sugar, and the weight went down. My Drs fully support my staying on a low carb diet.
BTW, low card does not imply high fat or low fiber. I eat what my ancestors (mostly northern European) ate and I do fine with it.
I went through all of this while excercising in Dr approved ways and Dr approved amounts. I'm sure the excercise is important, very important. But, the diet is as important, IMHO more important. A diet that doesn't suit *you* will kill you. We are all individuals.
I did finally find a form of excercise that is not just painfully boring and a group of people who don't brow beat you for not being a perfect physical specimen. An excercise experience unlike anything I have ever encountered in any setting at any time in my life.
Shaolin-Do http://www.shaolin-do.com/
Mentally and physically challenging. Oddly enough, where I live most of the students are geeks. Tons of computer people, mathematicians, engineers, and so on. And, they don't tolerate bullies.
Stonewolf
In the late '80s I started working with a headhunter who was a retired developer. He understood what I wanted to do and he was able to track jobs that I would be interested in and qualified for. He worked with me for a couple of years and finally found a job I really liked.
That company went under, and when I tried to contact him again the phone number didn't work and mail was returned as undeliverable.
So, I talked to several headhunters and found one who at least acted honest. He also had a background as a developer and helped me find a job I really liked.
That company went under. So, I tried to contact that headhunter. No such luck. I could not find the guy again.
That was in about '93. I haven't encountered an honest headhunter since then. I'm not sure the last 3 I talked to are even human.
Stonewolf
Thank you,
What I wonder about is what has already been developed that we don't know about. Not that long ago a company came up with a new kind of paint that was super reflective. It contained tiny glass spheres. They tried to patent it. But, could not.
It turns out there was already a classified patent for a similar material. But, because of the sizes of the spheres that paint absorbed radar. It was a secret stealth technology.
Turns out it was discovered in the '60s. The quantum physics of how it works was figured out at a national lab many years later. And none of that, the fact that it existed nor the physics of how it works, had ever been published.
Another case is the uranium salt water reactor and the nuclear rocket that can be built using it. Both concepts were invented at Los Alamos during WWII and patented. They were reinvented in the '80s. The fellow who reinvented it found out about the original invention and patent only after his patent was denied.
How much of the "future" we expected was invented and supressed by national governments? What wonders are waiting to be found in the records of classified research and patents?
Stonewolf
IMHO the best science fiction of the past was always of the one-step-beyond variety. It took what we know, and looked one step farther out. It guessed about the new situations that people would face in that world, and wrote stories that showed what it would be like to live in that world.
The problem with doing that now, is that one step beyond is beyond what people *can believe*.
We are faced with the real possibility of physical immortality. People do not believe that.
We are faced with the complete restructuring of the economy and redefinition of the value of the individual due to the development of robots. This problem was first described and dicussed in R.U.R, the book in which the word "robot" was first used as we use it today. But, now it is just one step beyond. Very few people are even aware that the change is coming or how fast it will happen when it does.
We are faced with nanotechnology. The first discussion of the topic happened (AFAIK) in the second half of the 20th century and wasn't seriously dicussed until the late '80s. But, nanotech is already showing up. The majority of people have not yet even heard of nanotechnology.
I could go on and on.
One step beyond is now so far out that most people, even SF fans, can no longer accept it.
About 15 years ago I wrote to complain to the editor of my favorite science fiction magazine because one of the stories was not science fiction. It was about everyday things like a guy using email to interact with other people to solve a problem with a robotic assembly cell.
15 years ago the editor thought my letter was astounding. To him, everything in the story was pure science fiction. Stuff he didn't ecpect to every see.
Stonewolf
You seem to be jumbling things up a bit. I never said anything about a lawyer or judge not being interested. You seem to be responding to your own assumptions rather than to anything I ever said.
BTW, the manager was not reached through the call center, but through the corporate problem resolution line. I sent a long set of questions to them and he was reading from the reply he got from the corporate lawyers.
Anyway, it seems you feel that I must be lying because I could sue them. I find that hard to understand.
Stonewolf
That is the first time I've been accused of lying on slashdot. I guess that means that what I said strongly violates your view of reality. Could it be that you have a bell shaped head?
Stonewolf
I have DSL service from SBC. Do I need to say more?
They advertise the service as a being target at SOHOs (Small Office Home Office) and advertise that it is ideal for running servers. But, the end use contract specifically forbids you from running *any* *server* *at* *all*. This is a service that includes a set of static IPs, why would you pay for static IPs if you can't run a server?
Of course, there is no link nor any mention of that agreement on the page advertising the service. You don't see it until you try to register as a user. If you don't register you can not use their email or usenet servers. Not to mention that the customer service people refuse to talk to you if you aren't registered.
I escalated the problem as high as I could. I was told on the phone that they knew about the contradiction between the contract and the advertising. And they didn't care. They admitted that it was fraud, but it was there to let them mess with people who don't understand the law. I could chose to not use the service (and pay the termination fee) or I could sue them. Otherwise, "stop wasting my time."
BTW, they told me that if I did file a complaint or sue them they would disconnect all telephone wires to my home for a minimum of 5 years.
I will be switching carriers at the end of my contract. At that time I will switch my telephone service to another carrier. And, I will never do business with SBC again.
What can I say, at lest Dell is willing to take the computer back.
Stonewolf
Of course what I said was simplistic. I have only a few paragraphs to make my point.
Let me concentrate on the power of Bill Gate to create buggy software. You say that one man cannot... You are correct, one man cannot do much at all. But, Gates commands an army. He sets the policies, he set the procedures, and he choses the commanders under him. When he decided that MS had to take on the Internet it took only a matter of months for MS to pivote and charge. Gates, order his commanders to go in a different direcetion. He got rid of the onces who balked and he hired new ones that understood what he wanted. The army moved.
The top commander in an army or a corporation has enourmous power because his decisions are carried out by thousands of people. If gates said to do a complete line by line code inspection of every bit of Windows code, it would be done. And, I bet it would only take a few month to do it.
It is the fact that Gates has always put quality and reliability as the lowest priority that Windows and the other MS apps are the way they are. He sets the standards so he gets the blame.
In any history book you will read of battles. You will read about the decisions of the Generals who won and the Generals who lost. No one mentions the decisions of the soldiers (except in truly heroic situations) because their decisions only affect a small part of the battle. The decisions of the general effect the entire battle. And, at the end. It is the commanding generals who get the credit and the blame.
It is the same in busines. The top guys make the broad stroke decisions and everyone else marches in step. The CEOs, Presidents, and BPs get the credit, the big bucks, and when they pull an ENRON, they get the blame and they go to jail.
Gates has been the top decision maker in MS since the beginning of the company. His decisions, his blame.
Many other people have taken criminal actions to exploit Gates' errors. They deserve punishment. But, there is a legal theory called "depraved indifference". It is a few step beyond negligence.
In my opinion releasing new versions of Windows with a complete code inspection is depraved indifference for the welfare of the entire world.
Stonewolf
Hey Ted! It has been a long time since you nearly got me with that "package" up at the old UoU. I'm not surprised to see you working for Bill, but that is the kind of organization that would appreciate your special talents.
I was really hoping to never hear from you again. Now, where is the FBI's phone number...
Stonewolf
I understand you and even agree with you on some points.
The difference is that if you are using Red Hat you know that reasonable precautions have been taken to make the OS secure against known threats. If you are using MS you have no such assurance.
I'm willing to hang the idiots who authorized using Windows for applications where life and limb are on the line. I'm willing to hang the virus writer too.
But, as you pointed out. MS refused to supply security patches for systems that could not be readily upgraded. So, they clearly put profit ahead of the public safety. Microsoft, and Bill Gates, are criminally liable for all damages that resulted from that decision. They must be prosecuted for those crimes.
Stonewolf
I said: 100% of the blame for all of this damage rests on Bill Gates.
And you replied: So the virus writer is completely off the hook. 100% on Bill Gates? You really want to pin 100% of the blame on ONE man? That's assanine and very narrow sighted.
I expected this response. Once, when I was in college I owned an old truck. After I had it for a while one of the door locks broke. This didn;t bother me because I didn't keep anything of value in the truck and the truck had so little resale value that no one was ever going to steal it.
One Saturday night someone found the broken lock, put the truck in gear and coasted it down the hill and onto someone's lawn. It caused some damage. No big deal. I figured it was a one time thing and did nothing.
A couple of weeks later that same thing happened. More damage was done to the neighbors yard. After the third time I fixed the lock. Even though I was not legally at fault, at some point I become responsible for the damage done. Without the broken lock, the damage would not have been done.
Over the last decade Bill Gates has authorized selling hundreds of millions of "broken" locks. Software with severe security problems. These are problems that any reasonable development or testing process would not have let out the door.
Good grief, I was warned about the dangers of buffer over runs in my first programming class in 1972. This isn't rocket science. It is criminal neglect.
The virus writer is like the idiot who kept parking my truck on the neighbors lawn. He could not have done it if I had take the reasonable action of fixing the lock.
I said: The accumulated wealth of Bill Gates and Microsoft should be used to compensate the victims of his crimes
Any you replied: That's just a little communist don't you think?
You really have no contact with reality do you? Read the US legal code on collecting damages for harm done. If I harm you or your property you are entitled to compensation. That legal principle predates communism by many thousands of years. The concept of an-eye-for-an-eye is pretty well understood and has been carried forward from the dawn of time and lives on in our current legal code.
Stonewolf
100% of the blame for all of this damage rests on Bill Gates.
Bill Gates sets the standards for software development at Microsoft. Bill Gates decides what is, and is not, accpetable in the design, coding, and testing phases of Microsoft products. Over a year ago Bill Gates came up with the "trusted computing" fraud.
Microsoft makes much of its income by selling bug fixes for software they shipped knowing it was no damn good. What do you think new release is? Mostly just bug fixs plus new window dressing used to add more bugs. Bill Gates has made his fortune by deliberately selling inferior software.
If I owned a company that sold ladders that have the same failure rate as Windows does, it would have been sued into bankruptcy and I would most likely been put in jail the first time a ladder failure was linked to so much as a broken leg. Yet, Bill Gates is the wealthiest man in the world. Free to continue his crime spree.
The magnitude of the fraud that has been perpetrated by Bill Gates & company is so huge as to constitute a crime against humanity. He has done more damage than all the terrorists who ever attacked the US. It is beyond treason. He should be tried for his crimes. If one person has died as a result of known bugs in Windows then he, and the entire management chain below him should be hung.
The latest attacks on world infratructure facilitated by Windows must be the last. It is time to prosecute the man whose greed and disregard for humanity enabled all of this damage. The accumulated wealth of Bill Gates and Microsoft should be used to compensate the victims of his crimes.
Stonewolf
I do 1 hour of excercise before coding showering and getting down to code. It adjusts my attitude, focusses my mind, reduces my bug count. Wonderful.
Oh, yeah, I keep a large cup of coffee and a larger bottle of water next to me while I excercise.
I usually do my stretches first, then weapon practise in the backyard, then go through all my katas and sparring techniques....
Kung fu does wonderful things for the mind and body. All the physical and mental value of Yoga but about 10 times more fun.
Stonewolf
Yes, it could become just as you say, and I hope it does.
I won't argue about whether or not the result is socialism. I think the result is much closer to the goal of socialism, the ideal, rather than what people have called socialism in the past. I think it is important to come up with a name that is more socially acceptable than either "socialism" or "Sustainable Hedonism". Maybe we could call it some thing like "Freedom from want"?
Stonewolf
First off, this is not new. These predictions have been made many times over the last 40 years. Anyone who understands Moore's law can do it. I have seen the same predictions, with the same dates (plus or minus 5 years) several times since the late '70s.
Personally, I think the guy is a pessimist. The robots could be taking large numbers of jobs in as few as 5 years.
The Soviet Union (remember them?) was so worried about automated systems taking jobs away form people that they banned the development of that technology. Kept them 20 years behind the west for decades. That one decision could have been the nail in the coffin that lead to its down fall...
So what happens? Speaking as someone how has now lost three (3) jobs because it was cheaper to do them in India, I can tell you that change happens. When it happens it happens quickly. Those companies that adapt survive. Those that don't die. A technology like humanoid robots can reduce labor costs by 90% (or more) and once those jobs are taken by robots they will be gone forever.
Sure, a few people and a few new companies will get very very very rich implementing this technology. But many many people will lose everything to the robots.
So what happens? People get upset when they can't eat and in the US the starving can vote. Expect to see rising taxes placed on the robots. Property taxes, value added taxes, even an out right labor tax. (The increase in taxes will slow the adoption of robots by artificialy increasing there cost, but it won't stop it.)
The tax money will at first be used by governments to offset lost income tax revenue. Then, it will be used for "retraining" programs and extended unemployment benefits. Eventually, large parts of the tax money will be sent directly and indirectly to people who can't find jobs. We could easily get down to where less than 10% of the population is able to find a traditional job. The rest of us will be paid to keep us from rioting and burning the robots.
At that point the closest thing possible to "true" socialism will have arrived. A few of us will do all the brain work, robots will do all the physical work, and the rest of us will watch TV and do drugs at the expense of the robot owners. The RoboCapitalists will be the only ones with lots of money.
The next phase is physical immortality and the rise of the megaminds....
Stonewolf
For many of the same reasons everyone else has mentioned, plus the fact that Shaolin-do covers so many different styles. It is not only physically challenging it is mentally challenging.
Stonewolf
I'm a fairly normal over 50 while male US citizen. I do not care at all what you do to your body.
OTOH, I was *taught* by my parents to look down on people who had tatoos, odd colored hair, hair of the wrong length, and piercings. (In those days only saw piercings on people from India or Africa, or in the National Geographic.) I was *taught* that only people of the wrong class, the wrong race(s), and without education did those sorts of things.
What happened to me is pretty much what happened to everyone I grew up with and most of them did the same thing to their children.
Even though I have over come my feelings about hair (it has been too long and the wrong style my whole adult life) and beards (I have worn one almost constatly since I was 16) I have only now gotten over looking down on people with tatoos. (Though I haven't gotten up the nerve to get one.) And, I still find piercings to be horrifying rather than interesting....
That is the way I was raised.
I have been turned down for more than one job because of my long hair and beard. I have seen people fired for showing up to work with bright blue hair (the manager was 20 years younger than I am and the blue haired fellow worked for me.)
I can at least claim that I am aware of my bigotry. Most people can not, they just react according to the way they were raised.
If you want to advance in the corporate world. Learn to were what ever the job requires. Wear your hair the same way the CEO does. And do not even consider dying your hair, getting a tatoo, or any sort of piercing. (Ok, women can have pierced ears, one hole in each side, no more.)
Or, you can tell them to piss of and start your own business. If enough of us do that then those of us who don't wear suits, who have blue hair (I like metallic blue hair) who have tatoos and piercings can create our own economy and force the suits wearing asshole to conform to US!
Stonewolf
To the best of my knowledge there are 9 known genetic mutations that are implicated in ADHD. There is only 1 (and a possible second) mutation implicated in ADD. The ADD mutation is not implicated in ADHD.
Some of the symptoms are similar, and the treatments are similar, but they are genetically distinct differences.
Stonewolf, diagnosed with ADD at age 45....
I know the article title is highly misleading, but the key issue here is that it is the patent on Lempel-Ziv-Welch (LZW) compression that is expiring. The GIF format uses LZW compression. GIF is not (AFAIK) patented in anyway, just the compression algorithm.
The important thing is that this powerful compression technique will soon be in the public domain. Yes, in the public domain, not GPLed, or LGPLed, or BSDed, or any other license. It will soon be the property of every living being capable of making use of it. You will be free to use LZW in a compression utility. You will be free to distribute a library that implements LZW. You will be free to add LZW compression to PNG. Or to use it as the basis of a file system. Of, to print it on your T-shirts and toilet paper if you want to wear it or... with it.
LZW is now ours.
This is the whole point of patents by the way, the inventor gets a monopoly for a while (to damned long in most cases) so they can cover the cost of development, but then the patented item becomes public domain.
Stonewolf
I got laid off so I got a business license and started trying to make a little money on the side. (Any one want a Mexican Samuri Sword?)
About a week after I got my license I got a nasty letter from the BSA. It made a lot of threats. Said that they had the right to inspect my place of business (my home) and gave be a "chance" to get all my software license up to date before they came to tear my compters apart.
My reaction was fairly normal. I ignored them. A couple of weeks later I got another nasty letter. This time I made sure my door locks were solid. I made sure I could find my ammunition and guns in the dark. And, I took every bit of software that I had from BSA members and threw it out. I am now 100% pure open source software.
After reading through a couple of BSA letters and discussing them with a lawyer it becomes obvious that most small business can't afford to *own* software made by BSA members. The legal liability for missplacing a software license is greater than the value of the business. Misplace a license, lose your house, your savings, your kids college fund, your ability to buy perscription drugs...
Stonewolf