As anyone following the news might know, France is using Linux in most of its wiring of public schools, and many french firms are adopting OSS for their software needs.
While some posters are correct that the UK is not pro-OSS in many respects, and certainly anti-privacy, Europe is not a monolith. OSS is spreading throughout northern Europe (Scandinavia), Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and so on.
None of this will defeat Echelon, however, so long as the UK sits in the middle of the pipe, feeding any data that comes through Gibralter and England to the US. So, without strong encryption of normal traffic, and a move to IPv6sec, Echelon will continue to survive and prosper.
Didn't take long, fortunately, for me to find a new job. I now make twice as much as I was making before... and I'm saving money at about two and a half times the rate, because I haven't increased my expenses much over what they had been (I lost two roommates, so the rent tripled). It will probably be years before I do, and you can be sure I'll have at least one significant raise under my belt beforehand.
You, my friend, are doomed to become a millionaire like me. We are the invisible ones, who don't spend all our money on fancy clothes and cars, who max out our retirement plans, overpay our mortgages (into principal, natch), and end up with more wealth than all the high flyers.
Yes, it is hubris, the majority of execs spend more than they make, and have little to show for it. You can live quite well on a moderate salary, still afford to go on vacations, and educate your kids quite well - but your attitude must be different.
As an example, my dad and I went on a two-week vacation in France this year. We got cheap seats, flew economy, used Paris La Visite passes and Museum passes, took the TGV, and stayed in one or two star hotels. And we ate in the moderate parts of town.
So, for what it cost some of the people we saw on the rich island in center Paris to live for one day, we had two weeks of travel and fun. And we didn't wait in the lines they did, and got to see the real Paris.
The problem for the ex-CEOs is expectations. They expect to live that way as a CEO. If they were true geek CEOs, they would still live in a shared house, ride the bike to work, and keep their suits at work for when they needed to do the VC rounds. And, like Paul Allen, they would have diversified their investments so that their tech investments were only some of their holdings.
My dad got out of the markets back in February 1999 and went bonds, t-bills, and money market. He's done quite well. I stayed in and rode some IPOs, but cashed out half of most holdings when they got nuts. We're both better off than everyone else is, but we don't live high on the hog, so our natural saving nature keeps us investing for the future and only spending on what we truly care about.
And that, in short, is what makes the difference between a paper millionaire who's in debt for more than he's worth, and a real millionaire who doesn't do debt unless it's a very good idea.
The comment about having to share a dorm room and all that entails when you lived, for some, the life of the CEO must be humbling indeed.
Those in other countries perhaps can't understand of which we speak - a CEO in the US makes about 500 to 600 times the base pay of the lowest paid employee in the US, not the 30 to 40 times common in Europe or the 20 to 30 times common in Asia.
So one day they're living the life of Riley, jetting around; the next I'm watching a film with them at the Film Fest, and they have less than my friends who work part time.
Well, yes, tea has a higher percentage of antioxidants and far fewer negative side effects. But it's actually a wash as to black tea or green tea - both are about the same, when you add them all up.
But I still like coffee, and chai for that matter.
The funny thing is that this action, which MSFT believes to be in its favor, will almost certainly cause Europe to pick up the bat dropped by the US government and whack MSFT even harder.
MSFT may be able to influence the US government, especially through very large contribs to GWBush (I park my car next to The Ruins sometimes, I'm not naive), but they have little or no influence on the EU, which has the total and absolute power to dissolve MSFT into two companies.
"But wait!", you say, "Europe can't do that to an American company!" Silly person, you fail to understand that as a condition of doing business in Europe, the EU may require that MSFT split in two or three parts. No split, no sales.
This is the lesson that many US multinationals have been learning over the past few months - sometimes it's better to have your friends whack you over the head (US penalties) than to let your enemies do it instead (EU penalties).
Well, while suggesting 5, 7, or 10 year copyright lives may sound keen to you young'ns, as someone who has actually published and been paid for writing, I think a 25 year lifespan is sufficient for copyright, but less is not a good idea. Little incentive to take time to craft your work.
Patents one might be able to argue as being less than 17 years, but it has taken many people up to 5 years to get it to a patent stage, so I'm not as comfortable with making it too short. That defeats the reason for patents - to ensure it becomes published and licensable, instead of hidden as a trade secret. But we do need to use "public domain" patents way more often.
The biggest point he's made is the user familiarity. Something difficult to overcome. Something that Linux has been working on to try and grab the Windows population.
Say what you must, but everytime I show KDE to Windows only users, they look puzzled.
That's why Ximian is taking over. Yes, I know, it's not as tight as KDE, but it makes them Win users very very happy.
And that, my friend, is what wins the war. They will use that.
Instead of just rolling back the life of a copyright to 25 years, as it was when this country was founded, why not also reduce the patent life to 12 or 15 years, and go back to the prior system of "public domain" patents, which used to be the majority of all patents filed, where the patent revenues revert to the US government?
The main reason that you should go and do this is that, with the current situation, the Telco has no incentive to drive cheap and fast installs of DSL out to your area. They will not build new COs as a way to deny this, and require you to go T1/T3. They will claim "there's a line problem" on a fresh install in a new house when you can see the CO at the end of the block.
But, if enough people do this, they will have to react. Sure, they'll try to shut it down. Then you just get a Burglar Alarm business and buy em up that way. Eventually they'll get a clue stick and realize that they need to stop seeing those disappearing T1/T3 sales that stop them from driving out DSL quickly (they lose money), and see those disappearing DSL sales that at least they made some money on.
In the absence of regulatory push, sometimes you have to push it yourself. We are Americans - we deserve DSL to every building! Nothing less. Until they wise up and deliver it for less than $50 a month, we need to fight guerilla style, and grab all the high-speed access we can, at whatever the cost.
We shall fight them on the airwaves. We shall fight them at the COs. We shall fight them for every sliver of high-speed data access. We shall never surrender, for we are the wired age, and noone shall stand in our way!
I think you mispeld Katz too. Not sure about ilites or elliterati either.
Durn those comp-u-tors. They make it too easy to type to fast. The mind is in motion, the thoughts flow, the juice makes the mind work faster, the words flow like the spice.
No, you can't. Look, mod me down for telling the truth to this Danish poster, but the reality is this:
The length of US copyright will always be longer than the survivor rights of the Disney created works. I'm a shareholder of Disney, and this is a truth. You just don't want to admit how flawed the system is, because you believe it to be fair.
It's not fair. It's affected by how much money Disney and other copyright holders give to the congress to extend the term of copyright.
The same process holds true for patents. They just patented (in the US), Basmati rice. These were bio-pirated from India, yet we patented them. Eventually, under pressure, we removed the patents for 17 of the 24 patents, but they still hold 7 patents.
Thus, my post, which is true, should be restated as follows:
The length of copyright in the US will always be N+x years after the death of the original copyright holder, except where it has been usurped through previously illegal means (now declared legal by congress) by a corporation. N shall be the length of years since Walt Disney died, x shall be the length in years needed to force through an extention of the copyright length in congress.
The length of a patent shall always be Y years, where Y is the time to bring to market a new pharmeceutical drug to replace the prior patent of the existing drug that would otherwise expire. Prior patents shall be granted for manufacturing processes previously undeclared in the original patent application, permitting the pharmeceutical companies to extend patent protection for N x Y years, where N is the profit yield factor of the pharmeceutical.
Look, I own shares in Disney and many pharmeceuticals. I know how the game works, I get to go to those nice annual meetings in the Caribbean too. You can pretend the system is the way you describe it, or you can realize that it is nothing like what exists worldwide, and only faintly resembles that described in the US Constitution.
In Denmark, whatever you produce (texts, images, lyrics) is automatically your copyright. You don't buy it, or have to specifically declare it copyrighted. Isn't it like this in the States?
No, here the corporations own the copyrights for 75 years after we die, and the patents last for centuries as well.
Forget the US PR game, we're the land of the fee payers and the home of the lawsuit.
why was above a troll? that was useful info - apparently the Reuters version of the story has some video links of the court hearing. Noone else told us that...
And since I asked the question that he replied to, who the heck modded him down?
Part of why Carly went this route, is HP is really getting hammered on quarterly profits. I think it's a smart move, and it will expand the Linux user base universe.
Be thankful she did it the right way - we get the source - and while you or I shan't choose it, it might help those of us stuck at companies afraid to go with Linux to choose the right solution anyway.
Where's the link to the RealVideo feed of the court depositions?
What? You mean there's no newsfeed? How come?
But _should_ Linux replace AIX?
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IBM Wants Linux
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· Score: 1
The question is not will Linux replace AIX, but should Linux replace AIX.
Look, don't get me wrong, the first Net server I ever got running was AIX (on a Mac, talk about irony).
The question we should be asking is, do we want Linux to become the corporate behemoth? I mean, it's nifty that Linux is an option, and that they support us, but maybe we should let Big Blue keep doing Unix with all its crufty apps for the corporate guys, and Linux does what it wants to do.
So long as they support us, help us get drivers, publish their specs, do we need to control the whole sandbox?
The only reason Linux isn't mostly in Seattle
on
Linux Win In Schools
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· Score: 1
Is that Bill Gates gives most of the local public and private schools large grants of MSFT software, and PCs too.
But we do have some Macs and there are quite a few PTA members with Linux skills, especially in the UDist and Fremont neighborhoods.
1. fire all the top level executives and all mid-level legal department heads (wholesale) - require that MSFT replace them from a list of people who work in other software firms but have not worked for MSFT (they pick from the short list)
2. require all specs and interfaces be fully documented and available to all other US and Canadian firms. Every new code release, have an independent auditor scan new code to make sure no unpublished code interfaces are used. Until it's golden and good, it won't go out.
3. Replace the current board of directors with one where no board member may hold more than 0.1 percent of MSFT shares and recieves no more than $50,000 in options, priced at date of grant stock price.
4. Put Bill Gates in a dunk tank in Westlake Mall in Seattle, with cream pies (non-toxic) and dunk balls for free, to all comers, for 8 hours a day, 2 days a week, for a six week period. The dunk tank should be heated if the outside temp drops below 70 F or 18 C and towels provided. Prison means nothing to him... but this will.
5. Require community service by all managers and execs remaining of 8 hours of coding per week for 8 weeks for Open Source code on a recognized project. Peer review is sufficient punishment.
6. Require an FTC agent be present at all times for a five year period (exception - when going to bedroom with spouse or significant other) for all executive of VP and above. Any chargable offenses to be charged on execution of said offenses. All monitors and PDA screens to be visible to said agents at all times.
Is it live or is it wearing concrete overshoes
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Mob Software
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· Score: 1
Uhh.. he specifically said that Linux and Open Source t is *not* mob software. For the specific reasons you mention.
If you read the entire article, mob software really doesn't exist yet.
Or, maybe the reason mob software doesn't exist is that humans behave in certain ways when they are mobs, as opposed to gangs. And those ways just happen to not be conducive to creating software.
Besides, how do you know it doesn't exist? After all, the Cosa Nostra likes to keep it quiet, and those who rat on it have a little accident.
One should point out that you can also contextualize it, with a common base of painting for example - the use of certain background images or shades can have a meaning that a machine will miss, but a human can translate:
Picture of small boy holding a goose while reading a book = I am hungry for words.
Picture of a goose holding a book about a small boy = The feds are spying on me.
Picture done with buttons instead = no more bagels.
Slashdot Mirror
As anyone following the news might know, France is using Linux in most of its wiring of public schools, and many french firms are adopting OSS for their software needs.
While some posters are correct that the UK is not pro-OSS in many respects, and certainly anti-privacy, Europe is not a monolith. OSS is spreading throughout northern Europe (Scandinavia), Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and so on.
None of this will defeat Echelon, however, so long as the UK sits in the middle of the pipe, feeding any data that comes through Gibralter and England to the US. So, without strong encryption of normal traffic, and a move to IPv6sec, Echelon will continue to survive and prosper.
Didn't take long, fortunately, for me to find a new job. I now make twice as much as I was making before... and I'm saving money at about two and a half times the rate, because I haven't increased my expenses much over what they had been (I lost two roommates, so the rent tripled). It will probably be years before I do, and you can be sure I'll have at least one significant raise under my belt beforehand.
You, my friend, are doomed to become a millionaire like me. We are the invisible ones, who don't spend all our money on fancy clothes and cars, who max out our retirement plans, overpay our mortgages (into principal, natch), and end up with more wealth than all the high flyers.
Yes, it is hubris, the majority of execs spend more than they make, and have little to show for it. You can live quite well on a moderate salary, still afford to go on vacations, and educate your kids quite well - but your attitude must be different.
As an example, my dad and I went on a two-week vacation in France this year. We got cheap seats, flew economy, used Paris La Visite passes and Museum passes, took the TGV, and stayed in one or two star hotels. And we ate in the moderate parts of town.
So, for what it cost some of the people we saw on the rich island in center Paris to live for one day, we had two weeks of travel and fun. And we didn't wait in the lines they did, and got to see the real Paris.
The problem for the ex-CEOs is expectations. They expect to live that way as a CEO. If they were true geek CEOs, they would still live in a shared house, ride the bike to work, and keep their suits at work for when they needed to do the VC rounds. And, like Paul Allen, they would have diversified their investments so that their tech investments were only some of their holdings.
My dad got out of the markets back in February 1999 and went bonds, t-bills, and money market. He's done quite well. I stayed in and rode some IPOs, but cashed out half of most holdings when they got nuts. We're both better off than everyone else is, but we don't live high on the hog, so our natural saving nature keeps us investing for the future and only spending on what we truly care about.
And that, in short, is what makes the difference between a paper millionaire who's in debt for more than he's worth, and a real millionaire who doesn't do debt unless it's a very good idea.
The comment about having to share a dorm room and all that entails when you lived, for some, the life of the CEO must be humbling indeed.
...
Those in other countries perhaps can't understand of which we speak - a CEO in the US makes about 500 to 600 times the base pay of the lowest paid employee in the US, not the 30 to 40 times common in Europe or the 20 to 30 times common in Asia.
So one day they're living the life of Riley, jetting around; the next I'm watching a film with them at the Film Fest, and they have less than my friends who work part time.
Zam. Icarus, you flew so high
Well, yes, tea has a higher percentage of antioxidants and far fewer negative side effects. But it's actually a wash as to black tea or green tea - both are about the same, when you add them all up.
But I still like coffee, and chai for that matter.
The funny thing is that this action, which MSFT believes to be in its favor, will almost certainly cause Europe to pick up the bat dropped by the US government and whack MSFT even harder.
MSFT may be able to influence the US government, especially through very large contribs to GWBush (I park my car next to The Ruins sometimes, I'm not naive), but they have little or no influence on the EU, which has the total and absolute power to dissolve MSFT into two companies.
"But wait!", you say, "Europe can't do that to an American company!" Silly person, you fail to understand that as a condition of doing business in Europe, the EU may require that MSFT split in two or three parts. No split, no sales.
This is the lesson that many US multinationals have been learning over the past few months - sometimes it's better to have your friends whack you over the head (US penalties) than to let your enemies do it instead (EU penalties).
There was another article today on Reuters Health pointing out that coffee was chock full of antioxidants.
So it's all a wash.
Well, while suggesting 5, 7, or 10 year copyright lives may sound keen to you young'ns, as someone who has actually published and been paid for writing, I think a 25 year lifespan is sufficient for copyright, but less is not a good idea. Little incentive to take time to craft your work.
Patents one might be able to argue as being less than 17 years, but it has taken many people up to 5 years to get it to a patent stage, so I'm not as comfortable with making it too short. That defeats the reason for patents - to ensure it becomes published and licensable, instead of hidden as a trade secret. But we do need to use "public domain" patents way more often.
The biggest point he's made is the user familiarity. Something difficult to overcome. Something that Linux has been working on to try and grab the Windows population.
Say what you must, but everytime I show KDE to Windows only users, they look puzzled.
That's why Ximian is taking over. Yes, I know, it's not as tight as KDE, but it makes them Win users very very happy.
And that, my friend, is what wins the war. They will use that.
is that the question is not "why switch to StarOffice from Microsoft Office", but is instead:
...
Why not save money instead of "upgrading" to Microsoft Office 2000.
Face it, you never use 99 percent of all those "features" Microsoft crams in there. So why bother about them?
For the vast and overwhelming group of office package users, StarOffice is just as good as Microsoft Office, and a heck of a lot cheaper.
Maybe in the US cost is not a big deal, but in the rest of the world it sure is
A good point, but not far enough.
Instead of just rolling back the life of a copyright to 25 years, as it was when this country was founded, why not also reduce the patent life to 12 or 15 years, and go back to the prior system of "public domain" patents, which used to be the majority of all patents filed, where the patent revenues revert to the US government?
Here's the link for the MSNBC version of this story. Has a pic of the judge, good bio, many links.
Of course, MSNBC is partially owned and operated by Microsoft, so caveat emptor.
The main reason that you should go and do this is that, with the current situation, the Telco has no incentive to drive cheap and fast installs of DSL out to your area. They will not build new COs as a way to deny this, and require you to go T1/T3. They will claim "there's a line problem" on a fresh install in a new house when you can see the CO at the end of the block.
But, if enough people do this, they will have to react. Sure, they'll try to shut it down. Then you just get a Burglar Alarm business and buy em up that way. Eventually they'll get a clue stick and realize that they need to stop seeing those disappearing T1/T3 sales that stop them from driving out DSL quickly (they lose money), and see those disappearing DSL sales that at least they made some money on.
In the absence of regulatory push, sometimes you have to push it yourself. We are Americans - we deserve DSL to every building! Nothing less. Until they wise up and deliver it for less than $50 a month, we need to fight guerilla style, and grab all the high-speed access we can, at whatever the cost.
We shall fight them on the airwaves. We shall fight them at the COs. We shall fight them for every sliver of high-speed data access. We shall never surrender, for we are the wired age, and noone shall stand in our way!
I think you mispeld Katz too. Not sure about ilites or elliterati either.
Durn those comp-u-tors. They make it too easy to type to fast. The mind is in motion, the thoughts flow, the juice makes the mind work faster, the words flow like the spice.
Can I put it up 17 years from now?
No, you can't. Look, mod me down for telling the truth to this Danish poster, but the reality is this:
The length of US copyright will always be longer than the survivor rights of the Disney created works. I'm a shareholder of Disney, and this is a truth. You just don't want to admit how flawed the system is, because you believe it to be fair.
It's not fair. It's affected by how much money Disney and other copyright holders give to the congress to extend the term of copyright.
The same process holds true for patents. They just patented (in the US), Basmati rice. These were bio-pirated from India, yet we patented them. Eventually, under pressure, we removed the patents for 17 of the 24 patents, but they still hold 7 patents.
Thus, my post, which is true, should be restated as follows:
The length of copyright in the US will always be N+x years after the death of the original copyright holder, except where it has been usurped through previously illegal means (now declared legal by congress) by a corporation. N shall be the length of years since Walt Disney died, x shall be the length in years needed to force through an extention of the copyright length in congress.
The length of a patent shall always be Y years, where Y is the time to bring to market a new pharmeceutical drug to replace the prior patent of the existing drug that would otherwise expire. Prior patents shall be granted for manufacturing processes previously undeclared in the original patent application, permitting the pharmeceutical companies to extend patent protection for N x Y years, where N is the profit yield factor of the pharmeceutical.
Look, I own shares in Disney and many pharmeceuticals. I know how the game works, I get to go to those nice annual meetings in the Caribbean too. You can pretend the system is the way you describe it, or you can realize that it is nothing like what exists worldwide, and only faintly resembles that described in the US Constitution.
I have a more workable solution than paying teachers a decent wage and benefits.
/. posting priveledges?
...
If we want to weed out illiterates, why don't we just take away their
Problem solved
In Denmark, whatever you produce (texts, images, lyrics) is automatically your copyright. You don't buy it, or have to specifically declare it copyrighted. Isn't it like this in the States?
No, here the corporations own the copyrights for 75 years after we die, and the patents last for centuries as well.
Forget the US PR game, we're the land of the fee payers and the home of the lawsuit.
[spooky music - we see that kid from AI and a certain ex-husband of Demi Moore - slowly zoom in]
...
Bruce Willis: [hushed tones] What do you see when you look in Microsoft's PR department?
[pause, music builds]
Hailey: [plaintive voice] I see dead people
[music crescendo, hush]
why was above a troll? that was useful info - apparently the Reuters version of the story has some video links of the court hearing. Noone else told us that ...
And since I asked the question that he replied to, who the heck modded him down?
Part of why Carly went this route, is HP is really getting hammered on quarterly profits. I think it's a smart move, and it will expand the Linux user base universe.
Be thankful she did it the right way - we get the source - and while you or I shan't choose it, it might help those of us stuck at companies afraid to go with Linux to choose the right solution anyway.
Where's the link to the RealVideo feed of the court depositions?
What? You mean there's no newsfeed? How come?
The question is not will Linux replace AIX, but should Linux replace AIX.
Look, don't get me wrong, the first Net server I ever got running was AIX (on a Mac, talk about irony).
The question we should be asking is, do we want Linux to become the corporate behemoth? I mean, it's nifty that Linux is an option, and that they support us, but maybe we should let Big Blue keep doing Unix with all its crufty apps for the corporate guys, and Linux does what it wants to do.
So long as they support us, help us get drivers, publish their specs, do we need to control the whole sandbox?
Is that Bill Gates gives most of the local public and private schools large grants of MSFT software, and PCs too.
But we do have some Macs and there are quite a few PTA members with Linux skills, especially in the UDist and Fremont neighborhoods.
Don't break up the company, instead try this:
... but this will.
1. fire all the top level executives and all mid-level legal department heads (wholesale) - require that MSFT replace them from a list of people who work in other software firms but have not worked for MSFT (they pick from the short list)
2. require all specs and interfaces be fully documented and available to all other US and Canadian firms. Every new code release, have an independent auditor scan new code to make sure no unpublished code interfaces are used. Until it's golden and good, it won't go out.
3. Replace the current board of directors with one where no board member may hold more than 0.1 percent of MSFT shares and recieves no more than $50,000 in options, priced at date of grant stock price.
4. Put Bill Gates in a dunk tank in Westlake Mall in Seattle, with cream pies (non-toxic) and dunk balls for free, to all comers, for 8 hours a day, 2 days a week, for a six week period. The dunk tank should be heated if the outside temp drops below 70 F or 18 C and towels provided. Prison means nothing to him
5. Require community service by all managers and execs remaining of 8 hours of coding per week for 8 weeks for Open Source code on a recognized project. Peer review is sufficient punishment.
6. Require an FTC agent be present at all times for a five year period (exception - when going to bedroom with spouse or significant other) for all executive of VP and above. Any chargable offenses to be charged on execution of said offenses. All monitors and PDA screens to be visible to said agents at all times.
Uhh.. he specifically said that Linux and Open Source t is *not* mob software. For the specific reasons you mention.
If you read the entire article, mob software really doesn't exist yet.
Or, maybe the reason mob software doesn't exist is that humans behave in certain ways when they are mobs, as opposed to gangs. And those ways just happen to not be conducive to creating software.
Besides, how do you know it doesn't exist? After all, the Cosa Nostra likes to keep it quiet, and those who rat on it have a little accident.
One should point out that you can also contextualize it, with a common base of painting for example - the use of certain background images or shades can have a meaning that a machine will miss, but a human can translate:
Picture of small boy holding a goose while reading a book = I am hungry for words.
Picture of a goose holding a book about a small boy = The feds are spying on me.
Picture done with buttons instead = no more bagels.