Napster has become a billion-dollar business by making it very easy to copy copyritten works. My feelings about copyright are that it should last *maybe* 8 years or so. But this is a country of laws and the judge had no choice but to follow the law - and shut down Napster, hard.
I can't cry for them. They are a company built on an a-moral business model. But I can cry for the internet.
Soon, it may be illegal to post links to illegal material at all. I have nothing against scour, alta-vista, and yahoo who only link to illegal mp3s. Sure, they are as agnostic as napster, making it easy to download mp3s, whether they are copyrighted or not. Legal or not.
The future of the internet is in jeapordy. Soon everything objectionable on the internet will be walled off. This will, of course, section off the internet. It will be illegal to link to porn, music, or stolen software. That means that places like breast cancer resource sites, copyright-free music, and free software will all suffer hard.
Is there a way to stop it? To boycott those who are causing this? No. WE are causing it, by putting so much effort into creating new ideas that we want disseminated and to own at the same time. The future will closely resemble the past, with guilds controlling complete sections of the economy, enforced by law. My suggestion, therefore, is to join a guild.
Here is the clickable link. That ain't no 10 minutes! This is proof (if true, of course) that bacteria can survive harsh space conditions for extended periods of time.
Sure it doesn't prove that "we are the aliens", but it's the best evidence yet (besides similar lab results of vacuum and radiation) that bacteria can survive things like mars meterorites. (Who knows, maybe even comets?) So life may be more pervasive than we thought. (Or maybe only able to be more pervasive)
1. Boycotters of Amazon will hate the blatant 1-click shopping.
2. How many 20-page installments will this book have. I would guess he has the $10,000 already and could go on to installment #2 tomorrow.
3. If this experiment is succesfull it doesn't mean joe schmo writer would be successful this way, even if amazon agreed to give them a similar deal.
4. The "honor system" is avoidable, but I think he meant to show that it is only at the expense of risking people going elsewhere. As a publicity stunt, this will gauruntee page hits to his site which valued at a penny a hit will far exceed dollar revenues. (yes a penny is an arbitrary figure).
5. This is a good system for an online learning course. If people find a course useful they might pay to get the instructor to continue. It's a paradigm for many things.
6. Holding people in "escrow" by getting the money up front and returning it later is far far more annoying than the likable 1-click credit card payment that has been arranged.
7. Anyone who sets up an ftp site with this novella is a bad person (tm) and also breaking the law.
Maybe it's enough for some to theorize. I payed my dollar and read the darn thing. It was mildly suspensefull as promised.
Think about it this way: Do you buy cds online? Books online? Stuff online in general? This is just another way to do payments for entertainment, and we should support him if the novel is good.
I disagree. Anyone should be withing their rights to say their site is "unspiderable" by personal as well as coperate spiders. They should specify this in their copyright notice and spiders.txt, and it should be enforced by law. It's the sites own loss if they do so, as yahoo auctions will probably allow spiders, and thus be quicker to shop.
Likewise, if a store wishes to only reveal prices when the item is bought, like some jewlery stores or some auto shops (due to complicated pricing) they are allowed to. And best of luck to them, competing against stores who WILL publish their prices up front, searchably, on the internet.
I'm not a creationist or a scientific ignoramus. I don't care about the oil companies.
I know the Earth transfers heat and mass with the greater universe (especially through the sun, which shines on us and allows plants to grow and thereby life and evolution, even intellegent life and computers).
But, the unavoidable conclusion of this intellegence is that it will use all available energy it can. And this use of energy will always create entropy somewhere.
This is a philosophical point, not an indictment for love of petroleum products. Let's say you use solar power. As that technology currently stands, you have to replace the 10% effecient solar panels every couple years, causing about the same polution as the large, heavy batteries that also need replacement. Arguing that "innovation" will "solve" these problems is exactly why I proposed the philisophical point that no matter how the energy is harvested, somewhere entropy is created by its use. This entropy, in the end, will lead to heating the Earth, almost by definition. Waste heat, as discussed in many forums, is an inevitable consequence of any increase in energy use.
So what WOULD I recomend? Greater efficiency of energy that's being used now is the only reasonable course of action we have. This requires our devices be more expensive to build, but will work out in the end. Like the Honda Insite, which costs $18,000 (about $5,000 more than a regular car), which is a dual gas/electric hybrid, and gets about double the normal gas efficiency due to lighter materials, brake energy capture, and electric motor efficiencies.
Entropy is created SOMEWHERE when energy is harvested. Therefore we have to be careful and use our energy wisely and efficiently. Oh, and let the prices on gas rise. I bought the most fuel efficient car I could find (the ford escort) and will weather the rise better than most. (Too bad I don't have public transportation in this area:( )
Right. The best alternatives for gasoline are deisel, Natural gas, and arguably methenal. After that, the increasingly nutty ideas are Methane, Hydrogen and Electricity, or even solar.
Unless you've got a moped weight-car with as much of a footprint as a truck, solar power doesn't generate enough electricity. Electricity simply redistributes where the carbon is burned, and Hydrogen is very unstable (and can't be found in a mine like Petroleum). The others all contribute greatly to global warming (especially methane) and are more expensive to get.
Do you want to use Nuclear Power? That would quickly make a toxic, radioactive mess.
So if you're looking to solve the global warming problem, the expense problem, or any problem, by eliminating the dominant energy source, remember the second law of thermodynamics: "Any change in a closed system will tend to make the system more entropic." (more random) Basically any method of generating energy will negatively affect the world in some way (except solar, which negatively affects the sun, slowly).
People are looting. So the store owner puts out his rolex-lookalikes (that he manufactured) out in front, and switches the labels. Noone's sold anything, and the store owner can get the insurance back on the watches he didn't (and possibly couldn't) sell.
Since this is a "top" level domain, and should be inclusive, I'd recomend a better domain listing would be.gpl, under which all gnu public liscenced software could put theircode and projects, if they wanted. Linux, Slashdot's code, OpenGL for Java, and all the various projects could go there. But maybe that's not enough. Perhaps it should be inclusive enough for all free-code free-software products, like bsd, apache, mozilla, and gnu software.
That all products and services I have ever recieved from companies large enough to afford this service have been made with excellent workmanship and have all been vastly superior to all other products in their category.
Uh... unless of course the competing products were made by another company that uses this service. In that case, the products are both of superior form and function in their own ways.
Who knows? Being "economically correct" may be as important as "politically correct".
It shouldn't matter HOW a child learns, as long as they learn. Discussions twenty years ago focussed on how TV was a developemental destructive force. Yet somehow we and our parent grew up and went to have normal lives.
I think it's important to remember there isn't too much for kids on the internet though, but plenty of software.
Important in fuel efficiency are other factors such as wind resistance, vehicle weight, and power saving devices such as efficient breaks which channel the energy created from breaking back into an electrical engine.
These fuel efficiencies are seperate to the engine, but can be co-dependant. Already cars getting 70 miles per gallon have been created simply by being dual electical/internal combustion.
As a former worker at Ford Motor Company I used a genetic algorithm to optimize fuel efficiency as a function of cost. But maybe I wasn't thourough enough... Is it possible the biggest gain is yet to come when the ENTIRE car model is fed into a genetic algorythm and optimized by geometry, with goals of fuel efficiency and vehicle cost?
I had heard they were coming out with a C++ based language called "COOL". It sounded very similar to this newer speculation about "C#".
There are a couple of problems with Microsoft coming out with a cross-platform language and expecting everyone to use it instead of it's competitors (C,C++, and Java are all reasonably well supported across most platforms.)
1. Microsoft isn't well known for good cross-platform support. Their new SOAP XML standards are a good start. However, the technologies VB, COM, and MFC extentions were quite well rememberred as terribly non-cross platform, even though they claimed COM was (and claimed NT was POSIX compliant).
2. There is a good deal of heavily entrenched and saturated languages like Java and TCL already poised to defend their positions.
3. Microsoft is more weak than ever in claiming "This is the future." Their future is quite uncertain now, even if they fix a deal with the Justice Department.
-Ben
(P.S. This sounds like a computer language made for people who played flue and programmed C before, and now want to try object modelling their computer synthesiser.)
Time is on Microsoft's side. This doesn't mean they are right. We have a constitutional right to a speedy trial, no right to one that lasts as long as we want. Most corporations would love it if they could continue illegal and unethical behavhior in full view of the public and justice system for 10 (count them 10) years. Since were all tired of this, we should be happy for the possibility that this judgement moves it along. An injustice that has lasted for 10 long years is Microsoft's ability to claim that they need more time... and using ALL of that time to harass competitors. It's as if a school bully delayed his suspension hearings for weeks, during which time he bullied the other kids more, and then asks for more time again at the end. If this alone doesn't deserve the corporate death penalty (break-up), then what actions do?
Some people are pretending that downloading the Starr report and having to wait a few more minutes for it (during which time you can still put it in the background and work on something else) is the same thing as the hours of wait and pain you go through at a DMV. Get real. There truly is practically no wait (no more than it takes to download the product information and then make a decision and implement it... which all has to happen (slightly differently) when you are in line as well.)
Go to the DMV and tell me which soulless automatons you'd rather deal with.
It seems there is a point here: most people who work at the biggest advertisers, like McDonald's, Nike, the Gap, Wal-Mart, and Disney do get paid less than the market average for their position. And the second competitors to these (Burger King, and other shoe company, Old Navy, K-mart) also get paid nearly nothing.
My point is this: the advertising budgets are high, the pay of these companies is low, the homogeneousness is incredibly high and the chance for innovation or advancement for working at these places is absolutely zero.
My point is this: if people were to stop working at these places, then these 'evil' systems would colapse. A simple solution would be a recruitment page for small businesses where new employees would decide based on pay where to work.
We aren't living on the moon or mars or underwater or any other place now. We don't have ray guns or laser rifles or phasers.
Will we still be waiting for this future in 2050? (Put this under the future that never happened?) Will we still be waiting for the GUT then? (probably, since we can't know what we'll find between now and then)
Just because the doubling power of computers has held for rougly 60 years doesn't mean it will last forever. Did the European expansion throughout the world last forever? Did the power of rockets? Did the AIDS pandemic kill billions? Well, keep a thinking head on, and remember this might be the umpteenth time humans tried to reach an infinity in a closed space.
I have discussed the antitrust topics with konstant in the past. And I don't believe him to be unfairly biased at all!
How many Red Hat or AOL/Netscape employees who would love to see Microsoft drowned in litigation reply to this topic without such honesty? And they have every right to. Even if this good man konstant declined to mention his employer... perhaps, as a human with knowledge and feelings about this case has a right to speak. He has made no secret of his affiliations in the past anyway. And he raises a good point about the buying of a company just to prop up a letigious lawsuit against a rival! Read: AOL buys Netscape or Microsoft invests in Apple... etc...
In short, I'd like to say: "Listen to the message, and remember the source doesn't matter if the logic is valid!" Perhaps he can add something good regardless.
Personally I think $150 million is a valid amount to settle for and mutually beneficial to both parties, except of course for Novell Systems!
This is the best response to my very philosophical stance I have read. I understand you have not only put thought and work into your response (buying something for less than its value != legalized theft) but you have brought up a much more relavent example than my somewhat outlandish "murder" example.
For those who responded harshly to this extreme example, let me say for the record that my "murder" example did not involve any self-defense issues; any crime and punishment issues, or whether or how exactly the person was bad. The murderred party could just have been someone you didn't like (hence the "Bill Gates", who is unpopular here, perhaps unfairly so.)
Obviously, standard business logic dictates then when faced with buying a "diamond in the rough" you do not start by explaining to the merchant what you think it is worth. You could be wrong, after all, and the merchant could fail to inform you so. In a perfect world, this situation could never occur - everyone would clearly know the relative values of everything around them and everything would be commodity priced (perhaps with small fees attached for delivery or the sale itself, since otherwise no seller would have an incentive to sell something in their posession.)
This is the stuff of Economics 101, and obviously it doesn't work that way in the real or virtual world (especially E-bay). So, then, you may be right, screw 'em cause they didn't check their lawbooks enough may be the order of the day; but remember... this sets a general precedent, not an incident. From now on, every agreement must now be cross-checked across every state, county, township, national, international, provincial law, or else. So those advocating this idiotic notion that it is "fair" WILL be screwed over by a company like Microsoft, and they WILL lose their money in just so fair a way.
Let's face it; if Red Hat or Corel or Caldera offered a service deal in a loan, as Microsoft did it's MSN deal, then suddenly morality changes?
Well it doesn't. There is NO MORAL DIFFERENCE between murderring a bad man and murderring a good one. And there is no moral difference between legalized theft from a good company or a bad one.
Just because the law can't punish you doesn't mean it's somehow a correct action! If you were *allowed* to shoot Bill Gates, would you? If your answer is "no, I wouldn't do that" then consider how much it really matterred to you whether you were allowed to do something by the government!
I made my comment as a constructive piece of criticism to be worked with, not a catch-all.
My belief is that it takes less resources to secure an equivalent revelation in software systems than in, say, tractor parts. Therefore, the reward (in government supported monopoly over a number of years) should be lower. Exactly how many years should be determined by the how many years the industry can tolerate being without key technologies.
But there is another problem lurking behind the current patent system. Besides the fact that these patent "clerks" get payed nothing and hit with sh*t from lawyers making their annual salary in a week. Besides the fact that Congress has made "business processes" patentable, in violation of the spirit of patent law. Besides the fact that Intelectual property is itself a dubious notion (remember when your ten year-old friends used to say when an idea worked "I thought of it first!").
The real problems stem from truth, logic, and lack thereof in the system of obtaining, enforcing, and repealing patents. Each of these are insanely expensive, abusable, and all too human processes. I mean, there is better logic in playgrounds and Nurseries than in the lawyer's technical arguments over why X should pay Y several billion dollars of hard-earned money.
Submarine patents are obvious abuses, and should not be valid. Ever played boggle? Two people look for words in any direction on a small letter board, and hide their sheets. The most, best words win, and the rule is if two people come up with the same word from the board neither player gets the points. Patents should work like that. If two people independantly come up with an idea, obviously it wasn't patentable to begin with.
Since software has just recently become patentable, it should have a short-lived patent system, say a 3 year patent on all software innovations. Later, say in 10 years, congress could then extend the length of patents for longer. This is because software is a new and quickly emerging field, without 17-year business cycles.
Also, any new field (such as bio-technology and quantum computing) should have these same short patent lifetimes, followed by extensions as the market is ready for it. The times could be universally agreed upon by the (patent and non-patent holding) people in the industry.
This is my most reasonable thought on the subject, and it would have, if instigated earlier, quite nicely have kept microsoft from being able to hold its government-enforced software monopoly for its 20 year stranglehold. The old dos technology would have been quickly giving to third parties who would have helped the entire market, like the IBM-compatable computers.
Slashdot Mirror
Napster has become a billion-dollar business by making it very easy to copy copyritten works. My feelings about copyright are that it should last *maybe* 8 years or so. But this is a country of laws and the judge had no choice but to follow the law - and shut down Napster, hard.
I can't cry for them. They are a company built on an a-moral business model. But I can cry for the internet.
Soon, it may be illegal to post links to illegal material at all. I have nothing against scour, alta-vista, and yahoo who only link to illegal mp3s. Sure, they are as agnostic as napster, making it easy to download mp3s, whether they are copyrighted or not. Legal or not.
The future of the internet is in jeapordy. Soon everything objectionable on the internet will be walled off. This will, of course, section off the internet. It will be illegal to link to porn, music, or stolen software. That means that places like breast cancer resource sites, copyright-free music, and free software will all suffer hard.
Is there a way to stop it? To boycott those who are causing this? No. WE are causing it, by putting so much effort into creating new ideas that we want disseminated and to own at the same time. The future will closely resemble the past, with guilds controlling complete sections of the economy, enforced by law. My suggestion, therefore, is to join a guild.
-Ben
Here is the clickable link. That ain't no 10 minutes! This is proof (if true, of course) that bacteria can survive harsh space conditions for extended periods of time.
Sure it doesn't prove that "we are the aliens", but it's the best evidence yet (besides similar lab results of vacuum and radiation) that bacteria can survive things like mars meterorites. (Who knows, maybe even comets?) So life may be more pervasive than we thought. (Or maybe only able to be more pervasive)
-Ben
http://www.science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast0 1sep98_1.htm
Many have referred to it; here it is from a reliable source. Or as reliable as you get on the internet.
-Ben
Some theorizing myself would include:
1. Boycotters of Amazon will hate the blatant 1-click shopping.
2. How many 20-page installments will this book have. I would guess he has the $10,000 already and could go on to installment #2 tomorrow.
3. If this experiment is succesfull it doesn't mean joe schmo writer would be successful this way, even if amazon agreed to give them a similar deal.
4. The "honor system" is avoidable, but I think he meant to show that it is only at the expense of risking people going elsewhere. As a publicity stunt, this will gauruntee page hits to his site which valued at a penny a hit will far exceed dollar revenues. (yes a penny is an arbitrary figure).
5. This is a good system for an online learning course. If people find a course useful they might pay to get the instructor to continue. It's a paradigm for many things.
6. Holding people in "escrow" by getting the money up front and returning it later is far far more annoying than the likable 1-click credit card payment that has been arranged.
7. Anyone who sets up an ftp site with this novella is a bad person (tm) and also breaking the law.
-Ben
Maybe it's enough for some to theorize. I payed my dollar and read the darn thing. It was mildly suspensefull as promised.
Think about it this way: Do you buy cds online? Books online? Stuff online in general? This is just another way to do payments for entertainment, and we should support him if the novel is good.
-Ben
I disagree. Anyone should be withing their rights to say their site is "unspiderable" by personal as well as coperate spiders. They should specify this in their copyright notice and spiders.txt, and it should be enforced by law. It's the sites own loss if they do so, as yahoo auctions will probably allow spiders, and thus be quicker to shop.
Likewise, if a store wishes to only reveal prices when the item is bought, like some jewlery stores or some auto shops (due to complicated pricing) they are allowed to. And best of luck to them, competing against stores who WILL publish their prices up front, searchably, on the internet.
-Ben
I'm not a creationist or a scientific ignoramus. I don't care about the oil companies.
:( )
I know the Earth transfers heat and mass with the greater universe (especially through the sun, which shines on us and allows plants to grow and thereby life and evolution, even intellegent life and computers).
But, the unavoidable conclusion of this intellegence is that it will use all available energy it can. And this use of energy will always create entropy somewhere.
This is a philosophical point, not an indictment for love of petroleum products. Let's say you use solar power. As that technology currently stands, you have to replace the 10% effecient solar panels every couple years, causing about the same polution as the large, heavy batteries that also need replacement. Arguing that "innovation" will "solve" these problems is exactly why I proposed the philisophical point that no matter how the energy is harvested, somewhere entropy is created by its use. This entropy, in the end, will lead to heating the Earth, almost by definition. Waste heat, as discussed in many forums, is an inevitable consequence of any increase in energy use.
So what WOULD I recomend? Greater efficiency of energy that's being used now is the only reasonable course of action we have. This requires our devices be more expensive to build, but will work out in the end. Like the Honda Insite, which costs $18,000 (about $5,000 more than a regular car), which is a dual gas/electric hybrid, and gets about double the normal gas efficiency due to lighter materials, brake energy capture, and electric motor efficiencies.
Entropy is created SOMEWHERE when energy is harvested. Therefore we have to be careful and use our energy wisely and efficiently. Oh, and let the prices on gas rise. I bought the most fuel efficient car I could find (the ford escort) and will weather the rise better than most. (Too bad I don't have public transportation in this area
-Ben
Right. The best alternatives for gasoline are deisel, Natural gas, and arguably methenal. After that, the increasingly nutty ideas are Methane, Hydrogen and Electricity, or even solar.
Unless you've got a moped weight-car with as much of a footprint as a truck, solar power doesn't generate enough electricity. Electricity simply redistributes where the carbon is burned, and Hydrogen is very unstable (and can't be found in a mine like Petroleum). The others all contribute greatly to global warming (especially methane) and are more expensive to get.
Do you want to use Nuclear Power? That would quickly make a toxic, radioactive mess.
So if you're looking to solve the global warming problem, the expense problem, or any problem, by eliminating the dominant energy source, remember the second law of thermodynamics: "Any change in a closed system will tend to make the system more entropic." (more random) Basically any method of generating energy will negatively affect the world in some way (except solar, which negatively affects the sun, slowly).
-Ben
People are looting. So the store owner puts out his rolex-lookalikes (that he manufactured) out in front, and switches the labels. Noone's sold anything, and the store owner can get the insurance back on the watches he didn't (and possibly couldn't) sell.
-Ben
Since this is a "top" level domain, and should be inclusive, I'd recomend a better domain listing would be .gpl, under which all gnu public liscenced software could put theircode and projects, if they wanted. Linux, Slashdot's code, OpenGL for Java, and all the various projects could go there. But maybe that's not enough. Perhaps it should be inclusive enough for all free-code free-software products, like bsd, apache, mozilla, and gnu software.
-Ben
That all products and services I have ever recieved from companies large enough to afford this service have been made with excellent workmanship and have all been vastly superior to all other products in their category.
Uh... unless of course the competing products were made by another company that uses this service. In that case, the products are both of superior form and function in their own ways.
Who knows? Being "economically correct" may be as important as "politically correct".
-Ben
Now all I need is some gloves of power and I'll rule the world!
HAHAHAHAHA
It shouldn't matter HOW a child learns, as long as they learn. Discussions twenty years ago focussed on how TV was a developemental destructive force. Yet somehow we and our parent grew up and went to have normal lives.
I think it's important to remember there isn't too much for kids on the internet though, but plenty of software.
Important in fuel efficiency are other factors such as wind resistance, vehicle weight, and power saving devices such as efficient breaks which channel the energy created from breaking back into an electrical engine.
These fuel efficiencies are seperate to the engine, but can be co-dependant. Already cars getting 70 miles per gallon have been created simply by being dual electical/internal combustion.
As a former worker at Ford Motor Company I used a genetic algorithm to optimize fuel efficiency as a function of cost. But maybe I wasn't thourough enough... Is it possible the biggest gain is yet to come when the ENTIRE car model is fed into a genetic algorythm and optimized by geometry, with goals of fuel efficiency and vehicle cost?
-Ben
I had heard they were coming out with a C++ based language called "COOL". It sounded very similar to this newer speculation about "C#".
There are a couple of problems with Microsoft coming out with a cross-platform language and expecting everyone to use it instead of it's competitors (C,C++, and Java are all reasonably well supported across most platforms.)
1. Microsoft isn't well known for good cross-platform support. Their new SOAP XML standards are a good start. However, the technologies VB, COM, and MFC extentions were quite well rememberred as terribly non-cross platform, even though they claimed COM was (and claimed NT was POSIX compliant).
2. There is a good deal of heavily entrenched and saturated languages like Java and TCL already poised to defend their positions.
3. Microsoft is more weak than ever in claiming "This is the future." Their future is quite uncertain now, even if they fix a deal with the Justice Department.
-Ben
(P.S. This sounds like a computer language made for people who played flue and programmed C before, and now want to try object modelling their computer synthesiser.)
Time is on Microsoft's side. This doesn't mean they are right. We have a constitutional right to a speedy trial, no right to one that lasts as long as we want. Most corporations would love it if they could continue illegal and unethical behavhior in full view of the public and justice system for 10 (count them 10) years. Since were all tired of this, we should be happy for the possibility that this judgement moves it along.
An injustice that has lasted for 10 long years is Microsoft's ability to claim that they need more time... and using ALL of that time to harass competitors. It's as if a school bully delayed his suspension hearings for weeks, during which time he bullied the other kids more, and then asks for more time again at the end. If this alone doesn't deserve the corporate death penalty (break-up), then what actions do?
-Ben
This is the best comment here yet.
Some people are pretending that downloading the Starr report and having to wait a few more minutes for it (during which time you can still put it in the background and work on something else) is the same thing as the hours of wait and pain you go through at a DMV. Get real. There truly is practically no wait (no more than it takes to download the product information and then make a decision and implement it... which all has to happen (slightly differently) when you are in line as well.)
Go to the DMV and tell me which soulless automatons you'd rather deal with.
-Ben
Quite right, and a good point I missed.
-Ben
It seems there is a point here: most people who work at the biggest advertisers, like McDonald's, Nike, the Gap, Wal-Mart, and Disney do get paid less than the market average for their position. And the second competitors to these (Burger King, and other shoe company, Old Navy, K-mart) also get paid nearly nothing.
My point is this: the advertising budgets are high, the pay of these companies is low, the homogeneousness is incredibly high and the chance for innovation or advancement for working at these places is absolutely zero.
My point is this: if people were to stop working at these places, then these 'evil' systems would colapse. A simple solution would be a recruitment page for small businesses where new employees would decide based on pay where to work.
-Ben
We aren't living on the moon or mars or underwater or any other place now. We don't have ray guns or laser rifles or phasers.
Will we still be waiting for this future in 2050?
(Put this under the future that never happened?)
Will we still be waiting for the GUT then? (probably, since we can't know what we'll find between now and then)
Just because the doubling power of computers has held for rougly 60 years doesn't mean it will last forever. Did the European expansion throughout the world last forever? Did the power of rockets? Did the AIDS pandemic kill billions? Well, keep a thinking head on, and remember this might be the umpteenth time humans tried to reach an infinity in a closed space.
-Ben
I have discussed the antitrust topics with konstant in the past. And I don't believe him to be unfairly biased at all!
How many Red Hat or AOL/Netscape employees who would love to see Microsoft drowned in litigation reply to this topic without such honesty? And they have every right to. Even if this good man konstant declined to mention his employer... perhaps, as a human with knowledge and feelings about this case has a right to speak. He has made no secret of his affiliations in the past anyway. And he raises a good point about the buying of a company just to prop up a letigious lawsuit against a rival! Read: AOL buys Netscape or Microsoft invests in Apple... etc...
In short, I'd like to say: "Listen to the message, and remember the source doesn't matter if the logic is valid!" Perhaps he can add something good regardless.
Personally I think $150 million is a valid amount to settle for and mutually beneficial to both parties, except of course for Novell Systems!
-Ben
This is the best response to my very philosophical stance I have read. I understand you have not only put thought and work into your response (buying something for less than its value != legalized theft) but you have brought up a much more relavent example than my somewhat outlandish "murder" example.
For those who responded harshly to this extreme example, let me say for the record that my "murder" example did not involve any self-defense issues; any crime and punishment issues, or whether or how exactly the person was bad. The murderred party could just have been someone you didn't like (hence the "Bill Gates", who is unpopular here, perhaps unfairly so.)
Obviously, standard business logic dictates then when faced with buying a "diamond in the rough" you do not start by explaining to the merchant what you think it is worth. You could be wrong, after all, and the merchant could fail to inform you so. In a perfect world, this situation could never occur - everyone would clearly know the relative values of everything around them and everything would be commodity priced (perhaps with small fees attached for delivery or the sale itself, since otherwise no seller would have an incentive to sell something in their posession.)
This is the stuff of Economics 101, and obviously it doesn't work that way in the real or virtual world (especially E-bay). So, then, you may be right, screw 'em cause they didn't check their lawbooks enough may be the order of the day; but remember... this sets a general precedent, not an incident. From now on, every agreement must now be cross-checked across every state, county, township, national, international, provincial law, or else. So those advocating this idiotic notion that it is "fair" WILL be screwed over by a company like Microsoft, and they WILL lose their money in just so fair a way.
-Ben
Let's face it; if Red Hat or Corel or Caldera offered a service deal in a loan, as Microsoft did it's MSN deal, then suddenly morality changes?
Well it doesn't. There is NO MORAL DIFFERENCE between murderring a bad man and murderring a good one. And there is no moral difference between legalized theft from a good company or a bad one.
Just because the law can't punish you doesn't mean it's somehow a correct action! If you were *allowed* to shoot Bill Gates, would you? If your answer is "no, I wouldn't do that" then consider how much it really matterred to you whether you were allowed to do something by the government!
-Ben
I made my comment as a constructive piece of criticism to be worked with, not a catch-all.
My belief is that it takes less resources to secure an equivalent revelation in software systems than in, say, tractor parts. Therefore, the reward (in government supported monopoly over a number of years) should be lower. Exactly how many years should be determined by the how many years the industry can tolerate being without key technologies.
But there is another problem lurking behind the current patent system. Besides the fact that these patent "clerks" get payed nothing and hit with sh*t from lawyers making their annual salary in a week. Besides the fact that Congress has made "business processes" patentable, in violation of the spirit of patent law. Besides the fact that Intelectual property is itself a dubious notion (remember when your ten year-old friends used to say when an idea worked "I thought of it first!").
The real problems stem from truth, logic, and lack thereof in the system of obtaining, enforcing, and repealing patents. Each of these are insanely expensive, abusable, and all too human processes. I mean, there is better logic in playgrounds and Nurseries than in the lawyer's technical arguments over why X should pay Y several billion dollars of hard-earned money.
Submarine patents are obvious abuses, and should not be valid. Ever played boggle? Two people look for words in any direction on a small letter board, and hide their sheets. The most, best words win, and the rule is if two people come up with the same word from the board neither player gets the points. Patents should work like that. If two people independantly come up with an idea, obviously it wasn't patentable to begin with.
-Ben
I have always believed the simplest way is this:
Since software has just recently become patentable, it should have a short-lived patent system, say a 3 year patent on all software innovations. Later, say in 10 years, congress could then extend the length of patents for longer. This is because software is a new and quickly emerging field, without 17-year business cycles.
Also, any new field (such as bio-technology and quantum computing) should have these same short patent lifetimes, followed by extensions as the market is ready for it. The times could be universally agreed upon by the (patent and non-patent holding) people in the industry.
This is my most reasonable thought on the subject, and it would have, if instigated earlier, quite nicely have kept microsoft from being able to hold its government-enforced software monopoly for its 20 year stranglehold. The old dos technology would have been quickly giving to third parties who would have helped the entire market, like the IBM-compatable computers.
-Ben
(p.s. check out http://www.overlawyered.com)