Geeks should want not just software patents, but also "business process patents" (such as Priceline's reverse auction) to be banned. The spirit of the current patent law seems to already say that "algorithms and laws of nature should not be patentable." But, even though it is clear to each of us that all software programs are long copywritable collections of algorithms, there is such cluelessness in Washington D.C. that they were willing to listen to money rather than to law.
In fact, my humble opinion is that the whole judicial system in America is broken. Perhaps it is also broken elsewhere in the world and never worked at all. But when a judge can take the word a man who makes about $20,000 a year and has to deal with perhaps thousands of patent cases... and hold that over billion dollar industries...
My point is this. In our increasingly litigious society, people are flocking to building whatever fodder for lawsuits and protection from lawsuits they can find. The real heart of the problem is the breakdown of logic, facts, and truth in the judicial system in favor of patents, stories, allegations, and the threat of a lawsuit!
Surely you're not saying that just because the senators are republicans, that they have no care for individual welfare and only care about the companies. Oh wait a second, that's exactly what you're saying:
"I wonder where all the pressure came from. Citizens? Or the business lobby? Given the fact that the two politicians that were quoted were Republicans, it must have been mostly from the business side."
Well, as a freestanding individualist, I find your stereotypes as annoying as your ignorance. And I also do not believe ANYONE should expect the companies they work for to at any time care about in what conditions you live or work at home. If we open that door, we'll find that some companies actually WANT to pick out their employees furniture! And a couple other things too.
This OHSA paper from November 15th, 1999, seems illogical and also indicative of the growing unnecessary government influence in our lives. I'm glad we live in a time and place where it could be reversed quickly.
To me, it seems quite obvious that the U.S. government should not step into the psychological field.
I only listed what the large expenses would reasonably be if and when the government took over the field. You said a strange statement:
"Treating the mentally ill actually saves money; we lose massive amounts of economic productivity through illnesses like alcoholism, like depression or anxiety. "
I was myself treated for depression, and it may or may not have helped, but it was expensive. It was EXACTLY the cost of the first two figures (of course I counted what the insurance itself paid, not my deductable.) I merely think the insurance and HMO methods America has are better than government intervention taking over the system.
Alcoholism is a strange psychological disease, if it is one at all. What the hell would psychologists perscribe for this anyway? A pseudo-religious 12-step program, a drug, therapy?
Finally, anxiety, which I do not know the costs for (but I know it can be treated with therapy and wellbutrin, exactly like depression). Do you know the costs? How much are you willing to pay in taxes for this wierd government psychological program??
If we pay government psychs less than the current professionals, what service do you expect? If we pay them the same, what will happen to the costs as people start demanding treatment for stress?(which affects, roughly, 100% of the population at some time.)
You claim my figures are off (giving nothing to back that up), and then sound off about how it would be much better under a government system. Sounds to me like you've put in too little thought now, and we will all put in too much money later.
It turns out they have a retired gulf war vet as head of government relations. So if the telcoms come screaming, this vet, who happens to carry the title "Rear Admiral" may be of some use. He also worked in BOTH THE REAGAN AND BUSH ADMINISTRATIONS people. If it comes down to a gov't showdown, and Bush Jr. is in charge, my bets are all on the Admiral.
Offtopic but true: Rear Admiral Grace Cooper invented the compiler. If this Admiral is half the person she was, we may see some innovation coming.
I'm not convinced at all. This seems to truly be the wrong thing to do. Our current solutions for people with mental illnesses are just not advanced enough to be credible.
Our choices for treatment now include: 1. Talk to them (ala sigmund freud.) Do you have any idea how much this costs? $75 for 15 minutes apparently.
2. Drug 'em (ala Middle Ages). Costs about $35 a day, that is, for Welbutrin for Depression.
3. Lock 'em up (ala before Middle Ages) put them in an institution, for "protection"
I should know. I don't think I'll go back to the mental stuff we have currently for a while. And I don't know if we can each afford the taxes... Here's how it actually works out:
Each taxpayer (1/2 of the population) pays for each currently mentally ill patient (1/5) of the population. The patients, by my estimates listed up there, would cost between $75 a week (for therapy) and $200 a week (for medication and monitoring) or even $1000 per week (to lock them up). Now each taxpayer (of which I'm one now) Pays for 2/5 of each sick person's bill. Can you afford $30 a week extra in taxes, or $1560 a year? Can you afford $4160 a year (the most reasonable estimate) for medication alone? Can you afford $20800 in taxes extra a year??
That's what we're talking about here.
Don't buy the hype. This is another phony baloney attempt by the government to completely take over our lives and our money. All in the name of normalcy.
1. Antiseptics and Antibiotics are used to counter bacteria. 2. Bacteria becomes resistant to all or most forms of antibiotics. 3. General cleanliness, like soap hand washing becomes the norm in society. 4. Many people's immune systems, now made unready by the lack of bacterial diseases, become weaker. Immune disorders in the population thrive. 5. The only solution to this state of events is to genetically modify humans with weak or unready immune systems to have more powerful immune systems.
Prediction: In a tit for tat state, this will lead to diseases we cannot now fathom. They will again be dealt with through massive scientific effort, which may in fact lead to the erradication of all harmful bacteria and microbes we now know of. After that happens, who knows?
By my count, there were ~1300 signatures so far today. The counter seems to be malfunctioning for me, and it says "160 signatures.
Assuming we have twice that today, and with 300 days until the elections, and assuming today is more busy than typical, they will come to about 300,000 signatures. Unless cnn or yahoo or msnbc pick this up, I expect them to fall short of their (IMHO) low expectation. I'm signature number 157, btw.
Remember not to send them your primary e-mail as it isn't a secure form.
Arthur C Clarke was of the impression it's because we had no space program. I'd have to agree.
What many here may not realize is that the mission to the moon is still regarded as one of the most important stories of the twentieth century (3rd, I believe.)
Of course, at that time *there was no robots* who could have pilotted the craft and colected the moon rocks. Back then, the only choice was to spend the huge amount of money to send people in order to do the scientific study. Today, we could accomplish these things as well with cheaper, faster programs like sojourner and the downed climate observer.
But humanity is less completely enthralled by such programs. They don't hold the promise that the manned moon missions did. The thoughts of building houses and colonies on the moon in the lifetime of the astronauts who flew there. We're not pacified by the more scientific but less human mars program currently running.
Therefore, I think we may wish to try it the old way. Send men to mars, get them back. We don't have the technology to do this efficiently yet, but we may have it very soon. What this petition is about is the goal. Not for scientific purposes but for equally valid social and human purposes. I believe it will be an important step to solving one of humanities greatest problems: our eventual extinction we face by keeping ourselves locked into a single planet.
There's no excuse for it; we simply can't say that Microsoft did it on purpose even before they've been officially accused. Certainly, that's not to excuse their sloppiness, but I'm sure this is not malicious. They know very well that Lotus Notes can be run on many Unices, and they need the revenue. Now if the promised fix doesn't come in a week, then we can start the conspiricy engines. But for now, sloppiness is the only decent explanation.
And if they did it maliciously, or incompetently fail to fix the bug, who the hell cares? People can go on using service pack 5 until they have Lotus Notes working on Linux.
CMU, at the behest of the RIAA just reprimanded students for using the microsoft network to distribute mp3s and other software. They did this because they aren't a common carrier of information and could be sued by the RIAA. Here we see another man, using what can only be described as trade secrets to create an unliscenced DVD player over the internet.
Why do we pretend, sometimes, to care about IP at all, when by our actions we decry it as a thing of any value to society? Why do we feel so moved by this guy risking his neck against the Movie industry when thousands of penniless college students are doing the same against the music industry?
What is the internet? If a library can loan out books to anyone who wants them at any time, then why aren't library books on the internet, as well as tapes and cds that are at all libraries; even movies and newspapers are in libraries. If all that information IS ALREADY FREE AT THE NEAREST LIBRARY, then is the internet going to be, in the near future, simply a big shared *free* library?At some libraries I went to, some software was available for borrowing.
I know you don't quite grasp what I'm trying to say, so I'll make it easy for you: Copyright law is not the ideal way to run a society, especially one in which the students are bled for all their money like in CMU. There were very very few people there who had enough money left over (after financial aid determined how poor you should be) to buy CDs. And forget $50 for a game when you could eat for two weeks or not. You obviously have no clue what you are suggesting; in fact people simply couldn't work full time and go to college; because the classes were pretty darn tough. I saw people try to work full time at CMU - and go crazy doing it (if they weren't crazy to begin with.) So don't lecture me on being utopian!
You do what you need to do, so stealing and borrowing entertainment was a necessity. I've graduated - I don't go downloading WaRez now; I've got plenty of money to go to buy tunes for my car cd if I wish. But back then, you could forget it. And people in such a poverty position, many who couldn't find the time or transportation to go to a CD store (the nearest Sam Goody is 3 miles away) won't bother. And since few had cars, but most spent all their time on computers, downloading MP3s was pretty darn natural.
That's how it was.
You can take your idiotic "morality" and stuff it up your you know what. It's like saying to people marooned on a desert island that it's wrong to not do their taxes!
Oh and one more thing; for better or worse, the free software movement is about freedom, licensing, intellectual property, and copyright issues. So my landlord gets paid, but I know in my heart the direction society needs to be going.
The RIAA, which is a legal front and pressure group for the protection of the oligopoly of music production in America, is at it again. They want there to be only three ways to get music: over the radio, where you get addicted to it, on CDs where you buy it for 10 to 20 times what it cost to produce, and in the background of popular movies and shows, where you again go to the record store and buy the music for the soundtrack.
What really upsets me is that we have the tools now to be truly free of these ancient restrictions. All it takes is some freedom from the outside world (as in CMU) and a desire (to listen to music) with a problem (no money) to get the ball rolling. Like in the 60s, I know that using drugs and stealing music is a dead end, but to the hundreds of CMU students now forced to follow such restrictiveness while I had a so much easier time of it all, I'd like to say, "Bummer Dudes."
I know this sounds maybe too unreal to be believed, but I liked the free access to information environment at CMU. We had no money, and yet we all had pirated versions of quake, warcraft, starcraft, and plenty of MP3s and movie files. South Park episodes were on almost everyones' shared directory. I miss the freedom of going to any share directory in the CMU network and grabbing dozens of MP3 files I wanted very quickly, very easily, and very freely. What am I saying? That's illegal, immoral, and wrong! Right? I remember hoping that this was the future of computing - where everyone could claim access to anything and any entertainment they wanted. Now it's clear CMU doesn't want this to be the future. Why do so many here support *Free* software and yet cling so hard to copyright? Information should be free people, that's what we fought Microsoft for! We're the hippies, we're the rebels, we're the people who hate the restrictiveness of society, right? Sadly, Benjamin Shniper
First, the trial itself was the big deal. Since the trial, more and more attention has been payed to non-windows alternatives. Just before the trial, we saw Microsoft doing what it does best- double time. They marginalized Word Perfect, OS/2, and were starting to marginalize Unix as a server platform. They even started to marginalize Netscape (and I write of their success from an I.E. 5.0 browser, based on Spyglass Mosaic and bought lock, stock, and barrel by Microsoft's treasure.) There was no question AOL and other media companies were the next to feel Microsoft's expanding wrath.
Now, since the trial, you can buy Linux systems at Best Buy for $30 to $199 AND you can still download it for free from the internet. AOL is as strong as ever, and has added the mortally wounded Netscape company to it's fold. IBM seems to be making a comeback, and WordPerfect has been resurected as a Linux Suite! These were all due to the trial itself. So the trial was good.
But is the ruling good? It is and isn't. First, it's good that the present trends of the resurection of good old technologies can continue. But it will be bad if Microsoft is punished too severely. They always have made the products the people wanted and will continue to do so with their long-awaited and expensive Windows 2000. Still, perhaps we can look at this as an important lesson, you can buy the market, but you can't buy the government.
But with linux resurected and innovation safely out of Microsoft's grasp, I got what I wanted from the trial. And now, that it is at this stage, I wish it would stop. So I'd recomend not punishing Microsoft. We've drawn blood, we've kicked them when they were down, and we've shown them we can write better software than they can buy. Leave them alone. If they come after us again, let them have another trial and all the punishment they deserve.
This is correct. In other words he could say "Internet Explorer was bundled unfairly." or he could say it wasn't. This is more important, from a business standpoint, then the actual punishment.
It is like a judge saying "Bob really did steal that $100 from Jim."
The judge could say Bob pays Jim back $100, or Bob should go to jail, or Bob should get off with a warning.
But what people really care about is whether Microsoft's actions constitute stealing, more than they are interested with what the Judge will do with it.
I considerred doing this, but decided not to. Still, the fact remains that without many employees or expenses to build the systems they sell, money gets generated. Yes, it is probably being ported through some accounting tricks to save tax and look better on paper. My point isn't that these accounting tricks are excusable. My point is that they are making seriously large amounts of money in revenue, and thus deserve to be a hundred billion dollar company. Whether they deserve to be a trillion dollar company is up to stockholders, not you or me.
This may sound like a ridiculous thing to do, but I'd like to look at the math of this guy. Basically, a quick check at how a company selling about 50 million units a year worldwide at about 200$ profit each could possibly lose money. Between selling it's office suite and Windows NT to each company in America and charging about 400$ each, they must make money. Real money. That's about $10 billion dollars a year in variable profit and $20 billion a year in sales, by this estimate. Plus they sell tons of databases, e-mail and servers. Truly, I don't understand what all the hoopla could possibly be about. Are companies NOT going to buy Windows 2000 in droves? That's the issue, not the accounting practices.
P.S. this was just a guess, but on microsoft's page: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/fastfacts.htm
They say: Net revenue $19.75 billion Net income $7.79 billion
I'm sorry, but doesn't this seem reasonable? They can do whatever obfuscations of the accounting they want, but the fact is they're making money hand over fist. Until that changes, and we can change it by demonstrating better products than Microsoft's, they will be around.
This may sound like a ridiculous thing to do, but I'd like to look at the math of this guy. Basically, a quick check at how a company selling about 50 million units a year worldwide at about 200$ profit each could possibly lose money. Between selling it's office suite and Windows NT to each company in America and charging about 400$ each, they must make money. Real money. That's about $10 billion dollars a year in variable profit and $20 billion a year in sales, by this estimate. Plus they sell tons of databases, e-mail and servers. Truly, I don't understand what all the hoopla could possibly be about. Are companies NOT going to buy Windows 2000 in droves? That's the issue, not the accounting practices. P.S. this was just a guess, but on microsoft's page: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/fastfacts.htm They say: Net revenue $19.75 billion Net income $7.79 billion I'm sorry, but doesn't this seem reasonable? They can do whatever obfuscations of the accounting they want, but the fact is they're making money hand over fist. Until that changes, and we can change it by demonstrating better products than Microsoft's, they will be around. -Benjamin Shniper
This is from a comment on my favorite news-site, slashdot. Mr. Carter has constructed a theory of anthroplogy based about the premise that some large percentage of people are diseased. He has done this based on his observation of white-collar workers, primarily in technical fields. Earlier in this century Katherine C. Briggs cast her net wider. She observed some of the same phenomena, but in a much bigger context. She came up with a different interpretation. The sub-branch of psychology she founded has the following paradigm: A certain sub-population can be characterized as particularly change- and risk- adverse, very traditionalist and conservative, very methodical and habitual - among other traits. Testing indicates these people comprise about one third of the US population. Testing in workplaces, the military, and college programs which specialize in business training indicates that this change-adverse population is disproportionately represented among executives and business people. Let's call these people group A. A different sub-population (group B) can be characterized as particularly risk- and change- embracing; more dare-devil and capricious. They, too, account for about one third of the US population. This population has disproportionately high school drop-out rates, and a much lower tolerance of the routine of the office; they are less common in the white-collar world, and tend to work in "interupt-driven" jobs such as "business development". Group C, the remaining third-to-a-quarter (depending on which study you use) is the lump which has several familiar factions in it. It is not characterized (as a whole) as being particularly change-adverse or change-embracing (though individual members maybe on either end of that scale.) Instead, they are characterized by a facility with (and reliance on) abstract thought, which the other two populations don't share. In is in this population that you find the Poets, the Activists, the Mystics - and the Scientists, Architects, and yes, Hackers. If you didn't have a chance to, I suggest reading these comments now: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/10/26/137207 &mode=thread I myself have found that these groups are all equally necessary in society. They all make up approximately 33% of the population. Like all groups, some are smarter, some dumber. Some are less useful, others produce work of global importance. In all groups we see jobs they can be better or worse. Einstein may well have been group C, but most American presidents (even great ones like Lincoln and Washington) were almost certainly group A or B. I believe by the quick-changing nature of President Clinton, we can assume he is group B (possibly yet another way of saying "liberal"). Therefore we see that good or bad, there are important traits to being ritualised, to being trend-setting, and to being trend-following. Let's not get into what groups Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin were. What I'm trying to say is this: People aren't just around today waiting to be changed into better people, at least not most of them. There have been historical reasons for each of these wonderful groups and noone really needs to change them. HOWEVER, you do have a great point, which you made in "The Programmer's Stone", that mappers are better then packers at software engineering, and that packers act more like programmed computers then the other groups. I assume that Packes map to group A and Mappers map to group C. I'd probably be group B. But I've found that at 7:00 a.m until 9:00 a.m. I think more creatively, and from 1:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m. I think more linearly. I'll leave the point of that statement (which may need more refinement and testing on my part I admit) to your imagination on the focus of these many groups. All the same, like the problem with the Meyer's Brigg's test, categorizing people will always lead into a game of herding cats. People have long lives and WILL switch from one group to another, maybe more than once (especially if they are group B, they may change from A to B to C rapidly. No this isn't a contradiction.). A large percentage of people are on the fence. And similarly a large percentage of people and things are simply outside of any theorizing we can do (like: what are bees, bears, and microorganizms? What is the queen bee, yogi bear, and an ameoba?) I'm sorry to say this, but I believe your problem is this: You started out realizing that people need to think like a mapper in order to do software developement. (true) Then you decided everyone should learn to think this way (false). Stick to helping programmers program, and you may be better off. -Benjamin Shniper
I don't know if anyone else has said this; but I think it all goes to prove a very important point: Information wants to be free. Who was it that said that?
It would seem clear by this point, to all involved, that it is no easier or harder to make a web-based collaborative effort than any other colaborative effort. Certainly, we see this was a complex and large scale system that wasn't adequately supported by Microsoft, but was the failing in underestimating the amount of work needed to make everyone happy?
It's not easy to get thousands of people to cooperate on a large project, and especially hard for one person to hold it up alone as Mrs. Kush tried to do. I for one think the failure is with microsoft- not for failing, but for promising too much and not delivering.
Many have written in that, in a way, Microsoft is not guilty of the crime of anticompetitive behavior against netscape by integrating their own browser into the operating system. I repsectfully disagree, and argue that their punishment, in this case, did fit the crime, and that the government, though it punished Microsoft harshly for its actions, is justified.
"Huh?" you say. They haven't been broken up, at least yet. They may even win the case.
Well duh, people, look at all the news about Linux, and ask yourself how well Red Hat would have done if it weren't for the trial. Would there be Calderra and I-toasters for general sale at Best Buy now? Would there be the emphasis on alternatives? Would Dell have the guts to sell and support Linux on their systems?
Yes, Microsoft has payed dearly for its crimes against the public-loved Netscape. And it's punishment isn't over yet. The trial IS microsoft's punishment, and they are guilty, guilty, guilty as the trial goes on. Don't be fools, this was the point. Breaking up microsoft, as the company often says, would make them just another player in the market like Sun or IBM. But they are already on the road there! They have lost their way, propelled by our legal system that punishes the guilty and innocent alike. Think twice before predicting the outcome next time.
As most of us know already:
The crime was arrogance. The judge, jury, and executioner is the justice system. And the punishment is a trial that will wreck you.
Whether Microsoft is "defending it's right to innovate" or "upgrading" "known issues", we who keep the facts should do the world a favor. Microsoft can't back out of it's confabulation of the truth... It is in too deep. They cannot admit to trying to defend their rights to make exclusive contracts. They cannot admit they are fixing bugs. So we must make them wear it. Like a scarlet letter "I". Insincerity. At every press conference, every question, every time their damage control tactics come up in a conversation, we bring it down like a hammer. Insincerity. Insincere behavior in marketing is as close to illegal as you can get without the Feds knocking down your door (wait a second... they are!). Noone likes to deal with an insincere person, one who tries to seem genuine only to get something out of you. Microsoft is insincere, and it won't stop being insincere until it's black heart stops beating (forgive the hyperbole). So insincere we should call them, and we should call them out on being insincere! -Ben
Slashdot Mirror
Geeks should want not just software patents, but also "business process patents" (such as Priceline's reverse auction) to be banned. The spirit of the current patent law seems to already say that "algorithms and laws of nature should not be patentable." But, even though it is clear to each of us that all software programs are long copywritable collections of algorithms, there is such cluelessness in Washington D.C. that they were willing to listen to money rather than to law.
In fact, my humble opinion is that the whole judicial system in America is broken. Perhaps it is also broken elsewhere in the world and never worked at all. But when a judge can take the word a man who makes about $20,000 a year and has to deal with perhaps thousands of patent cases... and hold that over billion dollar industries...
My point is this. In our increasingly litigious society, people are flocking to building whatever fodder for lawsuits and protection from lawsuits they can find. The real heart of the problem is the breakdown of logic, facts, and truth in the judicial system in favor of patents, stories, allegations, and the threat of a lawsuit!
-Ben
Surely you're not saying that just because the senators are republicans, that they have no care for individual welfare and only care about the companies. Oh wait a second, that's exactly what you're saying:
"I wonder where all the pressure came from. Citizens? Or the business lobby? Given the fact that the two politicians that were quoted were Republicans, it must have been mostly from the business side."
Well, as a freestanding individualist, I find your stereotypes as annoying as your ignorance. And I also do not believe ANYONE should expect the companies they work for to at any time care about in what conditions you live or work at home. If we open that door, we'll find that some companies actually WANT to pick out their employees furniture! And a couple other things too.
This OHSA paper from November 15th, 1999, seems illogical and also indicative of the growing unnecessary government influence in our lives. I'm glad we live in a time and place where it could be reversed quickly.
-Ben
...openning the wrong champaign and killing us all.
-Ben
To me, it seems quite obvious that the U.S. government should not step into the psychological field.
I only listed what the large expenses would reasonably be if and when the government took over the field. You said a strange statement:
"Treating the mentally ill actually saves money; we lose massive amounts of economic productivity through illnesses like alcoholism, like depression or anxiety. "
I was myself treated for depression, and it may or may not have helped, but it was expensive. It was EXACTLY the cost of the first two figures (of course I counted what the insurance itself paid, not my deductable.) I merely think the insurance and HMO methods America has are better than government intervention taking over the system.
Alcoholism is a strange psychological disease, if it is one at all. What the hell would psychologists perscribe for this anyway? A pseudo-religious 12-step program, a drug, therapy?
Finally, anxiety, which I do not know the costs for (but I know it can be treated with therapy and wellbutrin, exactly like depression). Do you know the costs? How much are you willing to pay in taxes for this wierd government psychological program??
If we pay government psychs less than the current professionals, what service do you expect? If we pay them the same, what will happen to the costs as people start demanding treatment for stress?(which affects, roughly, 100% of the population at some time.)
You claim my figures are off (giving nothing to back that up), and then sound off about how it would be much better under a government system. Sounds to me like you've put in too little thought now, and we will all put in too much money later.
-Ben
It turns out they have a retired gulf war vet as head of government relations. So if the telcoms come screaming, this vet, who happens to carry the title "Rear Admiral" may be of some use. He also worked in BOTH THE REAGAN AND BUSH ADMINISTRATIONS people. If it comes down to a gov't showdown, and Bush Jr. is in charge, my bets are all on the Admiral.
Offtopic but true: Rear Admiral Grace Cooper invented the compiler. If this Admiral is half the person she was, we may see some innovation coming.
-Ben
I'm not convinced at all. This seems to truly be the wrong thing to do. Our current solutions for people with mental illnesses are just not advanced enough to be credible.
Our choices for treatment now include:
1. Talk to them (ala sigmund freud.) Do you have any idea how much this costs? $75 for 15 minutes apparently.
2. Drug 'em (ala Middle Ages). Costs about $35 a day, that is, for Welbutrin for Depression.
3. Lock 'em up (ala before Middle Ages) put them in an institution, for "protection"
I should know. I don't think I'll go back to the mental stuff we have currently for a while. And I don't know if we can each afford the taxes... Here's how it actually works out:
Each taxpayer (1/2 of the population) pays for each currently mentally ill patient (1/5) of the population. The patients, by my estimates listed up there, would cost between $75 a week (for therapy) and $200 a week (for medication and monitoring) or even $1000 per week (to lock them up). Now each taxpayer (of which I'm one now) Pays for 2/5 of each sick person's bill. Can you afford $30 a week extra in taxes, or $1560 a year? Can you afford $4160 a year (the most reasonable estimate) for medication alone? Can you afford $20800 in taxes extra a year??
That's what we're talking about here.
Don't buy the hype. This is another phony baloney attempt by the government to completely take over our lives and our money. All in the name of normalcy.
Ben
1. Antiseptics and Antibiotics are used to counter bacteria.
2. Bacteria becomes resistant to all or most forms of antibiotics.
3. General cleanliness, like soap hand washing becomes the norm in society.
4. Many people's immune systems, now made unready by the lack of bacterial diseases, become weaker. Immune disorders in the population thrive.
5. The only solution to this state of events is to genetically modify humans with weak or unready immune systems to have more powerful immune systems.
Prediction:
In a tit for tat state, this will lead to diseases we cannot now fathom. They will again be dealt with through massive scientific effort, which may in fact lead to the erradication of all harmful bacteria and microbes we now know of. After that happens, who knows?
-Ben
By my count, there were ~1300 signatures so far today. The counter seems to be malfunctioning for me, and it says "160 signatures.
Assuming we have twice that today, and with 300 days until the elections, and assuming today is more busy than typical, they will come to about 300,000 signatures. Unless cnn or yahoo or msnbc pick this up, I expect them to fall short of their (IMHO) low expectation. I'm signature number 157, btw.
Remember not to send them your primary e-mail as it isn't a secure form.
-Benjamin Shniper
What many here may not realize is that the mission to the moon is still regarded as one of the most important stories of the twentieth century (3rd, I believe.)
Of course, at that time *there was no robots* who could have pilotted the craft and colected the moon rocks. Back then, the only choice was to spend the huge amount of money to send people in order to do the scientific study. Today, we could accomplish these things as well with cheaper, faster programs like sojourner and the downed climate observer.
But humanity is less completely enthralled by such programs. They don't hold the promise that the manned moon missions did. The thoughts of building houses and colonies on the moon in the lifetime of the astronauts who flew there. We're not pacified by the more scientific but less human mars program currently running.
Therefore, I think we may wish to try it the old way. Send men to mars, get them back. We don't have the technology to do this efficiently yet, but we may have it very soon. What this petition is about is the goal. Not for scientific purposes but for equally valid social and human purposes. I believe it will be an important step to solving one of humanities greatest problems: our eventual extinction we face by keeping ourselves locked into a single planet.
-Ben
There's no excuse for it; we simply can't say that Microsoft did it on purpose even before they've been officially accused. Certainly, that's not to excuse their sloppiness, but I'm sure this is not malicious. They know very well that Lotus Notes can be run on many Unices, and they need the revenue. Now if the promised fix doesn't come in a week, then we can start the conspiricy engines. But for now, sloppiness is the only decent explanation.
And if they did it maliciously, or incompetently fail to fix the bug, who the hell cares? People can go on using service pack 5 until they have Lotus Notes working on Linux.
-Ben
That's great.
:)
I'd LOVE to have my company pay for a trip myself there. You taking anyone else?
Have fun.
-Benjamin Shniper
CMU, at the behest of the RIAA just reprimanded students for using the microsoft network to distribute mp3s and other software. They did this because they aren't a common carrier of information and could be sued by the RIAA. Here we see another man, using what can only be described as trade secrets to create an unliscenced DVD player over the internet.
Why do we pretend, sometimes, to care about IP at all, when by our actions we decry it as a thing of any value to society? Why do we feel so moved by this guy risking his neck against the Movie industry when thousands of penniless college students are doing the same against the music industry?
What is the internet? If a library can loan out books to anyone who wants them at any time, then why aren't library books on the internet, as well as tapes and cds that are at all libraries; even movies and newspapers are in libraries. If all that information IS ALREADY FREE AT THE NEAREST LIBRARY, then is the internet going to be, in the near future, simply a big shared *free* library?At some libraries I went to, some software was available for borrowing.
Okay, I'm done ranting now. Flame away.
-Benjamin Shniper
I know you don't quite grasp what I'm trying to say, so I'll make it easy for you: Copyright law is not the ideal way to run a society, especially one in which the students are bled for all their money like in CMU. There were very very few people there who had enough money left over (after financial aid determined how poor you should be) to buy CDs. And forget $50 for a game when you could eat for two weeks or not. You obviously have no clue what you are suggesting; in fact people simply couldn't work full time and go to college; because the classes were pretty darn tough. I saw people try to work full time at CMU - and go crazy doing it (if they weren't crazy to begin with.) So don't lecture me on being utopian!
You do what you need to do, so stealing and borrowing entertainment was a necessity. I've graduated - I don't go downloading WaRez now; I've got plenty of money to go to buy tunes for my car cd if I wish. But back then, you could forget it. And people in such a poverty position, many who couldn't find the time or transportation to go to a CD store (the nearest Sam Goody is 3 miles away) won't bother. And since few had cars, but most spent all their time on computers, downloading MP3s was pretty darn natural.
That's how it was.
You can take your idiotic "morality" and stuff it up your you know what. It's like saying to people marooned on a desert island that it's wrong to not do their taxes!
Oh and one more thing; for better or worse, the free software movement is about freedom, licensing, intellectual property, and copyright issues. So my landlord gets paid, but I know in my heart the direction society needs to be going.
-Benjamin Shniper
The RIAA, which is a legal front and pressure group for the protection of the oligopoly of music production in America, is at it again. They want there to be only three ways to get music: over the radio, where you get addicted to it, on CDs where you buy it for 10 to 20 times what it cost to produce, and in the background of popular movies and shows, where you again go to the record store and buy the music for the soundtrack.
What really upsets me is that we have the tools now to be truly free of these ancient restrictions. All it takes is some freedom from the outside world (as in CMU) and a desire (to listen to music) with a problem (no money) to get the ball rolling. Like in the 60s, I know that using drugs and stealing music is a dead end, but to the hundreds of CMU students now forced to follow such restrictiveness while I had a so much easier time of it all, I'd like to say, "Bummer Dudes."
-Benjamin Shniper
I know this sounds maybe too unreal to be believed, but I liked the free access to information environment at CMU. We had no money, and yet we all had pirated versions of quake, warcraft, starcraft, and plenty of MP3s and movie files. South Park episodes were on almost everyones' shared directory. I miss the freedom of going to any share directory in the CMU network and grabbing dozens of MP3 files I wanted very quickly, very easily, and very freely. What am I saying? That's illegal, immoral, and wrong! Right? I remember hoping that this was the future of computing - where everyone could claim access to anything and any entertainment they wanted. Now it's clear CMU doesn't want this to be the future. Why do so many here support *Free* software and yet cling so hard to copyright? Information should be free people, that's what we fought Microsoft for! We're the hippies, we're the rebels, we're the people who hate the restrictiveness of society, right? Sadly, Benjamin Shniper
First, the trial itself was the big deal. Since the trial, more and more attention has been payed to non-windows alternatives. Just before the trial, we saw Microsoft doing what it does best- double time. They marginalized Word Perfect, OS/2, and were starting to marginalize Unix as a server platform. They even started to marginalize Netscape (and I write of their success from an I.E. 5.0 browser, based on Spyglass Mosaic and bought lock, stock, and barrel by Microsoft's treasure.) There was no question AOL and other media companies were the next to feel Microsoft's expanding wrath.
Now, since the trial, you can buy Linux systems at Best Buy for $30 to $199 AND you can still download it for free from the internet. AOL is as strong as ever, and has added the mortally wounded Netscape company to it's fold. IBM seems to be making a comeback, and WordPerfect has been resurected as a Linux Suite! These were all due to the trial itself. So the trial was good.
But is the ruling good? It is and isn't. First, it's good that the present trends of the resurection of good old technologies can continue. But it will be bad if Microsoft is punished too severely. They always have made the products the people wanted and will continue to do so with their long-awaited and expensive Windows 2000. Still, perhaps we can look at this as an important lesson, you can buy the market, but you can't buy the government.
But with linux resurected and innovation safely out of Microsoft's grasp, I got what I wanted from the trial. And now, that it is at this stage, I wish it would stop. So I'd recomend not punishing Microsoft. We've drawn blood, we've kicked them when they were down, and we've shown them we can write better software than they can buy. Leave them alone. If they come after us again, let them have another trial and all the punishment they deserve.
-Benjamin Shniper
This is correct. In other words he could say
"Internet Explorer was bundled unfairly." or he could say it wasn't. This is more important, from a business standpoint, then the actual punishment.
It is like a judge saying "Bob really did steal that $100 from Jim."
The judge could say Bob pays Jim back $100, or Bob should go to jail, or Bob should get off with a warning.
But what people really care about is whether Microsoft's actions constitute stealing, more than they are interested with what the Judge will do with it.
-Ben
I considerred doing this, but decided not to.
Still, the fact remains that without many employees or expenses to build the systems they sell, money gets generated. Yes, it is probably being ported through some accounting tricks to save tax and look better on paper. My point isn't that these accounting tricks are excusable. My point is that they are making seriously large amounts of money in revenue, and thus deserve to be a hundred billion dollar company. Whether they deserve to be a trillion dollar company is up to stockholders, not you or me.
-Benjamin Shniper
This may sound like a ridiculous thing to do, but I'd like to look at the math of this guy. Basically, a quick check at how a company selling about 50 million units a year worldwide at about 200$ profit each could possibly lose money. Between selling it's office suite and Windows NT to each company in America and charging about 400$ each, they must make money. Real money. That's about $10 billion dollars a year in variable profit and $20 billion a year in sales, by this estimate. Plus they sell tons of databases, e-mail and servers. Truly, I don't understand what all the hoopla could possibly be about. Are companies NOT going to buy Windows 2000 in droves? That's the issue, not the accounting practices.
m
P.S. this was just a guess, but on microsoft's page:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/fastfacts.ht
They say:
Net revenue $19.75 billion
Net income $7.79 billion
I'm sorry, but doesn't this seem reasonable?
They can do whatever obfuscations of the accounting they want, but the fact is they're making money hand over fist. Until that changes, and we can change it by demonstrating better products than Microsoft's, they will be around.
-Benjamin Shniper
This may sound like a ridiculous thing to do, but I'd like to look at the math of this guy. Basically, a quick check at how a company selling about 50 million units a year worldwide at about 200$ profit each could possibly lose money. Between selling it's office suite and Windows NT to each company in America and charging about 400$ each, they must make money. Real money. That's about $10 billion dollars a year in variable profit and $20 billion a year in sales, by this estimate. Plus they sell tons of databases, e-mail and servers. Truly, I don't understand what all the hoopla could possibly be about. Are companies NOT going to buy Windows 2000 in droves? That's the issue, not the accounting practices. P.S. this was just a guess, but on microsoft's page: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/fastfacts.htm They say: Net revenue $19.75 billion Net income $7.79 billion I'm sorry, but doesn't this seem reasonable? They can do whatever obfuscations of the accounting they want, but the fact is they're making money hand over fist. Until that changes, and we can change it by demonstrating better products than Microsoft's, they will be around. -Benjamin Shniper
This is from a comment on my favorite news-site, slashdot. Mr. Carter has constructed a theory of anthroplogy based about the premise that some large percentage of people are diseased. He has done this based on his observation of white-collar workers, primarily in technical fields. Earlier in this century Katherine C. Briggs cast her net wider. She observed some of the same phenomena, but in a much bigger context. She came up with a different interpretation. The sub-branch of psychology she founded has the following paradigm: A certain sub-population can be characterized as particularly change- and risk- adverse, very traditionalist and conservative, very methodical and habitual - among other traits. Testing indicates these people comprise about one third of the US population. Testing in workplaces, the military, and college programs which specialize in business training indicates that this change-adverse population is disproportionately represented among executives and business people. Let's call these people group A. A different sub-population (group B) can be characterized as particularly risk- and change- embracing; more dare-devil and capricious. They, too, account for about one third of the US population. This population has disproportionately high school drop-out rates, and a much lower tolerance of the routine of the office; they are less common in the white-collar world, and tend to work in "interupt-driven" jobs such as "business development". Group C, the remaining third-to-a-quarter (depending on which study you use) is the lump which has several familiar factions in it. It is not characterized (as a whole) as being particularly change-adverse or change-embracing (though individual members maybe on either end of that scale.) Instead, they are characterized by a facility with (and reliance on) abstract thought, which the other two populations don't share. In is in this population that you find the Poets, the Activists, the Mystics - and the Scientists, Architects, and yes, Hackers. If you didn't have a chance to, I suggest reading these comments now: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/10/26/137207 &mode=thread I myself have found that these groups are all equally necessary in society. They all make up approximately 33% of the population. Like all groups, some are smarter, some dumber. Some are less useful, others produce work of global importance. In all groups we see jobs they can be better or worse. Einstein may well have been group C, but most American presidents (even great ones like Lincoln and Washington) were almost certainly group A or B. I believe by the quick-changing nature of President Clinton, we can assume he is group B (possibly yet another way of saying "liberal"). Therefore we see that good or bad, there are important traits to being ritualised, to being trend-setting, and to being trend-following. Let's not get into what groups Hitler, Stalin, and Lenin were. What I'm trying to say is this: People aren't just around today waiting to be changed into better people, at least not most of them. There have been historical reasons for each of these wonderful groups and noone really needs to change them. HOWEVER, you do have a great point, which you made in "The Programmer's Stone", that mappers are better then packers at software engineering, and that packers act more like programmed computers then the other groups. I assume that Packes map to group A and Mappers map to group C. I'd probably be group B. But I've found that at 7:00 a.m until 9:00 a.m. I think more creatively, and from 1:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m. I think more linearly. I'll leave the point of that statement (which may need more refinement and testing on my part I admit) to your imagination on the focus of these many groups. All the same, like the problem with the Meyer's Brigg's test, categorizing people will always lead into a game of herding cats. People have long lives and WILL switch from one group to another, maybe more than once (especially if they are group B, they may change from A to B to C rapidly. No this isn't a contradiction.). A large percentage of people are on the fence. And similarly a large percentage of people and things are simply outside of any theorizing we can do (like: what are bees, bears, and microorganizms? What is the queen bee, yogi bear, and an ameoba?) I'm sorry to say this, but I believe your problem is this: You started out realizing that people need to think like a mapper in order to do software developement. (true) Then you decided everyone should learn to think this way (false). Stick to helping programmers program, and you may be better off. -Benjamin Shniper
Information wants to be free.
Who was it that said that?
-Benjamin Shniper
It would seem clear by this point, to all involved, that it is no easier or harder to make a web-based collaborative effort than any other colaborative effort. Certainly, we see this was a complex and large scale system that wasn't adequately supported by Microsoft, but was the failing in underestimating the amount of work needed to make everyone happy?
It's not easy to get thousands of people to cooperate on a large project, and especially hard for one person to hold it up alone as Mrs. Kush tried to do. I for one think the failure is with microsoft- not for failing, but for promising too much and not delivering.
We've seen a lot of that, come to think of it.
-Ben
Many have written in that, in a way, Microsoft is not guilty of the crime of anticompetitive behavior against netscape by integrating their own browser into the operating system. I repsectfully disagree, and argue that their punishment, in this case, did fit the crime, and that the government, though it punished Microsoft harshly for its actions, is justified.
"Huh?" you say. They haven't been broken up, at least yet. They may even win the case.
Well duh, people, look at all the news about Linux, and ask yourself how well Red Hat would have done if it weren't for the trial. Would there be Calderra and I-toasters for general sale at Best Buy now? Would there be the emphasis on alternatives? Would Dell have the guts to sell and support Linux on their systems?
Yes, Microsoft has payed dearly for its crimes against the public-loved Netscape. And it's punishment isn't over yet. The trial IS microsoft's punishment, and they are guilty, guilty, guilty as the trial goes on. Don't be fools, this was the point. Breaking up microsoft, as the company often says, would make them just another player in the market like Sun or IBM. But they are already on the road there! They have lost their way, propelled by our legal system that punishes the guilty and innocent alike. Think twice before predicting the outcome next time.
As most of us know already:
The crime was arrogance.
The judge, jury, and executioner is the justice system.
And the punishment is a trial that will wreck you.
Only God can save them now.
-Ben
Whether Microsoft is "defending it's right to innovate" or "upgrading" "known issues", we who keep the facts should do the world a favor. Microsoft can't back out of it's confabulation of the truth... It is in too deep. They cannot admit to trying to defend their rights to make exclusive contracts. They cannot admit they are fixing bugs. So we must make them wear it. Like a scarlet letter "I". Insincerity. At every press conference, every question, every time their damage control tactics come up in a conversation, we bring it down like a hammer. Insincerity. Insincere behavior in marketing is as close to illegal as you can get without the Feds knocking down your door (wait a second... they are!). Noone likes to deal with an insincere person, one who tries to seem genuine only to get something out of you. Microsoft is insincere, and it won't stop being insincere until it's black heart stops beating (forgive the hyperbole). So insincere we should call them, and we should call them out on being insincere! -Ben