> And finally, any poster who uses the phrase "common carrier" in discussing this situation has no idea what it means. (Hint: "common carrier" is a term that refers ONLY to a very limited set of telecommunications companies: mainly the various Bells.)
That's not strictly accurate. You attempt to claim indemnity from prosecution for your comment by leaving them with the copyright. You are trying to retain some common carrier-like status.
By doing this they concede that they are responsible for everything on the site.
There previous claim, that they were a common carrier (like a phone company), a medium for comments to be posted, and were not liable for them, is gone.
This means:
1. Slashdot is liable for everything written on Slashdot. Libellous statements, illegal content, warez, and any thing criminal or tortious (a tort is a civil wrong, such as libel).
Censorship must come. -1 will be replaced with deletion
2. You better be worried. You, as a poster, are liable for what you write. Start shitting your pants.
Is what you wrote legal?
No?
Better contact your lawyers bud.
Still, it was never going to last. It's clear that by moderating comments, slashdot editors have revoked common carrier status and become publishers liable for all they write.
See, for instance, Demon, a UK ISP, who, on removing some Usenet posts for reasons of illegality, were held liable for every single post on their service, since they had become publishers in the eyes of tha law.
www.php.net/manual. The manual is great. You can learn everything you need to know about specific things from there. Before that, you need a basic tutorial.
Try that. Also, to get hold of PHP, use PHP Triad (on Linux, you can probably install it from your distribution CD), a win32 installer of PHP, Apache and MySQL.
Basically:
PHP is HTML with the code embedded between blocks starting
<?php
and ending
?>
within that you put your PHP code.
For example:
<?php
print "hello";
?>
would display hello - just like perl.
Similarly, as in Perl, variables are preceded by $.
So:
<?php
$message="chese";
print "I like $message";
?>
It's convenient - all form variables get put into variables of the same name:
would send apage.php two variables - $action='Submit'; and $thing= whatever you typed in there.
You should investigate PHP's object-orientation functions too. Here's an example class [class omitted due to slashdot's lameness filter:-(], which should be pretty explanatory.
Anyway, start here; read here for more, as well as here. Also subscribe to the mailing list at php-general@lists.php.net for help from others. --
Look, I'm not going to bullshit here. I'll just give you the facts.
1. Before MS came along, computers were unaffordable. Now we all reap the benefits of a computer in every home.
2. MS have consistently brought down prices - they cut prices in the spreadsheet market; they are producing software that is cheaper than what was their before. And they're still doing it. MS Sql Server, which is at least on a par with Oracle, is much cheaper than it, and thus benefits consumers that way.
3. Believe it or not, Microsoft actually do produce good software. Certainly Windows 3.1 wasn't very stable, but in 1992 what competition was there? Certainly not Linux. And even given that, if you ask me if I want my secretary on the current state of the art Linux, or on Windows 3.1 and Word 2, I'll bet you a dollar to a hundred that she'll be more effective on Windows 3.1
4. Microsoft have benefitted the US economy. It really has. Compared with the UK, for instance, the strength of the US IT industry is vast - and much of this strength is due to Microsoft.
5. Nearly all opposition to MS comes from jealous competitors. Netscape have been beaten fair-and-square by MS, for instance - just compare Netscape 6 with MSIE, for instance. This just backs up my point - Microsoft software is of exceptional quality. They hire the best programmers because they can afford to, and they release top software. Word beats anything else on the market, and as a usable OS, so does Windows (and on stability, Windows 2000 ranks pretty highly to). Combine this with easy administration - the idiot in my office is in charge of DNS administration, which he can easily do using MS DNS manager, because it's just point, right click/properties. He'd have no chance with Bind.
The fact is, for a small business with not many staff, Microsoft software allows them to compete with the big guys - they can offer ISP provision, because they don't need highly paid admins. This is great news for the economy and great news for them.
6. The fact is, as I have stated, there is a lot of jealousy and resentment out there - whereas the truth is that Microsoft produce damn fine software, and their very low prices (believe me - just check the price of a spreadsheet 20 years ago), mean that although they have a monopoly, that has come through selling good software at low prices and therefore high volume.
Damaging Microsoft would damage the consumer. What do you want people to use? Star Office? --
This presents an interesting 'What if?' dilemma. Of course it wouldn't take *as* long to do this, simply because the expertise is there - there is a bulk of people who know how to produce microchips, and they would remember how to do it.
But the second point is more interesting. Catastrophic loss? I don't think that's accurate. The effect of computers has been to break up society in a profoundly negative way. People are spending more and more time on their own, on computers and on the internet. This has reduced social contact. This means there is now less conversation between people, and people are less friendly. Compared with forty years ago, there is less of a sense of neighborliness and of community.
Although people now talk of 'online community', the fact is that there is no substitute for real human contact. It is a vital, life-affirming thing, and has been recognized as such since the ancient Greeks, who talked of man's worth being measured in his ability as a social animal. The effect of computers has been to reduce it, and this has a real effect on humanity. Although we might be richer, more 'successful' now than before, people are not as happy as they were. This lack of contentment has led to greater human suffering - more suicides, more depression, and more unfriendliness. The cause of this, the distintegration of society and community, although not wholly through computers, is through people spending more time with computers instead of people - although ostensibly satisified with a computer as a substitute for a human being, they certainly cannot be said to be happy.
And in other ways too - not simply people socializing with computers instead of people, our enslavement to technology has other symptoms. People now are never free from the computer - their palm pilots, their work computers, their home computers and their laptops.
This has affected people's home lives negatively - the typical Silicon Family has Mom and Dad out till 9pm working, with the children taken care of by a nanny. This kind of family, if you even pause to examine it for a second, is a profoundly negative thing - all the humanity is removed from it; what, after all, is the point of living if you are simply enslaved to computers without any time for people, as these people surely are.
Although, then, computers have helped in terms of 'progress', the world my Mom and Dad grew up in in the 50s is certainly a better one than the one we have today, so I'm really not sure this would be all that catastrophic. --
I wonder, as an important person in charge of leveraging market position in the OSDN (or something like that) (and therefore with an important position in advertising, not just on/., but on other major OS sites like kuro5hin and sourceforge), what do *you* see as the way to get people to click ads.
I know it's important for/.'s survival for people to click on ads, so what do you see as the future for/.'s ads? As I understand it, the simple banner at the top of the page is not as successful as you will like, so will we see/. with ads in the middle of the page (or every few comments), at the bottom and so on? --
People don't, I think, mind ad banners. In fact, they will click on them if they are interesting. For instance, I clicked on an ad for an interview with John Carmack the other day because it was interesting.
If you give people interesting ads, they will click. It's different to the real world. Since the success of ads is measured by clickthroughs (i.e. internet advertising is a direct sales route), then what you have to do is give people things they are directly interested in.
So things like those ads for $10 pearls, will fail on/., at least by the direct sales=success approach of the internet (cf. other media, where it's indirect growth that is measured), but an advert for a book about Perl might succeed.
As to successful indirect advertising (increasing sales, although not through clickthroughs), this is a different issue, and depends on a level of obtrusiveness that internet ads don't have. You can't make a catchy ad to sell rubbish on the internet, simply because that kind of full screen, 3-minute TV ads don't work, because you only have a few pixels on the screen.
Thus although traditional advertising is about selling people things they don't want, when selling online, you have to try and sell people things they do want - it's just a matter of finding the right people. And this, of course, is where profiles come in.
For the success of sites such as/., advertising must be effective, and to do this, advertisers need to know about you. The number one priority for online advertisers is to get the right ad in front of the right person, and for this ad cookies are vital for the survival of advertising-supported websites. --
I don't suppose anyone will be able to get to a vast PDF (once/.ed), never mind read it, so here's a précis:
The government wants to use public key for internal use, but because PKI is an immature standard, they are as yet unable to do so, faced with lack of compatibility and standards.
Furthermore, they find that there is no proven and robust system for highest-level security, and will have to wait for one to emerge.
They also believe costs will be high, as more user validation systems are developed, associated with the cost of issuing certificates and creating keys.
There is also a need to create a policy framework - a large executive agency will 'require a substantial effort' with user privacy and general policy issues.
Finally, there is the issue of training. To implement this, a trained staff is needed. Since PKI is complex, this has important cost implications. --
There are clearly higher costs associated with bigger usage. The reason the initial growth in web usage did not cause cost inflation is that the associated growth of users brought economies of scale.
There are two separate economic situations here. In the first, usage increased, but vastly increased scale and improved technology brought economies of scale.
In the second case however, growth is much shallower, and even if their is massive growth, the large size of the existing market means that there is less room for economies.
In this case, where it is a change in usage patterns more than user numbers, there are certainly implications for ISP costs.
The cost increases are still, however, likely to be small, simply through competition and improved technology. --
It is said that Linux games are 'more trouble than they are worth'. I think this might be right, but there is a deeper issue here. There is a reasonable-sized market for Mac games, and apparently Linux has a bigger market share than Apple now.
The problem, which hasn't really been discussed properly, is that a minority of Linux users seem unable to recognize the value of software - that some software costs money. The prevalence of free software means that many linux users refuse to pay for software. For many this is an ideological belief - according to the biggest advocates of the GPL, GPL should render software that you pay for obsolete.
This then is the problem for companies considering developing under Linux.
Many Linux users refuse to recognize intellectual property, and so won't pay for games under Linux. This means that the market is fatally undermined - you are attempting to sell to people who won't pay for software, or even believe that paying for software is wrong.
Until people can recognize that software does cost money - that while long-term projects such as Apache can be produced under the open-source model, things like games cannot - you cannot get graphic and sound artists to work for free; then non-free software on Linux will have an unhappy time.
I think this is sad, since there can exist a harmony between the two, but at the moment a minority of unrepresentative bigots, who don't seem to believe that hard work in producing software deserves reward, are holding the two worlds in a deathly battle. --
Although I think open source licences have advantages in many cases - for example, apache, KDE and Gnome are all good candidates for an open source licence, I'm not sure that open source is necessarily appropriate for a music compression alogrithm.
At the essence of music lies intellectual property. Intellectual property underpins music. Without it, there would be no Eminem, no N-Sync and no Limp Biskit. These bands rely on ownership of intellectual property for their income, and hence for their inception (without the protection IP affords, there would be no money from seeling records).
An open-source approach threatens to undermine this. We are seeing more and more the danger that MP3s present to musicians' livelihoods - they threaten to make paying for music obsolete.
Now as an 'owned' algorithm, MP3 can easily be protected, and indeed we are seeing the advent of watermarking to protect music.
With something whose very existence opposes intellectual property, however, the result will be 'free' music, since open source will not protect intellectual property.
This, in the end, is bad news. I hope people will realize this, and put the longterm good of the record industry ahead of short-term 'free' music from the likes of an unprotected compression system such as oggvorbis. --
> The private URL that IME creates is unique, tied to the sender of the package or transaction, to the content being sent, and to the intended recipient. I guess I can't tell my buds to surf to a non-public directory on my website to download stuff anymore.
Well yes. That's not the same thing.
This is talking about unique URL identifying URL.
A directory on a harddrive is not the same thing.
> Many web applications generate these private URLs.
Possibly. But Tumbleweed have patented it - they got there first - way back in 1997 according to the story, so it's tumbleweed that gets the patent. I don't see what the big deal is here. There's always been a rush to be the first to do thing - it encourages innovation, and the one who gets their first gets to exploit the invention. It's always happened, and just because it's now happening on the net is no different. I guess people aren't used to dealing with patents, but the news is that everyone else has been dealing with them for three centuries.
> Like the cheesy insecure bookmkarkable login URL that Slash uses for example
Well no, not really. That's just a URL with a password and username. That's not this. You might as well say that the diesel engine is 'like' the 4-stroke petrol engine. Sure there are certain similarities, but they aren't the same - and they can both be protected accordingly. --
And I didn't think it was one of his better efforts. While I think Hal is a fine author, I have read better books by him.
He's also something of an acquired taste; especially, ironically, for sci-fi fans (on which, there is an interesting essay on 'Hard Science Fiction' here).
Anyway, before you read this, read Mission Of Gravity. If you don't like that, don't read this. If you do, I would recommend this as a followup. --
I have never head such a lot of unscientific nonsense in my life.
You cannot prove that something like this is not true. This is about the most basic logical axiom that there is.
Furthermore, 'evidence' of evolution from supposed changes in genes is nothing more than evidence.
We have:
1. one set of genes - we are required to accept very many things here; the validity of the analysis of those genes, the validity of the research, the validity of the samples, etc.
2. another set of genes - again, the same ASSUMPTIONS, which CAN NEVER BE PROVED for certain persist
3. a deduction from this that there is evolution.
To take 3, there is absolutely nothing that compels us to draw the deduction suggested. All it is a hypothesis, and one that assumes a large number of things - certainly not sufficient evidence to make people change their beliefs.
To consider the wider issue, there are just as many problems (and more) with evolutionism as there are with creationism. For example, the evolutionists assert the earth is billions of years old, and yet they have not a shred of evidence for this. Their dating techniques, for example - the primary argument used by evolutionists for evolution is the fossil record.
Dating techniques are used to show that these fossils are supposedly millions of years old - and yet these same dating techniques have been shown to be unreliable to useless - thereby making their argument untenable. An example of this was where a rock, known only to be a few hundred years old, was dated at several million years.
In fact, there is no reliable evidence provided by the evolutionists to rebutt the very strong evidence (among others, the clear evidence of design in the world) that the earth was created a few thousand years ago.
I suggest that to get a balanced view on this, you read one of the many good creationist websites. For answers to each of the incorrect beliefs of evolutionists (don't forget, of course, that Dawin himself decided evolution was wrong shortly before his death), try here:
> it looks like NetBSD could give Linux a run for its money in the handheld arena."
That's all very well, but giving Linux a run for its money is not really the right aim. You should be aiming to become number one OS, not number 12, but beating some other OS.
The thing here is that NetBSD has no advantages in the handheld arena - things like server-class stability are largely irrelevant, whereas more important things such as suitability for the purpose (one of the custom-built OS), or a familiar interface (as with Windows CE) are key factors.
It seems bizarre to do this - to boast that one version of a server OS (Unix), might beat another (which it won't incidentally, since Linux has considerable marketing advantages) - it's like saying that Sun OS will beat IRIX or WindowsNT in the handheld arena - potentially true, but largely irrelevant - you are just saying that of the two tiny server OSs, one has more; it's true, but the numbers are so small it doesn't matter. --
It's nice to hear that there is extraintelligent life, but I think the question every/. reader wants answered is:
Do they run Linux?
If we find that the space aliens run Windows NT, it's bad news - although they'll be very pretty to look at when they're coming towards Earth, they'll crash just as they get to the surface.
Also, what's the uptime on their spaceship? Did they notice any improvement in stability after recompiling the kernel? --
The end of the Microsoft era?
on
Rebel Code
·
· Score: 5
> This is a good book to mark the end of the Microsoft Era
It might well be, but the Microsoft era certainly hasn't ended. They have better market share than ever.
They are poised to take over the game console market, and yesterday announced moves to corner the mobile phone market. This combined with the increasing acceptance of Windows 2000 as the most stable and maintainable server platform around means the Microsoft era is far from over.
We have seen the beginning of open source on a large scale, but we certainly haven't seen the end of the Microsoft era.
Looks like this guy's journalistic instincts to make a story where none exists have overridden the fact of the matter - the Microsoft era hasn't ended, and Open Source is no more significant or worrisome to Microsoft than Apple; there is no sign of the kind of consumer platform where everything is done for you (speaking as someone who recently went to see a client who didn't even understand how to change resolutions and had 640*480 on a 21" monitor, the importance of the OS helping you through everything is clear), nor indeed a server platform where the all important factor - staff time and expertise in maintenance is kept low enough.
Much as it would be nice to see a kind of people's revolution for the good of all, this is nothing more than hype and journalistic bull. --
I'm sorry but I'm not sure I understand. The headline is 'copy-control nightmare', but I don't see how it's a nightmare.
It appears that if someone has protected something, you can't play it.
So? This is like saying that 'New stronger lock for front door is a thief's nightmare'.
Sure it's a nightmare to the thief, but we don't really care about them do we - they are the ones that are in the wrong - they are the ones trying to steal something belonging to someone else. We wouldn't describe that as a nightmare, except by qualifying it - it's only a nightmare for the bad guy.
So it is in this case - people are given a chance to protect their property (the music they own and have written), and I can't see that that's a nightmare.
Why, in these cases, is it always portrayed that everyone has the right to someone else's music? We wouldn't say that I have the right to go into your house and steal your possessions, so why encourage stealing music?
Before anyone says, 'ah but with music, they still have it - you haven't taken anything', let me point this out: for artists and musicians, royalties are vitally important. Most artists (of whatever kind) earn far less than the average wage, so by denying them their royalties, you are effectively stealing the money out of their hand.
Please, have a little consideration here. Imagine it was you.
What if people had the chance to take your salary away, and as a result you were poor and destitute? Can you picture that? I do hope so. There is never an innocent victim in these cases.
You're never hurting the fat cat - it's the little guy that gets the blame. Not the high-earning Backstreet Boys, but the minority band earning $10,000 a year that gets shafted.
It's not the company director that gets fired when revenues are lost because of 'free' music, it's the worker in the factory - it's someone like you. It's just an ordinary decent guy who's getting screwed. Now just remember that the next time you talk about free music. --
Slashdot Mirror
> And finally, any poster who uses the phrase "common carrier" in discussing this situation has no idea what it means. (Hint: "common carrier" is a term that refers ONLY to a very limited set of telecommunications companies: mainly the various Bells.)
That's not strictly accurate. You attempt to claim indemnity from prosecution for your comment by leaving them with the copyright. You are trying to retain some common carrier-like status.
--
By doing this they concede that they are responsible for everything on the site.
There previous claim, that they were a common carrier (like a phone company), a medium for comments to be posted, and were not liable for them, is gone.
This means:
1. Slashdot is liable for everything written on Slashdot. Libellous statements, illegal content, warez, and any thing criminal or tortious (a tort is a civil wrong, such as libel).
Censorship must come. -1 will be replaced with deletion
2. You better be worried. You, as a poster, are liable for what you write. Start shitting your pants.
Is what you wrote legal?
No?
Better contact your lawyers bud.
Still, it was never going to last. It's clear that by moderating comments, slashdot editors have revoked common carrier status and become publishers liable for all they write.
See, for instance, Demon, a UK ISP, who, on removing some Usenet posts for reasons of illegality, were held liable for every single post on their service, since they had become publishers in the eyes of tha law.
Watch out people.
--
Sure.
:-(], which should be pretty explanatory.
www.php.net/manual. The manual is great. You can learn everything you need to know about specific things from there. Before that, you need a basic tutorial.
A PHP page looks like this:
<html>
<title>Hello</title>
<form action=<?php print $PHP_SELF; ?>
<input name=message>
<input type=submit>
</form>
<?php
print $message;
?>
Try that. Also, to get hold of PHP, use PHP Triad (on Linux, you can probably install it from your distribution CD), a win32 installer of PHP, Apache and MySQL.
Basically:
PHP is HTML with the code embedded between blocks starting
<?php
and ending
?>
within that you put your PHP code.
For example:
<?php
print "hello";
?>
would display hello - just like perl.
Similarly, as in Perl, variables are preceded by $.
So:
<?php
$message="chese";
print "I like $message";
?>
It's convenient - all form variables get put into variables of the same name:
<form action=apage.php>
<input name=thing>
<input type=submit name=action value=Submit>
</form>
would send apage.php two variables - $action='Submit'; and $thing= whatever you typed in there.
You should investigate PHP's object-orientation functions too. Here's an example class [class omitted due to slashdot's lameness filter
Anyway, start here; read here for more, as well as here. Also subscribe to the mailing list at php-general@lists.php.net for help from others.
--
Look, I'm not going to bullshit here. I'll just give you the facts.
1. Before MS came along, computers were unaffordable. Now we all reap the benefits of a computer in every home.
2. MS have consistently brought down prices - they cut prices in the spreadsheet market; they are producing software that is cheaper than what was their before. And they're still doing it. MS Sql Server, which is at least on a par with Oracle, is much cheaper than it, and thus benefits consumers that way.
3. Believe it or not, Microsoft actually do produce good software. Certainly Windows 3.1 wasn't very stable, but in 1992 what competition was there? Certainly not Linux. And even given that, if you ask me if I want my secretary on the current state of the art Linux, or on Windows 3.1 and Word 2, I'll bet you a dollar to a hundred that she'll be more effective on Windows 3.1
4. Microsoft have benefitted the US economy. It really has. Compared with the UK, for instance, the strength of the US IT industry is vast - and much of this strength is due to Microsoft.
5. Nearly all opposition to MS comes from jealous competitors. Netscape have been beaten fair-and-square by MS, for instance - just compare Netscape 6 with MSIE, for instance. This just backs up my point - Microsoft software is of exceptional quality. They hire the best programmers because they can afford to, and they release top software. Word beats anything else on the market, and as a usable OS, so does Windows (and on stability, Windows 2000 ranks pretty highly to). Combine this with easy administration - the idiot in my office is in charge of DNS administration, which he can easily do using MS DNS manager, because it's just point, right click/properties. He'd have no chance with Bind.
The fact is, for a small business with not many staff, Microsoft software allows them to compete with the big guys - they can offer ISP provision, because they don't need highly paid admins. This is great news for the economy and great news for them.
6. The fact is, as I have stated, there is a lot of jealousy and resentment out there - whereas the truth is that Microsoft produce damn fine software, and their very low prices (believe me - just check the price of a spreadsheet 20 years ago), mean that although they have a monopoly, that has come through selling good software at low prices and therefore high volume.
Damaging Microsoft would damage the consumer. What do you want people to use? Star Office?
--
This presents an interesting 'What if?' dilemma. Of course it wouldn't take *as* long to do this, simply because the expertise is there - there is a bulk of people who know how to produce microchips, and they would remember how to do it.
But the second point is more interesting. Catastrophic loss? I don't think that's accurate. The effect of computers has been to break up society in a profoundly negative way. People are spending more and more time on their own, on computers and on the internet. This has reduced social contact. This means there is now less conversation between people, and people are less friendly. Compared with forty years ago, there is less of a sense of neighborliness and of community.
Although people now talk of 'online community', the fact is that there is no substitute for real human contact. It is a vital, life-affirming thing, and has been recognized as such since the ancient Greeks, who talked of man's worth being measured in his ability as a social animal. The effect of computers has been to reduce it, and this has a real effect on humanity. Although we might be richer, more 'successful' now than before, people are not as happy as they were. This lack of contentment has led to greater human suffering - more suicides, more depression, and more unfriendliness. The cause of this, the distintegration of society and community, although not wholly through computers, is through people spending more time with computers instead of people - although ostensibly satisified with a computer as a substitute for a human being, they certainly cannot be said to be happy.
And in other ways too - not simply people socializing with computers instead of people, our enslavement to technology has other symptoms. People now are never free from the computer - their palm pilots, their work computers, their home computers and their laptops.
This has affected people's home lives negatively - the typical Silicon Family has Mom and Dad out till 9pm working, with the children taken care of by a nanny. This kind of family, if you even pause to examine it for a second, is a profoundly negative thing - all the humanity is removed from it; what, after all, is the point of living if you are simply enslaved to computers without any time for people, as these people surely are.
Although, then, computers have helped in terms of 'progress', the world my Mom and Dad grew up in in the 50s is certainly a better one than the one we have today, so I'm really not sure this would be all that catastrophic.
--
I wonder, as an important person in charge of leveraging market position in the OSDN (or something like that) (and therefore with an important position in advertising, not just on /., but on other major OS sites like kuro5hin and sourceforge), what do *you* see as the way to get people to click ads.
/.'s survival for people to click on ads, so what do you see as the future for /.'s ads? As I understand it, the simple banner at the top of the page is not as successful as you will like, so will we see /. with ads in the middle of the page (or every few comments), at the bottom and so on?
I know it's important for
--
People don't, I think, mind ad banners. In fact, they will click on them if they are interesting. For instance, I clicked on an ad for an interview with John Carmack the other day because it was interesting.
/., at least by the direct sales=success approach of the internet (cf. other media, where it's indirect growth that is measured), but an advert for a book about Perl might succeed.
/., advertising must be effective, and to do this, advertisers need to know about you. The number one priority for online advertisers is to get the right ad in front of the right person, and for this ad cookies are vital for the survival of advertising-supported websites.
If you give people interesting ads, they will click. It's different to the real world. Since the success of ads is measured by clickthroughs (i.e. internet advertising is a direct sales route), then what you have to do is give people things they are directly interested in.
So things like those ads for $10 pearls, will fail on
As to successful indirect advertising (increasing sales, although not through clickthroughs), this is a different issue, and depends on a level of obtrusiveness that internet ads don't have. You can't make a catchy ad to sell rubbish on the internet, simply because that kind of full screen, 3-minute TV ads don't work, because you only have a few pixels on the screen.
Thus although traditional advertising is about selling people things they don't want, when selling online, you have to try and sell people things they do want - it's just a matter of finding the right people. And this, of course, is where profiles come in.
For the success of sites such as
--
I don't suppose anyone will be able to get to a vast PDF (once /.ed), never mind read it, so here's a précis:
The government wants to use public key for internal use, but because PKI is an immature standard, they are as yet unable to do so, faced with lack of compatibility and standards.
Furthermore, they find that there is no proven and robust system for highest-level security, and will have to wait for one to emerge.
They also believe costs will be high, as more user validation systems are developed, associated with the cost of issuing certificates and creating keys.
There is also a need to create a policy framework - a large executive agency will 'require a substantial effort' with user privacy and general policy issues.
Finally, there is the issue of training. To implement this, a trained staff is needed. Since PKI is complex, this has important cost implications.
--
There are clearly higher costs associated with bigger usage. The reason the initial growth in web usage did not cause cost inflation is that the associated growth of users brought economies of scale.
There are two separate economic situations here. In the first, usage increased, but vastly increased scale and improved technology brought economies of scale.
In the second case however, growth is much shallower, and even if their is massive growth, the large size of the existing market means that there is less room for economies.
In this case, where it is a change in usage patterns more than user numbers, there are certainly implications for ISP costs.
The cost increases are still, however, likely to be small, simply through competition and improved technology.
--
It is said that Linux games are 'more trouble than they are worth'. I think this might be right, but there is a deeper issue here. There is a reasonable-sized market for Mac games, and apparently Linux has a bigger market share than Apple now.
The problem, which hasn't really been discussed properly, is that a minority of Linux users seem unable to recognize the value of software - that some software costs money. The prevalence of free software means that many linux users refuse to pay for software. For many this is an ideological belief - according to the biggest advocates of the GPL, GPL should render software that you pay for obsolete.
This then is the problem for companies considering developing under Linux.
Many Linux users refuse to recognize intellectual property, and so won't pay for games under Linux. This means that the market is fatally undermined - you are attempting to sell to people who won't pay for software, or even believe that paying for software is wrong.
Until people can recognize that software does cost money - that while long-term projects such as Apache can be produced under the open-source model, things like games cannot - you cannot get graphic and sound artists to work for free; then non-free software on Linux will have an unhappy time.
I think this is sad, since there can exist a harmony between the two, but at the moment a minority of unrepresentative bigots, who don't seem to believe that hard work in producing software deserves reward, are holding the two worlds in a deathly battle.
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Although I think open source licences have advantages in many cases - for example, apache, KDE and Gnome are all good candidates for an open source licence, I'm not sure that open source is necessarily appropriate for a music compression alogrithm.
At the essence of music lies intellectual property. Intellectual property underpins music. Without it, there would be no Eminem, no N-Sync and no Limp Biskit. These bands rely on ownership of intellectual property for their income, and hence for their inception (without the protection IP affords, there would be no money from seeling records).
An open-source approach threatens to undermine this. We are seeing more and more the danger that MP3s present to musicians' livelihoods - they threaten to make paying for music obsolete.
Now as an 'owned' algorithm, MP3 can easily be protected, and indeed we are seeing the advent of watermarking to protect music.
With something whose very existence opposes intellectual property, however, the result will be 'free' music, since open source will not protect intellectual property.
This, in the end, is bad news. I hope people will realize this, and put the longterm good of the record industry ahead of short-term 'free' music from the likes of an unprotected compression system such as oggvorbis.
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> The private URL that IME creates is unique, tied to the sender of the package or transaction, to the content being sent, and to the intended recipient. I guess I can't tell my buds to surf to a non-public directory on my website to download stuff anymore.
Well yes. That's not the same thing.
This is talking about unique URL identifying URL.
A directory on a harddrive is not the same thing.
> Many web applications generate these private URLs.
Possibly. But Tumbleweed have patented it - they got there first - way back in 1997 according to the story, so it's tumbleweed that gets the patent. I don't see what the big deal is here. There's always been a rush to be the first to do thing - it encourages innovation, and the one who gets their first gets to exploit the invention. It's always happened, and just because it's now happening on the net is no different. I guess people aren't used to dealing with patents, but the news is that everyone else has been dealing with them for three centuries.
> Like the cheesy insecure bookmkarkable login URL that Slash uses for example
Well no, not really. That's just a URL with a password and username. That's not this. You might as well say that the diesel engine is 'like' the 4-stroke petrol engine. Sure there are certain similarities, but they aren't the same - and they can both be protected accordingly.
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And I didn't think it was one of his better efforts. While I think Hal is a fine author, I have read better books by him.
He's also something of an acquired taste; especially, ironically, for sci-fi fans (on which, there is an interesting essay on 'Hard Science Fiction' here).
Anyway, before you read this, read Mission Of Gravity . If you don't like that, don't read this. If you do, I would recommend this as a followup.
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I have never head such a lot of unscientific nonsense in my life.
You cannot prove that something like this is not true. This is about the most basic logical axiom that there is.
Furthermore, 'evidence' of evolution from supposed changes in genes is nothing more than evidence.
We have:
1. one set of genes - we are required to accept very many things here; the validity of the analysis of those genes, the validity of the research, the validity of the samples, etc.
2. another set of genes - again, the same ASSUMPTIONS, which CAN NEVER BE PROVED for certain persist
3. a deduction from this that there is evolution.
To take 3, there is absolutely nothing that compels us to draw the deduction suggested. All it is a hypothesis, and one that assumes a large number of things - certainly not sufficient evidence to make people change their beliefs.
To consider the wider issue, there are just as many problems (and more) with evolutionism as there are with creationism. For example, the evolutionists assert the earth is billions of years old, and yet they have not a shred of evidence for this. Their dating techniques, for example - the primary argument used by evolutionists for evolution is the fossil record.
Dating techniques are used to show that these fossils are supposedly millions of years old - and yet these same dating techniques have been shown to be unreliable to useless - thereby making their argument untenable. An example of this was where a rock, known only to be a few hundred years old, was dated at several million years.
In fact, there is no reliable evidence provided by the evolutionists to rebutt the very strong evidence (among others, the clear evidence of design in the world) that the earth was created a few thousand years ago.
I suggest that to get a balanced view on this, you read one of the many good creationist websites. For answers to each of the incorrect beliefs of evolutionists (don't forget, of course, that Dawin himself decided evolution was wrong shortly before his death), try here:
the myth of natural selection
the error of the fossil record
and some of the other creationist sites.
When you've done that, and only then, come back to me, and if you can provide *any* proof of evolution I will eat my hat.
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> it looks like NetBSD could give Linux a run for its money in the handheld arena."
That's all very well, but giving Linux a run for its money is not really the right aim. You should be aiming to become number one OS, not number 12, but beating some other OS.
The thing here is that NetBSD has no advantages in the handheld arena - things like server-class stability are largely irrelevant, whereas more important things such as suitability for the purpose (one of the custom-built OS), or a familiar interface (as with Windows CE) are key factors.
It seems bizarre to do this - to boast that one version of a server OS (Unix), might beat another (which it won't incidentally, since Linux has considerable marketing advantages) - it's like saying that Sun OS will beat IRIX or WindowsNT in the handheld arena - potentially true, but largely irrelevant - you are just saying that of the two tiny server OSs, one has more; it's true, but the numbers are so small it doesn't matter.
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It's nice to hear that there is extraintelligent life, but I think the question every /. reader wants answered is:
Do they run Linux?
If we find that the space aliens run Windows NT, it's bad news - although they'll be very pretty to look at when they're coming towards Earth, they'll crash just as they get to the surface.
Also, what's the uptime on their spaceship? Did they notice any improvement in stability after recompiling the kernel?
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> This is a good book to mark the end of the Microsoft Era
It might well be, but the Microsoft era certainly hasn't ended. They have better market share than ever.
They are poised to take over the game console market, and yesterday announced moves to corner the mobile phone market. This combined with the increasing acceptance of Windows 2000 as the most stable and maintainable server platform around means the Microsoft era is far from over.
We have seen the beginning of open source on a large scale, but we certainly haven't seen the end of the Microsoft era.
Looks like this guy's journalistic instincts to make a story where none exists have overridden the fact of the matter - the Microsoft era hasn't ended, and Open Source is no more significant or worrisome to Microsoft than Apple; there is no sign of the kind of consumer platform where everything is done for you (speaking as someone who recently went to see a client who didn't even understand how to change resolutions and had 640*480 on a 21" monitor, the importance of the OS helping you through everything is clear), nor indeed a server platform where the all important factor - staff time and expertise in maintenance is kept low enough.
Much as it would be nice to see a kind of people's revolution for the good of all, this is nothing more than hype and journalistic bull.
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I'm sorry but I'm not sure I understand. The headline is 'copy-control nightmare', but I don't see how it's a nightmare.
It appears that if someone has protected something, you can't play it.
So? This is like saying that 'New stronger lock for front door is a thief's nightmare'.
Sure it's a nightmare to the thief, but we don't really care about them do we - they are the ones that are in the wrong - they are the ones trying to steal something belonging to someone else. We wouldn't describe that as a nightmare, except by qualifying it - it's only a nightmare for the bad guy.
So it is in this case - people are given a chance to protect their property (the music they own and have written), and I can't see that that's a nightmare.
Why, in these cases, is it always portrayed that everyone has the right to someone else's music? We wouldn't say that I have the right to go into your house and steal your possessions, so why encourage stealing music?
Before anyone says, 'ah but with music, they still have it - you haven't taken anything', let me point this out: for artists and musicians, royalties are vitally important. Most artists (of whatever kind) earn far less than the average wage, so by denying them their royalties, you are effectively stealing the money out of their hand.
Please, have a little consideration here. Imagine it was you.
What if people had the chance to take your salary away, and as a result you were poor and destitute? Can you picture that? I do hope so. There is never an innocent victim in these cases.
You're never hurting the fat cat - it's the little guy that gets the blame. Not the high-earning Backstreet Boys, but the minority band earning $10,000 a year that gets shafted.
It's not the company director that gets fired when revenues are lost because of 'free' music, it's the worker in the factory - it's someone like you. It's just an ordinary decent guy who's getting screwed. Now just remember that the next time you talk about free music.
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Troll or not, every word is true.
You can't just right off truth because of what the author is.
Why don't you actually address the real points there instead?
Thanks! I'd been looking for a history of open source - I didn't realise Richard Stallman wrote the first open source project.
In fact I didn't realise he wrote emacs - I thought he was just 'the open source dude'.