San Francisco appears to be a proprietary set of objects called Business Components for WebSphere. WebSphere, which I never heard of either, appears to be a web server combined with something like BackOffice. In other words, it's yet another proprietary product that failed.
What I was visualizing is a standard, well-documented set of common business objects, probably open source. I have a feeling we would have something like this if enough hardcore geeks took an interest in it. Maybe the problem is that the inner mechanics of business are so overwhelmingly boring.
The people at the patent office don't seem to be thinking very far ahead, or maybe it's just not their job to think ahead. Imitating the successful business techniques of others is a longstanding tradition in the business world. There's absolutely no historical precedent for treating a marketing method as intellectual property. The huge boom in business in America during the last century would not have happened if entrepreneurs had to stop at every turn to make sure their methods didn't infringe someone's patent. I can't find words to express how utterly and mind-bogglingly stupid this decision was.
For years I have been wondering why business software hasn't evolved into a set of common building blocks. Business and accounting functions are so standard. Business software packages all do the same basic things: payroll, billing, accounts payable, inventory, order processing, etc. Why isn't there an ANSI standard for doing all these things? Why isn't there a universally used set of business objects by now? Back in the eighties I sort of had hopes that the ISO9000 people might push along these lines, but all they did was insist that every process be documented.
Every company seems to think their situation is unique; off-the-shelf software just doesn't fit the way they do business. But with the high cost of customization and one-off coding, it would really make sense to let software standardization drive business standardization. Maybe it's the same problem that doomed the big push to imitate Japanese business techniques in America. American managers were happy to show a few videos, hand out some pamphlets and say to their employees, "Okay now, go act Japanese." The thing they were reluctant to do was give mere workers the control necessary to accomplish that.
I have a feeling that if somebody wrote a complete, concise standard for business software, managers would hand it to their in-house developers and say, "Go code this, but make sure it lets us keep doing everything the way we do it now."
from the article: "it's clearly a better deal than they get from piracy."
It's only a better deal if the musician's 12% cut of the download fee is somehow not covered by their recording contract. Normally all expenses of production, manufacturing, advertising and distribution come out of the musician's share, usually leaving zero. This standard recording contract provision is why musicians themselves don't actually lose money to piracy. They don't lose money because they don't make money from record sales. Musicians make money by playing gigs, and the exposure they get from record sales (or airplay, or downloads) generates more and better gigs. Downloading does not hurt musicians, it helps them.
To keep these people's comments in perspective, keep in mind that Madonna, Linkin Park et al don't represent "the music community" any more than Rush Limbaugh represents "the broadcast community." Major label musicians are an extremely tiny minority, and those who actually make money directly from CD sales are an even smaller minority.
The vast majority of the musician community has everything to gain and nothing to lose from the increased exposure downloads give. Whether it's one song or a whole album, more exposure generates more and better gigs, and nearly all professional musicians make a living from gigs, not from sales of copies of recordings.
Good insights, and I agree this is a decent start. But in my mind no automatic system that applies the brakes is ready for production until it also considers what's BEHIND the car.
This and the few other articles I was able to find through Google don't mention anything about the system looking at what's behind the car before applying the brakes. In my mind that is bad, bad, bad design. Maybe the Honda engineers determined that in most situations it's not a problem, but braking blindly based on statistics is not a smart idea. There's also no mention of the driver being able to defeat the system, as you can with cruise control.
The problem is that entertainment companies don't exist to promote or encourage the arts, they exist to make and sell copies. Period. To them music isn't art, it's a product that they can own and profit from.
Musicians make money by playing gigs, not by selling records. Recording contracts are written such that all expenses of production, manufacturing, distribution and advertising a CD are paid out of the musician's share, usually leaving zero. What the musician gets from CD sales is exposure, which translates to gigs. Musicians know this, but most of them aren't convinced yet that they can make it big without a recording contract. Very few superstars have taken strong stands against file sharing. A few who are smart enough at business (Madonna) to get a bigger percentage and actually make money from record sales, and a few idiots (Metallica).
If you are interested in a long-time singer's in-depth details of working with record companies, read some of Janis Ian's excellent writings on the subject.
Senator Hatch has clearly gone off the deep end. In no other situation is a citizen allowed to inflict get-even damage on someone against whom he has a grievance. Hatch and others liken copyright infringement to thieves driving off with a stolen tv. The desired mental image is of the rightfully enraged homeowner shooting out the tires to recover his property.
In light of Hatch's apparent loss of brain function, I would like to make a simple but underrated point about copyright. Copyright violation is not theft. It's just called theft by people who have a financial interest in calling it theft. There is no need to call it that. Defacing a billboard with spraypaint is called vandalism, not theft of display space. Setting fire to somebody's house is called arson, not theft of firewood. Parking in a bus zone is a traffic violation, not theft of parking.
Copyright is the government's way of giving one person an exclusive right. People who have copyrights are copyright "holders." They don't "own" anything. This is not just a semantic nitpick, it's an important distinction. Copyright law is like the law that allows the person in the right-hand lane to turn after stopping at the red light, but not the person in the left-hand lane. Distributing copies without permission may be against the law, but it's not "theft of content" any more than turning from the left lane at a stoplight is "theft of turning." There's nothing to steal.
It's unfortunate that our system has evolved to allow people to sell copyrights, for it creates the misconception of ownership, miscasting infringement in terms that are familiar but inappropriate -- the image of the unwashed pirate stealing the dubloons.
If we look at copyright for what it really is (permission granted by the government) instead of how the copy-making industry wants us to see it (sacred property forming the bedrock of the economy), then proposals like Senator Hatch's are even more ridiculous. We might as well authorize people to ram cars that cut them off in traffic (theft of lane position).
On the other hand, my neighbor across the street planted some trees several years ago that have shot up to twice the height of his house, and are blocking my once-panoramic view of Puget Sound. If only I could legally firebomb them to thwart his aggregious theft of my view...
Declan McCullagh's link to the final version of the proposal is broken. I would like to read it. Has anybody else bothered to look for it?
Re:I'm sorry, but I fail to see the contradiction
on
A Mighty Wind
·
· Score: 1
Apparently you fail to see the contradictions in ALL of your examples. The fact that there are other people who also don't want to practice what they preach doesn't change anything. The point is that being an "activist" with an ample bank account and a pen is a lot easier than actually walking the walk. It may be natural for people not to want those windmills in their backyards, but that's where the wind is.
Just build them on the nearest Indian reservation, between the casino and the fireworks stand! The tribe can make some money and the checkbook environmentalists won't have their view spoiled.
"In the gaming industry, wireless sensors attached to a personâ(TM)s arms and legs could replace the conventional joystick and allow a âcouch potatoâ(TM) to get some physical exercise while playing video games such as basketball or tennis."
I get it. Sort of like if they got off the couch and played the actual sport. Uh...
Historically things have to get pretty damn bad before public outcry changes them. The complexity of taxation is one of those issues that I believe will eventually get a final straw laid on top of it and things will change. But it's probably nowhere near the breaking point yet, and the tax wizards in various governments have only begun to explore the virgin territory of the Internet. To some of them it probably looks like the California gold rush.
My personal tax rant: There should be a single federal retail sales tax and NO OTHER TAXES WHATSOEVER. Outlaw income tax, business tax, property tax, interstate trucking tax, zero-gravity butt-wiping tax etc, etc, and simplify it with one tax on retail sales. In the United States this would be about 20%. To make it non-regressive, every head of household would get a flat dollar amount refunded each year, equal to the sales tax rate times whatever the government says is poverty income level, with an allowance per dependent like the income tax system has now. That way poor people, who presumably spend all their income, would pay zero tax, and the rate would ramp up gradually and automatically depending on how much you consume. In other words, the exact opposite of the flat income tax that has been proposed over and over.
The inner beauty of this scheme is that it eliminates all the hidden taxes the public now pays that are built into the price of everything, and eliminates the use of the tax system by lawmakers to create paybacks for their sponsors. They would have only 3 numbers to manipulate: the tax percentage, the refund amount and the dependent allowance, and every change would be plainly visible to everybody.
No bizarre deductions, no need for a 2000-page federal tax code or for the current 105,000 IRS employees who enforce it, not to mention the army of accountants, clerks, lawyers, consultants, and lobbyists whose living is based entirely on the complexity of the tax system.
Of course a single-tax system assumes there is a single government, or at least cooperation among governments.
Edison said invention is something like 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. The patent system wasn't set up to provide a means for one-percenters to stake a claim on the future hard work of the 99-percenters.
When you get a permit to build a house you generally have 2 years to complete the work, then if the work isn't done you have to get a new permit. Patent applications should expire like that. Otherwise we will have an idea-squatting industry akin to domain name squatting.
Another great illustration of the tremendous effort people are willing to invest to make sure the right number of beans are in the right piles.
I am really looking forward to when the Internet becomes a public utility and Internet access is more like like freeway access (not toll roads, not GPS-scanned roads, just freeways). A global communication system, like a highway system, benefits you all the time, not just while you are personally using it.
Okay, Ballmer is telling the employees that they have to work harder to convince the world that Microsoft products are a good deal. But I am amazed that nobody seems to be wondering how they plan to do this? For example, how does Microsoft plan to get users to buy Longhorn? They've stated very clearly that there will be no backward compatibility. Customers will have to buy all new Palladium-equipped hardware. That's fine for people who always want the newest thing, but right now in the US alone there are 40 million people still running Win98. Microsoft must be counting on something to motivate or compel these customers, who haven't seen fit to upgrade to NT, Millenium or XP over the years. Surely they are't suddenly realizing just now that this might be a problem. Are they?
Baldness??? How about regrowing TEETH??
on
Chicken Run
·
· Score: 1
Gosh, it's great to know that this research might lead to exciting breakthroughs in the treatment of baldness. Certainly that possibility dwarfs the implications that humans might one day be able to grow a new set of teeth.
The priorities of mainstream media! Too bad they couldn't work Martha Stewart into the story somehow.
Property and Rights are Different Things
on
Steal This Idea
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
This review really made me want to read this book. I think the centeral problem with Intellectual Property is the whole notion of defining a right as a property. The legal system should go back to treating patents, trademarks and copyrights as temporary rights to exclusive use, rather than the newer notion of equating them with physical property.
Slashdot Mirror
After they finish fixing the copyright system maybe Lessig, Lofgren and Doolittle will take an interest in fixing the patent system.
Side comment: the poster writes, "At roughly $950 per computer this clearly involves more than just the OS."
Not necessarily. These are the same people who in the past have paid thousands of dollars for hand tools and coffee makers.
San Francisco appears to be a proprietary set of objects called Business Components for WebSphere. WebSphere, which I never heard of either, appears to be a web server combined with something like BackOffice. In other words, it's yet another proprietary product that failed.
What I was visualizing is a standard, well-documented set of common business objects, probably open source. I have a feeling we would have something like this if enough hardcore geeks took an interest in it. Maybe the problem is that the inner mechanics of business are so overwhelmingly boring.
The people at the patent office don't seem to be thinking very far ahead, or maybe it's just not their job to think ahead. Imitating the successful business techniques of others is a longstanding tradition in the business world. There's absolutely no historical precedent for treating a marketing method as intellectual property. The huge boom in business in America during the last century would not have happened if entrepreneurs had to stop at every turn to make sure their methods didn't infringe someone's patent. I can't find words to express how utterly and mind-bogglingly stupid this decision was.
Seems like a good time to quote Starship Troopers:
Rico: "A citizen is someone who makes the safety of the human race their personal responsibility."
For years I have been wondering why business software hasn't evolved into a set of common building blocks. Business and accounting functions are so standard. Business software packages all do the same basic things: payroll, billing, accounts payable, inventory, order processing, etc. Why isn't there an ANSI standard for doing all these things? Why isn't there a universally used set of business objects by now? Back in the eighties I sort of had hopes that the ISO9000 people might push along these lines, but all they did was insist that every process be documented.
Every company seems to think their situation is unique; off-the-shelf software just doesn't fit the way they do business. But with the high cost of customization and one-off coding, it would really make sense to let software standardization drive business standardization. Maybe it's the same problem that doomed the big push to imitate Japanese business techniques in America. American managers were happy to show a few videos, hand out some pamphlets and say to their employees, "Okay now, go act Japanese." The thing they were reluctant to do was give mere workers the control necessary to accomplish that.
I have a feeling that if somebody wrote a complete, concise standard for business software, managers would hand it to their in-house developers and say, "Go code this, but make sure it lets us keep doing everything the way we do it now."
from the article:
"it's clearly a better deal than they get from piracy."
It's only a better deal if the musician's 12% cut of the download fee is somehow not covered by their recording contract. Normally all expenses of production, manufacturing, advertising and distribution come out of the musician's share, usually leaving zero. This standard recording contract provision is why musicians themselves don't actually lose money to piracy. They don't lose money because they don't make money from record sales. Musicians make money by playing gigs, and the exposure they get from record sales (or airplay, or downloads) generates more and better gigs. Downloading does not hurt musicians, it helps them.
For further explanation read some of Janis Ian's informative articles on the mechanics of the recording business.
To keep these people's comments in perspective, keep in mind that Madonna, Linkin Park et al don't represent "the music community" any more than Rush Limbaugh represents "the broadcast community." Major label musicians are an extremely tiny minority, and those who actually make money directly from CD sales are an even smaller minority.
The vast majority of the musician community has everything to gain and nothing to lose from the increased exposure downloads give. Whether it's one song or a whole album, more exposure generates more and better gigs, and nearly all professional musicians make a living from gigs, not from sales of copies of recordings.
Or Congress would have changed the law to extend the life patents for another 50 years.
Good insights, and I agree this is a decent start. But in my mind no automatic system that applies the brakes is ready for production until it also considers what's BEHIND the car.
This and the few other articles I was able to find through Google don't mention anything about the system looking at what's behind the car before applying the brakes. In my mind that is bad, bad, bad design. Maybe the Honda engineers determined that in most situations it's not a problem, but braking blindly based on statistics is not a smart idea. There's also no mention of the driver being able to defeat the system, as you can with cruise control.
No thanks.
The problem is that entertainment companies don't exist to promote or encourage the arts, they exist to make and sell copies. Period.
To them music isn't art, it's a product that they can own and profit from.
Musicians make money by playing gigs, not by selling records. Recording contracts are written such that all expenses of production, manufacturing, distribution and advertising a CD are paid out of the musician's share, usually leaving zero. What the musician gets from CD sales is exposure, which translates to gigs. Musicians know this, but most of them aren't convinced yet that they can make it big without a recording contract. Very few superstars have taken strong stands against file sharing. A few who are smart enough at business (Madonna) to get a bigger percentage and actually make money from record sales, and a few idiots (Metallica).
If you are interested in a long-time singer's in-depth details of working with record companies, read some of Janis Ian's excellent writings on the subject.
Senator Hatch has clearly gone off the deep end. In no other situation is a citizen allowed to inflict get-even damage on someone against whom he has a grievance. Hatch and others liken copyright infringement to thieves driving off with a stolen tv. The desired mental image is of the rightfully enraged homeowner shooting out the tires to recover his property.
In light of Hatch's apparent loss of brain function, I would like to make a simple but underrated point about copyright. Copyright violation is not theft. It's just called theft by people who have a financial interest in calling it theft. There is no need to call it that. Defacing a billboard with spraypaint is called vandalism, not theft of display space. Setting fire to somebody's house is called arson, not theft of firewood. Parking in a bus zone is a traffic violation, not theft of parking.
Copyright is the government's way of giving one person an exclusive right. People who have copyrights are copyright "holders." They don't "own" anything. This is not just a semantic nitpick, it's an important distinction. Copyright law is like the law that allows the person in the right-hand lane to turn after stopping at the red light, but not the person in the left-hand lane. Distributing copies without permission may be against the law, but it's not "theft of content" any more than turning from the left lane at a stoplight is "theft of turning." There's nothing to steal.
It's unfortunate that our system has evolved to allow people to sell copyrights, for it creates the misconception of ownership, miscasting infringement in terms that are familiar but inappropriate -- the image of the unwashed pirate stealing the dubloons.
If we look at copyright for what it really is (permission granted by the government) instead of how the copy-making industry wants us to see it (sacred property forming the bedrock of the economy), then proposals like Senator Hatch's are even more ridiculous. We might as well authorize people to ram cars that cut them off in traffic (theft of lane position).
On the other hand, my neighbor across the street planted some trees several years ago that have shot up to twice the height of his house, and are blocking my once-panoramic view of Puget Sound. If only I could legally firebomb them to thwart his aggregious theft of my view...
After all the whining is done, the ultimate answer is don't buy DRM products as long as there are alternatives.
No comment, I just enjoy typing, "a robot that destroys everything in its path."
Declan McCullagh's link to the final version of the proposal is broken. I would like to read it. Has anybody else bothered to look for it?
Apparently you fail to see the contradictions in ALL of your examples. The fact that there are other people who also don't want to practice what they preach doesn't change anything. The point is that being an "activist" with an ample bank account and a pen is a lot easier than actually walking the walk. It may be natural for people not to want those windmills in their backyards, but that's where the wind is.
Just build them on the nearest Indian reservation, between the casino and the fireworks stand! The tribe can make some money and the checkbook environmentalists won't have their view spoiled.
"In the gaming industry, wireless sensors attached to a personâ(TM)s arms and legs could replace the conventional joystick and allow a âcouch potatoâ(TM) to get some physical exercise while playing video games such as basketball or tennis."
I get it. Sort of like if they got off the couch and played the actual sport. Uh...
Historically things have to get pretty damn bad before public outcry changes them. The complexity of taxation is one of those issues that I believe will eventually get a final straw laid on top of it and things will change. But it's probably nowhere near the breaking point yet, and the tax wizards in various governments have only begun to explore the virgin territory of the Internet. To some of them it probably looks like the California gold rush.
My personal tax rant:
There should be a single federal retail sales tax and NO OTHER TAXES WHATSOEVER. Outlaw income tax, business tax, property tax, interstate trucking tax, zero-gravity butt-wiping tax etc, etc, and simplify it with one tax on retail sales. In the United States this would be about 20%. To make it non-regressive, every head of household would get a flat dollar amount refunded each year, equal to the sales tax rate times whatever the government says is poverty income level, with an allowance per dependent like the income tax system has now. That way poor people, who presumably spend all their income, would pay zero tax, and the rate would ramp up gradually and automatically depending on how much you consume. In other words, the exact opposite of the flat income tax that has been proposed over and over.
The inner beauty of this scheme is that it eliminates all the hidden taxes the public now pays that are built into the price of everything, and eliminates the use of the tax system by lawmakers to create paybacks for their sponsors. They would have only 3 numbers to manipulate: the tax percentage, the refund amount and the dependent allowance, and every change would be plainly visible to everybody.
No bizarre deductions, no need for a 2000-page federal tax code or for the current 105,000 IRS employees who enforce it, not to mention the army of accountants, clerks, lawyers, consultants, and lobbyists whose living is based entirely on the complexity of the tax system.
Of course a single-tax system assumes there is a single government, or at least cooperation among governments.
Edison said invention is something like 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. The patent system wasn't set up to provide a means for one-percenters to stake a claim on the future hard work of the 99-percenters.
When you get a permit to build a house you generally have 2 years to complete the work, then if the work isn't done you have to get a new permit. Patent applications should expire like that. Otherwise we will have an idea-squatting industry akin to domain name squatting.
Another great illustration of the tremendous effort people are willing to invest to make sure the right number of beans are in the right piles.
I am really looking forward to when the Internet becomes a public utility and Internet access is more like like freeway access (not toll roads, not GPS-scanned roads, just freeways). A global communication system, like a highway system, benefits you all the time, not just while you are personally using it.
Okay, Ballmer is telling the employees that they have to work harder to convince the world that Microsoft products are a good deal. But I am amazed that nobody seems to be wondering how they plan to do this? For example, how does Microsoft plan to get users to buy Longhorn? They've stated very clearly that there will be no backward compatibility. Customers will have to buy all new Palladium-equipped hardware. That's fine for people who always want the newest thing, but right now in the US alone there are 40 million people still running Win98. Microsoft must be counting on something to motivate or compel these customers, who haven't seen fit to upgrade to NT, Millenium or XP over the years. Surely they are't suddenly realizing just now that this might be a problem. Are they?
Gosh, it's great to know that this research might lead to exciting breakthroughs in the treatment of baldness. Certainly that possibility dwarfs the implications that humans might one day be able to grow a new set of teeth.
The priorities of mainstream media! Too bad they couldn't work Martha Stewart into the story somehow.
This review really made me want to read this book. I think the centeral problem with Intellectual Property is the whole notion of defining a right as a property. The legal system should go back to treating patents, trademarks and copyrights as temporary rights to exclusive use, rather than the newer notion of equating them with physical property.