Others have said parts of this, but let me try to put them together:
Sure you can sue someone for taking your GPL code and incorporating it into a proprietary package or system. It's not stealing; you can't pursue that avenue. It is a license violation, and you could sue for that. But even better would be to take the resulting proprietary product, decompile it, and post the code publicly with specific documentation that it is now GPL code itself.
Some thoughts about this: - The company will surely try to sue you and/or get an injunction. But then again, you were thinking about spending time in court anyway suing them, and you can surely countersue for costs and time lost. If you did your homework documenting that the code is a derivative of yours and that you were entirely within the bounds of the license that they adopted by using your code, you stand a good chance of having the case thrown out. - By releasing their GPL code for them, you expand the market for implementation and support services. Since it's a derivative of your code, you stand to benefit from it because you're more familiar with the code. Therefore it's mostly a good thing.
This underscores the critical requirement for the legality of reverse-engineering. If click-licenses take the essential right to examine what you have purchased away from you, you have lost the right to know when or if you have been violated as a consumer or as a competitor. That's a completely unacceptable state of affairs: Imagine you buy a car with a 2.5L engine and the mfr puts a clause in the purchase agreement that licenses you the engine when you purchase the physical media of the frame and body -- and precludes you from disassembling the engine to see if they really gave you a 1.9L HO engine for which they stole the design from a competitor. It would be ludicrous, yet we accept the same arrangement in software. Why is Ferarri not worried that Chevrolet will steal their engine designs? Why are architects ok with giving their innovative structural designs to the public records office at City Hall? Why doesn't Makita worry that Dewalt will reverse-engineer their new compound-slide saw and put out a derivative work? Because these are all in mature enough industries where people realize that there's already ways to prevent misappropriation of technology (in the current legal context) without placing onerous legal restrictions on the consumer.
Not to defend them, but one can obtain patents to protect novel algorythms and innovative software. Why hide code? For example, why doesn't Microsoft publish the source for Word and sue the hell out of anyone that inappropriately uses it? One would think that the best way to defend a patent would be to openly establish ones' work as prior art by publishing the source just as every car comes with an openable hood.
I knew this had probably been done, but I never really gave it much thought. How scary; your Gemstar-licensed set-top box can report your specific, comprehensive viewing habits, not just pay-per-view or other targeted bits. Probably feeds right into Experian's marketing database and has Ron Popeil merchandise delivered to your door if you linger too long on his infomercials.
But on the bright side, all this patent madness encourages a more healthy lifestyle. How? There are almost a dozen CRTs in my house. Only one does not have a keyboard in front of it, and it doesn't get turned on much. And I cancelled cable service a while back because (a) 99% of all video content is rehashed, unoriginal, uninteresting, unartistic crap, and (b) I won't support an industry that wants to insinuate itself as a controlling influence in my life. It doesn't take a patented monitoring or menu system to tell that my cable connection is permanently off. If I want to watch something on the SciFi channel, I have to (*gasp*) leave the house, (*akk!!*) expose myself to sunshine, and (no!!!) socialize with friends. J
Settings=Control Panel=Add/Remove Programs=Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 and Internet Tools=Add/Remove only removes a shell application, leaving behind some 30-40 megs of web-related crap that you really can't get rid of because of intentional dependencies in the OS. It may be just as hard or harder than removing the Netscape icon on your TurboLinux desktop; if TurboLinux makes it hard to get rid of then shame on them.
Microsoft only does with IE what every other OS supplier does -- they installed and featured a preferred browser. Um, no. What they did was to install a browser on a monopoly product and make it difficult enough to get rid of that the average user would become frustrated and simply use what they were given. Most users would try to drag IE to the trash and give up when told that that operation was not permitted.
There is no harm to the consumer. We all know that Netscape Navigator is an inferior product which does not support CSS in a consistent way.Flamebait! Inferiority is a matter of opinion. Personally I think that CSS is a POS junk technology that extends a terrible model of client-side content control, breaking tons of business security models in its path. IE's consistent and tight integration with a platform that suffers from major security problems means that those security problems are extended so far that even my browsing of the web can damage my system. OTOH, I can fire up Netscape as 'nobody' on Linux and safely cruise the web with Javascript and Java turned on. From this security-centric point of view (one which is much more important in a corporate setting than CSS functionality), Internet Explorer is a vastly inferior product.
Is it Microsoft's fault that Netscape degraded its own browser with useless proprietary mush that no one wanted? Nope. Netscape shot themselves in the foot by allowing Microsoft to define the development game. But then again, MS controls 90%+ of the deployment platforms, which makes fighting a feature-driven battle an almost unwinnable one.
Do we really want the government regulating the computer desktop in favor of an inferior product? Clearly not. I want the government to punish Microsoft for its illegal behavior. That's all. Netscape, IE, Linux, W2K; all of these should live or die by their own merits. A monopoly that tries to force product acceptance outside of these merits ought to be treated to interference by the DOJ. Funny that...
I think the issue is more one of code construction to support a business model. If TurboLinux installs Netscape by default, integrates it into the system so that it's hard to remove, and generally makes it hard for you to use a competing tool, then that's a Bad Thing.
OTOH, I don't see anything wrong with including an application in an OS package. The only rub comes in when a monopoly uses its power to extend the monopoly. I hope the DOJ kicks MS's corporate ass, but only insofar as they have broken the law and prevented people from exercising free market choice. (I believe they did, and they have.) People should use Linux, Mac, BeOS, etc etc because they want to, not because they want to hurt MS.
You're right, that is glossing over an important point. Here's my thinking:
The basic design model for IE is consistent across platforms. MS used various tools (I can't remember the primary Win2Unix tool's name off the top of my head) to port the code. However, on the Windows platform Microsoft has manipulated the structure of the program such that the various functions are now distributed throughout the OS, and the IE application is pretty much just a shell that calls various network, parsing, script execution, and other components implemented as DLLs throughout the OS. However, I'm of the opinion that just because they sprinkled the DLLs into the OS and made use of them elsewhere does not justify the various claims of "integration", claims that the integration benefits the consumer, and that this integration was a natural evolution of the product. There is still a distinct application hidden in the woodwork of the operating system.
To me, Microsoft's arguments about WIn98/IE integration sound a lot like the Iraqi behavior concerning chemical weapons in the gulf war -- they separated the components and distributed them throughout the country. While some of the components may have then been legit pharmeceuticals stored in a given factory, that doesn't preclude a factual conclusion that there still existed chemical weapons in the country. I see the MS lawyers saying "Look, no browser here, just an OS." But I see a distinct app with a distinct model, development plan, characteristics, features, and even portability, all swirled around in Win98. The only real effect of that "swirling" that I can see is to prevent easy removal of the application, and to (successfully) stifle a competitor.
Did we, the public, expect anything less? Microsoft is nothing if not an extraordinary spin factory.
The Microsoft Proposed Findings of Law (MSPFOL) is a very well-written house of cards that depends on the legal fiction that Windows 98 and Internet Explorer are one product. I don't need to go into detail with this; if IE is available for Solaris, it ain't an inseparable part of Win98. Their lawyers may be able to say "one product" in section 1A with a straight face, but that don't make it so. Pull that card out, and the whole argument falls. (Not to say that there aren't other flaws in the MSPFOL.)
Admittedly, from a purely functional standpoint it's hard to say where any given OS ends and the applications begin, but the issue here has more to do with integration that was motivated by the desire to stamp competitors out of existence. All the arguments I've seen to the contrary are just so much hot air. IE's quality took huge leaps forward *after* it gained large market share by being forced on OEMs and customers. Win95 and IE4 were separate products, and there's not much real evidence to support the notion that there was real qualifying benefit to the consumer in the ensuing (flagrantly defiant) "integration."
So the crux of the matter (for me) lies in arguments such as claiming IE5 is a product when it suits Microsoft's interest to offer it on another platform, but it's an inseparable OS component when they walk into the courtroom. And then there's the attempt to redefine the market (section 5A, where I should take into account mainframes and PalmPilots in the same breath) to support the laughable fiction that the Windows platform does not compose a monopoly power. To me there's a line short of which their legal hairsplitting that may keep them in the right, and over that line there's a ridiculous denial of reality that irreparably harms their own credibility. Once they cross that line, how can they expect to be taken seriously again? Is it just that they're dug in so far that there's no other alternative but to fight dead-on? Or is it just that the arrogance is so deeply ingrained that even the law is just another business obstacle to be overcome, without a second thought about the ethical, social, and other long-term reasoning behind the law?
Jon Just my rambling thoughts. Me? I want to work for a company that still has a collective conscience.
You're correct that XML support was explicitly stated to be a part of WP/Win v9. However, it didn't start there -- there was full SGML support (and thus support for conforming XML docs with DTDs) in version 8, released (if memory serves me right) back in mid-1997.
Because the Linux WP8 was a port of the Unix codebase but was still tied to the development plan for WP8/Win, I spoke to one of the senior development managers a few months before the WP8/Linux version was released and inquired about SGML/XML support. I was told: (a) it would not be present in the Linux WP8, (b) it was purely a development/porting time-related business decision, and (c) they would port that code if there was user demand for it. (I told him in a semi-humorous manner that I was a user and I demanded it.)
My question is intended to elicit a more pointed response than the generic "We like XML" answers I've seen so far. The doc you referenced is a good starting point, but doesn't really address the issue of SGML/XML support on Linux, or its ubiquity in Corel apps in any real depth. Any more insight, Mr. Cowpland?
One of the most attractive features in the recent versions of WordPerfect for Windows is the support for SGML/XML documents, so I was very disappointed to find that it wasn't in the Linux version when it was released. One of the methods by which Microsoft maintains a strong hold on the office productivity software market is the maintenance of a model that uses proprietary data storage formats. This model is dependent on the assumption of the user that s/he must select a proprietary format to match their product choice, and the common assumption that it's a hassle to switch back and forth. Use of SGML/XML does away with that, making it easier to switch products, as well as easier to share textual information. (This is a primary motivator for why MS is so actively involved in XML development; it would otherwise represent a tremendous loss of control for them.) So you can see why, despite being grateful for WordPerfect on Linux, I was a little burned up about losing the features in which I found the most overall value.
What is Corel's/your overall approach to XML/SGML? Will we see XML document support in WordPerfect for Linux? How about in other products where the fit seems quite natural, such as Trellix (for object-based structured/modular text), or Quattro Pro (working directly in MathML documents, etc)?
Nice, but expensive: "80 playback hours (1200 songs)... The PJB 100 offers exceptional music capacity vs cost less than $10 per playback hour..."
That's $800us. Not bad, considering you get an IBM microdrive and a 10hr lithium-ion battery, but what's the target audience? It's a little big to be a portable (15cm x 2.6cm X 8cm / 6" x 1.25" x 3.2", close to an old Beta tape), especially compared to the latest audiotape-sized shirt-pocket wonders. And it's not designed to be a home stereo component (although I like the screen). If the connections were all on the back rather than the side, it might find its home on my office desk, or on top of my tuner. But then there's that pesky USB connector, and the necessity to connect to a Windows host to manage content. Hmm.
This is just what the doc ordered: simple to use, efficient, and makes good use of existing technology. Didn't D'music have a portable cd-based mp3 player in the works? Or was it Pine Technology? A cd has enough capacity that I won't complain about swapping disks, and (this is important) -- I can use the same disks when I take them on the road with my laptop. Very nice.
The portability of the media notwithstanding, I still would like an mp3 network appliance -- a simple system with:
a decent processor
an os in flash for upgradability (with some careful consideration of security)
a local drive for cacheing
network connectivity (dhcp capable, since a lot of dsl and cable bridge/routers provide this)
http, ftp, and maybe nfs protocol support
a stupidly simple browsing mechanism (lcd touch screen?) that would allow you to pull files or playlists
subtle styling so that it doesn't look out of place on top of a tuner
Hook up the cat 5 right alongside the RCA plugs, enter a couple of starting points (small keypad?), and browse for music. Now THAT would be a component mp3 system.
...They are even paying Wine's leader (Alexandre Julliard) money to fix Wine's last major architectural problem (only 1 address space for all processes) despite the fact that the problem doesn't directly affect their applications.... we may have enough apps to conquer the desktop sooner than you think:)
This is great. There are a couple of windows apps that I find is very difficult to leave behind, like Eudora, Agent, and Lotus Organizer -- mostly because I'm a fuddy-duddy and used to them. The mo-better these work through WINE, the mo-closer I am to platform bliss. I have precisely -zero- desire to run these thru Graphon or VNC tools; I want 'em on my linux laptop. The only criticism I've had for the WINE dev crowd is that y'all need to publicise your achievements more -- but I see that the website is much more informative & friendly than it used to be.
This means that users can run windows apps on a free OS, which is good. However, connection or per-seat licenses may be required by MS, since the app is actually running on a Windows system. Lightweight clients, heavyweight licensing restrictions; windows is like glue -- you touch a box with a running MS kernel, you have to play/pay by their rules.
It also means that the apps stay remote. On the good side, it might encourage users to adopt Linux-native apps locally, but is also might make them feel like second class citizens -- tied to a network to get familiar apps. This becomes less and less of an issue as KDE and Gnome environments begin to provide more and more general-office functionality.
It's nice to see some movement towards server-based apps on a true multi-user system (multiple people logged into the same NT box simultaneously, a la NTTS). However, in my explorations, the licensing fees for such a config is more expensive than just buying one cheap system per anticipated concurrent user (a farm of cheap single-user-OS NT boxen) and using VNC.
It doesn't preclude the use of WINE. This is good, because binary compatibility would be the death of the whole Win32 platform. ("A better Windows than Windows") On the flip side, it takes away some of the motivation to continue WINE development, particularly from Corel, which promised much support for WINE.
Graphon's model means sending screen scrapes over the network & potentially over the internet. Is it encrypted well? On the flip side, using SSH to tunnel VNC is rather intimidating to the typical human.
Just some thoughts, and no real conclusion. I guess I'll stay here on the fence, and throw some more support/feedback to the WINE folks.
AYE!! My neighbor even threatened to turn me in to the building inspectors when I installed an old classic full-size commode in my house. (I'd picked it up from a building salvage place for cheap, and it matches the rest of the classy 1920's porcelain in my house.)
Wasting water? Bullshit! With the new lo-flo toilets, you have to flush two or even three times to banish a floater from the bowl. Damn those Canadians, they have everything! Good beer, socialized medicine, and toilets that make poop go bye-bye.
You're mostly right -- corporate entities have control over people's lives because they abdicate responsibility to those corporations. They do so not because they must, but because it's easier.
It's easier on so many levels it almost defies decription. Do you work with a large corporation to define its job title and description before you take the job, or do you accept the role and work within it? Do you write up your own mortgage agreement, or sign the documents put in front of you? Do you define your needs and buy a vehicle to meet them, or do you select a car that best matches your self-image according to a set of options put forth by a car manufacturer? Do you buy a cheeseburger and drink, or do you buy meal #3 and get the fries anyway?
Of course it would be silly to imply that people have no choice in these matters. One always has a choice. You can be an independent consultant. You can privately finance your house. You can take the bus or ride a bike to work. And you can cook your meals at home, be a vegan, or even grow your own food in the hills and never talk to another person. But the simple reality is that most people choose what's easist in their daily transactions, and that means choosing from a limited set of options defined by a commercial entity.
Does this mean I'm running for the hills? No. And I'll just eat the fries like everyone else. But I do worry that many people become so complacent in their decision-making that they select a president with no more cognitive effort than they select between Southern-Fried or Extra-Crispy. They lose sight of the big picture, and allow themselves to be financially and politically herded. It's important that people maintain a sense of self, a sense of perspective, and an independent sense of ethics against which they can judge the actions of corporate entities (because they're rarely self-regulating and will continue to concentrate financial & political power for the forseeable future), just as a lot of greater minds suggest that one must keep a watchful eye on one's government lest it become oppressive. I'm not even necessarily advocating activism -- just awareness.
corporations and individuals
on
The Timekeeper
·
· Score: 3
Katz says "...work of both underscores the hubris of people who think they know how technology will evolve. The only thing predictable about technology over the centuries is that it isn't predictable. "
But the observation about corporate power and the diminishing relative power of the individual is well received. Given recent experience, it is probably safe to make one prediction: The future will be increasingly shaped by corporate powers for some time to come.
The average corporate entity has no defined, consistent, or evident ethics, and any attempt to change the nature of the corporate beast internally lands one either in endless mission statement and vision definition meetings (universally derided within corporate culture as roughly on par with being a United Way chairperson -- a sign of being useless), or labels the company as a hippie granola farm or religious cult. Attempts to change corporate culture externally by individuals are generally portrayed as signs of nuttiness or foolish idealism (something Michael Moore tried to change with productions like TV Nation). To be serious about changing unethical corporate behavior, one has to use the clout of connected supplier or vendor corporation using money as leverage, or perhaps the US Department of Justice. A gloomy state of affairs indeed.
The obvious question, here at the end of the millenium, is what to do about it. I don't have much faith that a corporate-power driven future holds much good for me, even though I'm a white male in the top 99.5+% of income worldwide. Not much good at all. For my part I'm trying very hard to make a lot of money, concentrate and contribute it in a manner that maximizes my financial and political power, while trying very hard not to lose my sense of ethics. I may work for big, powerful, sometimes passively benevolent, sometimes actively evil corporations, but I am first and foremost and individual. But it sure as hell is hard not to lose oneself in a corporate culture.
What's your plan for making it ok to look at yourself in the mirror each morning?
Just my opinion, but these specs seem rather simplistic and inconsistent with the stated purpose of the systems. If you're doing heavy number-crunching and then working with the results to generate human-readable/graphical representations of the data, you're looking at two classes of activity for which you should separate and optimize the system designs. To be more specific, you don't need any sound card, dvd capability, or high-end graphics adapter on a number cruncher, but you need good keyboards, graphics, and the like for the workstations. A lot of thought probably went into the config and purchase of the SGIs; you should do the same here.
So... I would recommend a more radical solution for the number crunching -- perhaps a cluster of systems running Beowolf. In such a config, the need for dual-processor machines is mostly negated, and with the cost savings (switching to common motherboards, processors, and memory) you can cover the extra network cards, ethernet switch, and put in several more single-processor nodes. The Athlon-700 is an ideal processor in this configuration, providing much more bang for the buck, and potentially provides a cheap path into higher-power SlotA processors. Unless your stuff runs entirely in memory, Rambus won't get you much as opposed to PC100/133, don't waste the money. Stick with a 100m Tulip-based ethernet card or three. And for storage, I'd spend some time designing a screamingly fast solution -- maybe you can good use of your existing SGI systems to host a large array (20 or 30 9gb striped scsi drives in a fiber-linked array, a la the Sun SSA114 or whatever SGI's equivalent is.)
For the workstations, I'd agree with the config pretty much as stated, except that I question the necessity of the entertainment components. If workstation processing power is really such an issue that you really need dual cpus, don't run media apps that hork cpu cycles. Buy a Rio, and watch the DVDs at home.
(Of course, now that I think of it, watching DVDs on your new Linux-based system would make the US Army a co-defendant in the recent decss suit... Hey, why doncha leave that in the config...:)
HPFS wasn't and isn't the holy grail. But it was a lot faster, more stable, more resistant to fragmentation than NT, and had very nice extended attribute management for metadata. And I'd like to point out that *NT* did not support HPFS security -- but HPFS does have it. That Microsoft did not support or even import HPFS security is not a knock on HPFS. Journaling would have been nice, but an abended NTFS partition needs to be chkdsk'd just the same as an abended HPFS partition.
"Technically superior" is a subective label, not a distortion of reality. I have a strong appreciation for clean object-based systems, so I think Warp 4 was/is a better architecture and a cleaner environment in which to write code. Your mileage may vary.
I can see why you might think that, and I didn't mean to imply that this document is a singularly evil thing. It's just another example of how Microsoft uses a technical spin on things to market their products. Whether this document was consciously written with this slant in mind, or whether this document was written and posted because MS has done something like this many times before (such as badmouthing the competition or blaming someone else's software in the tech notes database) remains to be seen.
I would assume the latter, since imho most of the actively, consciously evil people within Microsoft are the technical marketing people who fully understand that they are displacing other products with inferior ones, while spewing tsunamis of horseshit lies to the contrary. Most of the rest of MS is composed of (in order of number) the ambivalent, the Microsoft true believers, the Bill-worshipers, and even the occasional technically-excellent and well-meaning person. It's not a big conspiracy -- just the behavior of an ill-mannered company that's used to being able to get its way. (As an aside, I remember several meetings when I was working there in which it was agreed to co-opt or redefine industry terms and acronyms in the manuals to benefit the perception or appearance of a product. A lot of attention is paid to single words in places that might surprise you.)
It's not so much what the document says about how to remove Linux, it's what the doc says about MS's collective thoughts about Linux. Clearly it shows that MS considers Linux something that needs to be embraced (publicly acknowledged), extended (portrayed as something you migrate *from*), and extinguished (fdisk'ed). How do they go about this? They talk about "upgrading" in a targeted yet nonchalant way so as to ingrain a concept in a consumer's mind.
MS would like consumers to think that because Windows 2000 has a release date in 1Q2000, one would "upgrade" to it from, say, Suse 6.3 released in 4Q1999. However, the reality is that "upgrading" is a subjective concept. It implies that one is moving to or augmenting a system, resulting in greater value. To my mind, one would "upgrade" from W2K to any kernel 2.2 release. I'm sure that MS apologists would see things differently. The important thing for MS is to squelch this idea and redefine the debate, presenting (a) the notion of "upgrading to W2K" as an objective decision, and (b) drowning out all the other voices to make it seem as if the common wisdom relating to that decision is a nod to W2K.
Just as AMD and Intel are involved in a race for MHz when the consumer should be interested in actual performance (like attempting to judge the speed potential of a car by only looking at the tachometer), Microsoft attempts to refocus consumers' collective attention away from what's more well-developed or robust, to what's the latest version number, what's the most with-it name, or what's newest and modern.
There's a lot of Microsoft precedent for this:
Version inflation, to make it seem as if the development work and stability present in a product is comparable to the competition. Witness Microsoft products such as MS Exchange 4.0, which was really a 1.0 release, MS Word 2000 (v9) which is really version 6, Schedule+ version 7.0 which was really release 3, etc etc)
Association of a product release with a date, such as the OS and Office apps, to make it seem as if there were value in running a application with the current year in the name. One of the admitted original goals was to prepare the consumer for yearly software licensing -- an idea which MS quickly withdrew, at least publicly.
Most importantly: The public positioning of the latest product as THE thing to which one upgrades. It's a mindshare thing. For example, when MS released NT 3.1 it supported HPFS, which is/was generally acknowledged to be technically superior to NTFS. However, HPFS was associated with OS/2, and was thus "old" technology. Clients were strongly encouraged to use the lesser NTFS technology, then (with 3.51) refused support if they used HPFS, and then (with 4.0) forced to abandon the superior file system technology entirely. To my mind, NT was used to kill a technically and architecturally superior Warp 4 simply by marketing that portrayed the latter as old and tired. (Not to make any apologies for IBM, which couldn't market a firehose to a common consumer in a burning building...)
W2K will be marketed as the latest thing, the most "2000" thing, and the best thing -- despite the fact that the first two are valueless, and the last is something that is only determined by the consumer. Personally, I will "upgrade" my NT4/RH52 system at work to W2K (because it will make life easier in a Win-centric office), and then will "upgrade" my new home system that will inevitably come bundled with W2K to the latest RH or SuSE distro (because I don't like sloppy code or bad licenses in my home; it's a poor example for the kids).
Funny you should mention it -- a large telecom company in Japan decided a while ago to take advantage of their cellular layout for tracking purposes, with an unpleasant backlash. (Since I got most of these details through the AT&T grapevine, the following information is worth what you paid for it.)
There are about 20 radios in the typical cellular location (cell). With digital technologies one can take those 20 analog channels and push 3-5 calls per, raising the call capacity. However it's often not enough. In dense areas, the cells are made smaller and smaller, by installing more antenna arrays (cells) with lower power. New York and Tokyo were the first locations to begin installing microcells on individual buildings, and then on floor ranges for those buildings.
Then some bright Japanese fellow (or woman) decided that it would be nifty if one could go to a website and type in a cellular number, and be told what Tokyo microcell the phone was in. The purpose was ostensibly for safety and business convenience. The effect, predictably imho, was that the site was frequented by not-so-pleased wives looking for their husbands who were "working late at the office" but were oddly reported as being on the XXth floor of a downtown hotel. Needless to say, this was pulled very quickly.
With an adult, I agree with you. Any adult person (in a common definition) who can't figure out the clear difference between a FPS game and reality needs to be weeded out of the gene pool asap. But kids who still believe in Santa (who they only hear about from other people) are in no position to discriminate FPS games (which they can see, hear, and control) from reality. Where that maturity line is is anyone's guess.
So I have to disagree when we're talking about kids. There used to be a clear and simple difference between games and reality. No one ever got so into Zork that they tried to off cop thinking he was a monster. But FPS games are becoming more advanced and dependent on long-term assumption of a role, learning game/combat-specific skills, and immersion in a visual, semi-realistic environment. In such a situation, it becomes harder for the less-mature to decide where the game leaves off and reality begins.
The typical reply to this would be that reality begins when you get up from the computer and go outside. But think about this -- modern FPS games are visual representations of non-computer environments. You can pick real-world locations in which to do battle. Many of the storylines and scenarios are tied into real-world things -- governmental agencies, police, and fictionalization of real-world events -- that kids see or hear about in the real world. Here's a test. Take two five year old boys and put them outside in the summer with no toys. I'd wager a chunk-o-money that not an hour would go by before one of them picks up a stick, pretends it's a gun, and plays out a scenario that they saw on tv. And that's just by being a passive observer. With FPS games they *have* to respond and participate, or the experience ends. A problem arises when the kid gets so into the FPS scenario (this is the information vs. experience thing) that they begin to identify with the experience, rather than just observe it.
Here's the thing -- I'm not so terrified that every kid is going to grab a gun and start blowing people away (although we've seen this with increasing frequency). What I'm really afraid of is that the experiences that shape the ethics of a lot of kids are being slowly displaced by fictionalized experiences & environments. That's a lot more subtle, and IMHO a lot more damaging to human culture. Is it a reason for me to go on a jihad against FPS games? Nah. But from a parental evaluation, they sure don't fit in the same category as same-topic movies or books.
On one hand, I'm a flag-waving 'merikin who thinks that the government -- at any level -- should not be able to control what I see, read, or internalize by any method. One of the roles of government, IMHO, is to make sure that any of the resultant actions I may take do not harm another person or group/entity. But I have a vehement distaste for censorship in pretty much any form, and have a rather low opinion of those who put informational input controls into law.
On the other hand, I have a 6 month old boy of whom I'm quite protective. I'm not so sure I want him to be able to play a FPS game in the near future. Reading a book or seeing a movie with a sci-fi/killer/combat/monster/slaughter theme is something that I would prefer to influence as a parent, but philosophically I would never want to be in the position to tell my kid he's not allowed to internalize a specific collection of information -- fictional or not, canned or interactive, in a game, movie, or document. However, when he wants to express outward activities tht include borrowing a 9mm to hunt the neighborhood dogs or build a fuel-air bomb out of my lawnmower, I have no qualms about doing my best to quash such behavior.
However, FPS games are getting to the point where it's not so much an interactive story or glorified logic puzzle. It's becoming a full-blown participatory experience rather than an input of information. To me, the line between the input of information (like reading a book on a combat situation) and resultant actions (participating in a combat scenario) is getting increasingly fuzzy.
I'm not sure what to do about it -- and I have to do something about it, especially for this little guy who depends on me for a great deal of his learning and input. Barring someone else's great ideas, I think I have to treat FPS games as having crossed the line into experience rather than information input, which means that I have to consider a FPS game in the same light as whether I want my kid trained to shoot other people.
Slashdot Mirror
Others have said parts of this, but let me try to put them together:
Sure you can sue someone for taking your GPL code and incorporating it into a proprietary package or system. It's not stealing; you can't pursue that avenue. It is a license violation, and you could sue for that. But even better would be to take the resulting proprietary product, decompile it, and post the code publicly with specific documentation that it is now GPL code itself.
Some thoughts about this:
- The company will surely try to sue you and/or get an injunction. But then again, you were thinking about spending time in court anyway suing them, and you can surely countersue for costs and time lost. If you did your homework documenting that the code is a derivative of yours and that you were entirely within the bounds of the license that they adopted by using your code, you stand a good chance of having the case thrown out.
- By releasing their GPL code for them, you expand the market for implementation and support services. Since it's a derivative of your code, you stand to benefit from it because you're more familiar with the code. Therefore it's mostly a good thing.
This underscores the critical requirement for the legality of reverse-engineering. If click-licenses take the essential right to examine what you have purchased away from you, you have lost the right to know when or if you have been violated as a consumer or as a competitor. That's a completely unacceptable state of affairs: Imagine you buy a car with a 2.5L engine and the mfr puts a clause in the purchase agreement that licenses you the engine when you purchase the physical media of the frame and body -- and precludes you from disassembling the engine to see if they really gave you a 1.9L HO engine for which they stole the design from a competitor. It would be ludicrous, yet we accept the same arrangement in software. Why is Ferarri not worried that Chevrolet will steal their engine designs? Why are architects ok with giving their innovative structural designs to the public records office at City Hall? Why doesn't Makita worry that Dewalt will reverse-engineer their new compound-slide saw and put out a derivative work? Because these are all in mature enough industries where people realize that there's already ways to prevent misappropriation of technology (in the current legal context) without placing onerous legal restrictions on the consumer.
Not to defend them, but one can obtain patents to protect novel algorythms and innovative software. Why hide code? For example, why doesn't Microsoft publish the source for Word and sue the hell out of anyone that inappropriately uses it? One would think that the best way to defend a patent would be to openly establish ones' work as prior art by publishing the source just as every car comes with an openable hood.
Jon
I had a look at Gemstar's patent list, and it includes this beauty: Apparatus and methods for using compressed codes for monitoring television program viewing.
I knew this had probably been done, but I never really gave it much thought. How scary; your Gemstar-licensed set-top box can report your specific, comprehensive viewing habits, not just pay-per-view or other targeted bits. Probably feeds right into Experian's marketing database and has Ron Popeil merchandise delivered to your door if you linger too long on his infomercials.
But on the bright side, all this patent madness encourages a more healthy lifestyle. How? There are almost a dozen CRTs in my house. Only one does not have a keyboard in front of it, and it doesn't get turned on much. And I cancelled cable service a while back because (a) 99% of all video content is rehashed, unoriginal, uninteresting, unartistic crap, and (b) I won't support an industry that wants to insinuate itself as a controlling influence in my life. It doesn't take a patented monitoring or menu system to tell that my cable connection is permanently off. If I want to watch something on the SciFi channel, I have to (*gasp*) leave the house, (*akk!!*) expose myself to sunshine, and (no!!!) socialize with friends. J
Ok, you wanted some opinions, so here you go:
Settings=Control Panel=Add/Remove Programs=Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 and Internet Tools=Add/Remove only removes a shell application, leaving behind some 30-40 megs of web-related crap that you really can't get rid of because of intentional dependencies in the OS. It may be just as hard or harder than removing the Netscape icon on your TurboLinux desktop; if TurboLinux makes it hard to get rid of then shame on them.
Microsoft only does with IE what every other OS supplier does -- they installed and featured a preferred browser. Um, no. What they did was to install a browser on a monopoly product and make it difficult enough to get rid of that the average user would become frustrated and simply use what they were given. Most users would try to drag IE to the trash and give up when told that that operation was not permitted.
There is no harm to the consumer. We all know that Netscape Navigator is an inferior product which does not support CSS in a consistent way. Flamebait! Inferiority is a matter of opinion. Personally I think that CSS is a POS junk technology that extends a terrible model of client-side content control, breaking tons of business security models in its path. IE's consistent and tight integration with a platform that suffers from major security problems means that those security problems are extended so far that even my browsing of the web can damage my system. OTOH, I can fire up Netscape as 'nobody' on Linux and safely cruise the web with Javascript and Java turned on. From this security-centric point of view (one which is much more important in a corporate setting than CSS functionality), Internet Explorer is a vastly inferior product.
Is it Microsoft's fault that Netscape degraded its own browser with useless proprietary mush that no one wanted? Nope. Netscape shot themselves in the foot by allowing Microsoft to define the development game. But then again, MS controls 90%+ of the deployment platforms, which makes fighting a feature-driven battle an almost unwinnable one.
Do we really want the government regulating the computer desktop in favor of an inferior product? Clearly not. I want the government to punish Microsoft for its illegal behavior. That's all. Netscape, IE, Linux, W2K; all of these should live or die by their own merits. A monopoly that tries to force product acceptance outside of these merits ought to be treated to interference by the DOJ. Funny that...
J
I think the issue is more one of code construction to support a business model. If TurboLinux installs Netscape by default, integrates it into the system so that it's hard to remove, and generally makes it hard for you to use a competing tool, then that's a Bad Thing.
OTOH, I don't see anything wrong with including an application in an OS package. The only rub comes in when a monopoly uses its power to extend the monopoly. I hope the DOJ kicks MS's corporate ass, but only insofar as they have broken the law and prevented people from exercising free market choice. (I believe they did, and they have.) People should use Linux, Mac, BeOS, etc etc because they want to, not because they want to hurt MS.
You're right, that is glossing over an important point. Here's my thinking:
The basic design model for IE is consistent across platforms. MS used various tools (I can't remember the primary Win2Unix tool's name off the top of my head) to port the code. However, on the Windows platform Microsoft has manipulated the structure of the program such that the various functions are now distributed throughout the OS, and the IE application is pretty much just a shell that calls various network, parsing, script execution, and other components implemented as DLLs throughout the OS. However, I'm of the opinion that just because they sprinkled the DLLs into the OS and made use of them elsewhere does not justify the various claims of "integration", claims that the integration benefits the consumer, and that this integration was a natural evolution of the product. There is still a distinct application hidden in the woodwork of the operating system.
To me, Microsoft's arguments about WIn98/IE integration sound a lot like the Iraqi behavior concerning chemical weapons in the gulf war -- they separated the components and distributed them throughout the country. While some of the components may have then been legit pharmeceuticals stored in a given factory, that doesn't preclude a factual conclusion that there still existed chemical weapons in the country. I see the MS lawyers saying "Look, no browser here, just an OS." But I see a distinct app with a distinct model, development plan, characteristics, features, and even portability, all swirled around in Win98. The only real effect of that "swirling" that I can see is to prevent easy removal of the application, and to (successfully) stifle a competitor.
Jon
Did we, the public, expect anything less? Microsoft is nothing if not an extraordinary spin factory.
The Microsoft Proposed Findings of Law (MSPFOL) is a very well-written house of cards that depends on the legal fiction that Windows 98 and Internet Explorer are one product. I don't need to go into detail with this; if IE is available for Solaris, it ain't an inseparable part of Win98. Their lawyers may be able to say "one product" in section 1A with a straight face, but that don't make it so. Pull that card out, and the whole argument falls. (Not to say that there aren't other flaws in the MSPFOL.)
Admittedly, from a purely functional standpoint it's hard to say where any given OS ends and the applications begin, but the issue here has more to do with integration that was motivated by the desire to stamp competitors out of existence. All the arguments I've seen to the contrary are just so much hot air. IE's quality took huge leaps forward *after* it gained large market share by being forced on OEMs and customers. Win95 and IE4 were separate products, and there's not much real evidence to support the notion that there was real qualifying benefit to the consumer in the ensuing (flagrantly defiant) "integration."
So the crux of the matter (for me) lies in arguments such as claiming IE5 is a product when it suits Microsoft's interest to offer it on another platform, but it's an inseparable OS component when they walk into the courtroom. And then there's the attempt to redefine the market (section 5A, where I should take into account mainframes and PalmPilots in the same breath) to support the laughable fiction that the Windows platform does not compose a monopoly power. To me there's a line short of which their legal hairsplitting that may keep them in the right, and over that line there's a ridiculous denial of reality that irreparably harms their own credibility. Once they cross that line, how can they expect to be taken seriously again? Is it just that they're dug in so far that there's no other alternative but to fight dead-on? Or is it just that the arrogance is so deeply ingrained that even the law is just another business obstacle to be overcome, without a second thought about the ethical, social, and other long-term reasoning behind the law?
Jon
Just my rambling thoughts. Me? I want to work for a company that still has a collective conscience.
You're correct that XML support was explicitly stated to be a part of WP/Win v9. However, it didn't start there -- there was full SGML support (and thus support for conforming XML docs with DTDs) in version 8, released (if memory serves me right) back in mid-1997.
Because the Linux WP8 was a port of the Unix codebase but was still tied to the development plan for WP8/Win, I spoke to one of the senior development managers a few months before the WP8/Linux version was released and inquired about SGML/XML support. I was told: (a) it would not be present in the Linux WP8, (b) it was purely a development/porting time-related business decision, and (c) they would port that code if there was user demand for it. (I told him in a semi-humorous manner that I was a user and I demanded it.)
My question is intended to elicit a more pointed response than the generic "We like XML" answers I've seen so far. The doc you referenced is a good starting point, but doesn't really address the issue of SGML/XML support on Linux, or its ubiquity in Corel apps in any real depth. Any more insight, Mr. Cowpland?
One of the most attractive features in the recent versions of WordPerfect for Windows is the support for SGML/XML documents, so I was very disappointed to find that it wasn't in the Linux version when it was released. One of the methods by which Microsoft maintains a strong hold on the office productivity software market is the maintenance of a model that uses proprietary data storage formats. This model is dependent on the assumption of the user that s/he must select a proprietary format to match their product choice, and the common assumption that it's a hassle to switch back and forth. Use of SGML/XML does away with that, making it easier to switch products, as well as easier to share textual information. (This is a primary motivator for why MS is so actively involved in XML development; it would otherwise represent a tremendous loss of control for them.) So you can see why, despite being grateful for WordPerfect on Linux, I was a little burned up about losing the features in which I found the most overall value.
What is Corel's/your overall approach to XML/SGML? Will we see XML document support in WordPerfect for Linux? How about in other products where the fit seems quite natural, such as Trellix (for object-based structured/modular text), or Quattro Pro (working directly in MathML documents, etc)?
Jon
xeno@wolfenet.com
Nice, but expensive: "80 playback hours (1200 songs) ... The PJB 100 offers exceptional music capacity vs cost less than $10 per playback hour..."
That's $800us. Not bad, considering you get an IBM microdrive and a 10hr lithium-ion battery, but what's the target audience? It's a little big to be a portable (15cm x 2.6cm X 8cm / 6" x 1.25" x 3.2", close to an old Beta tape), especially compared to the latest audiotape-sized shirt-pocket wonders. And it's not designed to be a home stereo component (although I like the screen). If the connections were all on the back rather than the side, it might find its home on my office desk, or on top of my tuner. But then there's that pesky USB connector, and the necessity to connect to a Windows host to manage content. Hmm.
It's all in the industrial design, man.
The portability of the media notwithstanding, I still would like an mp3 network appliance -- a simple system with:
- a decent processor
- an os in flash for upgradability (with some careful consideration of security)
- a local drive for cacheing
- network connectivity (dhcp capable, since a lot of dsl and cable bridge/routers provide this)
- http, ftp, and maybe nfs protocol support
- a stupidly simple browsing mechanism (lcd touch screen?) that would allow you to pull files or playlists
- subtle styling so that it doesn't look out of place on top of a tuner
Hook up the cat 5 right alongside the RCA plugs, enter a couple of starting points (small keypad?), and browse for music. Now THAT would be a component mp3 system.J
...They are even paying Wine's leader (Alexandre Julliard) money to fix Wine's last major architectural problem (only 1 address space for all processes) despite the fact that the problem doesn't directly affect their applications.... we may have enough apps to conquer the desktop sooner than you think :)
This is great. There are a couple of windows apps that I find is very difficult to leave behind, like Eudora, Agent, and Lotus Organizer -- mostly because I'm a fuddy-duddy and used to them. The mo-better these work through WINE, the mo-closer I am to platform bliss. I have precisely -zero- desire to run these thru Graphon or VNC tools; I want 'em on my linux laptop. The only criticism I've had for the WINE dev crowd is that y'all need to publicise your achievements more -- but I see that the website is much more informative & friendly than it used to be.
J
Just some thoughts, and no real conclusion. I guess I'll stay here on the fence, and throw some more support/feedback to the WINE folks.
Jon
AYE!! My neighbor even threatened to turn me in to the building inspectors when I installed an old classic full-size commode in my house. (I'd picked it up from a building salvage place for cheap, and it matches the rest of the classy 1920's porcelain in my house.)
Wasting water? Bullshit! With the new lo-flo toilets, you have to flush two or even three times to banish a floater from the bowl. Damn those Canadians, they have everything! Good beer, socialized medicine, and toilets that make poop go bye-bye.
There's no need for you to comb your hair; this didn't even graze you as it went over your head.
(Criminy, some people would need a prybar to haul their twisted knickers out of their arses!) Don't be so uptight -- laugh once in a while!
J
Come to think of it, the decision about
who to vote for is pretty much like
a visit to KFC.
Do I get the Southern Fried Bush?
Or the Extra Crispy Gore?
...eat the fries...
Jon
You're mostly right -- corporate entities have control over people's lives because they abdicate responsibility to those corporations. They do so not because they must, but because it's easier.
It's easier on so many levels it almost defies decription. Do you work with a large corporation to define its job title and description before you take the job, or do you accept the role and work within it? Do you write up your own mortgage agreement, or sign the documents put in front of you? Do you define your needs and buy a vehicle to meet them, or do you select a car that best matches your self-image according to a set of options put forth by a car manufacturer? Do you buy a cheeseburger and drink, or do you buy meal #3 and get the fries anyway?
Of course it would be silly to imply that people have no choice in these matters. One always has a choice. You can be an independent consultant. You can privately finance your house. You can take the bus or ride a bike to work. And you can cook your meals at home, be a vegan, or even grow your own food in the hills and never talk to another person. But the simple reality is that most people choose what's easist in their daily transactions, and that means choosing from a limited set of options defined by a commercial entity.
Does this mean I'm running for the hills? No. And I'll just eat the fries like everyone else. But I do worry that many people become so complacent in their decision-making that they select a president with no more cognitive effort than they select between Southern-Fried or Extra-Crispy. They lose sight of the big picture, and allow themselves to be financially and politically herded. It's important that people maintain a sense of self, a sense of perspective, and an independent sense of ethics against which they can judge the actions of corporate entities (because they're rarely self-regulating and will continue to concentrate financial & political power for the forseeable future), just as a lot of greater minds suggest that one must keep a watchful eye on one's government lest it become oppressive. I'm not even necessarily advocating activism -- just awareness.
Katz says "...work of both underscores the hubris of people who think they know how technology will evolve. The only thing predictable about technology over the centuries is that it isn't predictable. "
But the observation about corporate power and the diminishing relative power of the individual is well received. Given recent experience, it is probably safe to make one prediction: The future will be increasingly shaped by corporate powers for some time to come.
The average corporate entity has no defined, consistent, or evident ethics, and any attempt to change the nature of the corporate beast internally lands one either in endless mission statement and vision definition meetings (universally derided within corporate culture as roughly on par with being a United Way chairperson -- a sign of being useless), or labels the company as a hippie granola farm or religious cult. Attempts to change corporate culture externally by individuals are generally portrayed as signs of nuttiness or foolish idealism (something Michael Moore tried to change with productions like TV Nation). To be serious about changing unethical corporate behavior, one has to use the clout of connected supplier or vendor corporation using money as leverage, or perhaps the US Department of Justice. A gloomy state of affairs indeed.
The obvious question, here at the end of the millenium, is what to do about it. I don't have much faith that a corporate-power driven future holds much good for me, even though I'm a white male in the top 99.5+% of income worldwide. Not much good at all. For my part I'm trying very hard to make a lot of money, concentrate and contribute it in a manner that maximizes my financial and political power, while trying very hard not to lose my sense of ethics. I may work for big, powerful, sometimes passively benevolent, sometimes actively evil corporations, but I am first and foremost and individual. But it sure as hell is hard not to lose oneself in a corporate culture.
What's your plan for making it ok to look at yourself in the mirror each morning?
Just my opinion, but these specs seem rather simplistic and inconsistent with the stated purpose of the systems. If you're doing heavy number-crunching and then working with the results to generate human-readable/graphical representations of the data, you're looking at two classes of activity for which you should separate and optimize the system designs. To be more specific, you don't need any sound card, dvd capability, or high-end graphics adapter on a number cruncher, but you need good keyboards, graphics, and the like for the workstations. A lot of thought probably went into the config and purchase of the SGIs; you should do the same here.
:)
So... I would recommend a more radical solution for the number crunching -- perhaps a cluster of systems running Beowolf. In such a config, the need for dual-processor machines is mostly negated, and with the cost savings (switching to common motherboards, processors, and memory) you can cover the extra network cards, ethernet switch, and put in several more single-processor nodes. The Athlon-700 is an ideal processor in this configuration, providing much more bang for the buck, and potentially provides a cheap path into higher-power SlotA processors. Unless your stuff runs entirely in memory, Rambus won't get you much as opposed to PC100/133, don't waste the money. Stick with a 100m Tulip-based ethernet card or three. And for storage, I'd spend some time designing a screamingly fast solution -- maybe you can good use of your existing SGI systems to host a large array (20 or 30 9gb striped scsi drives in a fiber-linked array, a la the Sun SSA114 or whatever SGI's equivalent is.)
For the workstations, I'd agree with the config pretty much as stated, except that I question the necessity of the entertainment components. If workstation processing power is really such an issue that you really need dual cpus, don't run media apps that hork cpu cycles. Buy a Rio, and watch the DVDs at home.
(Of course, now that I think of it, watching DVDs on your new Linux-based system would make the US Army a co-defendant in the recent decss suit... Hey, why doncha leave that in the config...
Jon
LinuxBob?
Isn't that the new Microsoft distro?
-J
HPFS wasn't and isn't the holy grail. But it was a lot faster, more stable, more resistant to fragmentation than NT, and had very nice extended attribute management for metadata. And I'd like to point out that *NT* did not support HPFS security -- but HPFS does have it. That Microsoft did not support or even import HPFS security is not a knock on HPFS. Journaling would have been nice, but an abended NTFS partition needs to be chkdsk'd just the same as an abended HPFS partition.
"Technically superior" is a subective label, not a distortion of reality. I have a strong appreciation for clean object-based systems, so I think Warp 4 was/is a better architecture and a cleaner environment in which to write code. Your mileage may vary.
I can see why you might think that, and I didn't mean to imply that this document is a singularly evil thing. It's just another example of how Microsoft uses a technical spin on things to market their products. Whether this document was consciously written with this slant in mind, or whether this document was written and posted because MS has done something like this many times before (such as badmouthing the competition or blaming someone else's software in the tech notes database) remains to be seen.
I would assume the latter, since imho most of the actively, consciously evil people within Microsoft are the technical marketing people who fully understand that they are displacing other products with inferior ones, while spewing tsunamis of horseshit lies to the contrary. Most of the rest of MS is composed of (in order of number) the ambivalent, the Microsoft true believers, the Bill-worshipers, and even the occasional technically-excellent and well-meaning person. It's not a big conspiracy -- just the behavior of an ill-mannered company that's used to being able to get its way. (As an aside, I remember several meetings when I was working there in which it was agreed to co-opt or redefine industry terms and acronyms in the manuals to benefit the perception or appearance of a product. A lot of attention is paid to single words in places that might surprise you.)
MS would like consumers to think that because Windows 2000 has a release date in 1Q2000, one would "upgrade" to it from, say, Suse 6.3 released in 4Q1999. However, the reality is that "upgrading" is a subjective concept. It implies that one is moving to or augmenting a system, resulting in greater value. To my mind, one would "upgrade" from W2K to any kernel 2.2 release. I'm sure that MS apologists would see things differently. The important thing for MS is to squelch this idea and redefine the debate, presenting (a) the notion of "upgrading to W2K" as an objective decision, and (b) drowning out all the other voices to make it seem as if the common wisdom relating to that decision is a nod to W2K.
Just as AMD and Intel are involved in a race for MHz when the consumer should be interested in actual performance (like attempting to judge the speed potential of a car by only looking at the tachometer), Microsoft attempts to refocus consumers' collective attention away from what's more well-developed or robust, to what's the latest version number, what's the most with-it name, or what's newest and modern.
There's a lot of Microsoft precedent for this:
- Version inflation, to make it seem as if the development work and stability present in a product is comparable to the competition. Witness Microsoft products such as MS Exchange 4.0, which was really a 1.0 release, MS Word 2000 (v9) which is really version 6, Schedule+ version 7.0 which was really release 3, etc etc)
- Association of a product release with a date, such as the OS and Office apps, to make it seem as if there were value in running a application with the current year in the name. One of the admitted original goals was to prepare the consumer for yearly software licensing -- an idea which MS quickly withdrew, at least publicly.
- Most importantly: The public positioning of the latest product as THE thing to which one upgrades. It's a mindshare thing. For example, when MS released NT 3.1 it supported HPFS, which is/was generally acknowledged to be technically superior to NTFS. However, HPFS was associated with OS/2, and was thus "old" technology. Clients were strongly encouraged to use the lesser NTFS technology, then (with 3.51) refused support if they used HPFS, and then (with 4.0) forced to abandon the superior file system technology entirely. To my mind, NT was used to kill a technically and architecturally superior Warp 4 simply by marketing that portrayed the latter as old and tired. (Not to make any apologies for IBM, which couldn't market a firehose to a common consumer in a burning building...)
W2K will be marketed as the latest thing, the most "2000" thing, and the best thing -- despite the fact that the first two are valueless, and the last is something that is only determined by the consumer. Personally, I will "upgrade" my NT4/RH52 system at work to W2K (because it will make life easier in a Win-centric office), and then will "upgrade" my new home system that will inevitably come bundled with W2K to the latest RH or SuSE distro (because I don't like sloppy code or bad licenses in my home; it's a poor example for the kids).J
Funny you should mention it -- a large telecom company in Japan decided a while ago to take advantage of their cellular layout for tracking purposes, with an unpleasant backlash. (Since I got most of these details through the AT&T grapevine, the following information is worth what you paid for it.)
There are about 20 radios in the typical cellular location (cell). With digital technologies one can take those 20 analog channels and push 3-5 calls per, raising the call capacity. However it's often not enough. In dense areas, the cells are made smaller and smaller, by installing more antenna arrays (cells) with lower power. New York and Tokyo were the first locations to begin installing microcells on individual buildings, and then on floor ranges for those buildings.
Then some bright Japanese fellow (or woman) decided that it would be nifty if one could go to a website and type in a cellular number, and be told what Tokyo microcell the phone was in. The purpose was ostensibly for safety and business convenience. The effect, predictably imho, was that the site was frequented by not-so-pleased wives looking for their husbands who were "working late at the office" but were oddly reported as being on the XXth floor of a downtown hotel. Needless to say, this was pulled very quickly.
With an adult, I agree with you. Any adult person (in a common definition) who can't figure out the clear difference between a FPS game and reality needs to be weeded out of the gene pool asap. But kids who still believe in Santa (who they only hear about from other people) are in no position to discriminate FPS games (which they can see, hear, and control) from reality. Where that maturity line is is anyone's guess.
So I have to disagree when we're talking about kids. There used to be a clear and simple difference between games and reality. No one ever got so into Zork that they tried to off cop thinking he was a monster. But FPS games are becoming more advanced and dependent on long-term assumption of a role, learning game/combat-specific skills, and immersion in a visual, semi-realistic environment. In such a situation, it becomes harder for the less-mature to decide where the game leaves off and reality begins.
The typical reply to this would be that reality begins when you get up from the computer and go outside. But think about this -- modern FPS games are visual representations of non-computer environments. You can pick real-world locations in which to do battle. Many of the storylines and scenarios are tied into real-world things -- governmental agencies, police, and fictionalization of real-world events -- that kids see or hear about in the real world. Here's a test. Take two five year old boys and put them outside in the summer with no toys. I'd wager a chunk-o-money that not an hour would go by before one of them picks up a stick, pretends it's a gun, and plays out a scenario that they saw on tv. And that's just by being a passive observer. With FPS games they *have* to respond and participate, or the experience ends. A problem arises when the kid gets so into the FPS scenario (this is the information vs. experience thing) that they begin to identify with the experience, rather than just observe it.
Here's the thing -- I'm not so terrified that every kid is going to grab a gun and start blowing people away (although we've seen this with increasing frequency). What I'm really afraid of is that the experiences that shape the ethics of a lot of kids are being slowly displaced by fictionalized experiences & environments. That's a lot more subtle, and IMHO a lot more damaging to human culture. Is it a reason for me to go on a jihad against FPS games? Nah. But from a parental evaluation, they sure don't fit in the same category as same-topic movies or books.
This tears the hell outta me.
On one hand, I'm a flag-waving 'merikin who thinks that the government -- at any level -- should not be able to control what I see, read, or internalize by any method. One of the roles of government, IMHO, is to make sure that any of the resultant actions I may take do not harm another person or group/entity. But I have a vehement distaste for censorship in pretty much any form, and have a rather low opinion of those who put informational input controls into law.
On the other hand, I have a 6 month old boy of whom I'm quite protective. I'm not so sure I want him to be able to play a FPS game in the near future. Reading a book or seeing a movie with a sci-fi/killer/combat/monster/slaughter theme is something that I would prefer to influence as a parent, but philosophically I would never want to be in the position to tell my kid he's not allowed to internalize a specific collection of information -- fictional or not, canned or interactive, in a game, movie, or document. However, when he wants to express outward activities tht include borrowing a 9mm to hunt the neighborhood dogs or build a fuel-air bomb out of my lawnmower, I have no qualms about doing my best to quash such behavior.
However, FPS games are getting to the point where it's not so much an interactive story or glorified logic puzzle. It's becoming a full-blown participatory experience rather than an input of information. To me, the line between the input of information (like reading a book on a combat situation) and resultant actions (participating in a combat scenario) is getting increasingly fuzzy.
I'm not sure what to do about it -- and I have to do something about it, especially for this little guy who depends on me for a great deal of his learning and input. Barring someone else's great ideas, I think I have to treat FPS games as having crossed the line into experience rather than information input, which means that I have to consider a FPS game in the same light as whether I want my kid trained to shoot other people.