Not saying this is the case but, there's a third option: leak. Used to be, publication was a requisite for copyright. Now if you're being kind, you can even DMCA whistleblowers instead of jailing or killing them.
Careful there. The Russia that Japan defeated in a naval battle was the dying Russia of the Tsars and Japan only managed it using a special "technique" (kind of reminds me of Pearl Harbor). The only war the Russia humiliatingly "lost" was Afghanistan, and they "lost" it pretty much the way the US "lost" Vietnam, a troop withdrawal that forced them to abandon the sympathetic regimes they were trying to prop up.
And you're making a bold assumption that China has enough soldiers willing to fight a war that doesn't have an ideological basis yet. An invasion of Taiwan or a naval blockade of the South China Sea is a more likely scenario, even when faced with the possibility of American retaliation, because Party propaganda has already projected these areas as part of a greater China. So unless we start seeing news in the state media about the lands that the Soviets supposedly "stole", don't expect a lot of volunteers signing up for the next Great Patriotic War. The most you get is bunch of draftees with less passion for battle than the pot-smoking porn-chewing Vietnam vets.
And where my friend did the artist get the vocabulary, the musical scale and the tropes on which his works are based? Culture is a shared resource. You cannot create in a cultural vaccuum devoid of the works created by other people.
My suspicion is that China's island-building brinkmanship is intended simply to stoke the fires of nationalism while the Chinese economy teeters on the verge of collapse. What better way to mis-direct the discontent at home than perceived enemies abroad (us against the world or at least our nearby neighbors)? That or the Party is making the landgrab while it still.
The new business Glass looks like the more mobile replacement for the dash/action cams beloved by extreme sports enthusiasts and Russians, if the device is made rugged. The police force could also be a target market, although I'm not sure Google would want the "police state" association. (This might prove useful in settling police abuse cases though.)
"If this were the 80's and a hard drive vendor had more than two reports of data loss under, say VMS, there would have been engineers on a plane to DEC by morning to get it solved by the coming weekend."
Hard disks were way more expensive in the 80s, and they sold in lower numbers. So it makes economic sense to do hands-on damage control.
This is just like the way touchscreens have come to dominate the mobile computing landscape. Convenience trumps the corner cases. Since most people are slow typists anyway, the slowness of an onscreen keyboard works out just fine. Since most people are mediocre drivers anyway, if they can drive at all, a self-driving car will become the norm everywhere but offroad and on the racetrack. Maybe human car drivers will become idolized like today's Formula 1 competitors or at least have the rebel youth cool factor of a dragracer.
The FSF has made a stand against binary-only firmware. But isn't binary-only firmware files, provided they can be freely redistributed, better than firmware that is burnt into the ROM of a device?
The distinction is useful but can be adapted as part of a unified volatile/non-volatile memory/storage technology. I'm thinking of a memory partitioning scheme similar to the way we already divide hard disks.
"This is not the America I grew up in. This is disgraceful."
Unless you're over a hundred years old, teh America you grew up in is fiction. The current regime is more evil only because of its access to more sophisticated tools. Go look up the guy named J. Edgar Hoover. Hint: he was already "in service" during FDR's time and survived well into NIxon's second term.
"I wouldn't put my bank login details in to it though, because of vulnerabilities + trojans + keystroke-loggers."
So how do you input your bank login details? Vulnerabilities, trojans, and especially keystroke-loggers would affect you (if you have a compromised computer) whether or not you have a password manager or not. Beyond these common securities issues, the only flaw of many standalone password managers is using the clipboard as temporary storage. So in theory, malware that targets the clipboard could steal your password. I don't know about Windows, but I recently installed a security app that showed me how this was clearly a problem in Android since all (most?) apps have the "permission" to cut-n-paste the clipboard. A built-in browser-specific password manager won't suffer from this problem.
"It can only be fixed by a rooted device or a software update to replace the broken library."
"Rooting" (or allowing runtime access to root-level functions) is unnecessary for fixing any Android OS-level problem. However an unlocked bootloader will allow you to install an unofficial update or patch (unfortunately also allowing you to install a malware). A "rooted" device is actually even more of a security risk, especially if you have to trust a closed-sourced "superuser" binary.
Note that I distinguish between "rooted" Android systems that allow you to gain root level access on demand and those setups that allow for off-line root access via special recovery or debug modes that require a reboot and so is not available when running the system normally.
... "we have these convenient, near-magical devices called computers, and more to the point,.pdf files, which make the cost of 'publishing' such a reference work near zero, and the cost of updating it also, relatively speaking, near zero. "
I get your point. However, PDF files are difficult as hell to update. Now I don't know what proprietary/open source/web-based desktop publishing and/or word processing software the state of Georgia uses, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't chew PDF files for breakfast.
If it's long you'll need screencasting software. Or are they using some DRM-like technology that'll prevent folks from even photographing the screen. Not much security by obscurity as security by inconvenience.
The goal as I see it is not to build an OPEN SOURCE community but to build a large end USER community around the project. An open-source community would want, by most implied meanings of the term, the ability to modify the product and to share the changes. Of course, strictly speaking, open source is simply allowing others to view the source code. But that's the peep show definition, useful only to software voyeurs not developers/modders.
"Well... two wrongs don't make a right. When you talk about getting sued by supposedly "free" software projects... it doesn't make you look too good."
That is a problem. The solution would be a copyleft license that gives the copyleft violator the option not to pay damages provided that they (1) release the source within a reasonable period from the time they're notified of the infringement (no, 1000 emails before compliance) and (2) don't initiate the court proceedings.
A problem with #1 is how to ascertain the notice has been received. With #2, in case the alleged violator loses the case, compensation should be provided the software authors with regard to time and lawyers' fee. Howver I find it defeats the spiritual purpose of copyleft to impose hefty damages for a GPL violation except perhaps in the case of repeat offenders, but mainly as a deterrent and not a money-making extortion scheme. Apparently the GPL has a provision where if you don't accept the GPL you can get sued for any amount allowed under NORMAL copyright law, and in certain jurisdictions that can be very high indeed.
Most of them anyway. Rather find fields where a gold rush type of mentality can actually spur innovation, maybe the fields of fusion hot and cold or space transportations. Not in fields where garage or basement inventors can "make" new things. I doubt backyard rocket scientists are going to make much of difference in producing the next SSTO space vehicle (if ever that's a feasible concept).
Not an Indian. But looking at the income numbers you mentioned, it seems that this is the market that can best be served by tablets, unless you happen to be a poor software developer who needs a full-blown Intel-based PC to do your stuff. Developers are the minority of minorities. I'm probably being economically biased here, but the more successful developers probably come from background that can afford to buy $300 computers (since developing good software requires some good education that requires $$$ as well).
If the goal is to provide up-to-date information/education to the masses then a tablet or even a mid-range smartphone is the way to go. And the problem isn't so much about personal hardware but telecommunications infrastructure (presence of wifi hotspots or reliable but fairly cheap 3g/4g).
Maybe we should be asking what's the truck factor (or is that nuclear strike factor?) of Github. What's the effect of developers centralizing on on the ONE opensource hosting site? Seriously what happens when Github is incapacitated by say a malicious state actor (put your favorite cyberbaddy here)? I know it's git, so there should be "mirrors" everywhere for the big projects (which have a high truck factor to begin with). So TF has to be divided further by the resiliency of the host site.
"When everything is "free", children will not be a financial liability anymore, leaving many folks to breed like rabbits."
Ah, my son, you've never had children? Children aren't just a financial liability, they're an emotional burden as well, just like your wife or your best friend. So unless you're thinking of children you collect like Facebook friends, I don't think normal people would want a collection of relations they can't divorce or unfriend. And really, does 24 children bring 12 x the emotional satisfaction of having 2 children?
Of course people's behaviour might change, and having a harem of mass-produced (artificially cloned/wombed) children might become the new status symbol, but I'm not sure about that.
Americans tend to be more open than Europeans, at least within the EU where you have to navigate a minefield of different national/culural sensibilities. An NSA-like scandal wouldn't be possible in Europe or would die down quickly. So within the context of a less open (or more discreet, depending on your perspective) society, private corruption is practically the same as well-publicized corruption, aka lobbying.
Slashdot Mirror
Not saying this is the case but, there's a third option: leak. Used to be, publication was a requisite for copyright. Now if you're being kind, you can even DMCA whistleblowers instead of jailing or killing them.
Careful there. The Russia that Japan defeated in a naval battle was the dying Russia of the Tsars and Japan only managed it using a special "technique" (kind of reminds me of Pearl Harbor). The only war the Russia humiliatingly "lost" was Afghanistan, and they "lost" it pretty much the way the US "lost" Vietnam, a troop withdrawal that forced them to abandon the sympathetic regimes they were trying to prop up.
And you're making a bold assumption that China has enough soldiers willing to fight a war that doesn't have an ideological basis yet. An invasion of Taiwan or a naval blockade of the South China Sea is a more likely scenario, even when faced with the possibility of American retaliation, because Party propaganda has already projected these areas as part of a greater China. So unless we start seeing news in the state media about the lands that the Soviets supposedly "stole", don't expect a lot of volunteers signing up for the next Great Patriotic War. The most you get is bunch of draftees with less passion for battle than the pot-smoking porn-chewing Vietnam vets.
And where my friend did the artist get the vocabulary, the musical scale and the tropes on which his works are based? Culture is a shared resource. You cannot create in a cultural vaccuum devoid of the works created by other people.
My suspicion is that China's island-building brinkmanship is intended simply to stoke the fires of nationalism while the Chinese economy teeters on the verge of collapse. What better way to mis-direct the discontent at home than perceived enemies abroad (us against the world or at least our nearby neighbors)? That or the Party is making the landgrab while it still.
The new business Glass looks like the more mobile replacement for the dash/action cams beloved by extreme sports enthusiasts and Russians, if the device is made rugged. The police force could also be a target market, although I'm not sure Google would want the "police state" association. (This might prove useful in settling police abuse cases though.)
"If this were the 80's and a hard drive vendor had more than two reports of data loss under, say VMS, there would have been engineers on a plane to DEC by morning to get it solved by the coming weekend."
Hard disks were way more expensive in the 80s, and they sold in lower numbers. So it makes economic sense to do hands-on damage control.
This is just like the way touchscreens have come to dominate the mobile computing landscape. Convenience trumps the corner cases. Since most people are slow typists anyway, the slowness of an onscreen keyboard works out just fine. Since most people are mediocre drivers anyway, if they can drive at all, a self-driving car will become the norm everywhere but offroad and on the racetrack. Maybe human car drivers will become idolized like today's Formula 1 competitors or at least have the rebel youth cool factor of a dragracer.
Gallium Nitrade is when you sell the stuff after office hours.
Same question. But I think this is a better title since I forgot that software can also be "hardcoded".
The FSF has made a stand against binary-only firmware. But isn't binary-only firmware files, provided they can be freely redistributed, better than firmware that is burnt into the ROM of a device?
The distinction is useful but can be adapted as part of a unified volatile/non-volatile memory/storage technology. I'm thinking of a memory partitioning scheme similar to the way we already divide hard disks.
"This is not the America I grew up in. This is disgraceful." Unless you're over a hundred years old, teh America you grew up in is fiction. The current regime is more evil only because of its access to more sophisticated tools. Go look up the guy named J. Edgar Hoover. Hint: he was already "in service" during FDR's time and survived well into NIxon's second term.
"I wouldn't put my bank login details in to it though, because of vulnerabilities + trojans + keystroke-loggers."
So how do you input your bank login details? Vulnerabilities, trojans, and especially keystroke-loggers would affect you (if you have a compromised computer) whether or not you have a password manager or not. Beyond these common securities issues, the only flaw of many standalone password managers is using the clipboard as temporary storage. So in theory, malware that targets the clipboard could steal your password. I don't know about Windows, but I recently installed a security app that showed me how this was clearly a problem in Android since all (most?) apps have the "permission" to cut-n-paste the clipboard. A built-in browser-specific password manager won't suffer from this problem.
"It can only be fixed by a rooted device or a software update to replace the broken library."
"Rooting" (or allowing runtime access to root-level functions) is unnecessary for fixing any Android OS-level problem. However an unlocked bootloader will allow you to install an unofficial update or patch (unfortunately also allowing you to install a malware). A "rooted" device is actually even more of a security risk, especially if you have to trust a closed-sourced "superuser" binary.
Note that I distinguish between "rooted" Android systems that allow you to gain root level access on demand and those setups that allow for off-line root access via special recovery or debug modes that require a reboot and so is not available when running the system normally.
... "we have these convenient, near-magical devices called computers, and more to the point, .pdf files, which make the cost of 'publishing' such a reference work near zero, and the cost of updating it also, relatively speaking, near zero. "
I get your point. However, PDF files are difficult as hell to update. Now I don't know what proprietary/open source/web-based desktop publishing and/or word processing software the state of Georgia uses, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't chew PDF files for breakfast.
If it's long you'll need screencasting software. Or are they using some DRM-like technology that'll prevent folks from even photographing the screen. Not much security by obscurity as security by inconvenience.
The goal as I see it is not to build an OPEN SOURCE community but to build a large end USER community around the project. An open-source community would want, by most implied meanings of the term, the ability to modify the product and to share the changes. Of course, strictly speaking, open source is simply allowing others to view the source code. But that's the peep show definition, useful only to software voyeurs not developers/modders.
Who needs a sub when you can equip a shark with a laser
"Well... two wrongs don't make a right. When you talk about getting sued by supposedly "free" software projects... it doesn't make you look too good."
That is a problem. The solution would be a copyleft license that gives the copyleft violator the option not to pay damages provided that they (1) release the source within a reasonable period from the time they're notified of the infringement (no, 1000 emails before compliance) and (2) don't initiate the court proceedings.
A problem with #1 is how to ascertain the notice has been received. With #2, in case the alleged violator loses the case, compensation should be provided the software authors with regard to time and lawyers' fee. Howver I find it defeats the spiritual purpose of copyleft to impose hefty damages for a GPL violation except perhaps in the case of repeat offenders, but mainly as a deterrent and not a money-making extortion scheme. Apparently the GPL has a provision where if you don't accept the GPL you can get sued for any amount allowed under NORMAL copyright law, and in certain jurisdictions that can be very high indeed.
No, Renderman is the nemesis of Blenderman. He morphs into pixels the rays from Blenderman's polyguns.
Most of them anyway. Rather find fields where a gold rush type of mentality can actually spur innovation, maybe the fields of fusion hot and cold or space transportations. Not in fields where garage or basement inventors can "make" new things. I doubt backyard rocket scientists are going to make much of difference in producing the next SSTO space vehicle (if ever that's a feasible concept).
Not an Indian. But looking at the income numbers you mentioned, it seems that this is the market that can best be served by tablets, unless you happen to be a poor software developer who needs a full-blown Intel-based PC to do your stuff. Developers are the minority of minorities. I'm probably being economically biased here, but the more successful developers probably come from background that can afford to buy $300 computers (since developing good software requires some good education that requires $$$ as well).
If the goal is to provide up-to-date information/education to the masses then a tablet or even a mid-range smartphone is the way to go. And the problem isn't so much about personal hardware but telecommunications infrastructure (presence of wifi hotspots or reliable but fairly cheap 3g/4g).
Maybe we should be asking what's the truck factor (or is that nuclear strike factor?) of Github. What's the effect of developers centralizing on on the ONE opensource hosting site? Seriously what happens when Github is incapacitated by say a malicious state actor (put your favorite cyberbaddy here)? I know it's git, so there should be "mirrors" everywhere for the big projects (which have a high truck factor to begin with). So TF has to be divided further by the resiliency of the host site.
"When everything is "free", children will not be a financial liability anymore, leaving many folks to breed like rabbits."
Ah, my son, you've never had children? Children aren't just a financial liability, they're an emotional burden as well, just like your wife or your best friend. So unless you're thinking of children you collect like Facebook friends, I don't think normal people would want a collection of relations they can't divorce or unfriend. And really, does 24 children bring 12 x the emotional satisfaction of having 2 children?
Of course people's behaviour might change, and having a harem of mass-produced (artificially cloned/wombed) children might become the new status symbol, but I'm not sure about that.
Americans tend to be more open than Europeans, at least within the EU where you have to navigate a minefield of different national/culural sensibilities. An NSA-like scandal wouldn't be possible in Europe or would die down quickly. So within the context of a less open (or more discreet, depending on your perspective) society, private corruption is practically the same as well-publicized corruption, aka lobbying.