If you are getting involved with outsourced storage or apps, you absolutely need the assistance of a lawyer who has worked with this type of contract before. Contrary to current hype, neither the ASP model nor outsourced storage is new, so there should be good examples around (can you say "service bureau"? If not, that tells me how young you are).
At a _minimum_, your contract must absolutely specify that the applications, data, and backups belong to you and only you, that you can recover them at any time, that such rights survive change of control and bankruptcy, that you will receive a copy of your backup tapes at a meaningful interval (daily, weekly, hourly?), and that the vendor will sign the necessary contracts with insurance companies and bonding agencies to ensure that these things happen.
That's a MINIMUM from a non-lawyer. Before you take chances with your company's future, you absolutely must get good legal advice and assistance. Otherwise you might be finding out what happens to a person with "C" in their title when your employer makes a claim against their D&O insurance.
Assuming that (a) the problem CAN be solved. It is possible that paper is the optimal solution for human-readable output. (b) the "solution", once forced upon the consuming public, is BETTER than the previous technology (paper). As Seymour Hirsch used to say of hi-fi systems, once a thing can be done digitally, there is a tendency to always do it digitally, whether or not the results of the digital method is superior (he was speaking primariy of tuning and other controls, not the method of reproduction).
I have seen very little convincing evidence that e-books are a better solution than paper, but I have seen a lot of arguments that contain hidden and circular assumptions that they are superior, well, because. Remember, just because it is _possible_ to put text on a computer does not mean that it is necessarily better to do so: you must prove WHY it is better.
I have several books in my collection that were printed in 1500; quite a few from the 1800's. I reasonably expect that these will all be readable in 2300 as well.
Now, how long do you expect your "e-book" reader to last? Will PDF still be a usable format in the year 2300? What happens if a very large software company puts a propriatary lock on all digital book files?
And this doesn't scratch the surface of the ergonomic issues. Perhaps rather than the Luddites, the appropriate parable for e-books is The Emperor's New Clothes?
Yeah, that's what one of my former coworkers, a native of Lithuania, thought too. This guy had survived the Red Army and was (is) one of the hardest workers I have ever met in my life.
Then one day, after two weeks of 16 hour/day hacking, his wrists froze up and his wife found him lying on the floor screaming in pain.
Good thing he had that other American excess, health insurance. 6 months of surgery and physical therapy and he can pretty much work 4-5 hours a day now.
It's a strange kind of malingering that strikes the people who are driven to work the most, hardest.
Ah, but the current incarnation of Iridium wrote off the development and construction costs, so they need only charge for the operations costs plus profit. I am guessing still not inexpensive, but it doesn't have to be the $5/minute of the earlier attempt.
This "new" technology is about 20 years old. Various utilities have been doing it for a long time, mostly using the static wire (the thin wire at the top of the tower that is used primarily for lightning protection). There are problem other than the obvious ones already mentioned, the big one being that when the static wire (or conductor in this case) is hit by lightning, the thermal shock tends to shatter the fiber (unless the conductive element is just melted, in which case the fiber breaks since it isn't strong enough to carry the two ends of the conductor).
For this reason, utilities have preferred to use their ROW to bury the fiber, rather than string it up on the towers.
If the researchers are claiming that an electric utility can achieve 25% better efficiency by exchanging more data, I have bad news there: utilites have been very heavy users of data processing at every level of the operation since the 1920's. The utility I used to work at had many joint projects with IBM in the 1950's and 60's, in fact, due to their heavy volume of transaction processing. A lot of new stuff (like check scanners) in the computing world was driven by utility requirements.
This doesn't even scratch the surface of the utilities' power flow management efforts. So I really doubt there is much in the way of SCADA that hasn't been thought of by now.
Apart from the obesity of this particular disclaimer, has text of this nature ever been used successfully as a defense against any type of legal action, be it a civil suit or a government enforcement action? Can anyone point to any examples of disclamiers being accepted or rejected by a court?
"What the heck use would a table be in zero/micro gravity? A cupboard or a drawer, fine. But a table? Why? You can't put things "down" on it, you can't chop anything, mix anything or lay crockery on it."
Need for table: (a) to sit around while eating a meal, meals being as much of a social event as a fueling stop, particularly on long journeys in close company (b) to provide a common plane of spatial reference for social activities and for looking at stuff.
Can't put things "down": Velcro(r) is I believe banned due to flammability, but they use clips and other devices developed for ships to hold things in place.
Can't mix or chop: why not? These aren't gravity-dependent actions. A mixing bowl might have to be closed to prevent the contents from splashing away, but you would still want to put it against something to give your mixing arm leverage.
Question: for simple tricks, how does a yo-yo behave differently in zero-g* ? Answer: it doesn't. Not everything we do depends on gravity.
sPh
* yes, yes, I know: "microgravity". As Harry Stine once said, only NASA could make space travel boring to the general public.
Re:What else can these guys hack?
on
Home Improvement
·
· Score: 2
"Smoking anything would be problematic in space, first of all, there is no convection, so smoke doesnt rise, it would just kind of cluster in a ball around the lit tip of your cigarette until it goes out. "
Better tell the Russians - _Dragonfly_ made it pretty clear that the Russian cosmonauts on Mir had both cigarettes and vodka available.
"Norton and Adaptec are part of an entire cottage industry of companies that exist solely off of the increadable failings of the Windows operating system to provide what it should * as an operating system.* "
While I personally have sympathy for your point of view, there IS an alternate school of thought (if not alternate universe) that goes like this: the failings and shortfalls in MS-DOS and follow-on products are exactly what made Microsoft the dominant force it is today. Because there was a hunger for "legitimate" personal computing power, people bought IBM PC's in huge numbers (circa 1982). Because there were shortcomings in the system, a huge cottage industry of enhancements, improvements, utilities, hardware, and software sprang up. Once this cottage industry got rolling, it gave the PC platform the momentum that other attempts (Exidy Sorceror, anyone?) had never had.
Afer the first few boom years, Microsoft could have easily incorporated many of these improvements and utilities into their product. Perhaps they didn't so as not to kill the goose? Not that it makes me happy that, e.g. timesync, is an add-on to NT, but mabye there is a method to the madness.
"Really? And what information do you think isn't available?
More than one word, preferably, so we know what you're talking about?"
OK, how about four phrases: WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, Novell Netware, Netscape Navigator.
If you have followed the history of any of these products since the mid-1980's, you know that they have all suffered from the same problem. Pretty much since the release of MS-Windows 3.11, every release of MS-DOS or Windows has contained some change in DLL's, API's, or data structures that has broken these applications.
"Oops, sorry about that". "It was always in the standard - you just didn't interpret it correctly" "Change the API? No, we didn't change the API".
This kind of behaviour is very very common in competitive industries, and everyone who works in such industries (a) knows it goes on (b) keeps their mouth shut if their company is doing it (c) also keeps their mouth shut if their competitor/supplier (e.g. Microsoft) is doing it, for fear of being punished further. However, when there is only one supplier of a key product worldwide - I leave the conclusion to you.
Take a look at the history of the FTC's investigation into the breakfast cereal industry, the FTC/DOJ investigations into airline pricing, or the layoff lawsuit against American Can for more details.
Yes, my boys both learned how to use at mouse at 18 months. Kids 5 years old can learn anything. The premise of _Ender's Game_ wasn't too farfetched.
For another point of view, here is a quote from William Mossberg's column. Note that I don't personally agree with everything Mossberg writes, but his point of view is an important one to consider:
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/mailbox-20010412.ht ml
"I have long felt that what we need isn't for users to become "computer literate" but for the techie class, especially those who design and maintain computers, to become "human literate." One reason personal computers are of such poor quality is that too many of their designers believe that, when their customers can't use PCs properly, the fault lies with the customers, not with the machines -- or with themselves."
"I could not belive the questions I had.
"How do I do a right button click" "
I've done my share of tech support, and received my share of inane questions. But double-clicking a mouse (or using a mouse, for that matter) is by no means an intuitive operation. Like riding a bicycle, once you get it, you get it, but unless someone shows you the odds of figuring it out yourself are about nil.
There is a saying that only one man ever taught himself to fly a helicopter (Igor Sikorski), and that everyone else learned from someone who learned from him. Along those lines, Apple included with the IIgs a tutorial that booted itself up and taught you to use the mouse assuming no prior knowledge. A work of art IMHO; I wish they had transferred it to other platforms.
"Compared to the Ericssons or the Nokias, they are a) big, b) ugly, and c) unreliable."
Agreed, but I was talking about the 1989 - 1991 time period, when Motorola did dominate the market worldwide. I am pretty confident that what I said about the GSM standard is correct.
That in mind, I also had a lot of friends who worked for Motorola Cellular 1992 - 1998, and they tell me that Motorola essentially shot its own foot off by ignoring its international customers and not taking GSM seriously. They also had a lot of the technology in-house for very small phones, designer phones, etc. in 1995, but their marketing group felt that there would be no demand for such devices. At the same time their executives were out of the office most of the time teaching "Six Sigma" to other companies. Oops.
Partly due to installed base issues, partly becuase the voice quality of digital cell phones is so inferior to analog that it is hard to get poeple to give up their analog phones. O ce yo hav lis n d to a dig l phon you w ll w nt our an o ph e ba k.
"SPORK REMINDS AMERICANS THAT GSM MAKE CELLULAR TELEPHONY VERY POPULAR AND GSM WRITTEN BY EUROPEAN COMMITTEE AND ENFORCED ACROSS EUROPE!!! REGULATION CAUSE CELL PHONE SUCCESS NOT HINDER IT!!! "
remind spork that gsm standard have two purposes:
* build interoperable phone network as spork describe
* lock MOTOROLA out of european market for several years so nokia, ericsson, etc. have chance to recover from total us domination of world market.
"So how is this different than a cellphone? The only thing different now from what you describe above is increased capacity and we replaced operators with computers"
Radiophone: one big antenna, one central transmission point, high power transmitter, one set of circuits.
Cellphone = cellular tower technology = many antennas, many transmission points, low power transmitter, handoff of signal from one antenna to the next as the mobile unit moves, many circuits on same frequency across geographical area.
Totally different technology though - you had to make a direct radio connection to a central Bell facility, where an operator would route your call to the local exchange. Sort of a throw-back to the 1920's. And IIRC the total capacity of the Chicago system, for example, was about 20 simultaneous calls.
This practice is directed more at keeping the placement offices at large colleges happy than it is at keeping employees (or un-employees!) themselves happy.
During the 80's the several large employers were threatened with being banned from recruiting at leading engineering schools due to their practice of retracting accepted offers. Since being banned from, say, an MIT would be a bad thing when the economy starts back up, the practice arose of paying off the un-recruits to keep them from screaming back to the placement office.
I have seen a number of articles about this in the tech press recently. Clearly most of the people writing (and reading) these articles are too young to remember the 1980's, much less the 1970's. This kind of thing was quite common at all kinds of large companies in the 80's when the economy was swooping up and down.
10 years of continuous growth was pretty neat, but I hope no one was deluded into thinking the businss cycle had gone away?
Perhaps someone with actual music contract experience could comment (there's a thought!), but my understanding was that the recording industry works pretty hard to pre-empt this kind of thing. In that, sooner or later every successful musician would like to sign a contract for commercial distribution, but that all such contracts contain clauses turning over complete control of distribution to the recording company, and explicitly prohibiting the artist from using any other form of distribution. And that these contracts have recently been amended to specifically prohibit distribution via Internet, just in case the musicians start having any uppity thoughts about going out on their own.
"Do you know who invented the computer? Charles Babbage or Ada Lovelace? Konrad Zuse? Atanashoff or Berry? NCR? IBM? John "I couldn't wire a circuit if my life depended on it" von Neuman? Alan Turing? Are you aware of when the telephone was invented? The Radio? The television?"
Given that I have worked in the electric utility, telecommunications, and information management industries, and that I have over 500 books on the history of technology in my collection (publication dates ranging from 1500 - 2001), yes, I would say that I do know a little bit about those things. Never as much as I would like, though.
I also have a limit on the amount of time I can spend composing Slashdot posts during my lunch hour (unlike, say, Jon Katz), thus leading me to be less clear or complete than I would like ("if I had more time I would write less"). Sorry if I what I wrote wasn't clear to you, but I think my meaning was there.
And while I certainly believe that there is actually very little new under the sun, the kind of communication that is occuring today over the web is different from what has gone before. That's my opinion; YMMV.
And to the previous poster: (i) 000 is a common accounting abbreviation for "thousands" (ii) Slashdot has a limit on the length of a post's title.
I have a collection of publications from the steam and electric utility industries 1880 - 1920. Around 1900 there were thousands of suppliers of switchgear, generator, transformers, motors, fuseboxes, electric irons, etc. People were trying to electrify everything from stoves (successful) to dog walking (unsuccessful). Companies came and went with incredible speed, fortunes were won and lost, etc. Sound familiar?
Electronic communication is in its infancy, and it may well be a transition point similar to the arrival of the steam engine and electricy (MAY be). During any transition point there will be chaos, fortunes, and failures. That's the nature of evolution.
What does concern me a bit is that this time government may be large and well-organized enough to be quash the chaos on behalf of the vested interests. (can you say DMCA? RIAA?) That could stop any possible transition in its tracks.
Slashdot Mirror
If you are getting involved with outsourced storage or apps, you absolutely need the assistance of a lawyer who has worked with this type of contract before. Contrary to current hype, neither the ASP model nor outsourced storage is new, so there should be good examples around (can you say "service bureau"? If not, that tells me how young you are).
At a _minimum_, your contract must absolutely specify that the applications, data, and backups belong to you and only you, that you can recover them at any time, that such rights survive change of control and bankruptcy, that you will receive a copy of your backup tapes at a meaningful interval (daily, weekly, hourly?), and that the vendor will sign the necessary contracts with insurance companies and bonding agencies to ensure that these things happen.
That's a MINIMUM from a non-lawyer. Before you take chances with your company's future, you absolutely must get good legal advice and assistance. Otherwise you might be finding out what happens to a person with "C" in their title when your employer makes a claim against their D&O insurance.
sPh
Assuming that (a) the problem CAN be solved. It is possible that paper is the optimal solution for human-readable output. (b) the "solution", once forced upon the consuming public, is BETTER than the previous technology (paper). As Seymour Hirsch used to say of hi-fi systems, once a thing can be done digitally, there is a tendency to always do it digitally, whether or not the results of the digital method is superior (he was speaking primariy of tuning and other controls, not the method of reproduction).
I have seen very little convincing evidence that e-books are a better solution than paper, but I have seen a lot of arguments that contain hidden and circular assumptions that they are superior, well, because. Remember, just because it is _possible_ to put text on a computer does not mean that it is necessarily better to do so: you must prove WHY it is better.
sPh
That ZDNet article is one of the funniest things I have ever read in a Ziff publiction (intentionally funny, anyway).
sPh
I have several books in my collection that were printed in 1500; quite a few from the 1800's. I reasonably expect that these will all be readable in 2300 as well.
Now, how long do you expect your "e-book" reader to last? Will PDF still be a usable format in the year 2300? What happens if a very large software company puts a propriatary lock on all digital book files?
And this doesn't scratch the surface of the ergonomic issues. Perhaps rather than the Luddites, the appropriate parable for e-books is The Emperor's New Clothes?
sPh
Yeah, that's what one of my former coworkers, a native of Lithuania, thought too. This guy had survived the Red Army and was (is) one of the hardest workers I have ever met in my life.
Then one day, after two weeks of 16 hour/day hacking, his wrists froze up and his wife found him lying on the floor screaming in pain.
Good thing he had that other American excess, health insurance. 6 months of surgery and physical therapy and he can pretty much work 4-5 hours a day now.
It's a strange kind of malingering that strikes the people who are driven to work the most, hardest.
sPh
Excellent post, but you forgot to work in the words "exciting" and "great new".
Personally, any time in the last two years that I have heard those phrases I have checked my wallet and double-locked my door.
sPh
Ah, but the current incarnation of Iridium wrote off the development and construction costs, so they need only charge for the operations costs plus profit. I am guessing still not inexpensive, but it doesn't have to be the $5/minute of the earlier attempt.
sPh
This "new" technology is about 20 years old. Various utilities have been doing it for a long time, mostly using the static wire (the thin wire at the top of the tower that is used primarily for lightning protection). There are problem other than the obvious ones already mentioned, the big one being that when the static wire (or conductor in this case) is hit by lightning, the thermal shock tends to shatter the fiber (unless the conductive element is just melted, in which case the fiber breaks since it isn't strong enough to carry the two ends of the conductor).
For this reason, utilities have preferred to use their ROW to bury the fiber, rather than string it up on the towers.
If the researchers are claiming that an electric utility can achieve 25% better efficiency by exchanging more data, I have bad news there: utilites have been very heavy users of data processing at every level of the operation since the 1920's. The utility I used to work at had many joint projects with IBM in the 1950's and 60's, in fact, due to their heavy volume of transaction processing. A lot of new stuff (like check scanners) in the computing world was driven by utility requirements.
This doesn't even scratch the surface of the utilities' power flow management efforts. So I really doubt there is much in the way of SCADA that hasn't been thought of by now.
sPh
Apart from the obesity of this particular disclaimer, has text of this nature ever been used successfully as a defense against any type of legal action, be it a civil suit or a government enforcement action? Can anyone point to any examples of disclamiers being accepted or rejected by a court?
sPh
"What the heck use would a table be in zero/micro gravity? A cupboard or a drawer, fine. But a table? Why? You can't put things "down" on it, you can't chop anything, mix anything or lay crockery on it."
Need for table: (a) to sit around while eating a meal, meals being as much of a social event as a fueling stop, particularly on long journeys in close company (b) to provide a common plane of spatial reference for social activities and for looking at stuff.
Can't put things "down": Velcro(r) is I believe banned due to flammability, but they use clips and other devices developed for ships to hold things in place.
Can't mix or chop: why not? These aren't gravity-dependent actions. A mixing bowl might have to be closed to prevent the contents from splashing away, but you would still want to put it against something to give your mixing arm leverage.
Question: for simple tricks, how does a yo-yo behave differently in zero-g* ? Answer: it doesn't. Not everything we do depends on gravity.
sPh
* yes, yes, I know: "microgravity". As Harry Stine once said, only NASA could make space travel boring to the general public.
"Smoking anything would be problematic in space, first of all, there is no convection, so smoke doesnt rise, it would just kind of cluster in a ball around the lit tip of your cigarette until it goes out. "
Better tell the Russians - _Dragonfly_ made it pretty clear that the Russian cosmonauts on Mir had both cigarettes and vodka available.
sPh
"Norton and Adaptec are part of an entire cottage industry of companies that exist solely off of the increadable failings of the Windows operating system to provide what it should * as an operating system.* "
While I personally have sympathy for your point of view, there IS an alternate school of thought (if not alternate universe) that goes like this: the failings and shortfalls in MS-DOS and follow-on products are exactly what made Microsoft the dominant force it is today. Because there was a hunger for "legitimate" personal computing power, people bought IBM PC's in huge numbers (circa 1982). Because there were shortcomings in the system, a huge cottage industry of enhancements, improvements, utilities, hardware, and software sprang up. Once this cottage industry got rolling, it gave the PC platform the momentum that other attempts (Exidy Sorceror, anyone?) had never had.
Afer the first few boom years, Microsoft could have easily incorporated many of these improvements and utilities into their product. Perhaps they didn't so as not to kill the goose? Not that it makes me happy that, e.g. timesync, is an add-on to NT, but mabye there is a method to the madness.
sPh
"Really? And what information do you think isn't available?
More than one word, preferably, so we know what you're talking about?"
OK, how about four phrases: WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, Novell Netware, Netscape Navigator.
If you have followed the history of any of these products since the mid-1980's, you know that they have all suffered from the same problem. Pretty much since the release of MS-Windows 3.11, every release of MS-DOS or Windows has contained some change in DLL's, API's, or data structures that has broken these applications.
"Oops, sorry about that". "It was always in the standard - you just didn't interpret it correctly" "Change the API? No, we didn't change the API".
This kind of behaviour is very very common in competitive industries, and everyone who works in such industries (a) knows it goes on (b) keeps their mouth shut if their company is doing it (c) also keeps their mouth shut if their competitor/supplier (e.g. Microsoft) is doing it, for fear of being punished further. However, when there is only one supplier of a key product worldwide - I leave the conclusion to you.
Take a look at the history of the FTC's investigation into the breakfast cereal industry, the FTC/DOJ investigations into airline pricing, or the layoff lawsuit against American Can for more details.
sPh
Yes, my boys both learned how to use at mouse at 18 months. Kids 5 years old can learn anything. The premise of _Ender's Game_ wasn't too farfetched.
t ml
For another point of view, here is a quote from William Mossberg's column. Note that I don't personally agree with everything Mossberg writes, but his point of view is an important one to consider:
http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/mailbox-20010412.h
"I have long felt that what we need isn't for users to become "computer literate" but for the techie class, especially those who design and maintain computers, to become "human literate." One reason personal computers are of such poor quality is that too many of their designers believe that, when their customers can't use PCs properly, the fault lies with the customers, not with the machines -- or with themselves."
sPh
"I could not belive the questions I had.
"How do I do a right button click" "
I've done my share of tech support, and received my share of inane questions. But double-clicking a mouse (or using a mouse, for that matter) is by no means an intuitive operation. Like riding a bicycle, once you get it, you get it, but unless someone shows you the odds of figuring it out yourself are about nil.
There is a saying that only one man ever taught himself to fly a helicopter (Igor Sikorski), and that everyone else learned from someone who learned from him. Along those lines, Apple included with the IIgs a tutorial that booted itself up and taught you to use the mouse assuming no prior knowledge. A work of art IMHO; I wish they had transferred it to other platforms.
sPh
"Compared to the Ericssons or the Nokias, they are a) big, b) ugly, and c) unreliable."
Agreed, but I was talking about the 1989 - 1991 time period, when Motorola did dominate the market worldwide. I am pretty confident that what I said about the GSM standard is correct.
That in mind, I also had a lot of friends who worked for Motorola Cellular 1992 - 1998, and they tell me that Motorola essentially shot its own foot off by ignoring its international customers and not taking GSM seriously. They also had a lot of the technology in-house for very small phones, designer phones, etc. in 1995, but their marketing group felt that there would be no demand for such devices. At the same time their executives were out of the office most of the time teaching "Six Sigma" to other companies. Oops.
sPh
Partly due to installed base issues, partly becuase the voice quality of digital cell phones is so inferior to analog that it is hard to get poeple to give up their analog phones. O ce yo hav lis n d to a dig l phon you w ll w nt our an o ph e ba k.
sPh
"SPORK REMINDS AMERICANS THAT GSM MAKE CELLULAR TELEPHONY VERY POPULAR AND GSM WRITTEN BY EUROPEAN COMMITTEE AND ENFORCED ACROSS EUROPE!!! REGULATION CAUSE CELL PHONE SUCCESS NOT HINDER IT!!! "
remind spork that gsm standard have two purposes:
* build interoperable phone network as spork describe
* lock MOTOROLA out of european market for several years so nokia, ericsson, etc. have chance to recover from total us domination of world market.
mission successful
sPh
"So how is this different than a cellphone? The only thing different now from what you describe above is increased capacity and we replaced operators with computers"
Radiophone: one big antenna, one central transmission point, high power transmitter, one set of circuits.
Cellphone = cellular tower technology = many antennas, many transmission points, low power transmitter, handoff of signal from one antenna to the next as the mobile unit moves, many circuits on same frequency across geographical area.
sPh
Totally different technology though - you had to make a direct radio connection to a central Bell facility, where an operator would route your call to the local exchange. Sort of a throw-back to the 1920's. And IIRC the total capacity of the Chicago system, for example, was about 20 simultaneous calls.
sPh
This practice is directed more at keeping the placement offices at large colleges happy than it is at keeping employees (or un-employees!) themselves happy.
During the 80's the several large employers were threatened with being banned from recruiting at leading engineering schools due to their practice of retracting accepted offers. Since being banned from, say, an MIT would be a bad thing when the economy starts back up, the practice arose of paying off the un-recruits to keep them from screaming back to the placement office.
sPh
I have seen a number of articles about this in the tech press recently. Clearly most of the people writing (and reading) these articles are too young to remember the 1980's, much less the 1970's. This kind of thing was quite common at all kinds of large companies in the 80's when the economy was swooping up and down.
10 years of continuous growth was pretty neat, but I hope no one was deluded into thinking the businss cycle had gone away?
sPh
Perhaps someone with actual music contract experience could comment (there's a thought!), but my understanding was that the recording industry works pretty hard to pre-empt this kind of thing. In that, sooner or later every successful musician would like to sign a contract for commercial distribution, but that all such contracts contain clauses turning over complete control of distribution to the recording company, and explicitly prohibiting the artist from using any other form of distribution. And that these contracts have recently been amended to specifically prohibit distribution via Internet, just in case the musicians start having any uppity thoughts about going out on their own.
True, or just another Internet rumour?
sPh
"Do you know who invented the computer? Charles Babbage or Ada Lovelace? Konrad Zuse? Atanashoff or Berry? NCR? IBM? John "I couldn't wire a circuit if my life depended on it" von Neuman? Alan Turing? Are you aware of when the telephone was invented? The Radio? The television?"
Given that I have worked in the electric utility, telecommunications, and information management industries, and that I have over 500 books on the history of technology in my collection (publication dates ranging from 1500 - 2001), yes, I would say that I do know a little bit about those things. Never as much as I would like, though.
I also have a limit on the amount of time I can spend composing Slashdot posts during my lunch hour (unlike, say, Jon Katz), thus leading me to be less clear or complete than I would like ("if I had more time I would write less"). Sorry if I what I wrote wasn't clear to you, but I think my meaning was there.
And while I certainly believe that there is actually very little new under the sun, the kind of communication that is occuring today over the web is different from what has gone before. That's my opinion; YMMV.
And to the previous poster: (i) 000 is a common accounting abbreviation for "thousands" (ii) Slashdot has a limit on the length of a post's title.
sPh
I have a collection of publications from the steam and electric utility industries 1880 - 1920. Around 1900 there were thousands of suppliers of switchgear, generator, transformers, motors, fuseboxes, electric irons, etc. People were trying to electrify everything from stoves (successful) to dog walking (unsuccessful). Companies came and went with incredible speed, fortunes were won and lost, etc. Sound familiar?
Electronic communication is in its infancy, and it may well be a transition point similar to the arrival of the steam engine and electricy (MAY be). During any transition point there will be chaos, fortunes, and failures. That's the nature of evolution.
What does concern me a bit is that this time government may be large and well-organized enough to be quash the chaos on behalf of the vested interests. (can you say DMCA? RIAA?) That could stop any possible transition in its tracks.
sPh