If you let the people have a say, you would end up with free ice cream, maybe free beer, and no free speach.
That's the same cynicism that's at the heart of the "benevolent dictatorship" attitude of modern government. We're too dumb to know what we want, so we need a politican class (hereditary, even) to rule over us.
Frankly, I think we'd be better having referenda about everything. I do agree that in the short term, We, the People would screw up and hurt ourselves with our own greed (as we experience actual democracy for the first time since Athens) but, as with Athens, I reckon we'd get smart fairly quickly.
Just as an FYI, this mirrors the situation in the UK. The incumbent monopoly, British Telecom (or just "BT" as they now style themselves) has been stalling and foot dragging on DSL as well.
They claimed they'd roll out DSL fast, then spent years testing to make sure they'd "get it right first time.". They then delayed further to switch to a screwed up USB (rather than ethernet) system that nobody wanted, and kicked off with massive installation delays, broken promises and network snafus. If this was them getting it right, god knows what they'd have done if they'd rushed it.
They went with a weedy 512/256Kbit/s ADSL system with a maximum 2.5km range from the exchange, meaning only urban customers can get DSL. They're now pushing this to 3.5km (woo hoo), but still have no concrete plans to bring affordable broadband to low density suburban or rural areas, other than a prohibitively expensive satellite solution.
When they were finally forced to open their exchanges, they claimed that there was no space. They then offered local loops in the 50 or so least profitable exchanges, while selling off exchange space in the others as luxury flats!
Despite the market and local loop being opened, try actually getting DSL from anyone other than BT. They've made the process of taking a local loop so expensive and awkward that nobody can compete that way. They rent DSL loops wholesale at £35~=$53 a month plus a connection fee, while retailing at £40~=$60 a month, which precluding any competition from resellers. Their biggest DSL reseller customer, Freeserve, has recently had to hike their retail price from £40 to £50~=$75 just to break even. So, you can pay £40 to BT or £50 to Freeserve for exactly the same service. Tough choice, huh?
It sounds like the same sorry mess you have with the Bells. On the bright side, the UK's two main cableco's have just teamed up to market broadband cable together, so at least there's some competition, even if it's not in the DSL space.
it was found that the computer game only stimulated activity in the parts of the brain associated with vision and movement.
Let me predict the arguments here regarding this article.
Pro: But of course, c.f. these other references.
Con: i plai games on AOL an am genus, But munkies i kil yoo
Funny-ha-ha's aside, what on earth did we expect? That spending 8 hours a day watching repetitive, unvaried images of violence and gore would create a race of uber kinder?
Don't get me wrong, I like games. I used to write them, and I enjoy playing them, including FPS'ers. I honestly feel that (partly because I used to write them) I'm smart enough to realise that playing them does actually makes me dumber and antisocial (and I'm pushing 30). I don't think they make me more violent, but my fragile little mind was well formed before I really started playing gore-o-ramas in earnest, plus I blow off a lot of steam playing physical sports, something that GenY is doing less and less.
No, it's not the collapse of civilisation as we know it, but if you're going to argue that environment doesn't shape behaviour, then we have no grounds for debate, and you mite ars wel kil me, cuz i am gay but monkie.
Many varieties of hydrogen-based fuel cells are made from cheap materials
Really? Got references? I'd heard that they were still all mondo expensive, but that may just be Big Oil FUD.
Re:Ah, its not to say that it is suprising...
on
$1200 Cheap!
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· Score: 2
The question of the matter is that bundling is legal
Bundling is legal unless there's no choice, i.e. the bundler has a de facto monopoly and is abusing it. Don't take my word for it, ask any court in the USA.
Yes, yes, I hear you, M$ doesn't have a monopoly in consoles. Yet. All I'm saying is: keep a close eye on them, and believe the worst (Judge Jackson did). If the DOJ waits until they have their console monopoly before doing anything about it, then it will be too late, short of finally getting the the much overdue breakup into platform and application (i.e. console and games).
Hurrah, now I can watch the best bits without wearing out my tape. Specifically, the first two minutes: that spine shivering D7 battlecruiser flyby intro, and the sterling example of a thorough Klingon scientific investigation: "Visual! Tactical! Stand by torpedoes! Fire! [pause, oops] Evasive!"
After that though, the boring old Federation Dudley Dorights take over, and it all kind of goes downhill from there.;)
Re:Ah, its not to say that it is suprising...
on
$1200 Cheap!
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· Score: 2
you can still get a bare $299 Xbox, why is this unfair
Let me stare into my crystal ball...
M$ can only fab up a fixed number of X-Boxen before the Christmas frenzy. Tell me, where are those boxen going to go? Are M$ going to distribute them fairly across the channel, calmly accepting that demand for bare $300 boxen will outstrip demand for $500-$1200 mega bundles, and knowing that they'll lose money on every bare box sale?
Or is it remotely possible that they will limit the number of (loss leading) bare boxen available, creating an artifical scarcity, driving up the perceived value, and putting pressure on harassed parents (and impatient geeks) to pay the extra for the bundled deal?
Before you get on your "Just wait, dumbass!" high horse, remember that we're talking about the mass market here, on their Chrismas mission to provide for their rosy cheeked infants, prove their hunting prowess and secure some sweet lovin' from their adoring spouse.
And remember, if I can figure this out (while still in possession of my soul), then I'm damn sure the M$ marketing collective can.
Just because the company involved is Microsoft doesn't mean that their actions must necessarily be evil.
Uh oh, why do I get the feeling that I've stepped into the Star Trek (& South Park) Evil Parallel Universe? Are you wearing a goatee?
Slightly more seriously, basic pattern recognition tells us that M$'s actions regarding the X-Box will be abusive and might be technically illegal.
Let my hypothesise for a second. We're seeing lots of posts saying "Buy a bare one, dumbass!". Fair enough, in an open market, you can do that. But M$ can only fab up a fixed number of X-Boxen. Care to wager money about how many will be given to the channel to sell bare, and how many will be reserved for bundle deals?
If they create an artificial shortage of the boxen that people want, that generates good publicity for them, and will pressure harassed parents to buy the expensive bundled deals that they don't really want.
Sure, berate me for being overly cynical, but do please remember, this is Microsoft.
Re:Did you expect any differently?
on
$1200 Cheap!
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· Score: 2
the bundling we're seeing here in the console market is legal, because MS holds no monopoly in the gaming console market
This is technically correct ("The best kind of correct..."), but it's always worth bearing in mind that at the speed the Justice Department works, if MS do buy themselves an abusive monopoly in the console market, by the time we get around to doing anything about it, there won't be any competition left to rescue.
And the same goes for all the groans of "Why are you bashing M$, everybody else does it". This is a company that has repeatedly been found guilty of illegally abusing monopoly positions. And you reckon that they won't do it again?
By focusing extremely precise measuring techniques at 47 Ursae Majoris, which is about 45 light years (more than 200 trillion miles) away, astronomers measured wobbles of 36 feet per second and inferred the presence of one of the large planets.
Uh huh. When I did astronomy, back in the day, we worked in powers of ten. Anything with the right number of digits was "close enough".
Now here we have a bunch of astronomers who have been funded to find planets. They come up with a single observation technique that they reckon will prove the existence of planets. They have no way of correlating their findings. They look for this observation, expecting to find it. They find it. This proves the existence of planets.
Remind me, what would be the effects on the funding of this project if they hadn't "proven" both their technique and the existence of planets?
Kudos to Zooko for producing this, but I have to point out that if you didn't already know this stuff, you're not going to learn much of anything useful here because there's not enough basic introduction, and if you did already know it, you're not going to learn much of anything useful here, because there's not enough detail.
And what on earth is the point in posting your opinion on legal issues, then disclaiming that opinion as being worthless? Again, no disrespect to Zooko, but his opinion isn't worth any more than mine or yours.
Let's keep pressing for IAAL advice, or better yet, get some of these licenses tested in court, proactively and preemptively if necessary. I'd happily help fund a FSF case to have a declaratory decision made on the validity and limitations of the GPL.
I have a cable modem, which costs me around £20 per month. A lot of the time I'm not really using it. [...] we did this in Aberdeen, Scotland, three years ago
I'm in the same situation, and am very tempted to set up a consume.net node near Glasgow. The recommended kit is £500 (~$750) plus an old PC. That in itself is not a barrier to entry, but the problem is that I'm in a suburban area (in a ground hollow, even) and the chance of actually finding a consume.net peer is low.
Perhaps the most valuable service that alternative net projects could provide will be to track the (approximate!) geographical locations of live nodes, to encourage people to join, or to start new clusters in the knowledge that they will soon be joined by other peers.
Re:As long as I can connect...
on
Taming the Web
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· Score: 2
If this post doesn't get moderated to 5, then it's probably time to stop reading/. and go stock your bunker with spam, ammo, and good breedin' women.
Only when absolutely necessary. The R&D cost of re-engineering a product dwarfs the cost of saving a few pennies by moving to more modern, high volume hardware.
So this decision will cost some companies in R&D. That sucks!
No... no, wait, I'm an R&D engineer... yah, AMD!;)
Across millions of units, its worth it to have engineers shave out a few pennies here and there.
Uh, no. Beyond a certain age, older, slower chips actually get more expensive. It's the R&D cost of re-engineering the entire product that stops companies from putting in more modern (high volume, cheaper) hardware.
Companies who have spent millions of dollars designing and testing an embedded device running on a rock solid, low power 25Mhz SX 486 don't want to go through the whole process again to upgrade their boards (different pins, more power) or even to put in a faster 486 (you might have to actually cripple your application to keep its execution speed constant).
The cost of the CPU isn't really the issue (you often pay more for older, slower chips!), it's the associated re-development cost that keeps the demand for old chips going.
Sure, I meant no disrespect to you, and I agree in substance with your points. My only bone of contention is that while Star Wars 4, 5 and the first half of 6 (pre re-master) are superficial, they don't necessarily become irritating with age. For me, at least, the magic is still there. It's remembered childhood magic, but it doesn't have Jar Jar screwing it up for me, like he'll do for the kiddies who squealed and giggled at him in Phantom Menace.
Incidentally, I didn't mean to imply that modern blockbusters are in any way worthy pieces of film making. Perish the thought.;)
The only answer is to add enough value, that consumers are willing to pay the money to avoid the hassle
As a commercial auther (text and software), I should be ranting about you advocating the theft of my hard work.
But the thing is... you're absolutely correct. I have no right to make money off of my work; if I fail to persuade people to buy my work under my terms, then I've already lost the sale. I have no one to blame but myself. If my work then gets copied, what more have I "lost"?
Maybe I'm just peculiar in the head, but I actually see myself as having an obligation to offer value on the customers' terms, not demand reward on mine.
But, it looks like portal systems like Zope would be in the clear. Damn broad patent, though.
Whee, this is fun, another keen poster who didn't bother reading to the end:
Those skilled in the art may make numerous modifications and departures from the specific embodiments without departing from the spirit and scope of the claimed invention. For example [...]the software downloaded may be intended to perform tasks such as database management, word processing, spread sheet, games, or other tasks that are not specified herein.
"Method and system for securing, managing or optimizing a personal computer"
I wonder how many times I'm going to have to post the simple advice to read to the end, to see that it gets even worse:
Those skilled in the art may make numerous modifications and departures from the specific embodiments without departing from the spirit and scope of the claimed invention. For example [...]the software downloaded may be intended to perform tasks such as database management, word processing, spread sheet, games, or other tasks that are not specified herein.
The patent abstract only seems to imply that this will cover remote recovery/maintence of PC's.
Read to the end:
Those skilled in the art may make numerous modifications and departures from the specific embodiments without departing from the spirit and scope of the claimed invention. For example [...]the software downloaded may be intended to perform tasks such as database management, word processing, spread sheet, games, or other tasks that are not specified herein.
Those skilled in the art may make numerous modifications and departures from the specific embodiments without departing from the spirit and scope of the claimed invention. For example[...] the software downloaded may be intended to perform tasks such as database management, word processing, spread sheet, games, or other tasks that are not specified herein.
A system, method, and computer program product for delivery and automatic execution of security, management, or optimization software over an Internet connection to a user computer responsive to a user request entered via a web browser on the user computer
What? A patent that actually limits its scope?. But read right to the end for the gotcha:
Those skilled in the art may make numerous modifications and departures from the specific embodiments without departing from the spirit and scope of the claimed invention. For example [...]the software downloaded may be intended to perform tasks such as database management, word processing, spread sheet, games, or other tasks that are not specified herein.
Filed: December 8, 1998
Even for a USPTO filing, this is breathtaking. The detail wording of the patent discloses prior art that differs only in small details (at the time of filing) from the claimed method, and the attempt to generalise from a specific implementation to cover pretty much anything you download and install would be hilarious if it wasn't being done by a company with a legal department and a belligerent attitude.
I'm astonished to find that I can't wait for Microsoft to let their lawyers loose on this. I wonder how much longer the USPTO can be allowed to continue in it's current form? It's slipped quietely from being merely incompetent and underfunded into the realms of the farcical.
George Lucas has officially announced the title of Star Wars II, the much-anticipated follow-up to Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, and they've named it Attack of the Clones. Yup, you read that correctly: Attack of the Clones. The announcement was made on Monday on the official Star Wars site. One of the rumored titles that was passed along this time last year was "The Rise of the Empire" though that was quickly proved false. Our fans clearly favored "The Clone Wars" as the new name in a poll taken at the time, and it isn't too far from where it ended up. Discuss this new development and much, much more on our [snicker] Attack of the Clones [chortle] message boards.
It's for your kids. Stop complaining and let them enjoy it.
Circa 1977:
L'il Rogerborg: Gosh, father, what a splendid cinematic experience. Did you also enjoy it?
L'il Rogerborg's daddy: Why, yes son, it was both invigorating and diverting. On balance, I would judge it a most excellent film and would be pleased to take you to see it again.
Circa 1999:
L'il Nephew Neddy: Woo! Yeah! Now this is pod racing! Yee ha! Take me to see it again, Uncle Rogerborg! Again! Again!
Uncle Rogerborg: Aaargh! No! I can't sit through that again. I'm going to watch South Park: BLU and nurse my violated childhood memories.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the same cynicism that's at the heart of the "benevolent dictatorship" attitude of modern government. We're too dumb to know what we want, so we need a politican class (hereditary, even) to rule over us.
Frankly, I think we'd be better having referenda about everything. I do agree that in the short term, We, the People would screw up and hurt ourselves with our own greed (as we experience actual democracy for the first time since Athens) but, as with Athens, I reckon we'd get smart fairly quickly.
It's got to be worth a try.
Just as an FYI, this mirrors the situation in the UK. The incumbent monopoly, British Telecom (or just "BT" as they now style themselves) has been stalling and foot dragging on DSL as well.
It sounds like the same sorry mess you have with the Bells. On the bright side, the UK's two main cableco's have just teamed up to market broadband cable together, so at least there's some competition, even if it's not in the DSL space.
Let me predict the arguments here regarding this article.
Funny-ha-ha's aside, what on earth did we expect? That spending 8 hours a day watching repetitive, unvaried images of violence and gore would create a race of uber kinder?
Don't get me wrong, I like games. I used to write them, and I enjoy playing them, including FPS'ers. I honestly feel that (partly because I used to write them) I'm smart enough to realise that playing them does actually makes me dumber and antisocial (and I'm pushing 30). I don't think they make me more violent, but my fragile little mind was well formed before I really started playing gore-o-ramas in earnest, plus I blow off a lot of steam playing physical sports, something that GenY is doing less and less.
No, it's not the collapse of civilisation as we know it, but if you're going to argue that environment doesn't shape behaviour, then we have no grounds for debate, and you mite ars wel kil me, cuz i am gay but monkie.
Really? Got references? I'd heard that they were still all mondo expensive, but that may just be Big Oil FUD.
Bundling is legal unless there's no choice, i.e. the bundler has a de facto monopoly and is abusing it. Don't take my word for it, ask any court in the USA.
Yes, yes, I hear you, M$ doesn't have a monopoly in consoles. Yet. All I'm saying is: keep a close eye on them, and believe the worst (Judge Jackson did). If the DOJ waits until they have their console monopoly before doing anything about it, then it will be too late, short of finally getting the the much overdue breakup into platform and application (i.e. console and games).
Hurrah, now I can watch the best bits without wearing out my tape. Specifically, the first two minutes: that spine shivering D7 battlecruiser flyby intro, and the sterling example of a thorough Klingon scientific investigation: "Visual! Tactical! Stand by torpedoes! Fire! [pause, oops] Evasive!"
After that though, the boring old Federation Dudley Dorights take over, and it all kind of goes downhill from there. ;)
Let me stare into my crystal ball...
M$ can only fab up a fixed number of X-Boxen before the Christmas frenzy. Tell me, where are those boxen going to go? Are M$ going to distribute them fairly across the channel, calmly accepting that demand for bare $300 boxen will outstrip demand for $500-$1200 mega bundles, and knowing that they'll lose money on every bare box sale?
Or is it remotely possible that they will limit the number of (loss leading) bare boxen available, creating an artifical scarcity, driving up the perceived value, and putting pressure on harassed parents (and impatient geeks) to pay the extra for the bundled deal?
Before you get on your "Just wait, dumbass!" high horse, remember that we're talking about the mass market here, on their Chrismas mission to provide for their rosy cheeked infants, prove their hunting prowess and secure some sweet lovin' from their adoring spouse.
And remember, if I can figure this out (while still in possession of my soul), then I'm damn sure the M$ marketing collective can.
Uh oh, why do I get the feeling that I've stepped into the Star Trek (& South Park) Evil Parallel Universe? Are you wearing a goatee?
Slightly more seriously, basic pattern recognition tells us that M$'s actions regarding the X-Box will be abusive and might be technically illegal.
Let my hypothesise for a second. We're seeing lots of posts saying "Buy a bare one, dumbass!". Fair enough, in an open market, you can do that. But M$ can only fab up a fixed number of X-Boxen. Care to wager money about how many will be given to the channel to sell bare, and how many will be reserved for bundle deals?
If they create an artificial shortage of the boxen that people want, that generates good publicity for them, and will pressure harassed parents to buy the expensive bundled deals that they don't really want.
Sure, berate me for being overly cynical, but do please remember, this is Microsoft.
This is technically correct ("The best kind of correct..."), but it's always worth bearing in mind that at the speed the Justice Department works, if MS do buy themselves an abusive monopoly in the console market, by the time we get around to doing anything about it, there won't be any competition left to rescue.
And the same goes for all the groans of "Why are you bashing M$, everybody else does it". This is a company that has repeatedly been found guilty of illegally abusing monopoly positions. And you reckon that they won't do it again?
Uh huh. When I did astronomy, back in the day, we worked in powers of ten. Anything with the right number of digits was "close enough".
Now here we have a bunch of astronomers who have been funded to find planets. They come up with a single observation technique that they reckon will prove the existence of planets. They have no way of correlating their findings. They look for this observation, expecting to find it. They find it. This proves the existence of planets.
Remind me, what would be the effects on the funding of this project if they hadn't "proven" both their technique and the existence of planets?
Kudos to Zooko for producing this, but I have to point out that if you didn't already know this stuff, you're not going to learn much of anything useful here because there's not enough basic introduction, and if you did already know it, you're not going to learn much of anything useful here, because there's not enough detail.
And what on earth is the point in posting your opinion on legal issues, then disclaiming that opinion as being worthless? Again, no disrespect to Zooko, but his opinion isn't worth any more than mine or yours.
Let's keep pressing for IAAL advice, or better yet, get some of these licenses tested in court, proactively and preemptively if necessary. I'd happily help fund a FSF case to have a declaratory decision made on the validity and limitations of the GPL.
I'm in the same situation, and am very tempted to set up a consume.net node near Glasgow. The recommended kit is £500 (~$750) plus an old PC. That in itself is not a barrier to entry, but the problem is that I'm in a suburban area (in a ground hollow, even) and the chance of actually finding a consume.net peer is low.
Perhaps the most valuable service that alternative net projects could provide will be to track the (approximate!) geographical locations of live nodes, to encourage people to join, or to start new clusters in the knowledge that they will soon be joined by other peers.
If this post doesn't get moderated to 5, then it's probably time to stop reading /. and go stock your bunker with spam, ammo, and good breedin' women.
Only when absolutely necessary. The R&D cost of re-engineering a product dwarfs the cost of saving a few pennies by moving to more modern, high volume hardware.
So this decision will cost some companies in R&D. That sucks!
No... no, wait, I'm an R&D engineer... yah, AMD! ;)
Uh, no. Beyond a certain age, older, slower chips actually get more expensive. It's the R&D cost of re-engineering the entire product that stops companies from putting in more modern (high volume, cheaper) hardware.
Companies who have spent millions of dollars designing and testing an embedded device running on a rock solid, low power 25Mhz SX 486 don't want to go through the whole process again to upgrade their boards (different pins, more power) or even to put in a faster 486 (you might have to actually cripple your application to keep its execution speed constant).
The cost of the CPU isn't really the issue (you often pay more for older, slower chips!), it's the associated re-development cost that keeps the demand for old chips going.
Sure, I meant no disrespect to you, and I agree in substance with your points. My only bone of contention is that while Star Wars 4, 5 and the first half of 6 (pre re-master) are superficial, they don't necessarily become irritating with age. For me, at least, the magic is still there. It's remembered childhood magic, but it doesn't have Jar Jar screwing it up for me, like he'll do for the kiddies who squealed and giggled at him in Phantom Menace.
Incidentally, I didn't mean to imply that modern blockbusters are in any way worthy pieces of film making. Perish the thought. ;)
As a commercial auther (text and software), I should be ranting about you advocating the theft of my hard work.
But the thing is... you're absolutely correct. I have no right to make money off of my work; if I fail to persuade people to buy my work under my terms, then I've already lost the sale. I have no one to blame but myself. If my work then gets copied, what more have I "lost"?
Maybe I'm just peculiar in the head, but I actually see myself as having an obligation to offer value on the customers' terms, not demand reward on mine.
Whee, this is fun, another keen poster who didn't bother reading to the end:
I wonder how many times I'm going to have to post the simple advice to read to the end, to see that it gets even worse:
Read to the end:
The sting in the tail:
What? A patent that actually limits its scope?. But read right to the end for the gotcha:
Even for a USPTO filing, this is breathtaking. The detail wording of the patent discloses prior art that differs only in small details (at the time of filing) from the claimed method, and the attempt to generalise from a specific implementation to cover pretty much anything you download and install would be hilarious if it wasn't being done by a company with a legal department and a belligerent attitude.
I'm astonished to find that I can't wait for Microsoft to let their lawyers loose on this. I wonder how much longer the USPTO can be allowed to continue in it's current form? It's slipped quietely from being merely incompetent and underfunded into the realms of the farcical.
From the IMDB
The [commentary] is theirs, not mine.
Circa 1977:
Circa 1999: