Well, the theory is, laws sometimes have to be made on banning acts that the majority of times they're performed, it's for something illegal.
Someone might want to make counterfeit money for artistic value, or decorative value, or just for the challenge of it. It's still illegal to produce.
Same with ROMs or Napster: sure, some people use them for legitimate purposes. But the overwhelming majority use them for illegitimate purposes.
Is that fair? Probably not. But the alternative would be 24-hour surveillance of everyone to make sure they weren't spending the fake money or downloading copyrighted material or playing pirated games.
Or take away the monetary value of money, and the copyright rights of content producers. Now, some people think taking away the copyright rights is a good idea but generally, in our society, that's considered an unaccepable solution.
Exactly. People with $millions making money for them don't need a tax break. People who work do.
Which is (partly) why most tax cuts should just take the form of bracket shifts... just move 'em up till the desired break is achieved.
Shave a few percent off the brackets if you want... this'll give you room to move if you need to raise taxes.... but for the most part, just shift the brackets. Oh, and shift them by the rate of inflation every year as well.
(Aside: It amazes me how little is actually keyed to inflation... like the president's salary, which just gets doubled every 20-30 years... Clinton made $200,000. Bush makes $400,000. Ideological arguments aside, does that make sense to anyone?)
As I understand it, NASA has money under a program called the Space Launch Initiative (SLI). X-33 was funded under that program. NASA has decided that the X-33 wasn't using the money effectively, and has decided to distribute that money instead to numerous other related projects.
Basically, they decided the technology wasn't there to put all there eggs in one basket (the X-33/Venturestar) and do so some more R&D. This is a smart decision and a Good Thing: pumping money into a project that's ahead of its time is exactly how we got stuck with the Space Shuttle.
(In fact, the SLI budget has actually increased 64% in this budget. More money is actually being spend to develop cheap launching technologies.)
Good article at http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0103/01x33/ind ex2.html
> Associate documents with
> programs? Why should a process automatically
> do that anyway?
Um... that's the type of thinking that will keep Linux from entering the mainstream.;)
You create something in Word. You double-click on it. You expect it to open in Word. Why should the user have to load Word, go to file..open, and double click on it in there? The computer should know what the document is. The user doesn't want to use the Word process to edit a document, the user wants to edit a document (subtle but important difference).
The end result is what's important, not the tools used. (The computer is just a tool, all the user cares about is writing the letter.)
That's not to say that associating files with program shouldn't be optional during the install, which most installations neglect to ask about, but for your typical user, that's not a problem.
Re: Microsoft Ease-of-Use Quality: Only those that are willing to view configuring their computer as an end rather than a means (ie. computer geeks who are inheritly interested in setting these things up) can install/run Linux.
If someone wants to use a PC to word process, or play with images, or whatever, Linux is simply too complex, it has too much of a learning curve. (Imagine your typical mother trying to set up a Linux machine). Recent distributions are getting easier, but they still haven't reached the level Windows 95 had six years ago. I mean, RPM's (from what I've seen, I could be wrong) don't even add things to a menu/program manger or associate documents with programs - Windows has had that since Windows 3.0. So if you want to run a program in Linux, you have to know the command line... and if you want to make it easier to use, you have to go make configuration changes to Gnome/KDE. Mom ain't going to want to figure out how to do that... most people don't even reconfigure their Start Menu from what they're given.
Until the Linux developers really begin to try to think like non-computer people, Linux just isn't going to catch up with the general populace. It's like Linux GUIs... every screenshot on the Gnome or KDE sites has multiple terminal windows. No one except computer geeks would ever want to use a terminal window.
This is also carrying over to servers, btw... Windows 2000 is way easier to use than Linux (case in point: the Management Console). A, well, stupider person could manage a Microsoft network/server than a Linux network/server. Since smarter people are more expensive, Microsoft's track could actually end up looking cheaper.
Linux is certainly better in my areas, but in ease-of-use, Microsoft is way ahead. (Way ahead, from a MS/Linux comparison. The Mac/MS comparison, its arguable... although from what I've seen Mac users tend to think Windows is harder than it is, and I think the Windows UI has been ahead since Windows 95. But that's just personal opinion.)
I think the important difference between the SSH situation and the PGP situation is that Zimmerman is freely opening up the name "OpenPGP" to the Open Source community and the creator of SSH hasn't, and would like to keep it to himself for a while. Mostly a matter of politeness, of respecting the creator's wishes.
(Also of note: Zimmerman has likely made his millions. The SSH team hasn't yet.)
I just posted the above message and it said "posted at 8:20pm EDT". But I'm sitting here in Toronto in the Eastern Daylight Time zone and it's definitely around 7:23pm.
Looks to me like Mr. Web Standards Project is just trying to feel important. Look, he got called a "web standards group" on CNET! I thought that was the W3C...
Not letting people view their site unless they have a machine that can run the latest version of browsers is just plain inconsiderate. There are plenty of machines out there that are limited... various UNIX machines are limited to older Netscapes, various Windows machines can't support the newest browsers, Palm users, WebTV users, Win3.1 users, etc etc
Sites should be designed to degrade gracefully. Granted, this is easier with a dynamic system (ASP,PHP,etc) than trying to code it all in HTML, but if one sticks to standard HTML, it should work. It won't be as pretty, but giving someone with Netscape 4 an ugly, but functional, page and saying "it'll look better with a newer browser" is a heck of a lot more polite than saying "piss off."
...but it will be useful stepping-stone until the record companies can set up their own servers. Paying $10/month or whatever Napster wants for other people's unreliable, partially-completed, and often misnamed files is going to find a very limited audience. Especially with the recent rash of falsely named MP3s on Napster (ie. U2's latest album)... and if I had a dime for every song that cut out a few seconds early...
However, paying the same for high-quality, complete downloads from the RIAA's own high-speed servers would be acceptable. And all they'll have to do is tweak Napster's search routines to point to their own servers when they're up...
MS is serious about it's new anti-piracy initiatives (every serial number can be used only on one machine, verified over Internet)
OpenOffice gets a feature level up to an Office 95-level product (Office 97+ really doesn't add too much for the home user)
and it offers full file compatibility with the latest MS products
...then it has a chance for home and small business... and if Sun makes gains in enterprises, that could be enough to give it a good chance to take over.
Don't forget, Lotus 123 and WordPerfect were once the brand names...
...that they feel the need to rip everything down before they build it back up again.
Deja.com was the most useful resource for troubleshooting... now they've disabled functionality, made the interface unwieldy, and generally are starting all over again.
Why do that? Why not leave it the way it was, put up a beta site to test their new search engine, and put up the new site when it's ready?
Makes me wish Yahoo had acquired them... Yahoo's acquisition and transition of eGroups to Yahoo! Groups was flawless. There was plenty of warning the transition was coming, and the transition itself was implemented perfectly, including the integration with Yahoo's user accounts
Mmm. Disagreements based on semantics. "I define hacker as A." "I define hacker as B." Well, to add my two cents...
Call me old fashioned, but a hacker, IMHO, is someone who "hacks" into things... whether it be Defense Department computers or computer game code or whatever. There has to mystery about it; there has to be figuring out how things work on your own, understanding the computer at the most basic level, and then fooling or changing the system...
I blame the media. In their urge to make computers sound cool, everyone's a hacker. It used to be an elite group. (One I'm not, BTW, in any way part of... except maybe for when I used to use a hex editor to give myself unlimited lives or money in computer games...<g>)
I don't think anything done with setting-up or configuring open-source, by definition, could be considered "hacking", since it's all there in the open. Discovering and exploiting its weaknesses, on the other hand, could be.
The real first step in deciding issues like this is having a government that doesn't drop in its knees when big business calls... we can talk about GNU for DNA till we're blue in the face, but it's never going to happen while big money runs the country.
In my view, the world would be transformed to the open-source model. That you give away the recipe and sell the chicken. That you can download music free but pay for the live performance. You'd pay to see movies on the big screen with great sound.
So the skilled recipe-creator gets nothing, but the person who owns the chicken farm gets everything. So the band that has a good live show gets rewarded, but the anti-social electronic composer who makes music in his basement gets nothing. So the person who can afford the fancy home theatre system (or better yet, can afford to build a theatre and charge people admission) get all the rewards, whereas those who actually create the work get nothing.
A non-copyright society would just make the inequities of the current system even worse.
Relating to the software industry, the difficult-to-use always-breaks-down software would get all the support money, whereas the works-like-a-charm easy-to-use software would get nothing.
(BTW, that's a problem with the open-source system as an economic model, IMHO, as there's no incentive to make it easy to use in the long term.)
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the theory is, laws sometimes have to be made on banning acts that the majority of times they're performed, it's for something illegal.
Someone might want to make counterfeit money for artistic value, or decorative value, or just for the challenge of it. It's still illegal to produce.
Same with ROMs or Napster: sure, some people use them for legitimate purposes. But the overwhelming majority use them for illegitimate purposes.
Is that fair? Probably not. But the alternative would be 24-hour surveillance of everyone to make sure they weren't spending the fake money or downloading copyrighted material or playing pirated games.
Or take away the monetary value of money, and the copyright rights of content producers. Now, some people think taking away the copyright rights is a good idea but generally, in our society, that's considered an unaccepable solution.
Exactly. People with $millions making money for them don't need a tax break. People who work do.
Which is (partly) why most tax cuts should just take the form of bracket shifts... just move 'em up till the desired break is achieved.
Shave a few percent off the brackets if you want... this'll give you room to move if you need to raise taxes.... but for the most part, just shift the brackets. Oh, and shift them by the rate of inflation every year as well.
(Aside: It amazes me how little is actually keyed to inflation... like the president's salary, which just gets doubled every 20-30 years... Clinton made $200,000. Bush makes $400,000. Ideological arguments aside, does that make sense to anyone?)
As I understand it, NASA has money under a program called the Space Launch Initiative (SLI). X-33 was funded under that program. NASA has decided that the X-33 wasn't using the money effectively, and has decided to distribute that money instead to numerous other related projects.
d ex2.html
Basically, they decided the technology wasn't there to put all there eggs in one basket (the X-33/Venturestar) and do so some more R&D. This is a smart decision and a Good Thing: pumping money into a project that's ahead of its time is exactly how we got stuck with the Space Shuttle.
(In fact, the SLI budget has actually increased 64% in this budget. More money is actually being spend to develop cheap launching technologies.)
Good article at http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0103/01x33/in
> Associate documents with
;)
> programs? Why should a process automatically
> do that anyway?
Um... that's the type of thinking that will keep Linux from entering the mainstream.
You create something in Word. You double-click on it. You expect it to open in Word. Why should the user have to load Word, go to file..open, and double click on it in there? The computer should know what the document is. The user doesn't want to use the Word process to edit a document, the user wants to edit a document (subtle but important difference).
The end result is what's important, not the tools used. (The computer is just a tool, all the user cares about is writing the letter.)
That's not to say that associating files with program shouldn't be optional during the install, which most installations neglect to ask about, but for your typical user, that's not a problem.
Re: Microsoft Ease-of-Use Quality: Only those that are willing to view configuring their computer as an end rather than a means (ie. computer geeks who are inheritly interested in setting these things up) can install/run Linux.
If someone wants to use a PC to word process, or play with images, or whatever, Linux is simply too complex, it has too much of a learning curve. (Imagine your typical mother trying to set up a Linux machine). Recent distributions are getting easier, but they still haven't reached the level Windows 95 had six years ago. I mean, RPM's (from what I've seen, I could be wrong) don't even add things to a menu/program manger or associate documents with programs - Windows has had that since Windows 3.0. So if you want to run a program in Linux, you have to know the command line... and if you want to make it easier to use, you have to go make configuration changes to Gnome/KDE. Mom ain't going to want to figure out how to do that... most people don't even reconfigure their Start Menu from what they're given.
Until the Linux developers really begin to try to think like non-computer people, Linux just isn't going to catch up with the general populace. It's like Linux GUIs... every screenshot on the Gnome or KDE sites has multiple terminal windows. No one except computer geeks would ever want to use a terminal window.
This is also carrying over to servers, btw... Windows 2000 is way easier to use than Linux (case in point: the Management Console). A, well, stupider person could manage a Microsoft network/server than a Linux network/server. Since smarter people are more expensive, Microsoft's track could actually end up looking cheaper.
Linux is certainly better in my areas, but in ease-of-use, Microsoft is way ahead. (Way ahead, from a MS/Linux comparison. The Mac/MS comparison, its arguable... although from what I've seen Mac users tend to think Windows is harder than it is, and I think the Windows UI has been ahead since Windows 95. But that's just personal opinion.)
I think the important difference between the SSH situation and the PGP situation is that Zimmerman is freely opening up the name "OpenPGP" to the Open Source community and the creator of SSH hasn't, and would like to keep it to himself for a while. Mostly a matter of politeness, of respecting the creator's wishes.
(Also of note: Zimmerman has likely made his millions. The SSH team hasn't yet.)
I just posted the above message and it said "posted at 8:20pm EDT". But I'm sitting here in Toronto in the Eastern Daylight Time zone and it's definitely around 7:23pm.
Am I missing something?
Looks to me like Mr. Web Standards Project is just trying to feel important. Look, he got called a "web standards group" on CNET! I thought that was the W3C...
Not letting people view their site unless they have a machine that can run the latest version of browsers is just plain inconsiderate. There are plenty of machines out there that are limited... various UNIX machines are limited to older Netscapes, various Windows machines can't support the newest browsers, Palm users, WebTV users, Win3.1 users, etc etc
Sites should be designed to degrade gracefully. Granted, this is easier with a dynamic system (ASP,PHP,etc) than trying to code it all in HTML, but if one sticks to standard HTML, it should work. It won't be as pretty, but giving someone with Netscape 4 an ugly, but functional, page and saying "it'll look better with a newer browser" is a heck of a lot more polite than saying "piss off."
...but it will be useful stepping-stone until the record companies can set up their own servers. Paying $10/month or whatever Napster wants for other people's unreliable, partially-completed, and often misnamed files is going to find a very limited audience. Especially with the recent rash of falsely named MP3s on Napster (ie. U2's latest album)... and if I had a dime for every song that cut out a few seconds early...
However, paying the same for high-quality, complete downloads from the RIAA's own high-speed servers would be acceptable. And all they'll have to do is tweak Napster's search routines to point to their own servers when they're up...
Don't forget, Lotus 123 and WordPerfect were once the brand names...
...that they feel the need to rip everything down before they build it back up again. Deja.com was the most useful resource for troubleshooting... now they've disabled functionality, made the interface unwieldy, and generally are starting all over again. Why do that? Why not leave it the way it was, put up a beta site to test their new search engine, and put up the new site when it's ready? Makes me wish Yahoo had acquired them... Yahoo's acquisition and transition of eGroups to Yahoo! Groups was flawless. There was plenty of warning the transition was coming, and the transition itself was implemented perfectly, including the integration with Yahoo's user accounts
Mmm. Disagreements based on semantics. "I define hacker as A." "I define hacker as B." Well, to add my two cents...
Call me old fashioned, but a hacker, IMHO, is someone who "hacks" into things... whether it be Defense Department computers or computer game code or whatever. There has to mystery about it; there has to be figuring out how things work on your own, understanding the computer at the most basic level, and then fooling or changing the system...
I blame the media. In their urge to make computers sound cool, everyone's a hacker. It used to be an elite group. (One I'm not, BTW, in any way part of... except maybe for when I used to use a hex editor to give myself unlimited lives or money in computer games...<g>)
I don't think anything done with setting-up or configuring open-source, by definition, could be considered "hacking", since it's all there in the open. Discovering and exploiting its weaknesses, on the other hand, could be.
The real first step in deciding issues like this is having a government that doesn't drop in its knees when big business calls... we can talk about GNU for DNA till we're blue in the face, but it's never going to happen while big money runs the country.
So the skilled recipe-creator gets nothing, but the person who owns the chicken farm gets everything. So the band that has a good live show gets rewarded, but the anti-social electronic composer who makes music in his basement gets nothing. So the person who can afford the fancy home theatre system (or better yet, can afford to build a theatre and charge people admission) get all the rewards, whereas those who actually create the work get nothing.
A non-copyright society would just make the inequities of the current system even worse.
Relating to the software industry, the difficult-to-use always-breaks-down software would get all the support money, whereas the works-like-a-charm easy-to-use software would get nothing.
(BTW, that's a problem with the open-source system as an economic model, IMHO, as there's no incentive to make it easy to use in the long term.)