If there isn't some aspect of extremism, the real problems never get laid out. Though we are far from perfect, we are much closer to perfect than we were before a bunch of ball-busting, man-hating , feminist zealots pushed the issues onto us testosterone types.
Where would the women's movement be without it's radicals (zealots).
Our society flatly rejects violence, whatever its cause. Most violence is not caused by zealots.
It also says that they have only about 12 months of cash left at the rate they're losing money. That means if they don't get more money from licensing, they will be broke before the IBM case comes to trial. If someone else sues them, they'll probably go under even sooner.
The interesting thing is that this has a lot to do with one of the recent slashdot stories: Project Censored. If you read this one, you'll see why people like SCO can get away with this...
It seems to be a weakness to me, seeing as SCO has been enjoined in Germany against making unsubstantiated claims without a full lawsuit, but Red Hat doesn't dare ask for a preliminary injunction in the US because it is either too costly or too difficult to do.
In the case of individuals, It should definitely be costly and time consuming to enjoin their speech, but in the case of executives or agents of publicly traded companies, it should be easier; Their speech affects the market and it should not do that if the claims are unsubstantiated.
This is not to reduce the validity of your statements, it is to clarify my own. While what you say is true and 'the way things should be', it does not address the specific weakness that I was referring to. I'll try and be more clear next time.
Take a look at Project for the New American Century. Read some of the reports, especially the ones while Clinton was still in charge. Signed by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, etc. The real foreign relations policy of the US is there.
Not completely weak. The contributions are maintained by contributor. If a section of code is incorrectly contributed and the real copyright holder complains, the code is removed. That is part of the design of the GPL. That is how copyright works. The infringer is the contributor, not the end product or the end user; this being true even if the infringing code is NOT removed.
It is a weakness in the US legal system that a**holes like SCO can just say "Our code is in there", not show it, and cause all this trouble. That they say that it can't be removed is also a joke. Of course it can be removed. It wasn't in 2.2, most of it probably won't be in 2.6. Notice how the SCO FUD machine got shut down in Germany.
I suspect that SCO will have issues come court time, as SCO have not taken the steps necessary to protect their copyrights (by showing the code).
As to someone contributing maliciously, the explanation earlier shows who's to blame. That's why the "I don't do IP" stance taken by Linus works. The day Linus starts trying to verify the source copyright is the day Darl McBride can say that Linux, not the original contributor, is infringing. He's trying to goad developers into doing that. Each contributor is responsible for their own copyrights, that's how it works.
Take a look at the Itanium. It's not taking off because not enough people 'get' EPIC, and moving to that platform is a lot of work. The speed benefits for a full migration to Itanium are quite large, but nobody wants to hand-tune their millions of lines of code.
This type of functionality has been available for quite some time. That's why no-talent bimbos can become famous on the merits of their great butt. That it's available in real time now is not too surprising. If the pitch correction is too great, it sounds funny though.
Real time correction can make it worse if the pitch correction takes the note to the next half step away. Ouch.
Re:This is why ISPs are changing their SMTP rules?
on
P2P Spam?
·
· Score: 1
Why not set up a PPTP tunnel to home base and redirect SMTP traffic that way? Then you get a one size fits all setup for mobile users. FreeS/WAN is a good choice. VPNs are a great solution for many problems.
Of course you may still need webmail for the cybercafe impaired.
They are similar becuase of artificially created scarcity. We are moving into an age of plenty. We can already print real objects using a modofied inkjet. It shouldn't be too long (compared to the time between the printing press and the computer) until our computers can produce most anything we want from a pile of atoms.
The better question is, what becomes scarce? Knowledge? Art? Service technicians for replication devices? I've yet to hear a good answer. The elimination of scarcity throws our entire economic model out the window. What's the new model? Do we go Star Trek and only care about improving ourselves?
That rant pushes the edge of legal. One could definitely consider some of those words to be threats. I just hope they don't come to take him away. He's needed right now.
By legalizing marijuana, the Government of California could TAX it. The current estimated value of California's (only California's) marijuana crop is over 4 billion dollars. Take on the imports and it balloons to around 7 or 8 billion. If the same tax structure as cigarrettes were used, The Government of California could realise 3 Billion in extra revenue.
Actually, I'm not encouraging theft. I'm saying that by pricing books beyond the means of the poor, that piracy is a natural result. I'm also saying that book publishers are ignoring an important market.
By selling a book for 10 dollars, they obtain market penetration of x, if they sold it for 5 dollars, their market would increase by a factor of 10, easily. My comment illustrates poor management and poor business decisions.
In this country, those that are not 'the poor' can most definitely afford books and should buy them. They are, after all, physical copies in the true spirit of copyright. The legitimate market in the third world will only expand through lower prices. Yes, this is the same argument as overpriced CD's in North America.
If you read that argument to indicate support of Piracy, you are indicating that current pricing is fair and correct and 'what the market will bear'. The reality is the prices are much greater than 'what the market will bear' and piracy is the result. In the case of CD's , it is true market manipulation and collusion. In the case of book publishers, they need to get their act together and figure out how to grow their markets while remaining profitable. For example, printing books in local market instead of importing them, permitting a lower operating cost and permitting lower prices with the same profit margin and a HUGE reduction in piracy.
Locally produced literature is affordable. Without a doubt. Locally produced books are very inexpensive. The problem is the content of locally produced literature is fiction, history, etc. Textbooks are a prime example that does not work well in that model, as the information changes too rapidly. Yes, colleges can create textbooks for first and second year courses, but try and create topical textbooks for third year and beyond.
Is a very old thing. It has been going on for a very long time.
An illegal translation of Harry Potter was being sold here (Chile). They regularly decommision tens of thousands of books at a time here.
Books suffer the same type of overcharged price fixing as CD's, so most people here can't afford them. Does that mean that the poor are denied the right to read? Libraries are basically non existent here too. Book piracy is not bad in the developed world because of fairly good libraries and greater affluence. One cannot expect a person making 200 bucks a month (or less) to buy a 10 dollar (minimum) book. Pirate copies sell for around 2 bucks. An affordable price. Your 10 dollar paperback could still make decent profit if sold for 3 bucks.
Just goes to show you how much Linux is worth. SCO seems to have it valued about right. Of course, Linux is GPL and FREE! Were one to charge for Linux, based on it's high end features, the price is close.
Re:how much was Ximian worth?
on
Novell Buys Ximian
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
For it to be non-material, it needs to be less than 1% of what it affects on Novell's balance sheet. Purchases of companies are assets. As of the last quarter, Novell had 1.6 Billion in Assets. Unless they had an incredible quarter causing cash to go through the roof, it would be hard to see more than 16 million as a maximum selling price.
I agree more closely with your statements than you know:)
Would you agree to the statement 'Software patents are terrible as implemented'? That's my opinion.
Would you still agree with your statements if the USPTO actually did a good job? What about if the patents were of high quality and of shorter term? That's what I see as the primary problem. At the moment they're totally screwing it up because of too many (mostly bad) patents, and the term is too long.
If you had created a truly novel way of doing something completely new, would you not expect to get paid (unless you were planning to give it away, which is also reasonable)? I still believe that a properly run patent system is the only protection joe hacker has to come out of his garage with little capital. It needs fixing, big time.
The Intertrust patents are pretty specific. They lost their business because Microsoft used their patents and essentially gave them away for free in their products, destroying the value for Intertrust in selling their technology. Though all that remains of Interust are patents and lawyers, at one point they had almost 400 employees. 400 employees worked for several years to produce technology that was co-opted by Microsoft. All of those employees lost their jobs because Microsoft used their patents.
Though the majority here just say that 'software patents are bad' , there is some justification for patents. The main problem with software patents is the USPTO and it's inability to properly check patents; issuing overbroad patents that cover overly generic stuff.
These aren't submarine patents or anything else as Intertrust sued Microsoft shortly after talks between the two companies broke down when Microsoft was first introducing DRM into Windows Media Player.
If that's the case, then perhaps I should've read a bit more before opening my big mouth....
I was under the impression that they had only optimized a specific 'standard' DirectX 9 Shader for the way that 3DMark used it. Do you have a hyperlink or anything with your more detailed information?
Optimizing a specific program that has a million or more users is very worthwhile, as application-specific optimizations can often have greater impact on framerate or visual quality than API optimizations.
id software generally convinces Nvidia and ATI to optimize for their program before it's even released.
With graphics programming moving in shader languages, the picture changs again.
If a popular game is using a standard DirectX 9 Shader, optimizing that shader for the way that application uses the shader in turn optimizes that program.
Many 'cheats' from 3DMark are of that type. Optimizing a particular shader for the way a specific application uses it. If the base spec of a shader requires a clear of a buffer at a certain point, but the specific application does not require it because of how it manages the scene, you can improve performance for that program by optimizing the shader for the program.
The Doom 3 speedups with NVidia are becuase they optimized some specific ARB extensions. ARB extensions proposed by NVidia.
The only thing disappointing about the 3DMark optimizations is the swapped speed for quality. That seems like a bit lame, as many users would prefer quality over 2fps more.
The best way to do all this trasparently would be the ability to enable or disable specific optimizacions in the driver. Explicitly stating what your optimizations are is much safer than letting perople discover them, as Nvidia is finding out.
Slashdot Mirror
If there isn't some aspect of extremism, the real problems never get laid out. Though we are far from perfect, we are much closer to perfect than we were before a bunch of ball-busting, man-hating , feminist zealots pushed the issues onto us testosterone types.
Where would the women's movement be without it's radicals (zealots).
Our society flatly rejects violence, whatever its cause. Most violence is not caused by zealots.
It also says that they have only about 12 months of cash left at the rate they're losing money. That means if they don't get more money from licensing, they will be broke before the IBM case comes to trial. If someone else sues them, they'll probably go under even sooner.
I sure hope someone else sues them soon.
The interesting thing is that this has a lot to do with one of the recent slashdot stories: Project Censored. If you read this one, you'll see why people like SCO can get away with this...
It seems to be a weakness to me, seeing as SCO has been enjoined in Germany against making unsubstantiated claims without a full lawsuit, but Red Hat doesn't dare ask for a preliminary injunction in the US because it is either too costly or too difficult to do.
In the case of individuals, It should definitely be costly and time consuming to enjoin their speech, but in the case of executives or agents of publicly traded companies, it should be easier; Their speech affects the market and it should not do that if the claims are unsubstantiated.
This is not to reduce the validity of your statements, it is to clarify my own. While what you say is true and 'the way things should be', it does not address the specific weakness that I was referring to. I'll try and be more clear next time.
Take a look at Project for the New American Century. Read some of the reports, especially the ones while Clinton was still in charge. Signed by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, etc. The real foreign relations policy of the US is there.
Not completely weak. The contributions are maintained by contributor. If a section of code is incorrectly contributed and the real copyright holder complains, the code is removed. That is part of the design of the GPL. That is how copyright works. The infringer is the contributor, not the end product or the end user; this being true even if the infringing code is NOT removed.
It is a weakness in the US legal system that a**holes like SCO can just say "Our code is in there", not show it, and cause all this trouble. That they say that it can't be removed is also a joke. Of course it can be removed. It wasn't in 2.2, most of it probably won't be in 2.6. Notice how the SCO FUD machine got shut down in Germany.
I suspect that SCO will have issues come court time, as SCO have not taken the steps necessary to protect their copyrights (by showing the code).
As to someone contributing maliciously, the explanation earlier shows who's to blame. That's why the "I don't do IP" stance taken by Linus works. The day Linus starts trying to verify the source copyright is the day Darl McBride can say that Linux, not the original contributor, is infringing. He's trying to goad developers into doing that. Each contributor is responsible for their own copyrights, that's how it works.
It's critical mass behind existing systems.
Take a look at the Itanium. It's not taking off because not enough people 'get' EPIC, and moving to that platform is a lot of work. The speed benefits for a full migration to Itanium are quite large, but nobody wants to hand-tune their millions of lines of code.
This type of functionality has been available for quite some time. That's why no-talent bimbos can become famous on the merits of their great butt. That it's available in real time now is not too surprising. If the pitch correction is too great, it sounds funny though.
Real time correction can make it worse if the pitch correction takes the note to the next half step away. Ouch.
Why not set up a PPTP tunnel to home base and redirect SMTP traffic that way? Then you get a one size fits all setup for mobile users. FreeS/WAN is a good choice. VPNs are a great solution for many problems.
Of course you may still need webmail for the cybercafe impaired.
Good Idea.
:)
What happens when an individual can replicate current energy tech with the right blueprint though?
Solar powered hydrogen producer to feed a fuel cell generator.
Or... Mister Fusion
They are similar becuase of artificially created scarcity. We are moving into an age of plenty. We can already print real objects using a modofied inkjet. It shouldn't be too long (compared to the time between the printing press and the computer) until our computers can produce most anything we want from a pile of atoms.
The better question is, what becomes scarce? Knowledge? Art? Service technicians for replication devices? I've yet to hear a good answer. The elimination of scarcity throws our entire economic model out the window. What's the new model? Do we go Star Trek and only care about improving ourselves?
I picked up some implied physical threats. But seeing as Eric's a gun aficionado, it's easy to see why. Hmm, deja vu
. ht ml
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,19049,00
That rant pushes the edge of legal. One could definitely consider some of those words to be threats. I just hope they don't come to take him away. He's needed right now.
A Worm is a Worm.
Spyware is Spyware.
There are more ethical alternatives.
By legalizing marijuana, the Government of California could TAX it. The current estimated value of California's (only California's) marijuana crop is over 4 billion dollars. Take on the imports and it balloons to around 7 or 8 billion. If the same tax structure as cigarrettes were used, The Government of California could realise 3 Billion in extra revenue.
Now does that sound like wasting time?
A Mac is like an onion... It has LAYERS!!!
Hopefully MS will take advantage of ATI's other strength (swiss army knife video card) and expand the concept of a console into PVR, etc.
Actually, I'm not encouraging theft. I'm saying that by pricing books beyond the means of the poor, that piracy is a natural result. I'm also saying that book publishers are ignoring an important market.
By selling a book for 10 dollars, they obtain market penetration of x, if they sold it for 5 dollars, their market would increase by a factor of 10, easily. My comment illustrates poor management and poor business decisions.
In this country, those that are not 'the poor' can most definitely afford books and should buy them. They are, after all, physical copies in the true spirit of copyright. The legitimate market in the third world will only expand through lower prices. Yes, this is the same argument as overpriced CD's in North America.
If you read that argument to indicate support of Piracy, you are indicating that current pricing is fair and correct and 'what the market will bear'. The reality is the prices are much greater than 'what the market will bear' and piracy is the result. In the case of CD's , it is true market manipulation and collusion. In the case of book publishers, they need to get their act together and figure out how to grow their markets while remaining profitable. For example, printing books in local market instead of importing them, permitting a lower operating cost and permitting lower prices with the same profit margin and a HUGE reduction in piracy.
Locally produced literature is affordable. Without a doubt. Locally produced books are very inexpensive. The problem is the content of locally produced literature is fiction, history, etc. Textbooks are a prime example that does not work well in that model, as the information changes too rapidly. Yes, colleges can create textbooks for first and second year courses, but try and create topical textbooks for third year and beyond.
Is a very old thing. It has been going on for a very long time.
An illegal translation of Harry Potter was being sold here (Chile). They regularly decommision tens of thousands of books at a time here.
Books suffer the same type of overcharged price fixing as CD's, so most people here can't afford them. Does that mean that the poor are denied the right to read? Libraries are basically non existent here too. Book piracy is not bad in the developed world because of fairly good libraries and greater affluence. One cannot expect a person making 200 bucks a month (or less) to buy a 10 dollar (minimum) book. Pirate copies sell for around 2 bucks. An affordable price. Your 10 dollar paperback could still make decent profit if sold for 3 bucks.
Just goes to show you how much Linux is worth. SCO seems to have it valued about right. Of course, Linux is GPL and FREE! Were one to charge for Linux, based on it's high end features, the price is close.
For it to be non-material, it needs to be less than 1% of what it affects on Novell's balance sheet. Purchases of companies are assets. As of the last quarter, Novell had 1.6 Billion in Assets. Unless they had an incredible quarter causing cash to go through the roof, it would be hard to see more than 16 million as a maximum selling price.
I agree more closely with your statements than you know :)
Would you agree to the statement 'Software patents are terrible as implemented'? That's my opinion.
Would you still agree with your statements if the USPTO actually did a good job? What about if the patents were of high quality and of shorter term? That's what I see as the primary problem. At the moment they're totally screwing it up because of too many (mostly bad) patents, and the term is too long.
If you had created a truly novel way of doing something completely new, would you not expect to get paid (unless you were planning to give it away, which is also reasonable)? I still believe that a properly run patent system is the only protection joe hacker has to come out of his garage with little capital. It needs fixing, big time.
The Intertrust patents are pretty specific. They lost their business because Microsoft used their patents and essentially gave them away for free in their products, destroying the value for Intertrust in selling their technology. Though all that remains of Interust are patents and lawyers, at one point they had almost 400 employees. 400 employees worked for several years to produce technology that was co-opted by Microsoft. All of those employees lost their jobs because Microsoft used their patents.
Though the majority here just say that 'software patents are bad' , there is some justification for patents. The main problem with software patents is the USPTO and it's inability to properly check patents; issuing overbroad patents that cover overly generic stuff.
These aren't submarine patents or anything else as Intertrust sued Microsoft shortly after talks between the two companies broke down when Microsoft was first introducing DRM into Windows Media Player.
If that's the case, then perhaps I should've read a bit more before opening my big mouth....
I was under the impression that they had only optimized a specific 'standard' DirectX 9 Shader for the way that 3DMark used it. Do you have a hyperlink or anything with your more detailed information?
They should be doing both.
Optimizing a specific program that has a million or more users is very worthwhile, as application-specific optimizations can often have greater impact on framerate or visual quality than API optimizations.
id software generally convinces Nvidia and ATI to optimize for their program before it's even released.
With graphics programming moving in shader languages, the picture changs again.
If a popular game is using a standard DirectX 9 Shader, optimizing that shader for the way that application uses the shader in turn optimizes that program.
Many 'cheats' from 3DMark are of that type. Optimizing a particular shader for the way a specific application uses it. If the base spec of a shader requires a clear of a buffer at a certain point, but the specific application does not require it because of how it manages the scene, you can improve performance for that program by optimizing the shader for the program.
The Doom 3 speedups with NVidia are becuase they optimized some specific ARB extensions. ARB extensions proposed by NVidia.
The only thing disappointing about the 3DMark optimizations is the swapped speed for quality. That seems like a bit lame, as many users would prefer quality over 2fps more.
The best way to do all this trasparently would be the ability to enable or disable specific optimizacions in the driver. Explicitly stating what your optimizations are is much safer than letting perople discover them, as Nvidia is finding out.