The rest of Western Europe has more of a clue about geography than Americans, but aren't especially great on geography themselves. For National Geographic's Roper survey, they showed 18-24 year olds from nine different country a numbered map of Europe, and asked them to identify 12 specific countries. Here's the average number that could be identified:
8.0 Germany 7.5 Sweden 7.4 Italy 6.3 France 4.6 Great Britain 3.8 Japan 3.0 Canada 2.5 USA 2.2 Mexico
I'm not surprised that Europeans are better in identifying European countries, but even in Germany they couldn't identify a third of the countries. Pretty pathetic all around, I think
Interestingly, Americans did better than Germans at map reading skills on a hypothetical map.
Herbie, Speed Buggy, and animated Chevron cars would not qualify as prior art. Unless you believe Star Trek would count as prior art for someone trying to patent a working transporter.
The thrust of the article is that the economy in general isn't as bad as it seems, and that the average salary has gone up in most sectors. An exception (noted in the article) was silicon valley, where salary has dropped 22%. Also, if you followed the "What You're Worth" link, you'll see that they are predicting a drop in pay for most software jobs this year as well.
And what's with the Billings, MT remark? The article doesn't mention Billings, just lists Missoula (and Fayetteville, AK) as examples of areas that are doing better than the rest of the country. According to the article, no region of the country (or the world) is experiencing anything like a boom.
The links you listed gave no details of the US Army distributing smallpox-infected blankets. One link does mention Revolutionary soldiers using the tactic--though it does not say the opponents were native Americans. I doubt the British, Hessians and Tories were necessarily innoculated.
Yes, Lord Amherst did give smallpox infected blankets out (before the USA was founded). He gave them to hostile forces during a war. There's a difference between biological warfare and genocide.
Between the RIAA market report and the original story, we have some hard numbers:
1) Napster users went from 1.1M (February) to 4.9M (July).
2) Number of CDs shipped in the first six months of 2000 are 420M. This represents a 6% increase from last year (or an increase of 24M units).
Therefore, for the increase to be driven by Napster users, they would have to be buying 5 extra CDs apiece as a result of their Napster exposure. That's nearly one per month. I don't think anyone has numbers supporting that sort of average increase. If it is indeed the cause, we would expect another four fold increase in Napster usage (to 20M) to generate an additional 75M units. Those record company folks are going to get rich, rich rich.
Interestingly, the RIAA article credits the increase to first-quarter releases by Britney Spears, 'N SYNC, and Eminem. No doubt those obscure groups were benefitted by the try-before-you-buy opportunity presented by Napster.
I agree that there should be some gun control for teens. Perhaps they should not be allowed to:
1) buy shotguns. 2) convert them to "sawed-off" status. 3) purchase ammunition. 4) manufacture pipe bombs.
But wait -- with the possible exception of #3, those things are illegal *now*. Those two students broke a bunch of federal laws before they ever got to their high school, and I don't believe they had any legal "right" to bring their weapons to school either. Perhaps if a responsible adult at the school had a concealed weapon and the will and training to use it, the incident might have turned out differently.
I agree that most computer games will never be Open Source (tm), but the user of a computer game *would* benefit from having source code available. Not in the ego-based rewards of contributing to Free(tm) Software, but the more mundane rewards of getting the game to work better. Better game -> happier user.
I'm a big fan of turn-based strategy games. Unfortunately, the releases are often marred by substandard AI and frequent bugs. A bug-fix or two is released, getting the product up to passable play, and the game is left to languish forever. Bug fixes don't bring in revenue, after all. And thousands of dedicated users are left to whine on Usenet about the flaws in the game. Wouldn't it be great to have the code? Wouldn't it be great to fix those bugs and improve the AI? I don't care about credit, company exploitation, or the code's inherent right to be free. I want *better* games, and widespread source availability would be a huge plus.
I would be ecstatic if games routinely shipped with code and the following "Greedy Corporation License" (GCL) "1) All code is solely the property of Greedy Corp. You use our code in your product, we'll take your shirt. 2) If you change one character of code, all implied warranties (not that we ever gave you any) are automatically void. 3) All changes made by any user must be e-mailed to exploit@greedy.com. We own your changes, we will give you no credit, and if we use them for a generally distributed patch we reserve the right to charge people whatever we want to get it. 4) If you port this code to another platform, we get the code, and we can sell the port to users of the other platform. You get nada. 5) If you develop and sell a separate product that interfaces with our product, we get licensing fees. And see #1 again."
This GCL isn't exactly the APSL, but it's better than the situation we have now. It's not as good as it could be, but it opens up vast new possibilities -- bug fixes for old games, enhanced AIs, ports to unapproved platforms.
So it isn't Free. I'm not opposed to greedy corporations milking ideas for every last dollar. That's why they exist. I exist to have joy, so I always want the code. Under any conditions.
Slashdot Mirror
The rest of Western Europe has more of a clue about geography than Americans, but aren't especially great on geography themselves. For National Geographic's Roper survey, they showed 18-24 year olds from nine different country a numbered map of Europe, and asked them to identify 12 specific countries. Here's the average number that could be identified:
8.0 Germany
7.5 Sweden
7.4 Italy
6.3 France
4.6 Great Britain
3.8 Japan
3.0 Canada
2.5 USA
2.2 Mexico
I'm not surprised that Europeans are better in identifying European countries, but even in Germany they couldn't identify a third of the countries. Pretty pathetic all around, I think
Interestingly, Americans did better than Germans at map reading skills on a hypothetical map.
Herbie, Speed Buggy, and animated Chevron cars would not qualify as prior art. Unless you believe Star Trek would count as prior art for someone trying to patent a working transporter.
The thrust of the article is that the economy in general isn't as bad as it seems, and that the average salary has gone up in most sectors. An exception (noted in the article) was silicon valley, where salary has dropped 22%. Also, if you followed the "What You're Worth" link, you'll see that they are predicting a drop in pay for most software jobs this year as well.
And what's with the Billings, MT remark? The article doesn't mention Billings, just lists Missoula (and Fayetteville, AK) as examples of areas that are doing better than the rest of the country. According to the article, no region of the country (or the world) is experiencing anything like a boom.
The links you listed gave no details of the US Army distributing smallpox-infected blankets. One link does mention Revolutionary soldiers using the tactic--though it does not say the opponents were native Americans. I doubt the British, Hessians and Tories were necessarily innoculated.
Yes, Lord Amherst did give smallpox infected blankets out (before the USA was founded). He gave them to hostile forces during a war. There's a difference between biological warfare and genocide.
Between the RIAA market report and the original story, we have some hard numbers:
1) Napster users went from 1.1M (February) to 4.9M (July).
2) Number of CDs shipped in the first six months of 2000 are 420M. This represents a 6% increase from last year (or an increase of 24M units).
Therefore, for the increase to be driven by Napster users, they would have to be buying 5 extra CDs apiece as a result of their Napster exposure. That's nearly one per month. I don't think anyone has numbers supporting that sort of average increase. If it is indeed the cause, we would expect another four fold increase in Napster usage (to 20M) to generate an additional 75M units. Those record company folks are going to get rich, rich rich.
Interestingly, the RIAA article credits the increase to first-quarter releases by Britney Spears, 'N SYNC, and Eminem. No doubt those obscure groups were benefitted by the try-before-you-buy opportunity presented by Napster.
I agree that there should be some gun control for teens. Perhaps they should not be allowed to:
1) buy shotguns.
2) convert them to "sawed-off" status.
3) purchase ammunition.
4) manufacture pipe bombs.
But wait -- with the possible exception of #3, those things are illegal *now*. Those two students broke a bunch of federal laws before they ever got to their high school, and I don't believe they had any legal "right" to bring their weapons to school either. Perhaps if a responsible adult at the school had a concealed weapon and the will and training to use it, the incident might have turned out differently.
I agree that most computer games will never be Open Source (tm), but the user of a computer game *would* benefit from having source code available. Not in the ego-based rewards of contributing to Free(tm) Software, but the more mundane rewards of getting the game to work better. Better game -> happier user.
I'm a big fan of turn-based strategy games. Unfortunately, the releases are often marred by substandard AI and frequent bugs. A bug-fix or two is released, getting the product up to passable play, and the game is left to languish forever. Bug fixes don't bring in revenue, after all. And thousands of dedicated users are left to whine on Usenet about the flaws in the game. Wouldn't it be great to have the code? Wouldn't it be great to fix those bugs and improve the AI? I don't care about credit, company exploitation, or the code's inherent right to be free. I want *better* games, and widespread source availability would be a huge plus.
I would be ecstatic if games routinely shipped with code and the following "Greedy Corporation
License" (GCL)
"1) All code is solely the property of Greedy Corp. You use our code in your product, we'll take your shirt.
2) If you change one character of code, all implied warranties (not that we ever gave you any) are automatically void.
3) All changes made by any user must be e-mailed to exploit@greedy.com. We own your changes, we will give you no credit, and if we use them for a generally distributed patch we reserve the right to charge people whatever we want to get it.
4) If you port this code to another platform, we get the code, and we can sell the port to users of the other platform. You get nada.
5) If you develop and sell a separate product that interfaces with our product, we get licensing fees. And see #1 again."
This GCL isn't exactly the APSL, but it's better than the situation we have now. It's not as good as it could be, but it opens up vast new possibilities -- bug fixes for old games, enhanced AIs, ports to unapproved platforms.
So it isn't Free. I'm not opposed to greedy corporations milking ideas for every last dollar. That's why they exist. I exist to have joy, so I always want the code. Under any conditions.