"A targeted and well defined audience for your ads, being able to get your ad infront of people who you already know are interested in your product, is a total dream for advertisers."
A targeted and well defined audience with money is a total dream for advertisers.
Unfortunately. Else, we would be able to pay homeless for watching commercials for houses, unemployed for watching commercials for headhunters and we could feed large parts of the continent of africa by showing 'round the clock advertising for food.
Soap powder producers and baked bean salesmen would get a much better return on investment by simply targetting low-income neighbourhoods with coupons. And high interest loans are targetted towards people who can make the payments, not the ones who'll file for bankrupcy when the first payment becomes due.
Disposable income is one of the absolutely most important metrics when it comes to the value of advertising time. If the demographic group has little disposable income, advertising time with that demographic just isnt worth very much.
As computers have, for a long time now, been one of those 'things to have', the 'spenders', even if they may not have the money saved, will long since have bought one on credit. I doubt many of that demographic group will be wanting this.
"It's nice that you don't but don't condemn other people for liking free money."
I dont. However, the advertising has to be paid for or the company making the offer will go bust. Would you spend your advertising budget trying to sell your products to people who cant spend $200 on a PC, or would you spend your advertising budget on some demographic that may have more disposable money that they can spend on buying your products?
It's a good deal. For the recepients of the computers. But they're not the ones who will be paying for the PC's. So, how are they going to sell it to those who will be paying for it?
It's not about wether or not I'd take your $200, it's about wether or not you're going to give it away. Are you?
Oh, dont worry, if the user cant afford a PC it's not like he's likely to be interrupted while doing secure online purchases of airline tickets either.
"Imagine the repercussions if a world leader were cloned."
I'm trying to imagine that... would it be somewhat like the world leader getting a child? Perhaps a child that looks a lot like the leader? Or maybe a world leader that has a lookalike?
The reprecussions dont seem that horrific, really.
"Or worse yet what if we could speed up the process and steal other people's identities."
Even if, in fact, it would be possible to speed up biological aging, how are you going to explain that 'This is Joe. He may seem like a retarded 2 yearold (as he, in fact, is my identity stealing 9 month old evil clone twin), but it really _is_ Joe!'.
Actually, I think the most efficient way to get rid of these taxes would be to lobby for the fair distribution of this money. Those whose content is being copied most should be the ones getting the most money.
As the number one 'killer app' download appears to be pr0n, I'll bet the tariffs wont survive many weeks after the news headlines about 'government subsidizing the pr0n industry' get going.
However, if we're talking about the risk of dangerous electrical shocks, the voltage is one part of the equation that decides current. The resistance of the human body is the other. While a 1 volt powersource can output an arbitrary amount of power, it cant do so throught the human body, as you'd need a far higher voltage to drive the current to dangerous levels.
Of course, there are other risks like fire hazards that cant be removed simply by having a low voltage in the device.
"The main problem is that technical people don't know enough to serve in more than one capacity"
And the ones that do know enough to serve in all capacities havent slept or eaten away from their desks the last 7 years. I find that usually you cant get out of your ordinary responsibilities just because you stack several other jobs on top of it just because you can do them. But that's the way corporations usually work.
"The internet is great but it suffers from being based around the notion of naive trust instead of verifiable, secure trust. While this worked in the eary days of the internet, it simply does not work now."
"Simply put, the internet is no longer a hobby. It is quickly becoming as important a part of our infrastructure as electricity and roads, to name a few."
Indeed. That's why my telephone will not allow me to dial someone while it registers that I'm playing music in the background. It's also why all my mail is opened by the post office to ensure I'm not shipping any copyrighted material in it, and why my electricity shuts off when I try to use it to play a CD I've borrowed from a friend. And why my car will shut down if I go over the speed limit.
Oh, wait, that's not at all how it works, is it?
Secure, verifiable trust has never been part of our infrastructure, and the internet does not increase the need for it.
Communication over the internet is not secure, but then neither is any other form of communication wether by mail, fax, phone or physical delivery, unless you take certain steps to ensure it is.
US Code, title 17, chapter 1, section 109, subsection b 1 A;
Unless authorized by the owners of copyright (blah blah) neither owner of copy or person in possesion of it (blah blah) may, for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage, dispose of, or authorize the disposal of, the possession of that phonorecord or computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program) by rental, lease, or lending, or by any other act or practice in the nature of rental, lease, or lending.
There you pretty much have it. No rental for profit unless authorized.
Oh, and on the topic of public display, IIRC, it's not really the number of people but wether or not they're the public or not. In most cases I've seen you can get around it by forming a club with membership fees, ID checks at admission and stuff, but I havent looked that up recently.
This is the first sale doctrine. Ownership of a copy is not the same thing as copyright. You own a copy and may dispose and/or do whatever you want with it, unless it is specifically limited by copyright law. You can watch it, sell it, give it away, lend it to someone else, do weird ceremonies over it or destroy it. What you cant do is pretty much copy it or rent it out.
Much as I'm sure Disney and co would love to get there eventually, we're not there yet.
This is different. The fundamental idea behind this article _is_ that there will be new technological breakthroughs that lets the trend continue. _If_ we solve all the technical problems, where will we be in 15-20 years?
And the answer appears to be that if those problems are solved, then we end up with the problem that even if you can improve manufacturing to allow gates smaller than 5 nm it doesnt matter, because _they wont work_. Making any breakthroughs beyond that is meaningless, you could have a 1nm gate and fundamental physics say the electrons will pass straight through it and you cant control it anymore. You wont have a transistor. You'll just end up with a very very small resistor instead.
Quantum computers, while interesting, are not a replacement for current logic. Theoretically they would be very good for a specific subset of problems, but I havent seen any suggestion they could work as a general purpose replacement.
Of course, then you have the problem that the likelyhood you'll have a current perl and/or python available on a commercial *nix is even less than the likelyhood that the shell scripts will work.
Personally I've switched to buying entire series when they hit the right price on DVD. I barely see more TV than the short few seconds that it's on before the DVD is running.
It's far more satisfying as you get to experience fewer annoying cliffhangers, no commercials and it's on when you feel like watching.
These days I get more "programming" on my TV than I have time to watch, and it's the "programming" I actually want to see. No more "1200 channels and it all sucks".
"Well, since they are so closely tied to microsoft, looks like they have a BIT of a bias..."
Well, of course they're claiming that Netcraft is biased as they survey all webservers they can find. Port 80's idea of an 'unbiased' survey appears to be more in the line of '100% of all IIS sites run IIS which proves IIS is the most commonly used webserver'.
"I put Red Hat on my system with the expectation that it's going to be around for some time. By pulling support for the product, they're costing me time."
Most of the more-or-less free distributions have the same problem. Fast release cycles and rapid EOL'ing. Both Mandrake and SuSE run on similar life cycles; this whole thing is not news.
You can make the same mistake with Fedora, or you can make the same mistake with pretty much any other distribution.
"I don't know why they don't just BLOCK kazaa instead of screwing students over in this manner."
Ensuring that most people will be criminals by enacting laws that the majority will break (and allowing them to break those laws), and then monitoring such activities gives you a nice power leverage.
That way if anyone becomes uncomfortable for one reason or another (entirely unrelated to the issue), you can always 'get' them with the laws they did break.
The fuel rods have to be removed when there isnt enough U-235 to sustain the reaction efficiently. There's still a lot of U-235 remaining, and most of the rest is U-238... which works eminently in a breeder reactor, which creates its own fuel (or fuel useable in alternative reactors). Once the process is done the remains have a much shorter half-life, in the range of decades.
Compared to the alternatives of storing the spent material for thousands of years, it's a much simpler and efficient solution. If the engineering and security issues are dealt with.
As far as I know there are no international treaties banning breeder reactors; the bans that exists in the US for example, are internal to the country.
Maybe it's time to reconsider those bans, as it is becoming quite apparent that there is no near term solution to the energy problem apart from nuclear energy and there is no other good way to handle nuclear waste.
The solution to that is simple. You make new fuel of the waste. The technology to do it already exists, so instead of using a miniscule amount of the fuel and then considering it 'spent' and trying to store that highly radioactive material you can run it through a breeder reactor and use it again. And again. And again. And again.
That way you dont get a lot of waste, and you get many many times more use out of the fuel you have.
Nuclear waste is a problem that already has a solution, and a solution that is ecologically sound and very much in line with recycling and reuse.
I would agree with that line of reasoning except for two things;
First; SCO does not, in fact, hold copyright to the code in question. They are making very inventive claims about rights to derivative works.
Second; I've recieved the code in question under the GPL from SCO themselves, more than 6 months after they made their allegations. Are they claiming that they themselves cannot license the code they pretend is theirs?
So, the copyright holder (IBM) did authorize it, and SCO also authorized it (for good measure). Which makes that line of reasoning completely invalid.
"The problem is that time DOES matter, as another response to this pointed out. Also, IF there is a hole in GPL Mark I, how many businesses are going to rush to embrace GPL Mark II?"
Hmm, pretty much everyone? I havent seen any software under GPL Version 1 in a long long time. After all, it had some problems. The current version is, in fact, version 2.
Of course, if he gets the GPL overturned and he loses his license to distribute Linux, then he has to get copyright law overturned too before he can cash in.
Of course, if he gets copyright law overturned, then he has no way to enforce his royalties. So then he has to reestablish copyright as something that that only Darl McBride can hold.
Well, just minor kinks to work out in Darls Great Plan.
Re:Linux written to compete with SCO?
on
SCO News Roundup
·
· Score: 1
Well, technically most of the linux distributors dont sell products that compete with UNIX. They sell services and support for Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
"A targeted and well defined audience for your ads, being able to get your ad infront of people who you already know are interested in your product, is a total dream for advertisers."
A targeted and well defined audience with money is a total dream for advertisers.
Unfortunately. Else, we would be able to pay homeless for watching commercials for houses, unemployed for watching commercials for headhunters and we could feed large parts of the continent of africa by showing 'round the clock advertising for food.
Soap powder producers and baked bean salesmen would get a much better return on investment by simply targetting low-income neighbourhoods with coupons. And high interest loans are targetted towards people who can make the payments, not the ones who'll file for bankrupcy when the first payment becomes due.
Disposable income is one of the absolutely most important metrics when it comes to the value of advertising time. If the demographic group has little disposable income, advertising time with that demographic just isnt worth very much.
As computers have, for a long time now, been one of those 'things to have', the 'spenders', even if they may not have the money saved, will long since have bought one on credit. I doubt many of that demographic group will be wanting this.
"It's nice that you don't but don't condemn other people for liking free money."
I dont. However, the advertising has to be paid for or the company making the offer will go bust. Would you spend your advertising budget trying to sell your products to people who cant spend $200 on a PC, or would you spend your advertising budget on some demographic that may have more disposable money that they can spend on buying your products?
It's a good deal. For the recepients of the computers. But they're not the ones who will be paying for the PC's. So, how are they going to sell it to those who will be paying for it?
It's not about wether or not I'd take your $200, it's about wether or not you're going to give it away. Are you?
Oh, dont worry, if the user cant afford a PC it's not like he's likely to be interrupted while doing secure online purchases of airline tickets either.
Well, a thing or two could be said about the value of the demographic group 'people without enough disposable income to buy a cheap PC'.
"Imagine the repercussions if a world leader were cloned."
I'm trying to imagine that... would it be somewhat like the world leader getting a child? Perhaps a child that looks a lot like the leader? Or maybe a world leader that has a lookalike?
The reprecussions dont seem that horrific, really.
"Or worse yet what if we could speed up the process and steal other people's identities."
Even if, in fact, it would be possible to speed up biological aging, how are you going to explain that 'This is Joe. He may seem like a retarded 2 yearold (as he, in fact, is my identity stealing 9 month old evil clone twin), but it really _is_ Joe!'.
"who gets this money?"
Actually, I think the most efficient way to get rid of these taxes would be to lobby for the fair distribution of this money. Those whose content is being copied most should be the ones getting the most money.
As the number one 'killer app' download appears to be pr0n, I'll bet the tariffs wont survive many weeks after the news headlines about 'government subsidizing the pr0n industry' get going.
However, if we're talking about the risk of dangerous electrical shocks, the voltage is one part of the equation that decides current. The resistance of the human body is the other. While a 1 volt powersource can output an arbitrary amount of power, it cant do so throught the human body, as you'd need a far higher voltage to drive the current to dangerous levels.
Of course, there are other risks like fire hazards that cant be removed simply by having a low voltage in the device.
"The main problem is that technical people don't know enough to serve in more than one capacity"
And the ones that do know enough to serve in all capacities havent slept or eaten away from their desks the last 7 years. I find that usually you cant get out of your ordinary responsibilities just because you stack several other jobs on top of it just because you can do them. But that's the way corporations usually work.
"The internet is great but it suffers from being based around the notion of naive trust instead of verifiable, secure trust. While this worked in the eary days of the internet, it simply does not work now."
"Simply put, the internet is no longer a hobby. It is quickly becoming as important a part of our infrastructure as electricity and roads, to name a few."
Indeed. That's why my telephone will not allow me to dial someone while it registers that I'm playing music in the background. It's also why all my mail is opened by the post office to ensure I'm not shipping any copyrighted material in it, and why my electricity shuts off when I try to use it to play a CD I've borrowed from a friend. And why my car will shut down if I go over the speed limit.
Oh, wait, that's not at all how it works, is it?
Secure, verifiable trust has never been part of our infrastructure, and the internet does not increase the need for it.
Communication over the internet is not secure, but then neither is any other form of communication wether by mail, fax, phone or physical delivery, unless you take certain steps to ensure it is.
US Code, title 17, chapter 1, section 109, subsection b 1 A;
Unless authorized by the owners of copyright (blah blah) neither owner of copy or person in possesion of it (blah blah) may, for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage, dispose of, or authorize the disposal of, the possession of that phonorecord or computer program (including any tape, disk, or other medium embodying such program) by rental, lease, or lending, or by any other act or practice in the nature of rental, lease, or lending.
There you pretty much have it. No rental for profit unless authorized.
Oh, and on the topic of public display, IIRC, it's not really the number of people but wether or not they're the public or not. In most cases I've seen you can get around it by forming a club with membership fees, ID checks at admission and stuff, but I havent looked that up recently.
"The problem is that you DON'T OWN IT."
Yes you do.
"The content creator is licensing it to you."
No they dont.
This is the first sale doctrine. Ownership of a copy is not the same thing as copyright. You own a copy and may dispose and/or do whatever you want with it, unless it is specifically limited by copyright law. You can watch it, sell it, give it away, lend it to someone else, do weird ceremonies over it or destroy it. What you cant do is pretty much copy it or rent it out.
Much as I'm sure Disney and co would love to get there eventually, we're not there yet.
This is different. The fundamental idea behind this article _is_ that there will be new technological breakthroughs that lets the trend continue. _If_ we solve all the technical problems, where will we be in 15-20 years?
And the answer appears to be that if those problems are solved, then we end up with the problem that even if you can improve manufacturing to allow gates smaller than 5 nm it doesnt matter, because _they wont work_. Making any breakthroughs beyond that is meaningless, you could have a 1nm gate and fundamental physics say the electrons will pass straight through it and you cant control it anymore. You wont have a transistor. You'll just end up with a very very small resistor instead.
Quantum computers, while interesting, are not a replacement for current logic. Theoretically they would be very good for a specific subset of problems, but I havent seen any suggestion they could work as a general purpose replacement.
Of course, then you have the problem that the likelyhood you'll have a current perl and/or python available on a commercial *nix is even less than the likelyhood that the shell scripts will work.
Personally I've switched to buying entire series when they hit the right price on DVD. I barely see more TV than the short few seconds that it's on before the DVD is running.
It's far more satisfying as you get to experience fewer annoying cliffhangers, no commercials and it's on when you feel like watching.
These days I get more "programming" on my TV than I have time to watch, and it's the "programming" I actually want to see. No more "1200 channels and it all sucks".
"Well, since they are so closely tied to microsoft, looks like they have a BIT of a bias..."
Well, of course they're claiming that Netcraft is biased as they survey all webservers they can find. Port 80's idea of an 'unbiased' survey appears to be more in the line of '100% of all IIS sites run IIS which proves IIS is the most commonly used webserver'.
"I put Red Hat on my system with the expectation that it's going to be around for some time. By pulling support for the product, they're costing me time."
Most of the more-or-less free distributions have the same problem. Fast release cycles and rapid EOL'ing. Both Mandrake and SuSE run on similar life cycles; this whole thing is not news.
You can make the same mistake with Fedora, or you can make the same mistake with pretty much any other distribution.
"I don't know why they don't just BLOCK kazaa instead of screwing students over in this manner."
Ensuring that most people will be criminals by enacting laws that the majority will break (and allowing them to break those laws), and then monitoring such activities gives you a nice power leverage.
That way if anyone becomes uncomfortable for one reason or another (entirely unrelated to the issue), you can always 'get' them with the laws they did break.
The fuel rods have to be removed when there isnt enough U-235 to sustain the reaction efficiently. There's still a lot of U-235 remaining, and most of the rest is U-238... which works eminently in a breeder reactor, which creates its own fuel (or fuel useable in alternative reactors). Once the process is done the remains have a much shorter half-life, in the range of decades.
Compared to the alternatives of storing the spent material for thousands of years, it's a much simpler and efficient solution. If the engineering and security issues are dealt with.
As far as I know there are no international treaties banning breeder reactors; the bans that exists in the US for example, are internal to the country.
Maybe it's time to reconsider those bans, as it is becoming quite apparent that there is no near term solution to the energy problem apart from nuclear energy and there is no other good way to handle nuclear waste.
The solution to that is simple. You make new fuel of the waste. The technology to do it already exists, so instead of using a miniscule amount of the fuel and then considering it 'spent' and trying to store that highly radioactive material you can run it through a breeder reactor and use it again. And again. And again. And again.
That way you dont get a lot of waste, and you get many many times more use out of the fuel you have.
Nuclear waste is a problem that already has a solution, and a solution that is ecologically sound and very much in line with recycling and reuse.
I would agree with that line of reasoning except for two things;
First; SCO does not, in fact, hold copyright to the code in question. They are making very inventive claims about rights to derivative works.
Second; I've recieved the code in question under the GPL from SCO themselves, more than 6 months after they made their allegations. Are they claiming that they themselves cannot license the code they pretend is theirs?
So, the copyright holder (IBM) did authorize it, and SCO also authorized it (for good measure). Which makes that line of reasoning completely invalid.
"The problem is that time DOES matter, as another response to this pointed out. Also, IF there is a hole in GPL Mark I, how many businesses are going to rush to embrace GPL Mark II?"
Hmm, pretty much everyone? I havent seen any software under GPL Version 1 in a long long time. After all, it had some problems. The current version is, in fact, version 2.
Of course, if he gets the GPL overturned and he loses his license to distribute Linux, then he has to get copyright law overturned too before he can cash in.
Of course, if he gets copyright law overturned, then he has no way to enforce his royalties. So then he has to reestablish copyright as something that that only Darl McBride can hold.
Well, just minor kinks to work out in Darls Great Plan.
Well, technically most of the linux distributors dont sell products that compete with UNIX. They sell services and support for Linux.