While we are at it, why don't we abolish the whole concept of patents? Let's suppose that the little gray aliens show up and start demanding patent royalty payments for the our entire technology. Should we pay up? Well they would certainly be able to prove that they had all the ideas first and they would probably have the backing of an inter-galactic court system which has granted them universal rights which cover us. We could pay up or face the consequences.
This happens in our world today with advanced nations preventing the less advanced nations from having the freedom to use ideas to improve their society. In its early history the U.S. did not recognize the validity of foreign patents or even copyrights. Charles Dickens did a tour of the U.S. to try to get things changed so that his books would not be freely published here. Even our hero, Benjamin Franklin, reprinted works of British authors without paying anything for the privilege. At the time the U.S. thought this was perfectly sensible. We are so used to the status quo that we tend to accept that our laws are perfectly rational, but over the course of U.S. history we have altered our concepts of right and wrong many times.
The original purpose of patents was to grant short-term monopolies on "inventions" to encourage innovation. The current system doesn't encourage innovation in computer science and I suspect the same is true in other areas. It has achieved the opposite of its goal. We have in software a "patent war". We need a "War on Patents".
This was first thought too. I look forward to the day when you can download such games over the Internet. 200-400TB would take a long time to download on my DSL link. Downloads would have to be restartable since my DSL gives up the ghost whenever the weather report mentions rain.
I also question how well a PC or game console could manage that much space. I suppose it will be a 1000TB solid state disk. I hope I live long enough to see such games on $200 game systems downloading needed data at 1TB per second. After they finish this project they need to tackle cancer.
I believe that over 10% of the population holds an unshakable belief that UFOs exist and over 10% holds the opposite belief. Does that mean there are 2 majorities? I have not RTFA and realize the anonymous reader might have overstated things a bit. Still it is laughable.
Stealing 400 sim cards seems way beyond the rationality of simply making calls. A better bet is that some calls were made to centers which charge fees like some phone sex numbers. That way substantial money could be made before the cards were disabled. It seems like a fairly good scheme, but not good enough to make enough money to be worth the risk. It sounds like organized crime by some small-time organizers. I would expect that most likely the numbers called were to a country which would not cooperate will with investigation. The crime is not likely to be easily repeated, so the planners now need a new plan. It would be interesting to learn what results from this. Clearly the group which installed the system needs to make a better plan.
Supposedly the requirement for liability insurance for cars is to prevent people from being stuck with huge liabilities due to an accident. If I don't have liability insurance on my car, I could lose a lot of money or someone else might lose a lot of money if I can't pay the money I would be liable for. Health insurance, on the face of it, is like collision insurance which takes care of my car in an accident. The relation to health insurance is not quite the same sort of beast. A person without collision insurance could lose a car, while a person without health insurance is likely to go to the emergency room and run up debts which will never be paid. So, to some degree, a person without health insurance can be a liability to us all.
I recently spent 1 month in China and was unsure of what to expect about internet access. It was better than I expected. I think it is not worth the trouble to try to dodge any firewalling. I was able to use ssh to connect to computers back home and generally able to surf the internet. I think youtube and google video were blocked, but for a short trip this is not much to worry about. I was able to use gmail and google. The news under google/ig sometimes linked to blocked sites. However, there were always related links with the same information which were not blocked. So, for me, the only problem was not viewing videos for a few weeks. This did not matter to me, though I think there are alternative video sources which are not blocked. The net result is that access is nearly unfettered, so it is probably pointless and perhaps unwise to try to subvert the firewall. Freedom seems to be increasing in China. Enjoy your trip!
...When it's possible to get rich just managing other people's capital and skimming off the top then the way we organize our economy is broken. This house of cards cannot stand forever when you stack more and more of those people on top of the working class, the foundation, that actually produces wealth and knowledge.
I think we need a federal stack exchange tax. If every trade is taxed, then the millisecond trading scheme will disappear. Instead people will think long and hard about investments and invest for long enough periods to make more profit than the initial tax. Of course if they were taxed as heavily as the sales tax I have to pay on food, then they might be investing for dividends rather than profits.
Is there any better way to convert our casino-like stock exchange into a real investment system?
Your point about negotiating not working makes some sense. I contend that negotiators must have an alternative. I am a DIY person, so I would always feel that doing my own app is always a possibility. Any application which stays in business would generally have a community of customers. That community could organize to prepare a collaboratively-built alternative. That might allow negotiation to work. If money is your only negotiation tool, that can also work, but it might cost more than living with the existing problems.
From the original message we read that the "code was also written to interact with a completely different set of OS dependencies, problems, and libraries." This seems to imply that the IT organizations are allowing outside interests to dictate the rules of the game. If there were a stable set of operating system calls and libraries to rely on, then the software vendors would have an easier time maintaining software. I recognize that Linux changes, but the operating system calls work well and API is quite stable. I have used UNIX for a long time and I have compiled programs from 25 years ago under Linux. There have been some additions since then, but the basics of Linux work like the basics of UNIX from 25 years ago.
At present there are some applications available only on Windows and some only on Windows/Mac OSX. This might be difficult to change, but going along with someone's plan for computing which is based on continued obsolescence seems inappropriate. At least those who are more or less forced by software availability to use Windows should investigate Linux and negotiate with their vendors to supply Linux solutions.
Computers are hard to manage and hard to program. It is not helpful to undergo regular major overhauls in operating systems.
Killing mosquitoes is outstanding. In addition this technology might be adaptable to farming to have a mobile robot find and zap insect pests. There would be no need for pesticides. Likewise perhaps the robot could identify pest plant species and zap them. Perhaps organic farming will be cheaper than using pesticides and herbicides.
USM has moved from Linux sendmail to Oracle OCS and then to MS Exchange. The webmail is now MS Exchange Light. I think it works with Linux, but I forward all my email to gmail.
I think student web pages will be moved to something non-Linux before long.
Computer Science still uses Linux, more or less as you stated, though we have moved to Fedora on the workstations and RedHat on the servers. I still use Linux.
I would say outside CS Linux is allowed, but not supported.
The purpose of intellectual property laws should be to encourage innovation, not to protect intellectual property forever. The Mickey Mouse character has been lots of fun for a long time. Disney has earned lots of money from the character. Disney should now create something new rather than trying to protect Mickey forever.
What would happen to Disney without copyright protection continuing for Mickey? Would someone else start using a mouse character to promote a theme park? I doubt it. Would someone try to make some knock-off cartoons? Maybe, but would Disney suffer? I don't think Disney would lose much.
20 years is a nice duration for a copyright. An author or artist could live off a creation for about 1/3 of a long adult life-span. During that time the artist could create some more copyrighted material and have a productive life.
Our country has gone overboard with copyrights and patents. Extending patents and awarding patents for software do not encourage creativity. Instead they encourage defensive copyright/patent claims and litigation. We need to create an environment which encourages creativity rather than stifling it.
A typical bachelors degree requires about 128 semester hours. If you finished such a degree in 1 year (fall, spring and summer semesters), you would probably take about 50 hours of classes in the fall and spring and 28 hours in the summer. 50 hours of classes would mean 50 hours in lectures and some time spent on assignments. I don't think it is likely that you could get a degree in 1 year.
Getting a degree in 2 years sounds possible, but hard. You would need to take 2 years away from your job. This is usually hard for people to do.
Your trend of 50% salary increases is great. If you could keep up the good work, you could be rich soon. Then you could decide whether a degree was important or not. Also taking off for a couple of years or more might be easier to do.
If you have reached a salary plateau which does not seem to be leading to early retirement, then you might have a real interest in a 4 year degree. I would suggest that a good starting point would be to enroll in 1 or 2 night classes while continuing with your work. Enroll in at least 1 math class. Also you might ask about taking tests to prove that you don't need to take some of the beginning CS courses. Perhaps you could cut one semester out of your degree plan.
Slashdot Mirror
While we are at it, why don't we abolish the whole concept of patents? Let's suppose that the little gray aliens show up and start demanding patent royalty payments for the our entire technology. Should we pay up? Well they would certainly be able to prove that they had all the ideas first and they would probably have the backing of an inter-galactic court system which has granted them universal rights which cover us. We could pay up or face the consequences.
This happens in our world today with advanced nations preventing the less advanced nations from having the freedom to use ideas to improve their society. In its early history the U.S. did not recognize the validity of foreign patents or even copyrights. Charles Dickens did a tour of the U.S. to try to get things changed so that his books would not be freely published here. Even our hero, Benjamin Franklin, reprinted works of British authors without paying anything for the privilege. At the time the U.S. thought this was perfectly sensible. We are so used to the status quo that we tend to accept that our laws are perfectly rational, but over the course of U.S. history we have altered our concepts of right and wrong many times.
The original purpose of patents was to grant short-term monopolies on "inventions" to encourage innovation. The current system doesn't encourage innovation in computer science and I suspect the same is true in other areas. It has achieved the opposite of its goal. We have in software a "patent war". We need a "War on Patents".
This was first thought too. I look forward to the day when you can download such games over the Internet. 200-400TB would take a long time to download on my DSL link. Downloads would have to be restartable since my DSL gives up the ghost whenever the weather report mentions rain.
I also question how well a PC or game console could manage that much space. I suppose it will be a 1000TB solid state disk. I hope I live long enough to see such games on $200 game systems downloading needed data at 1TB per second. After they finish this project they need to tackle cancer.
I believe that over 10% of the population holds an unshakable belief that UFOs exist and over 10% holds the opposite belief. Does that mean there are 2 majorities? I have not RTFA and realize the anonymous reader might have overstated things a bit. Still it is laughable.
Stealing 400 sim cards seems way beyond the rationality of simply making calls. A better bet is that some calls were made to centers which charge fees like some phone sex numbers. That way substantial money could be made before the cards were disabled. It seems like a fairly good scheme, but not good enough to make enough money to be worth the risk. It sounds like organized crime by some small-time organizers. I would expect that most likely the numbers called were to a country which would not cooperate will with investigation. The crime is not likely to be easily repeated, so the planners now need a new plan. It would be interesting to learn what results from this. Clearly the group which installed the system needs to make a better plan.
I have always been the most important person on any team, but no one seems to notice...
Supposedly the requirement for liability insurance for cars is to prevent people from being stuck with huge liabilities due to an accident. If I don't have liability insurance on my car, I could lose a lot of money or someone else might lose a lot of money if I can't pay the money I would be liable for. Health insurance, on the face of it, is like collision insurance which takes care of my car in an accident. The relation to health insurance is not quite the same sort of beast. A person without collision insurance could lose a car, while a person without health insurance is likely to go to the emergency room and run up debts which will never be paid. So, to some degree, a person without health insurance can be a liability to us all.
I recently spent 1 month in China and was unsure of what to expect about internet access. It was better than I expected. I think it is not worth the trouble to try to dodge any firewalling. I was able to use ssh to connect to computers back home and generally able to surf the internet. I think youtube and google video were blocked, but for a short trip this is not much to worry about. I was able to use gmail and google. The news under google/ig sometimes linked to blocked sites. However, there were always related links with the same information which were not blocked. So, for me, the only problem was not viewing videos for a few weeks. This did not matter to me, though I think there are alternative video sources which are not blocked.
The net result is that access is nearly unfettered, so it is probably pointless and perhaps unwise to try to subvert the firewall. Freedom seems to be increasing in China. Enjoy your trip!
...When it's possible to get rich just managing other people's capital and skimming off the top then the way we organize our economy is broken. This house of cards cannot stand forever when you stack more and more of those people on top of the working class, the foundation, that actually produces wealth and knowledge.
I think we need a federal stack exchange tax. If every trade is taxed, then the millisecond trading scheme will disappear. Instead people will think long and hard about investments and invest for long enough periods to make more profit than the initial tax. Of course if they were taxed as heavily as the sales tax I have to pay on food, then they might be investing for dividends rather than profits.
Is there any better way to convert our casino-like stock exchange into a real investment system?
Wouldn't this help with our federal deficit?
Your point about negotiating not working makes some sense. I contend that negotiators must have an alternative. I am a DIY person, so I would always feel that doing my own app is always a possibility. Any application which stays in business would generally have a community of customers. That community could organize to prepare a collaboratively-built alternative. That might allow negotiation to work. If money is your only negotiation tool, that can also work, but it might cost more than living with the existing problems.
From the original message we read that the "code was also written to interact with a completely different set of OS dependencies, problems, and libraries." This seems to imply that the IT organizations are allowing outside interests to dictate the rules of the game. If there were a stable set of operating system calls and libraries to rely on, then the software vendors would have an easier time maintaining software. I recognize that Linux changes, but the operating system calls work well and API is quite stable. I have used UNIX for a long time and I have compiled programs from 25 years ago under Linux. There have been some additions since then, but the basics of Linux work like the basics of UNIX from 25 years ago.
At present there are some applications available only on Windows and some only on Windows/Mac OSX. This might be difficult to change, but going along with someone's plan for computing which is based on continued obsolescence seems inappropriate. At least those who are more or less forced by software availability to use Windows should investigate Linux and negotiate with their vendors to supply Linux solutions.
Computers are hard to manage and hard to program. It is not helpful to undergo regular major overhauls in operating systems.
Killing mosquitoes is outstanding. In addition this technology might be adaptable to farming to have a mobile robot find and zap insect pests. There would be no need for pesticides. Likewise perhaps the robot could identify pest plant species and zap them. Perhaps organic farming will be cheaper than using pesticides and herbicides.
Hi Nadaka!
USM has moved from Linux sendmail to Oracle OCS and then to MS Exchange. The webmail is now MS Exchange Light. I think it works with Linux, but I forward all my email to gmail.
I think student web pages will be moved to something non-Linux before long.
Computer Science still uses Linux, more or less as you stated, though we have moved to Fedora on the workstations and RedHat on the servers. I still use Linux.
I would say outside CS Linux is allowed, but not supported.
The purpose of intellectual property laws should be to encourage innovation, not to protect intellectual property forever. The Mickey Mouse character has been lots of fun for a long time. Disney has earned lots of money from the character. Disney should now create something new rather than trying to protect Mickey forever.
What would happen to Disney without copyright protection continuing for Mickey? Would someone else start using a mouse character to promote a theme park? I doubt it. Would someone try to make some knock-off cartoons? Maybe, but would Disney suffer? I don't think Disney would lose much.
20 years is a nice duration for a copyright. An author or artist could live off a creation for about 1/3 of a long adult life-span. During that time the artist could create some more copyrighted material and have a productive life.
Our country has gone overboard with copyrights and patents. Extending patents and awarding patents for software do not encourage creativity. Instead they encourage defensive copyright/patent claims and litigation. We need to create an environment which encourages creativity rather than stifling it.
A typical bachelors degree requires about 128 semester hours. If you finished such a degree in 1 year (fall, spring and summer semesters), you would probably take about 50 hours of classes in the fall and spring and 28 hours in the summer. 50 hours of classes would mean 50 hours in lectures and some time spent on assignments. I don't think it is likely that you could get a degree in 1 year.
Getting a degree in 2 years sounds possible, but hard. You would need to take 2 years away from your job. This is usually hard for people to do.
Your trend of 50% salary increases is great. If you could keep up the good work, you could be rich soon. Then you could decide whether a degree was important or not. Also taking off for a couple of years or more might be easier to do.
If you have reached a salary plateau which does not seem to be leading to early retirement, then you might have a real interest in a 4 year degree. I would suggest that a good starting point would be to enroll in 1 or 2 night classes while continuing with your work. Enroll in at least 1 math class. Also you might ask about taking tests to prove that you don't need to take some of the beginning CS courses. Perhaps you could cut one semester out of your degree plan.
Good luck!
Ray