Profs get their reputations from publishing research results which are thought highly of by knowledgeable colleagues, and tenure, promotions, jobs at better universities, and Nobel prizes all follow
Nobel Prizes... I'll agree with that, but all of those other benefits are the direct result of pulling in the most grant money, and nothing else.
Good question. Here's another: Why not leave the decision to fund research up to the public via some sort of voting process? I'm being sort of a smartass here because I know that would never happen, but the point is that admit it or not, professors getting rich off of research which was funded by tax dollars is completely wrong.
Oh and:
Besides, most often it's not some huge company locking up research, but the profs and grad students themselves who start companies based on their research
Either way, it's still publicly funded work going into a private business so that a few people can get rich off of it. If the government isn't going to give me $50k to do research so I can start a company, it shouldn't pay a university $50k so you can.
You're right on the money. Especially with all the new IP laws trying to capitalize on any and every idea anyone has, the public pays for things and then we are prosecuted for trying to access them. The main thing though is that if someone develops code based on proprietary code, he(or she) can't use it anyway, so that's a null argument.
Seeing as most college professors are more interested in getting grants than in actually teaching students, I propose a simple solution:
If you want a grant, your results become open source. No, don't steal from "closed source," come up with your own stuff, and it has to be open source, or you're not getting any money.
If you plan on making money off of your research, you're not getting a grant. The public should not be forced to pay for your profit, no matter what "societal benefits" your getting rich may provide.
What do voters care about? Taxes. It's that simple. So, you want to get elected, voters want lower taxes. How do you react to this situation? Find a way to lower, or at least not increase, taxes. Open source solutions are free. Maintenance of such systems, contrary to what M$ heads would have you believe, is about the same cost, maybe even less (because once it's running, it JUST WORKS.) Now, let's follow along to make a logical conclusion:
You want to be on the council.
The voters don't want to pay as much tax.
You want to use something that's free for IT purposes.
Tell the voters that using free software would reduce costs!
The voters will automatically imply that your action of reducing costs will lead to lowered taxes and BAM!! you're elected.
Actually, Apple makes less convenient machines. This is why they are so unpopular. Remember the first iMac for which you paid $$$ more to have a total LACK of removable storage... at a time when removable storage devices were standard on PC's?
Exactly what are you talking about? No... wait... I don't care.
How is a tiny pinhole for disk ejection "more convenient" than the button standard on PC's?
How is pressing a button on the front of the PC more convenient than simply having the computer eject the disk for you?
How is the cumbersomeness added to the OS by not having a 2nd mouse button "more convenient" ?
How is accessing menus by pressing a second button on the mouse more convenient than using OS toolbars present on the desktop, along with having every possible command associated with a shortcut?
How is this other iMac blunder, lack of standard peripheral interface to serve most existing Macintosh printers, "more convenient"?
Katz, like many other Pro x86 dimwitts, fails to realize that Pentium is a "spin oriented" company that is not concerned with performance, only public opinion. In other words, I'd put a PPC at 1 GHz up against a Pentium at 2.2 GHz or whatever they're up to now any day of the week. Katz is apparently trying to say that because the clock rate of G4's doesn't go up as fast as Pentiums that the hardware is worse... well, he's wrong, plain wrong.
PS - let's not even get into the plethora of other architectural issues that contribute to overall performance, I don't think Katz could follow.
First of all: The truly successful technologies and technology companies are utilitarian and dull -- decidedly non-hip. You will never seen a Microsoft or AOL exec talking about how cool the their companies or products are, only how useful and easy to use.
"You will never seen?" - what the hell are you talking about? That's bad grammar, not to mention the rest of the sentence is false. You're saying MS products are easy to use? Well, I admit, they've gotten better, but they're still playing catch up in that department.
The following is just complete nonsense, and if I can organize all of the rants floating in my head I'll show you why: Gates understands something Jobs and media don't. When it comes to technology, it's middle-class consumers and their tastes, needs and expectations that determine success or failure.
First and foremost, Apple and Microsoft are two completely different companies. Apple sells computers, Microsoft doesn't. Microsoft sells services, for the most part Apple doesn't. Comparing these two companies is really absurd. In the same way, it's not fair to compare Apple to a company like Gateway, as Apple makes an OS, MP3 player, etc. The point is: MacOS is dominated by Windows, but no Mac users give a rat's ass.
Next, you show your true ignorance with your statement that "middle class consumers" drive the market. Are you really that stupid? Everyone knows that it's businesses that drive the PC world for a myriad of reasons. Yes, every day there are more and more personal goodies for computers, and individuals are buying more of them, but that still does not compare to the amount of money generated by businesses. Every company that uses microsoft software is forced to have a license for every single workstation, unlike the home user who just borrows a friend's. When these businesses upgrade to XP, Microsoft is going to rake in a huge amount of profit. That is what drives their "innovation," not the whims of individual PC users. This is one major reason Mac users are so loyal. Macs give you the feeling that every single part of the computer was designed so that it would be extremely convenient for you to use, that's something that customers really appreciate. Sure, maybe everyone uses Windows, but there's still about 5% of people who use Macintosh, and that's a very happy and pleased 5%.
Content owners, for example, can start charging consumers every time their digital content is re-distributed within the home, or viewed several times during a certain number of days specified by them.
Every time their content is redistributed within the home? So, to compare with the present, they want to charge me to not only buy or rent the video, but also each time I play it? This is just pure evil.
One thing's for sure: if this isn't extremely cheap, ie $0.05 for each replay or something like that, it will never work, because "content" just isn't that important. I'll just go outside and play fetch with the dog, or have people over for a BBQ. I'm sure most other sane people feel the same way.
"The thing is, it's very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better. That's what we have tried to do with the new iMac."
Personally, I like the new iMac. Not enough to abandon my 6 month old PC and switch back to Macs, but I think it's a pretty cool computer. No matter what your opinion of Macintosh or their employees is, you have to like what the designer said. So many times in this industry (think about all Microsoft products) people forget that it's easy to make new and different things, the hard part is making reliable, efficient products that truly are "better." I say score one for Macintosh with this new computer, and even if it doesn't sell like hotcakes, they are in good shape if they all think like this guy does.
Well, I never said I had nothing to hide. I was just trying to point out that anyone with a basic knowlege of computers knows not to have any private information sitting out on servers, so I was wondering if anyone here ever had something out of their control happen, like a server copying their entire hard drive or something.
I personally don't keep anything around on my computer that has any incriminating information. If I did, I'd be damn sure that it's not in a shared space that gets copied onto any server or anything like that. I think any computer savy person already knows that you just don't keep digital records of things you don't want people to find out, and you definitely don't keep them anywhere there's a remote possibility the data could be duplicated. This will probably only jump up and bite the illiterate "business major" types, and I really don't have a problem with that.
Seriously. Their idea of a settlement was to donate computers with MS software to schools? I read about that before as their proposed settlement and didn't really pay much attention to it, but now that they actually took it to a judge I'm just speechless.
Here's why I'm laughing inside: MS gets sued by individuals for unfair competition and illegal business practices, and then MS proposes a solution where they will appear to be doing a public good, but in fact they will be cementing their platform in the future computer world by brainwashing children. What a joke!
Like many others on here, I would love to see them donate all this hardware only for RedHat to volunteer and install Linux on it all, but I seriously doubt MS would let that happen. Given their attitude and actions in this case so far, I'm sure they'd write up some wordy contracts about proper use of the equipment they donated. I wouldn't be surprised if they even claimed everything produced by the computers and software would then become IP of MS. Anyhow, I really think the judge should have fined them for wasting the court's time.
Does anyone know if Yahoo! has ever been Slashdotted?
I remember a few years back when a "hacker" performed a DOS attack on Yahoo which was moderately successful, but I'd like to know if it's ever been brought down by "innocent" traffic.
How did this article make it on Slashdot? Do the powers at be even research the submitted stories?
This is nothing new. Yahoo's related stories links are in fact links to other websites. Those websites, some of them, have pop up ads that show up when you go there. It's not Yahoo's doing.
As for a new story link that didn't show a story, only an ad, I couldn't find one.
I like this program called Note Tab for windows. It's downloadable fom shareware.com in a free lite version. It's really quick and easy, but powerful for text editing.
Nothing beats BBEdit though, nothing. It's only for Macs, which is killing me since I haven't bought a Mac lately.
Let's not kill each other, let's go on BattleBots!
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 4, Informative
A war without sacrifice is definitely a 21st century idea. Why should citizens of any country hesitate to wage such a war if they have the machinery?
My response to that quote and the rest of the article: what in the hell are you thinking?
A war without sacrifice isn't a war. Your argument for drone warfare is basically the same argument for sport-warfare. Instead of killing each other, why don't we just play a good old game of soccer to settle the conflict? Drones "killing" drones is basically the same thing, except it's like taking your countries to an episode of BattleBots. What happens when one drone army destroys another drone army? The drone army attacks the drone production facilities, then the human army, and then goes after the civilians (unless you surrender.) People will always die in wars, that's the whole point. You fight the war until you realize you can't win because you DON'T HAVE ENOUGH PEOPLE LEFT to do so.
Oh well, I had a really good argument but I'm sitting here in such disbelief that this actually got posted on Slashdot that I forgot what else I was going to say.
PS - Afghanistan has not been a drone war. There are pilots dropping most of the bombs, and navy seamen firing most of the cruise missiles. Yes, automated machines have been used, but they are nothing without our planes, ships, troops, and most importantly the Northern Alliance soldiers.
Before you dismiss me as some idiot, let me just say I do know about physics, thermodynamics, molecular chemistry, and history. What I was doing here was thinking openly. All of the laws and rules of science are not flawless, they're all written by men. I don't doubt that our laws of thermodynamics are accurate, I'm only saying that it's ignorant to discount a seemingly impossible idea just because research to this day has built up evidence against it, for example, "the world is round." We all know how that argument turned out.
Think about this (and I'm talking basics here, extremely simplistic, I don't want to get into details): what exactly is gravity? Just because something is massive, why am I pulled towards it because I'm far less massive? Why can I force two positively charged magnets towards each other and they will force themselves apart for as long as I feel like doing it? Yeah, yeah, I know about magnetism and molecular attraction and all that stuff, but I'm trying to get at the fact that science doesn't fully understand all of the forces around us, and it may never, so don't go condemning new ideas just because they disagree with your high school physics teacher.
Slashdot Mirror
Profs get their reputations from publishing research results which are thought highly of by knowledgeable colleagues, and tenure, promotions, jobs at better universities, and Nobel prizes all follow
Nobel Prizes... I'll agree with that, but all of those other benefits are the direct result of pulling in the most grant money, and nothing else.
Why not leave the decision up to the researcher?
Good question. Here's another: Why not leave the decision to fund research up to the public via some sort of voting process? I'm being sort of a smartass here because I know that would never happen, but the point is that admit it or not, professors getting rich off of research which was funded by tax dollars is completely wrong.
Oh and:
Besides, most often it's not some huge company locking up research, but the profs and grad students themselves who start companies based on their research
Either way, it's still publicly funded work going into a private business so that a few people can get rich off of it. If the government isn't going to give me $50k to do research so I can start a company, it shouldn't pay a university $50k so you can.
You're right on the money. Especially with all the new IP laws trying to capitalize on any and every idea anyone has, the public pays for things and then we are prosecuted for trying to access them. The main thing though is that if someone develops code based on proprietary code, he(or she) can't use it anyway, so that's a null argument.
Last time I checked, researchers at colleges didn't develop things that relate directly to national security.
That's actually an issue of semantics, so you're still not a grammar NAZI, but thanks for pointing that out.
Seeing as most college professors are more interested in getting grants than in actually teaching students, I propose a simple solution:
If you want a grant, your results become open source. No, don't steal from "closed source," come up with your own stuff, and it has to be open source, or you're not getting any money.
If you plan on making money off of your research, you're not getting a grant. The public should not be forced to pay for your profit, no matter what "societal benefits" your getting rich may provide.
But I doubt it. MS is a software company. They don't sell PC's. They only force PC manufacturers to use their software.
What do voters care about? Taxes. It's that simple. So, you want to get elected, voters want lower taxes. How do you react to this situation? Find a way to lower, or at least not increase, taxes. Open source solutions are free. Maintenance of such systems, contrary to what M$ heads would have you believe, is about the same cost, maybe even less (because once it's running, it JUST WORKS.) Now, let's follow along to make a logical conclusion:
You want to be on the council.
The voters don't want to pay as much tax.
You want to use something that's free for IT purposes.
Tell the voters that using free software would reduce costs!
The voters will automatically imply that your action of reducing costs will lead to lowered taxes and BAM!! you're elected.
Good luck!
Actually, Apple makes less convenient machines. This is why they are so unpopular. Remember the first iMac for which you paid $$$ more to have a total LACK of removable storage... at a time when removable storage devices were standard on PC's?
Exactly what are you talking about? No... wait... I don't care.
How is a tiny pinhole for disk ejection "more convenient" than the button standard on PC's?
How is pressing a button on the front of the PC more convenient than simply having the computer eject the disk for you?
How is the cumbersomeness added to the OS by not having a 2nd mouse button "more convenient" ?
How is accessing menus by pressing a second button on the mouse more convenient than using OS toolbars present on the desktop, along with having every possible command associated with a shortcut?
How is this other iMac blunder, lack of standard peripheral interface to serve most existing Macintosh printers, "more convenient"?
How are you still talking? STFU please!
Katz, like many other Pro x86 dimwitts, fails to realize that Pentium is a "spin oriented" company that is not concerned with performance, only public opinion. In other words, I'd put a PPC at 1 GHz up against a Pentium at 2.2 GHz or whatever they're up to now any day of the week. Katz is apparently trying to say that because the clock rate of G4's doesn't go up as fast as Pentiums that the hardware is worse... well, he's wrong, plain wrong.
PS - let's not even get into the plethora of other architectural issues that contribute to overall performance, I don't think Katz could follow.
First of all:
The truly successful technologies and technology companies are utilitarian and dull -- decidedly non-hip. You will never seen a Microsoft or AOL exec talking about how cool the their companies or products are, only how useful and easy to use.
"You will never seen?" - what the hell are you talking about? That's bad grammar, not to mention the rest of the sentence is false. You're saying MS products are easy to use? Well, I admit, they've gotten better, but they're still playing catch up in that department.
The following is just complete nonsense, and if I can organize all of the rants floating in my head I'll show you why:
Gates understands something Jobs and media don't. When it comes to technology, it's middle-class consumers and their tastes, needs and expectations that determine success or failure.
First and foremost, Apple and Microsoft are two completely different companies. Apple sells computers, Microsoft doesn't. Microsoft sells services, for the most part Apple doesn't. Comparing these two companies is really absurd. In the same way, it's not fair to compare Apple to a company like Gateway, as Apple makes an OS, MP3 player, etc. The point is: MacOS is dominated by Windows, but no Mac users give a rat's ass.
Next, you show your true ignorance with your statement that "middle class consumers" drive the market. Are you really that stupid? Everyone knows that it's businesses that drive the PC world for a myriad of reasons. Yes, every day there are more and more personal goodies for computers, and individuals are buying more of them, but that still does not compare to the amount of money generated by businesses. Every company that uses microsoft software is forced to have a license for every single workstation, unlike the home user who just borrows a friend's. When these businesses upgrade to XP, Microsoft is going to rake in a huge amount of profit. That is what drives their "innovation," not the whims of individual PC users. This is one major reason Mac users are so loyal. Macs give you the feeling that every single part of the computer was designed so that it would be extremely convenient for you to use, that's something that customers really appreciate. Sure, maybe everyone uses Windows, but there's still about 5% of people who use Macintosh, and that's a very happy and pleased 5%.
Content owners, for example, can start charging consumers every time their digital content is re-distributed within the home, or viewed several times during a certain number of days specified by them.
Every time their content is redistributed within the home? So, to compare with the present, they want to charge me to not only buy or rent the video, but also each time I play it? This is just pure evil.
One thing's for sure: if this isn't extremely cheap, ie $0.05 for each replay or something like that, it will never work, because "content" just isn't that important. I'll just go outside and play fetch with the dog, or have people over for a BBQ. I'm sure most other sane people feel the same way.
"The thing is, it's very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better. That's what we have tried to do with the new iMac."
Personally, I like the new iMac. Not enough to abandon my 6 month old PC and switch back to Macs, but I think it's a pretty cool computer. No matter what your opinion of Macintosh or their employees is, you have to like what the designer said. So many times in this industry (think about all Microsoft products) people forget that it's easy to make new and different things, the hard part is making reliable, efficient products that truly are "better." I say score one for Macintosh with this new computer, and even if it doesn't sell like hotcakes, they are in good shape if they all think like this guy does.
Well, I never said I had nothing to hide. I was just trying to point out that anyone with a basic knowlege of computers knows not to have any private information sitting out on servers, so I was wondering if anyone here ever had something out of their control happen, like a server copying their entire hard drive or something.
I personally don't keep anything around on my computer that has any incriminating information. If I did, I'd be damn sure that it's not in a shared space that gets copied onto any server or anything like that. I think any computer savy person already knows that you just don't keep digital records of things you don't want people to find out, and you definitely don't keep them anywhere there's a remote possibility the data could be duplicated. This will probably only jump up and bite the illiterate "business major" types, and I really don't have a problem with that.
Seriously. Their idea of a settlement was to donate computers with MS software to schools? I read about that before as their proposed settlement and didn't really pay much attention to it, but now that they actually took it to a judge I'm just speechless.
Here's why I'm laughing inside: MS gets sued by individuals for unfair competition and illegal business practices, and then MS proposes a solution where they will appear to be doing a public good, but in fact they will be cementing their platform in the future computer world by brainwashing children. What a joke!
Like many others on here, I would love to see them donate all this hardware only for RedHat to volunteer and install Linux on it all, but I seriously doubt MS would let that happen. Given their attitude and actions in this case so far, I'm sure they'd write up some wordy contracts about proper use of the equipment they donated. I wouldn't be surprised if they even claimed everything produced by the computers and software would then become IP of MS. Anyhow, I really think the judge should have fined them for wasting the court's time.
given MS's record on legal action for this case, do you really think they would let anyone install anything else but MS software?
Oh, thanks!
(I was afraid they were trying to make the internet Godly or something)
Just curious. Also, anyone with a NYT reg post the text, pretty please!
Does anyone know if Yahoo! has ever been Slashdotted?
I remember a few years back when a "hacker" performed a DOS attack on Yahoo which was moderately successful, but I'd like to know if it's ever been brought down by "innocent" traffic.
How did this article make it on Slashdot? Do the powers at be even research the submitted stories?
This is nothing new. Yahoo's related stories links are in fact links to other websites. Those websites, some of them, have pop up ads that show up when you go there. It's not Yahoo's doing.
As for a new story link that didn't show a story, only an ad, I couldn't find one.
And where did I mention Columbus? I simply inferred that at one point people said the world was flat, and later on it was proven to be "round."
If you're going to flame somebody, don't do it anonymously, and at least make sure you're doing a good job, damn.
I like this program called Note Tab for windows. It's downloadable fom shareware.com in a free lite version. It's really quick and easy, but powerful for text editing.
Nothing beats BBEdit though, nothing. It's only for Macs, which is killing me since I haven't bought a Mac lately.
A war without sacrifice is definitely a 21st century idea. Why should citizens of any country hesitate to wage such a war if they have the machinery?
My response to that quote and the rest of the article: what in the hell are you thinking?
A war without sacrifice isn't a war. Your argument for drone warfare is basically the same argument for sport-warfare. Instead of killing each other, why don't we just play a good old game of soccer to settle the conflict? Drones "killing" drones is basically the same thing, except it's like taking your countries to an episode of BattleBots. What happens when one drone army destroys another drone army? The drone army attacks the drone production facilities, then the human army, and then goes after the civilians (unless you surrender.) People will always die in wars, that's the whole point. You fight the war until you realize you can't win because you DON'T HAVE ENOUGH PEOPLE LEFT to do so.
Oh well, I had a really good argument but I'm sitting here in such disbelief that this actually got posted on Slashdot that I forgot what else I was going to say.
PS - Afghanistan has not been a drone war. There are pilots dropping most of the bombs, and navy seamen firing most of the cruise missiles. Yes, automated machines have been used, but they are nothing without our planes, ships, troops, and most importantly the Northern Alliance soldiers.
Before you dismiss me as some idiot, let me just say I do know about physics, thermodynamics, molecular chemistry, and history. What I was doing here was thinking openly. All of the laws and rules of science are not flawless, they're all written by men. I don't doubt that our laws of thermodynamics are accurate, I'm only saying that it's ignorant to discount a seemingly impossible idea just because research to this day has built up evidence against it, for example, "the world is round." We all know how that argument turned out.
Think about this (and I'm talking basics here, extremely simplistic, I don't want to get into details): what exactly is gravity? Just because something is massive, why am I pulled towards it because I'm far less massive? Why can I force two positively charged magnets towards each other and they will force themselves apart for as long as I feel like doing it? Yeah, yeah, I know about magnetism and molecular attraction and all that stuff, but I'm trying to get at the fact that science doesn't fully understand all of the forces around us, and it may never, so don't go condemning new ideas just because they disagree with your high school physics teacher.