It's really a complex equation of how best to encourage innovation. If tinkerring had too many protections and were too easy (and IBM were smarter...), we might not have had a PC based on non-proprietary components[...]
IBM tried to be "smart" with PS/2 and proprietary hardware and see how far that got them.
Apple Mac has always had very closed hardware and this led to the Mac conquering a "large" chuck of the PC market. Right?
If IBM hadn't opened up the PC, someone else would have. The idea is just too good...
Think about it. If you had unlimited cheap streaming access to any music anywhere in the world, what's the point in downloading? There is none. You save many gigabytes of hard disk space too. With increasing bandwidth to the home, this is only going to get more popular.
Actually storing stuff on my own devices is much better, as I pay for it once. 80 Gig disks cost $100 today and will only get cheaper. I can store all my CDs on 80 Gigs.
But the other point is that I also listen to music I record myself, or record with my friends, or music from musicians who are not on the top forty charts (eg. lots of obscure blues and jazz). Who will stream these? It's much easier to distribute MP3 files.
Like maybe "life of artist plus 10 years" or something like that. Though there are many people that would argue even life+10 is too short.
Why? I think 14 years from the date of publication is plenty. Shorter monopoly terms should encourage the artists to work (!) and create more, rather than sit on their buts collecting royalties.
[...]
what sort of amazing jewels of wisdom would I expect to find in a seminal paper from the 70s or 80s that would actually be of any use to me in my mainstream job developing software
And yes, it is OK to have that capitalistic element, because it is a great motivator to actually make thinks usable. Academia sometimes has the tendency to produce proof-of-concepts and then jump to a whole different topic, like a child who has enough of it's legos for today and now wants to play a videogame...
Making scientific discoveries usable is not really part of science, but it borders on engineering.
However, the real problem is that it is rather difficult to decide a priori which discoveries (yet unmade) will lead to great applications.
It's best for society to hedge its bets and support as many scientists as possible doing research in many diverse fields. You never know where the next great idea will come from.
I think I grew up on a terrible, terrible Eiffel IDE.
I'm guessing you used the ISE Eiffel compiler. The IDE is actually quite nice and powerful, just little different than a typical C/C++ IDE. How many C++ IDE's tell you which classes descend from a particular parent, or let you see all the members in the class (including parent classes recursively).
Besides that, I found the language really unintuitive after having first programmed in C and C++.
I'm suprised. What did you find unintuitive? Absence of pointers?
The internet is not meant to be a broadcast medium, nor is it very good as one.
I disagree. What's a web server?
Web is just one kind of application that runs over the Internet. Email is another one. Napster yet another. The Internet is a peer-to-peer data communication network. You can use it many different ways.
It happens to be pretty lousy mechanism for broadcast. Just think, there is no Slashdot effect
in television, no matter how many people watch a
particular channel.
Just break the crack habit, and stop STOP
BUYING THE FREAKING CDS!!!! How hard *is* that?
Actually, living without music is pretty hard. But big part of the problem is that I can't easily tell which CDs are part of the RIAA cartel and which aren't.
I buy a lot CDs that are off the beaten track (i.e. jazz and blues from small labels). This summer I bought several CDs directly from the artists after a concert.
Is there a way for us to tell a difference between RIAA and non-RIAA music?
It will not be a felony to produce any work without a license.
You are right. You will be able to create the work. But how will get it to listeners? If most of the players out there will only play licensed formats?
Imagine if today you were only able to disribute your work on 78RPM vinyl records? Who would take them?
It's not at all clear that new devices will remain compatible with old formats, because any device that can play unlicenced works, can play pirated works (I can record the sound coming from the speaker, with some loss of quality).
So, you can imagine a future where you are not even allowed to own a recording device (this happened in the past - you could not own a copy machine in the Soviet Union).
Concerning the slow death of the internet I am suprised that no major effort has been made to create a new layer and method of communication over the Internet that, through the use of a well written EULA and some pre-emptive patenting create a new tunneled Internet piggy-backing on the old Internet.
But a wireless grid network that just runs on our own computers, could potentially bypass the current internet infrastructure completely.
We each will turn into a micro-ISP, providing little routing and little storage for our neighbors.
If you lend your friend the DVD: nobody knows, nobody cares.
If you lend your friend the copy: nobody knows, nobody cares.
Not if your DVD player is on the net and it reports the uses to RIAA. Or better yet, it checks if you have the license to play it and will only play on your home player and nowhere else...
I'm not talking about distributing those copies. That is, of course, illegal as hell. I'm talking about using a copy of your own item for personal use.
Let's see. If I lend my friend a DVD that's OK. But if I lend him the copy, I go to jail. Right?
Approximately 40 million people have stolen music with a filesharing program.
Copyright violation is not stealing. You (and RIAA) assume that people would buy the CD of every song they download. This is not true. Just like they don't buy the CD of every song you hear on the radio.
There is not right to profit. If RIAA can't make stuff that people want to buy, they should reconsider the stuff they are making.
Do you think we should all stop driving fuel efficient cars because we are depriving oil companies of profits? Why not pass a law to make a car that gets more that 20 miles to a gallon illegal, and lets put all those "thiefs" who drive Honda Civics in jail.
This would lead to a classic "tragedy of the commons" situation, where everyone would stamp all over
everyone else's transmissions, so that noone would get any use out of radio transmission. Kiss your cellphone goodbye. Kiss
the radios in your police cars and ambulances and airplanes goodbye.
You are assuming that the current way we use the radio spectrum is the only way. But it's not!
Read up on digital radio and mesh networks. Imagine the spectrum as one extremely high speed Ethernet. Each device has it's own address and each device transmits when it has something to say - collisions from many devices would resolve the same way they do on Ethernet.
This way, everyone shares the wide spectrum (giving us great data transmission rates), without the need for the artificial scarcity.
Personally, I realize that record companies have legal grounds for trying to stop music sharing, but I don't believe they'll have much success in doing it.
While I agree with you that the record companies have a somewhat valid claim on music which they copyrighted, what they are trying to do is much more extensive.
With DRM technologies and DMCA they are trying to monopolize the digital distribution channel.
If it is true it won't stand up--there's prior art. Microsoft can push around individuals and small companies, but they'd be up
against an army.
I was using the "Secure O/S" patent as an example. In general, companies (especially like MS) have many patents, some of which are bit too broad, which they can use to control people without patents.
The big guys, IBM, ATT and SUN, have their own patent portfolios so they can horse trade. You licence patent 321321 to me, and I license 787888 to you.
Universities are not in a good position to fight the hoards of lawyers from MS, IBM or ATT.
I use Mozilla on Linux and on home Windows boxes. However, on my corporate NT network I cannot use Mozilla, because I need to login to a proxy server. The server requires user name, password and domain for login and in Mozilla I don't know where to put the domain?
Slashdot Mirror
IBM tried to be "smart" with PS/2 and proprietary hardware and see how far that got them.
Apple Mac has always had very closed hardware and this led to the Mac conquering a "large" chuck of the PC market. Right?
If IBM hadn't opened up the PC, someone else would have. The idea is just too good...
Actually storing stuff on my own devices is much better, as I pay for it once. 80 Gig disks cost $100 today and will only get cheaper. I can store all my CDs on 80 Gigs.
But the other point is that I also listen to music I record myself, or record with my friends, or music from musicians who are not on the top forty charts (eg. lots of obscure blues and jazz). Who will stream these? It's much easier to distribute MP3 files.
Why? I think 14 years from the date of publication is plenty. Shorter monopoly terms should encourage the artists to work (!) and create more, rather than sit on their buts collecting royalties.
Try reading most papers by David Parnas.
Making scientific discoveries usable is not really part of science, but it borders on engineering.
However, the real problem is that it is rather difficult to decide a priori which discoveries (yet unmade) will lead to great applications.
It's best for society to hedge its bets and support as many scientists as possible doing research in many diverse fields. You never know where the next great idea will come from.
Cool. Finally other IDE's caught to Eiffel. With ISE's IDE I could all these things in 1994.
I'm guessing you used the ISE Eiffel compiler. The IDE is actually quite nice and powerful, just little different than a typical C/C++ IDE. How many C++ IDE's tell you which classes descend from a particular parent, or let you see all the members in the class (including parent classes recursively).
Besides that, I found the language really unintuitive after having first programmed in C and C++.
I'm suprised. What did you find unintuitive? Absence of pointers?
What's wrong with GNU SmallEiffel?
I disagree. What's a web server?
Web is just one kind of application that runs over the Internet. Email is another one. Napster yet another. The Internet is a peer-to-peer data communication network. You can use it many different ways.
It happens to be pretty lousy mechanism for broadcast. Just think, there is no Slashdot effect in television, no matter how many people watch a particular channel.
Actually, living without music is pretty hard. But big part of the problem is that I can't easily tell which CDs are part of the RIAA cartel and which aren't.
I buy a lot CDs that are off the beaten track (i.e. jazz and blues from small labels). This summer I bought several CDs directly from the artists after a concert.
Is there a way for us to tell a difference between RIAA and non-RIAA music?
You are right. You will be able to create the work. But how will get it to listeners? If most of the players out there will only play licensed formats?
Imagine if today you were only able to disribute your work on 78RPM vinyl records? Who would take them?
It's not at all clear that new devices will remain compatible with old formats, because any device that can play unlicenced works, can play pirated works (I can record the sound coming from the speaker, with some loss of quality).
So, you can imagine a future where you are not even allowed to own a recording device (this happened in the past - you could not own a copy machine in the Soviet Union).
What's next? We will not be allowed to bookmark these sites? After all, saving a bookmark is just saving a link. Or maybe a big "DO NO READ" warning.
But a wireless grid network that just runs on our own computers, could potentially bypass the current internet infrastructure completely.
We each will turn into a micro-ISP, providing little routing and little storage for our neighbors.
Not if your DVD player is on the net and it reports the uses to RIAA. Or better yet, it checks if you have the license to play it and will only play on your home player and nowhere else...
Let's see. If I lend my friend a DVD that's OK. But if I lend him the copy, I go to jail. Right?
Copyright violation is not stealing. You (and RIAA) assume that people would buy the CD of every song they download. This is not true. Just like they don't buy the CD of every song you hear on the radio.
There is not right to profit. If RIAA can't make stuff that people want to buy, they should reconsider the stuff they are making.
Do you think we should all stop driving fuel efficient cars because we are depriving oil companies of profits? Why not pass a law to make a car that gets more that 20 miles to a gallon illegal, and lets put all those "thiefs" who drive Honda Civics in jail.
Exactly! But there wouldn't be any restrictions on who can transmit.
Sort of like the highway system. If a car conforms to the car spec (you know safety, emissions etc) then it can use the highyways.
What we have now with the spectrum is a highway system where lanes or entire roads are reserved for use by a single company.
You are assuming that the current way we use the radio spectrum is the only way. But it's not!
Read up on digital radio and mesh networks. Imagine the spectrum as one extremely high speed Ethernet. Each device has it's own address and each device transmits when it has something to say - collisions from many devices would resolve the same way they do on Ethernet.
This way, everyone shares the wide spectrum (giving us great data transmission rates), without the need for the artificial scarcity.
username: domain_name/username password: password
This worked for me. Thanks a 1e6 !
While I agree with you that the record companies have a somewhat valid claim on music which they copyrighted, what they are trying to do is much more extensive.
With DRM technologies and DMCA they are trying to monopolize the digital distribution channel.
I was using the "Secure O/S" patent as an example. In general, companies (especially like MS) have many patents, some of which are bit too broad, which they can use to control people without patents.
The big guys, IBM, ATT and SUN, have their own patent portfolios so they can horse trade. You licence patent 321321 to me, and I license 787888 to you.
Universities are not in a good position to fight the hoards of lawyers from MS, IBM or ATT.
Not really. Using OpenSSH and Linux? Well, Microsoft has a patent on "secure O/S"...
Get the picture?
Has anyone done this?