With so many hi tech jobs being shipped to cheap labour regions, you miss one important point: when you buy closed source products, chances are that they were coded in places like India.
The general case is that you don't have any idea who might have coded a piece of proprietary software or even what the software you have obtained actually does.
When you adopt an open source alternative, you do need to hire ad hoc support (and probably some coders to tailor your applications), which will be, most likely, physically located in the vecinity of your offices.
You also are more able to keep track of what is actually being done and not have to play "it's a feature, not a bug".
What is interesting, or disheartening, about this study is the blatant disregard for the law. The law is the law. It is a cold black and white document that applies to us whether we want it to or not.
Unlike things such as constitutions and treaties which governments love to re-interpret, bend and seek loopholes in. If it were simply a matter of "the law" being upheld any copyright infringment would be way way behind heads of state, politicans, civil servants, corporate executives, etc.
Prepare to see all SORTS of artists going even more starving. I'm an aspiring photojournalist. Guess what all the folks who made it tell me. If you're great, it takes 5 years to build an archive of shots that is going to be able to moderately support you and allow you to start paying off your debts. It's copyright that gives a photographer that ability. If 9 years later those images that I took go into the public domain, I will be forever working to maintain a barely-decent level of income.
Plenty of people work all the time to make a living. Many of them without a 14 year "buffer" to help them. Is there really that much money to be made selling photos of "old news"? Especially since newspapers and broadcasters tend to have their own extensive archives.
I like the life + 90, and I think it is very reasonable.
How exactly? As for the plus bit the phrase "you can't take it with you when you go." sums things up nicely. Also what's so special about this kind of work that people should potentially still get paid for life?
Perhaps the post-life extent could be shorter, but 14 years... Tell your favorite author what you want to do to their work -- most authors don't get paid as well as musicians and other artists...
Book authors tend to be more able to hold on to their "intellectual property" than other creators. Though if even the best selling author in the history of publishing cannot keep hold of the copyrights on her characters things arn't that much better.
Same goes for software and DVDs. DVDs are now the default technology, yet they are higher than tapes. Instead, tapes should be lower, and DVDs should be the same price.
If anything tapes should be more expensive, since the manufacturing and transportation costs are higher. Then you have the problem of "duds" not being detected until a customer buys one and complains. With a CD or DVD you have an easy to automate pressing operation to manufacture. It's probably not that difficult to automate removing mis-pressed disks from the production line either.
What is the practical effect of forever copyrights? Lack of creativity. Copyright holders concentrate on protecting the value of their current copyright rather than think up new things to copyright.
Which is utterly daft when the whole idea behind copyright is ment to be to promote creativity... Either it dosn't or only a small amount of copyright is needed. A bit like adding a tiny amount of salt to food can make it taste better, but adding too much salt can make it taste worst than if you hadn't added any.
But please, not Microsoft, the inventors of default top posting. This is one of the things which is making Usenet increasingly difficult to use.
The interesting thing is that just about every text editing program starts up with the cursor at the top. This isn't a software problem, it's a wetware issue.
This is very bad news for Usenet. In the beginning, USEnet was a haven for people with the persistence and intelligence necessary to figure out how to use it, and it was good. Flamewars were minimal, people were respectful, and knowledge flowed freely.
Also you didn't see people "top posting", let alone trying to argue that it made sense or threads about spoiler space, since adding a ^L "just worked" for everyone.
Then AOL, WebTV, and their ilk came along and lowered the barriers to entry. The quality of discussion went down, the quantity went up, and USEnet became a lot less USEful than it had been. I feel like that situation has improved slightly, at least in the text-only discussion groups.
Though you still get plenty of idiots posting HTML, base64 or various junk which dosn't qualify as "text".
But if MS makes it possible for every dingbat melonhead with a modem to get on it, it's going to get much worse.
Instead Microsoft might do better to fix their software so it actually follows the specs first.
The apps you need for a firewall or a web server are different than those you'd need for doing graphics or video editing. And Linux users still don't think a GUI is necessary. What decade is this? GUI's aren't just a feature for the clueless -- they came about as an evolution from the command line. To dismiss the benefits of a GUI with offhand remarks like "RTFM and you'll be fine...
There are plenty of "real world" computer situations where the real user interface is that of the only application that computer runs. You don't need a bitmapped WIMP GUI to operate a supermarket checkout or a stock control system. In these situations the fact that you cannot disable the Windows GUI is a shortcomming. In addition there are plenty of applications which use CLIs, character based GUIs or ANSI terminals.
Finally, and perhaps more importantly, Linux applications are still just not there to justify huge companies replacing their entire architecture. If the OSS community keeps at it, as I'm sure they will, then perhaps in five or ten years enough alternatives will exist for companies to switch. But right now, there's no alternative to Photoshop, 3DSMax, Pagemaker/InDesign, and the hundreds of thousands of games that already exist in mature forms for Windows systems.
Games (most of which fall into the catagory of "application UI) are a reason why "huge companies" must stick with Windows? If anything these "productivity killers" are a good reason to dump Windows, even if there is no alterative...
Windows Services for UNIX 3.0 includes the Server for NFS component that creates a full NFS version 3 server.
This is a set of servers which Microsoft describes as being for "UNIX-to-Windows migration". Can you easily have a WIndows machine use an NFS server or perform user authenication via NIS?
The Caldera-SCO rep kept saying this is about contracts not copyright, so I think that they believe that one of the contracts they hold with IBM contains a 'don't share clause'.
In which case this is an issue entirely between SCO and IBM. SCO's attempt to issue Linux licences appears from this point of view to be meaningless. Another thing is that clauses in contracts are "trumped" by statutes. With those concerning copyright having been ammended after whenever any agreement between SCO and IBM might have been made. Even SCO agrees that IBM is the copyright holder.
Based on what SCO showed me, it was quite plausible that the two pieces of code--in Unixware and in Linux--came from the same source. The similarities went well beyond predictable names and choice of algorithms. I say this as a practicing programmer with extensive experience.
Which could just as easily mean that the code came from a third source or SCO copied from Linux. There is also the issue of SCO proving that the code they produced actually comes from their software in the first place.
OK, fair enough, they're willing to embrace this technology. That's a good first step.
If Iraqis were not willing to embrace technology then Iraq would never have existed, nor would all the versions of the religion of Abraham. Indeed the last few thousand years of history might well be very different.
So when will they be able to afford this technology? How many Iraqi citizens even have computers? I know I'm coming from a position of ignorance, but it seems to me that the Iraqi people have bigger problems at the moment than lacking a quality communications infrastructure.
Their "bigger problems" include foreign soldiers running around shooting people and foreign companies working out how best to rip them off.
Given that Firefly is basically Blake's 7 with a budget but without the plot (rag tag bunch of renegades on a mission to, uh, uh...), that's rather harsh.
Firefly is certainly not a rehash of B7. Though it probably draws inspiration from it, as do Red Dwarf and Lexx. If anything there is probably more plot in Firefly, though with both the strength is character interaction. Which is probably what doomed Firefly, given that it's first broadcast was in the US.
I think that's what I was suggesting. Microsoft and SCO are claiming that their code has made it's way into linux, I'm saying that it's more likely that linux code has worked it's way into Microsoft and SCO.
It wouldn't suprise me if the vast majority of proprietary software contains pirated code, from all sorts of places. Given that the source code for such software is rarely seen.
It's called intellectual property, and many of us make a living selling it. Artists, writers, musicians, programmers. They're selling ideas and expressions of ideas, and if you say they can't control their creations you're saying they have no right to make a living.
You don't have a right to make a living or the right to make a profit or the right to a "return on your investment". Indeed copyright law, at least in the US, isn't intended to do this in the first place. Simply to give the creator "first bite of the cherry", if there is money to be made from whatever, so as to encourage them to create and publish.
It had a appliction for writing letters about the patients. This application was only used by secretaries.
I was talking to someone last week who said that in many cases what's needed is a "letter/memo writing program" rather than a generic "wordprocessor" which performs all sorts of functions completly irrelevent to the required task.
Secretaries and non-IT-skilled staff have for long been able to use all kinds of IT-systems (with proper training). I was surprised to see that they sometimes actually chose to use a unix-alike when there was also Word.
Only because Microsoft have hyped their way of doing things as being "easy".
Does the application do what you want from it, does it do it effectively, efficiently and reliably? GIU is a plus, but no more than that.
A GUI isn't always a plus, in some cases certain kinds of GUI can even be a handicap to usability.
One big difference tho; there's a lot more novice-friendly documentation out there for windows than linux. Linux docs tend to be written by geeks for geeks, and it gets pretty terse.
On the other hand non-novice level Windows documentation, let alone technical documentation is often virtually non existant. Try finding out which registry keys the typical Windows app uses and you are usually SOL.
it means that the copyright office has the option of entering it into the Library of Congress, and therefore, in some instances, you can view it at the library. However, most registered items are usually discarded after the registration is granted simply because the library lacks the storage capacity.
A problem other copyright libraries face with hugely long copyrights. Let alone that with individual authors modern copyright law is an administrative nightmare since the "clock" dosn't start until they die.
It is amazing that the news resulted in a 20% jump in the stock. If I am not mistaken, the Copyright office awards a copyright registration just about anytime someone sends them an envelope with $30 and an attached piece of paper.
This more a commont on the way stockmarket valuations can be utter fantasy.
That may well apply to an airline which only operates within one country and only operates aircraft carrying the flag of that country. If that isn't the case then things could easily become a lot more complex.e.g. if the cameras can see outside the aircraft or the airline removes the recordings from the plane anywhere else on the planet.
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With so many hi tech jobs being shipped to cheap labour regions, you miss one important point: when you buy closed source products, chances are that they were coded in places like India.
The general case is that you don't have any idea who might have coded a piece of proprietary software or even what the software you have obtained actually does.
When you adopt an open source alternative, you do need to hire ad hoc support (and probably some coders to tailor your applications), which will be, most likely, physically located in the vecinity of your offices.
You also are more able to keep track of what is actually being done and not have to play "it's a feature, not a bug".
What is interesting, or disheartening, about this study is the blatant disregard for the law. The law is the law. It is a cold black and white document that applies to us whether we want it to or not.
Unlike things such as constitutions and treaties which governments love to re-interpret, bend and seek loopholes in.
If it were simply a matter of "the law" being upheld any copyright infringment would be way way behind heads of state, politicans, civil servants, corporate executives, etc.
Prepare to see all SORTS of artists going even more starving. I'm an aspiring photojournalist. Guess what all the folks who made it tell me. If you're great, it takes 5 years to build an archive of shots that is going to be able to moderately support you and allow you to start paying off your debts. It's copyright that gives a photographer that ability. If 9 years later those images that I took go into the public domain, I will be forever working to maintain a barely-decent level of income.
Plenty of people work all the time to make a living. Many of them without a 14 year "buffer" to help them. Is there really that much money to be made selling photos of "old news"? Especially since newspapers and broadcasters tend to have their own extensive archives.
I like the life + 90, and I think it is very reasonable.
How exactly? As for the plus bit the phrase "you can't take it with you when you go." sums things up nicely. Also what's so special about this kind of work that people should potentially still get paid for life?
Perhaps the post-life extent could be shorter, but 14 years... Tell your favorite author what you want to do to their work -- most authors don't get paid as well as musicians and other artists...
Book authors tend to be more able to hold on to their "intellectual property" than other creators. Though if even the best selling author in the history of publishing cannot keep hold of the copyrights on her characters things arn't that much better.
Same goes for software and DVDs. DVDs are now the default technology, yet they are higher than tapes. Instead, tapes should be lower, and DVDs should be the same price.
If anything tapes should be more expensive, since the manufacturing and transportation costs are higher. Then you have the problem of "duds" not being detected until a customer buys one and complains. With a CD or DVD you have an easy to automate pressing operation to manufacture. It's probably not that difficult to automate removing mis-pressed disks from the production line either.
What is the practical effect of forever copyrights? Lack of creativity. Copyright holders concentrate on protecting the value of their current copyright rather than think up new things to copyright.
Which is utterly daft when the whole idea behind copyright is ment to be to promote creativity... Either it dosn't or only a small amount of copyright is needed. A bit like adding a tiny amount of salt to food can make it taste better, but adding too much salt can make it taste worst than if you hadn't added any.
But please, not Microsoft, the inventors of default top posting. This is one of the things which is making Usenet increasingly difficult to use.
The interesting thing is that just about every text editing program starts up with the cursor at the top. This isn't a software problem, it's a wetware issue.
This is very bad news for Usenet. In the beginning, USEnet was a haven for people with the persistence and intelligence necessary to figure out how to use it, and it was good. Flamewars were minimal, people were respectful, and knowledge flowed freely.
Also you didn't see people "top posting", let alone trying to argue that it made sense or threads about spoiler space, since adding a ^L "just worked" for everyone.
Then AOL, WebTV, and their ilk came along and lowered the barriers to entry. The quality of discussion went down, the quantity went up, and USEnet became a lot less USEful than it had been. I feel like that situation has improved slightly, at least in the text-only discussion groups.
Though you still get plenty of idiots posting HTML, base64 or various junk which dosn't qualify as "text".
But if MS makes it possible for every dingbat melonhead with a modem to get on it, it's going to get much worse.
Instead Microsoft might do better to fix their software so it actually follows the specs first.
The apps you need for a firewall or a web server are different than those you'd need for doing graphics or video editing. And Linux users still don't think a GUI is necessary. What decade is this? GUI's aren't just a feature for the clueless -- they came about as an evolution from the command line. To dismiss the benefits of a GUI with offhand remarks like "RTFM and you'll be fine...
There are plenty of "real world" computer situations where the real user interface is that of the only application that computer runs. You don't need a bitmapped WIMP GUI to operate a supermarket checkout or a stock control system. In these situations the fact that you cannot disable the Windows GUI is a shortcomming. In addition there are plenty of applications which use CLIs, character based GUIs or ANSI terminals.
Finally, and perhaps more importantly, Linux applications are still just not there to justify huge companies replacing their entire architecture. If the OSS community keeps at it, as I'm sure they will, then perhaps in five or ten years enough alternatives will exist for companies to switch. But right now, there's no alternative to Photoshop, 3DSMax, Pagemaker/InDesign, and the hundreds of thousands of games that already exist in mature forms for Windows systems.
Games (most of which fall into the catagory of "application UI) are a reason why "huge companies" must stick with Windows? If anything these "productivity killers" are a good reason to dump Windows, even if there is no alterative...
Windows Services for UNIX 3.0 includes the Server for NFS component that creates a full NFS version 3 server.
This is a set of servers which Microsoft describes as being for "UNIX-to-Windows migration". Can you easily have a WIndows machine use an NFS server or perform user authenication via NIS?
The only thing I found wrong with the article was that they assumed non-technical people would be system admins.
Possibly because Windows tends to blur the distinction between "users" and "admins".
The Caldera-SCO rep kept saying this is about contracts not copyright, so I think that they believe that one of the contracts they hold with IBM contains a 'don't share clause'.
In which case this is an issue entirely between SCO and IBM. SCO's attempt to issue Linux licences appears from this point of view to be meaningless.
Another thing is that clauses in contracts are "trumped" by statutes. With those concerning copyright having been ammended after whenever any agreement between SCO and IBM might have been made. Even SCO agrees that IBM is the copyright holder.
Based on what SCO showed me, it was quite plausible that the two pieces of code--in Unixware and in Linux--came from the same source. The similarities went well beyond predictable names and choice of algorithms. I say this as a practicing programmer with extensive experience.
Which could just as easily mean that the code came from a third source or SCO copied from Linux. There is also the issue of SCO proving that the code they produced actually comes from their software in the first place.
OK, fair enough, they're willing to embrace this technology. That's a good first step.
If Iraqis were not willing to embrace technology then Iraq would never have existed, nor would all the versions of the religion of Abraham. Indeed the last few thousand years of history might well be very different.
So when will they be able to afford this technology? How many Iraqi citizens even have computers? I know I'm coming from a position of ignorance, but it seems to me that the Iraqi people have bigger problems at the moment than lacking a quality communications infrastructure.
Their "bigger problems" include foreign soldiers running around shooting people and foreign companies working out how best to rip them off.
These identity cards will certainly reduce instances of fraudulent voting
They could just as easily make it considerably easier to vote multiple times.
Given that Firefly is basically Blake's 7 with a budget but without the plot (rag tag bunch of renegades on a mission to, uh, uh...), that's rather harsh.
Firefly is certainly not a rehash of B7. Though it probably draws inspiration from it, as do Red Dwarf and Lexx. If anything there is probably more plot in Firefly, though with both the strength is character interaction. Which is probably what doomed Firefly, given that it's first broadcast was in the US.
I think that's what I was suggesting. Microsoft and SCO are claiming that their code has made it's way into linux, I'm saying that it's more likely that linux code has worked it's way into Microsoft and SCO.
It wouldn't suprise me if the vast majority of proprietary software contains pirated code, from all sorts of places. Given that the source code for such software is rarely seen.
It's called intellectual property, and many of us make a living selling it. Artists, writers, musicians, programmers. They're selling ideas and expressions of ideas, and if you say they can't control their creations you're saying they have no right to make a living.
You don't have a right to make a living or the right to make a profit or the right to a "return on your investment". Indeed copyright law, at least in the US, isn't intended to do this in the first place. Simply to give the creator "first bite of the cherry", if there is money to be made from whatever, so as to encourage them to create and publish.
It had a appliction for writing letters about the patients. This application was only used by secretaries.
I was talking to someone last week who said that in many cases what's needed is a "letter/memo writing program" rather than a generic "wordprocessor" which performs all sorts of functions completly irrelevent to the required task.
Secretaries and non-IT-skilled staff have for long been able to use all kinds of IT-systems (with proper training). I was surprised to see that they sometimes actually chose to use a unix-alike when there was also Word.
Only because Microsoft have hyped their way of doing things as being "easy".
Does the application do what you want from it, does it do it effectively, efficiently and reliably? GIU is a plus, but no more than that.
A GUI isn't always a plus, in some cases certain kinds of GUI can even be a handicap to usability.
One big difference tho; there's a lot more novice-friendly documentation out there for windows than linux. Linux docs tend to be written by geeks for geeks, and it gets pretty terse.
On the other hand non-novice level Windows documentation, let alone technical documentation is often virtually non existant. Try finding out which registry keys the typical Windows app uses and you are usually SOL.
Most of my users can barely use Windows anyway
Assuming they "use Windows" as opposed to various applications, some of which may even go as far as to impose their own UI...
- any administration tasks are the responsibility of the IT people - which is no harder in Linux/BSD/etc than in Windows - often easier.
Especially when you can take away the ability of the end user or applications to be able to mess with all sorts of things best left alone.
Any custom applications will need to be written by someone paid for by the government anyway - why not base them on an open platform?
Especially as an alternative to basing them on a proprietary platform which changes frequently.
It may not be ready for secretaries etc.
Would MS Windows be considered "ready" if objective criteria were applied?
it means that the copyright office has the option of entering it into the Library of Congress, and therefore, in some instances, you can view it at the library. However, most registered items are usually discarded after the registration is granted simply because the library lacks the storage capacity.
A problem other copyright libraries face with hugely long copyrights. Let alone that with individual authors modern copyright law is an administrative nightmare since the "clock" dosn't start until they die.
It is amazing that the news resulted in a 20% jump in the stock. If I am not mistaken, the Copyright office awards a copyright registration just about anytime someone sends them an envelope with $30 and an attached piece of paper.
This more a commont on the way stockmarket valuations can be utter fantasy.
An airline is a private organization.
That may well apply to an airline which only operates within one country and only operates aircraft carrying the flag of that country. If that isn't the case then things could easily become a lot more complex.e.g. if the cameras can see outside the aircraft or the airline removes the recordings from the plane anywhere else on the planet.