Rule one - First come first served.
The heck with who owns a copyright or trademark, this is a seperate space.
You want it, get in line, get in line early, if you miss out try to buy it, if you can't buy it, rent it or come up with something else.
Actually this is what has caused most of the problems in the first place. With whatever.com the first thing which needs to be asked is if "whatever" is a commercial entity which operates in more than one country.
Rule two - One Domain name per customer.
dove.unilever.com is just fine, the space for dove.com should belong to someone else.
No actual need for this if you have a rule in.com that domains are only issued to a transnational commercial entity where the SLD is their legal or trading name. n.b. anyone not a transnational commercial entity should not be able to get a.com domain, even if the one they wanted was not in use.
Somebody had the rules system pretty close to right in the begining, too bad they wrecked it.
The problem was turning everthing into.misc and ending up with the same entity using foobar.*, which negates the point of having different TLDs.
So it all depends on how realistic the speeds are in a real world setting. A TGV would derail at the same speeds a Nozomi shinkansen takes corners. (I know, I konw, due to track guage it would never fit on the tracks in the first place, but imagine that it would.)
It would fit on the track fine, Japan uses the same guage as Western Europe (and the US).
A maglev track means that new tracks have to be built in addition to the existing tracks (unless you switch all your trains at once or manage to fit both varieties on the same tracks). This implies a huge expense for buying new land, building and maintaining new tracks, etc.
You need special tracks for trains such as the shinkansen, TVG, etc anyway. On regular tracks you'd be limited to whatever the track can cope with. Possibly 100 mph, possibly a lot less. This is what the Eurostar has to do.
FWIW the French TGV managed 515 km/h on tracks. The current limit of 300-350km/h is because of structural problems on unadapted tracks at high speeds (the train is designed to go fast on adapted tracks and slower on regular ones)
They did the tests on TGV track. In France the only trains to use these tracks are TGVs.
"You can move freely because there are no seat belts." Not that seatbelts do you much good at these kind of speeds, but a seatbelt might make some people feel safer at least.
Maybe time to reconsider seatbelts on aircarft. These trains trains are still slower than 560 mph.
Nevermind that most of us in any major city actually spend most of our time backed up in bumper to bumper traffic because EVERYONE feels they need that freedom they saw on the commercial.
Or the little matter that once you have got to your destination you need somewhere to put the car.
Because they are so much lighter than conventional trains, they should produce less damage if they crash, even though they are moving faster. Remember, kinetic energy = mass times velocity squared (E_k = mv^2, Newtonian physics). Which would you rather be hit by, a two-ton pickup truck travelling at 20 miles per hour, or a tennis ball travelling at 60 miles per hour?
Velocity makes a far greater contribution to kenetic energy than mass. Also whilst the trains themselves might be lighter this does not make the passengers and their luggage lighter.
Have you factored in the costs of roads, highway patrols, wrecks, ambulances, and the whole taxpayer-funded infrastructure that props up the federal highway system?
All too often when road and rail are compared the comparison is completly "apples and oranges".
When the US Govt. gave up what power they had over the domain system, it went to shit. Netsol messed it up, ICANN is messing it up even worse. But simply handing it back to the US government won't do much to solve the problems. Maybe it's time to start treating DNS domains as being analagous to telephone numbers, thus have the ITU handle all TLDs.
I kind of agree with you here, but I'm not sure it's about "single-user" mentality. It's more about lack of knowledge about how to setup the security in windows (nt, 2000, xp).
Dosn't really matter, since the problem is with the people who write applications to a single user paradigm. Since Windows (and the vast majority of Windows applications) are closed source there is nothing any administrator to address the problems.
What do you expect of a country where the government telecommunications monopoly is so bad that more people have cellphones than landlines?
If you don't have that much existing infrastructure then cellular networks are considerably cheaper than landline networks to install. Installing cable ie expensive, so expensive that technologies such as ISDN and ADSL were developed to make better use of existing cable infrastructure.
What do you expect of a country where everyone votes for the same party, regardless whether they messed up, promise to mess up or promise not to mess up again then mess up?
Is other words South Africa lacks political diversity. The US isn't that much better, About the only places you get lots of political diversity is Europe, especially the smaller countries.
This is all fine for the first run of a show, where Coke pays paramount to put a can of coke on the bridge of the Enterprise. Paramount gets the money, makes the placed ad, and airs show/ad on UPN. Now what happens when TNN buys the rights to reruns of old Star Trek episodes?
What happens if they have changed the logo in the mean time? Though since they have managed to wangle time travel into "Enterprise" it could probably be plausable for the stuff to actually be there.
And what happens when you place a product into a show, and the product proceeds to flop its way out of existance, or is even phased. You then end up with ads for products you can no longer buy: "Go to your neighborhood Ford dealer and test drive the new Aerostar"
It gets even riskier, not only did Pan Am not have scheduled flights to the moon in 2001 they didn't even make it into the 21st century.
How can you even bitch about product placement as a way for companies to make money? It's completely non-intrusive. Do you really get upset when you see someone on a sitcom drinking a Pepsi?
It only works with certain kinds of products, you can't really do any kind of "local add". It only works with contempoary drama, fans will spot an anachranism PDQ. You are in serious trouble if the product ceases to exist, gets renamed or the supplier goes the way of Pan Am or Enron.
And this should be a lesson: When your current business model is out of date, CHANGE THE MODEL.
This is something too many corporate entities just don't get.
Too often big corporations try to legislate profits rather then be innovative.
The likes of the RIAA and MPAA apparently see "buying" legislation to be and easier and cheaper option... There are also commercial entities, which whilst they can't actually buy laws, appear to think that there should be laws forcing their customers to make their business work. The I-Opener and Cue:Cat: spring to mind as recent examples.
When I go a concert and get a 'program', that program has a lot of ads for sponsors. Especially 'programs' like Playbill magazine that you get at classical concerts, broadway shows, etc. Is there an implicit contract that says I will read those ads?
How about bill boards? That could be very interesting with traffic cops. They could either book people for not watching where they are driving or book them for not looking at the ad.
And before we crucify MS, every single public company does it. Investors and analysts don't like crazy up and down profits. They like the earnings line chart to climb up like a ramp if possible, and since that is what they like, companies will try to give it to them.
So why don't people just go and play "fantasy stock market"? What is the point of trading real companies or even believing that the numbers that come out of New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong have any meaning at all...
The real bad guys here are probably the auditors, since they are supposed to find stuff like this and make sure it doesn't happen.
The Enron situation showed that this simply dosn't work anyway.
People in the know are aware that audited financial statements are just bullshit backed up by a promise that means just about nothing.
About as much as Microsoft's word to abide by the rules in future. Something they never did in the past...
You say that you write GPL'd software and that you have no problem with the software being charged for "under a different license."
The creator of a distribution would need to get all the copyright holders to agree. Probably possible for an application with few authors, but probably also just as easy for someone to produce a non per-seat drop in replacement. This would be virtually impossible for something like the Linux kernel.
A lot of companys are more familiar with per seat licensing.
Being familiar with something does not mean that they would choose this, if they were given a choice.
Having to pay for every copy makes it seem like it must be useful and productive software.
It also means needing to factor it the cost of administering the licences. Which could be considerable...
In a bizarre, twisted sort of way this could be the way to get people to switch away from MS!
More likely getting people to stick with Microsoft. Since either way they would still have the TCO of a per seat licence to copy with. Even if the price per seat is lower this may well not put much of a dent in the total outlay needed. But ditch the per seat licencing model and you save a lot of money.
All United Linux are saying, like Caldera did, is that the binaries will have per-seat licensing.
If these are GPL derived then they can't distribute them anyway. Since, by even making this claim they have broken the GPL and thus have no right to distribute the code at all. They can only do this with software they have written themselves. Otherwise they are basically software pirates.
The problem is that your monitor, modem, etc. all expect AC power. It's easiest just to make a UPS that provides standard AC power, and plug everything in.
Modems typically require something in the region of 12V DC. It is prefectly possible to build a monitor which will run from a 12V supply. The problem with "standard AC power" is that it isn't any kind of standard. Different voltages and frequences are used throughout the world. COmbined with even more different types of connectors.
Slashdot Mirror
Rule one - First come first served.
.com that domains are only issued to a transnational commercial entity where the SLD is their legal or trading name. n.b. anyone not a transnational commercial entity should not be able to get a .com domain, even if the one they wanted was not in use.
.misc and ending up with the same entity using foobar.*, which negates the point of having different TLDs.
The heck with who owns a copyright or trademark, this is a seperate space.
You want it, get in line, get in line early, if you miss out try to buy it, if you can't buy it, rent it or come up with something else.
Actually this is what has caused most of the problems in the first place. With whatever.com the first thing which needs to be asked is if "whatever" is a commercial entity which operates in more than one country.
Rule two - One Domain name per customer. dove.unilever.com is just fine, the space for dove.com should belong to someone else.
No actual need for this if you have a rule in
Somebody had the rules system pretty close to right in the begining, too bad they wrecked it.
The problem was turning everthing into
So it all depends on how realistic the speeds are in a real world setting. A TGV would derail at the same speeds a Nozomi shinkansen takes corners. (I know, I konw, due to track guage it would never fit on the tracks in the first place, but imagine that it would.)
It would fit on the track fine, Japan uses the same guage as Western Europe (and the US).
A maglev track means that new tracks have to be built in addition to the existing tracks (unless you switch all your trains at once or manage to fit both varieties on the same tracks). This implies a huge expense for buying new land, building and maintaining new tracks, etc.
You need special tracks for trains such as the shinkansen, TVG, etc anyway. On regular tracks you'd be limited to whatever the track can cope with. Possibly 100 mph, possibly a lot less.
This is what the Eurostar has to do.
FWIW the French TGV managed 515 km/h on tracks. The current limit of 300-350km/h is because of structural problems on unadapted tracks at high speeds (the train is designed to go fast on adapted tracks and slower on regular ones)
They did the tests on TGV track. In France the only trains to use these tracks are TGVs.
"You can move freely because there are no seat belts." Not that seatbelts do you much good at these kind of speeds, but a seatbelt might make some people feel safer at least.
Maybe time to reconsider seatbelts on aircarft. These trains trains are still slower than 560 mph.
Nevermind that most of us in any major city actually spend most of our time backed up in bumper to bumper traffic because EVERYONE feels they need that freedom they saw on the commercial.
Or the little matter that once you have got to your destination you need somewhere to put the car.
Because they are so much lighter than conventional trains, they should produce less damage if they crash, even though they are moving faster. Remember, kinetic energy = mass times velocity squared (E_k = mv^2, Newtonian physics). Which would you rather be hit by, a two-ton pickup truck travelling at 20 miles per hour, or a tennis ball travelling at 60 miles per hour?
Velocity makes a far greater contribution to kenetic energy than mass. Also whilst the trains themselves might be lighter this does not make the passengers and their luggage lighter.
Have you factored in the costs of roads, highway patrols, wrecks, ambulances, and the whole taxpayer-funded infrastructure that props up the federal highway system?
All too often when road and rail are compared the comparison is completly "apples and oranges".
When the US Govt. gave up what power they had over the domain system, it went to shit. Netsol messed it up, ICANN is messing it up even worse.
But simply handing it back to the US government won't do much to solve the problems. Maybe it's time to start treating DNS domains as being analagous to telephone numbers, thus have the ITU handle all TLDs.
MANY of the problems microsoft has had were due to marketing decisions that pushed usability over concerns for security.
It's questionable if they have pushed "usability" as opposed to "bells and whistles" for purely marketing reasons.
I kind of agree with you here, but I'm not sure it's about "single-user" mentality. It's more about lack of knowledge about how to setup the security in windows (nt, 2000, xp).
Dosn't really matter, since the problem is with the people who write applications to a single user paradigm. Since Windows (and the vast majority of Windows applications) are closed source there is nothing any administrator to address the problems.
What do you expect of a country where the government telecommunications monopoly is so bad that more people have cellphones than landlines?
If you don't have that much existing infrastructure then cellular networks are considerably cheaper than landline networks to install. Installing cable ie expensive, so expensive that technologies such as ISDN and ADSL were developed to make better use of existing cable infrastructure.
What do you expect of a country where everyone votes for the same party, regardless whether they messed up, promise to mess up or promise not to mess up again then mess up?
Is other words South Africa lacks political diversity. The US isn't that much better, About the only places you get lots of political diversity is Europe, especially the smaller countries.
This is all fine for the first run of a show, where Coke pays paramount to put a can of coke on the bridge of the Enterprise. Paramount gets the money, makes the placed ad, and airs show/ad on UPN. Now what happens when TNN buys the rights to reruns of old Star Trek episodes?
What happens if they have changed the logo in the mean time? Though since they have managed to wangle time travel into "Enterprise" it could probably be plausable for the stuff to actually be there.
And what happens when you place a product into a show, and the product proceeds to flop its way out of existance, or is even phased. You then end up with ads for products you can no longer buy: "Go to your neighborhood Ford dealer and test drive the new Aerostar"
It gets even riskier, not only did Pan Am not have scheduled flights to the moon in 2001 they didn't even make it into the 21st century.
How can you even bitch about product placement as a way for companies to make money? It's completely non-intrusive. Do you really get upset when you see someone on a sitcom drinking a Pepsi?
It only works with certain kinds of products, you can't really do any kind of "local add". It only works with contempoary drama, fans will spot an anachranism PDQ. You are in serious trouble if the product ceases to exist, gets renamed or the supplier goes the way of Pan Am or Enron.
And this should be a lesson: When your current business model is out of date, CHANGE THE MODEL.
This is something too many corporate entities just don't get.
Too often big corporations try to legislate profits rather then be innovative.
The likes of the RIAA and MPAA apparently see "buying" legislation to be and easier and cheaper option...
There are also commercial entities, which whilst they can't actually buy laws, appear to think that there should be laws forcing their customers to make their business work. The I-Opener and Cue:Cat: spring to mind as recent examples.
The DVD format supports the blocking of certain actions during certain segments of playback.
Open souce players will deal with this. Also it wouldn't suprise me if standalone players have undocumented options in their firmware.
When I go a concert and get a 'program', that program has a lot of ads for sponsors. Especially 'programs' like Playbill magazine that you get at classical concerts, broadway shows, etc. Is there an implicit contract that says I will read those ads?
How about bill boards? That could be very interesting with traffic cops. They could either book people for not watching where they are driving or book them for not looking at the ad.
And before we crucify MS, every single public company does it. Investors and analysts don't like crazy up and down profits. They like the earnings line chart to climb up like a ramp if possible, and since that is what they like, companies will try to give it to them.
So why don't people just go and play "fantasy stock market"? What is the point of trading real companies or even believing that the numbers that come out of New York, London, Tokyo and Hong Kong have any meaning at all...
The real bad guys here are probably the auditors, since they are supposed to find stuff like this and make sure it doesn't happen.
The Enron situation showed that this simply dosn't work anyway.
People in the know are aware that audited financial statements are just bullshit backed up by a promise that means just about nothing.
About as much as Microsoft's word to abide by the rules in future. Something they never did in the past...
Computers didn't start out free.
They did start out being used to defend freedom, however.
Don't get me wrong, they can PER-SEAT license THIER code all they want, just don't try it with OUR code.
They also had better make it clear which code is which.
Don't like the viral nature of the GPL, then write you own damn code.
Except that it's more the per-seat bit which is "viral" here.
You say that you write GPL'd software and that you have no problem with the software being charged for "under a different license."
The creator of a distribution would need to get all the copyright holders to agree. Probably possible for an application with few authors, but probably also just as easy for someone to produce a non per-seat drop in replacement. This would be virtually impossible for something like the Linux kernel.
The GPL is a contract. Accept it or not, but you can't use the code if you can't accept it.
Not quite, the GPL only covers distribution, it explicitally states that use is outside its scope.
A lot of companys are more familiar with per seat licensing.
Being familiar with something does not mean that they would choose this, if they were given a choice.
Having to pay for every copy makes it seem like it must be useful and productive software.
It also means needing to factor it the cost of administering the licences. Which could be considerable...
In a bizarre, twisted sort of way this could be the way to get people to switch away from MS!
More likely getting people to stick with Microsoft. Since either way they would still have the TCO of a per seat licence to copy with. Even if the price per seat is lower this may well not put much of a dent in the total outlay needed. But ditch the per seat licencing model and you save a lot of money.
All United Linux are saying, like Caldera did, is that the binaries will have per-seat licensing.
If these are GPL derived then they can't distribute them anyway. Since, by even making this claim they have broken the GPL and thus have no right to distribute the code at all.
They can only do this with software they have written themselves. Otherwise they are basically software pirates.
Mainly, I am writing software for the end-user. If that user CHOOSES to pay ANOTHER company a per seat license agreement, why should I interfere?
Most often it will be that user's employer who is making the purchase. The administration of per seat licence schemes is very expensive.
The problem is that your monitor, modem, etc. all expect AC power. It's easiest just to make a UPS that provides standard AC power, and plug everything in.
Modems typically require something in the region of 12V DC. It is prefectly possible to build a monitor which will run from a 12V supply. The problem with "standard AC power" is that it isn't any kind of standard. Different voltages and frequences are used throughout the world. COmbined with even more different types of connectors.