I always wondered about the phrase "the only way to win is not to play the game." Technically, isn't that the only way not to lose. In the case of Tic-Tac-Toe I suppose you don't win or lose regardless of whether you play or not assuming optimal play. However, at least with Global Thermonuclear War, playing is equivalent to losing, since there is no reasonale way to draw.
In any case, I just wanted to point out that losing and winning can be seperate binary conditions. They are mutually exclusive, but failing to be satisfy one doesn't necesarily mean that you satisfy the other.
Actually, there was an adapter that you could buy to make the Genesis backwards compatible. It isn't exactly the same thing as out of the box backwards compatibility, but I don't recall the adapter being very expensive.
The issue isn't that it is Office Depot, but that someone as done this. Basically, they have made Microsoft the gatekeeper for inclusion on their shelves. The fact that this is Office Depot doesn't make it a big deal, but this may open the door for places like Best Buy or CompUSA to follow suit. If that happenned, then it would very quickly become difficult to buy a software product that Microsoft didn't approve of.
It isn't the magnitude of the step, just the direction. I, for one, don't like where this is going.
Basically, the article says that WiFi might interfere with Radar. I don't think anybody wants that, so rather than just scare everybody, they should do some studies and find out. If it does, they will most likely restrict the locations that it is available, and if it doesn't then we should move on to more interesting problems.
Re:I can see the military's point
on
DOD vs. 802.11b
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· Score: 1
I can see the commercial now. "I didn't want to bomb anybody. I just wanted to use my laptop."
If someone has successfully patented a living organism, then the whole patent system needs to be revisited. If living organims are patentable, then every new breed of dog or cat sould be patentable, and clearly they haven't been. Why am I not patented?
I understand that some researchers spent a lot of time in creating that mouse, whether through selective breeding, gene therapy or whatever. However, what we have now is a self-replicating organism. The patent process was never intended nor should it ever be used to prevent organisms from self-replicating.
I don't know what the right solution is to encourage future developments in this field, but to say that anyone or anything owns the genetic code of an organism goes into dangerous terrority. It isn't like they created the genes, they just studied them and noted an interesting characteristic.
Your logic assumes that solar systems like ours are common. Even still you would have to consider the likelihood of life progressing to a starfaring level or at least a radio broadcast level.
However, you are overlooking the fact that signals broadcasted while travelling at warp speed retain warp characteristics for about 0.5 seconds after transmission which would allow the signal to arrive exactly 23.7 hours before the ships arrival assuming it is headed towards Earth. If it has another destination, the calculation will naturally get a little more complicated.
This is not to mention the fact that all bridges serve the same purpose. No matter what inovations happen in the art of bridge buidling, you are still trying to connect two previously unconnected pieces of land. In the case of software, the problems in some cases have not even been defined yet.
I don't think that I agree with your analogy about custom-fabricated tiny parts, but I do believe that the original analogy is very wrong. A better analogy might be building construction, because of the variability of needs and flexibility of materials.
However, in any case, I thing analogies shoud be stopped just like stopping a train (Oh, nevermind.)
First off, the motivation of a an open source developer tends to differ from that of a closed source developer. The closed-source developer is doing it at least partially for the money, so they have a great incentive to make it easy for customers to use. An open source developer generally creates software for some other reason. It is not that an open source developer wants to make things hard for people to use it, but since it isn't a goal it tends to be overlooked.
My understanding of the general flow of open source projects is that somebody writes some code for their own needs. They think it is cool, so they show it to some of their friends who may also be developers. The friends have some suggestions and pass it on to some of their friends. Soon you have a project written by developers for developers. If somebody else wants to use it, that's fine too.
Obviously, not every open source project starts this way, but the enduser generally isn't the first consideration.
You make an intersting argument, but I have to agree with Jerf on this one. If we were to take your argument to the extreme, you could start a book club, and have everyone make copies of their favorite books for everyone to read. Even though the point is to comment on the copied books that doesn't change the illegality of the initial act.
Slashdot and or members of its community may not be quilty of copyright infringement, but the person that posted it certainly is. If I understand the law correctly, Slashdot will have to suspend the account of the person that posted it and/or remove the posting when requested to by the Wall Street Journal. However, until that happens, I guess there is no choice but to enjoy.
By the way, I am not a Lawyer, but I play one on Slashdot.
Obviously Microsoft cannot compete on price or flexibility. Microsoft's main advantage seems to be its pervasiveness and it ability to run Office. Even if Office is the best productivity suite available, is it so much better that it is worth the extra cost of the software and the O/S needed to run it?
I'm just glad to see it when a customer wants something that Microsoft cannot and/or will not provide that they are willing to give Linux a chance. In this particular case, it looks like the decision wasn't made based on cost, but the cost of Linux is what made the decision possible.
It guess people will generally choose freedom especiall when it is free (as in beer!).
However this assumes that there will alsways be a real market for virtual money. As a person that doesn't play EQ I have no need for plat. Only when everyone plays on the same virtual system will such a thing occur. However, in the case of the internet the currency used is real currency. I don't see how that will change anytime soon.
I thought that under certain circumstances smart cards have already been cracked. Additionally, this would still be suceptible to program patches that cause the program to not check for authentication. I guess this should at least make software publishers feel better even if it doesn't prevent copying.
Lastly, wouldn't this make it impossible to make a backup copy of a CD. I'm pretty sure that my burner doesn't write smart cards. Perhaps, they should just give everyone two copies of every piece of software, just in case.
I just did a few calculations, and unless my usage of math is way off, travelling a distance of 15,000 feet in 60 seconds corresponds to an average speed of 250 ft/s which should be about 170 mph. I haven't calculated the G forces yet, but it sounds like no one on that water rocket would be able to jump out much less live after the ride. I do recognize that the mortality rate depends more on the accleration than the speed, but for now I'm assuming an impulse.
Civ III is many things, but I take exception to calling it a great teacher of military tactics. At best it could be a teacher of military strategy, but even that is a bit unrealistic. World War II lasted about 6 years, and there is no way to do anything approaching World War II in six turns in Civilization.
I love this game, but a military simulation it isn't.
Re:The concept of intellectual property has got to
on
Fair IP Laws?
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· Score: 1
I will agree that the current intellectural property laws can and are abused by record companies and pharmeceutical companies. However, in the abscense of IP laws, why would a company invest millions of dollars in research into a new drug, if someone can just analysis and replicate it for less. Without IP, all of the drug research would be done by the Government and Academic institutions. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I can't say that it would be an improvement.
As for the recording industry, I can't argue with you there. I don't think that we really need it anymore.
My concern is in regards to technical advances and not things of artistic merit, which I think need to and should be handled differently.
Re:The concept of intellectual property has got to
on
Fair IP Laws?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The problem with your plan is that there would be no sharing of information. If you outlaw intellectual property, then there is very little incentive to share ideas with others. That would basically mean that companies and people would hide their ideas, and much time would be wasted by having multiple companies repeatedly inventing the same things.
The idea of intellectual property laws is to encourage sharing of ideas by granting exclusivity to the creator for a limited amount of time. I believe that idea has been corrupted by corporate interests, but I don't think we should throw out the baby with the bath water.
I think the first thing that should be done is to greately reduce the amount of time that different works can be protected. Perhaps, you could have software expire after 5 years, and maybe books and movies after 10. I believe that the timeline is currently 75 years which is far longer than is necessary and appropriate.
Re:The guy sounds like a world-class sleazeball.
on
Hacking Web Services
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· Score: 1
The guy freely admitted that his was using obscurity to thwart the crackers. Of course, he isn't claiming to have a secure system.
Slashdot Mirror
I always wondered about the phrase "the only way to win is not to play the game." Technically, isn't that the only way not to lose. In the case of Tic-Tac-Toe I suppose you don't win or lose regardless of whether you play or not assuming optimal play. However, at least with Global Thermonuclear War, playing is equivalent to losing, since there is no reasonale way to draw.
In any case, I just wanted to point out that losing and winning can be seperate binary conditions. They are mutually exclusive, but failing to be satisfy one doesn't necesarily mean that you satisfy the other.
New Business Model:
1) Come up with new plausible business model.
2) Hold conferences where you teach business model.
3) Profit!
As I understand patent law, no one would be able to patent it, since it would be "known or used by others" before the invention by the applicant.
SMS: First gen.
Genesis: Not backward compatible.
Actually, there was an adapter that you could buy to make the Genesis backwards compatible. It isn't exactly the same thing as out of the box backwards compatibility, but I don't recall the adapter being very expensive.
I can't believe I'm saying this but even Microsoft isn't that expensive.
The issue isn't that it is Office Depot, but that someone as done this. Basically, they have made Microsoft the gatekeeper for inclusion on their shelves. The fact that this is Office Depot doesn't make it a big deal, but this may open the door for places like Best Buy or CompUSA to follow suit. If that happenned, then it would very quickly become difficult to buy a software product that Microsoft didn't approve of.
It isn't the magnitude of the step, just the direction. I, for one, don't like where this is going.
Basically, the article says that WiFi might interfere with Radar. I don't think anybody wants that, so rather than just scare everybody, they should do some studies and find out. If it does, they will most likely restrict the locations that it is available, and if it doesn't then we should move on to more interesting problems.
I can see the commercial now. "I didn't want to bomb anybody. I just wanted to use my laptop."
Just say no to wireless.
If someone has successfully patented a living organism, then the whole patent system needs to be revisited. If living organims are patentable, then every new breed of dog or cat sould be patentable, and clearly they haven't been. Why am I not patented?
I understand that some researchers spent a lot of time in creating that mouse, whether through selective breeding, gene therapy or whatever. However, what we have now is a self-replicating organism. The patent process was never intended nor should it ever be used to prevent organisms from self-replicating.
I don't know what the right solution is to encourage future developments in this field, but to say that anyone or anything owns the genetic code of an organism goes into dangerous terrority. It isn't like they created the genes, they just studied them and noted an interesting characteristic.
Your logic assumes that solar systems like ours are common. Even still you would have to consider the likelihood of life progressing to a starfaring level or at least a radio broadcast level.
However, you are overlooking the fact that signals broadcasted while travelling at warp speed retain warp characteristics for about 0.5 seconds after transmission which would allow the signal to arrive exactly 23.7 hours before the ships arrival assuming it is headed towards Earth. If it has another destination, the calculation will naturally get a little more complicated.
This is not to mention the fact that all bridges serve the same purpose. No matter what inovations happen in the art of bridge buidling, you are still trying to connect two previously unconnected pieces of land. In the case of software, the problems in some cases have not even been defined yet.
I don't think that I agree with your analogy about custom-fabricated tiny parts, but I do believe that the original analogy is very wrong. A better analogy might be building construction, because of the variability of needs and flexibility of materials.
However, in any case, I thing analogies shoud be stopped just like stopping a train (Oh, nevermind.)
First off, the motivation of a an open source developer tends to differ from that of a closed source developer. The closed-source developer is doing it at least partially for the money, so they have a great incentive to make it easy for customers to use. An open source developer generally creates software for some other reason. It is not that an open source developer wants to make things hard for people to use it, but since it isn't a goal it tends to be overlooked.
My understanding of the general flow of open source projects is that somebody writes some code for their own needs. They think it is cool, so they show it to some of their friends who may also be developers. The friends have some suggestions and pass it on to some of their friends. Soon you have a project written by developers for developers. If somebody else wants to use it, that's fine too.
Obviously, not every open source project starts this way, but the enduser generally isn't the first consideration.
It couldn't possibly be. Microsoft never breaks the rules, so you must have heard wrong.
You make an intersting argument, but I have to agree with Jerf on this one. If we were to take your argument to the extreme, you could start a book club, and have everyone make copies of their favorite books for everyone to read. Even though the point is to comment on the copied books that doesn't change the illegality of the initial act.
Slashdot and or members of its community may not be quilty of copyright infringement, but the person that posted it certainly is. If I understand the law correctly, Slashdot will have to suspend the account of the person that posted it and/or remove the posting when requested to by the Wall Street Journal. However, until that happens, I guess there is no choice but to enjoy.
By the way, I am not a Lawyer, but I play one on Slashdot.
Obviously Microsoft cannot compete on price or flexibility. Microsoft's main advantage seems to be its pervasiveness and it ability to run Office. Even if Office is the best productivity suite available, is it so much better that it is worth the extra cost of the software and the O/S needed to run it?
I'm just glad to see it when a customer wants something that Microsoft cannot and/or will not provide that they are willing to give Linux a chance. In this particular case, it looks like the decision wasn't made based on cost, but the cost of Linux is what made the decision possible.
It guess people will generally choose freedom especiall when it is free (as in beer!).
However this assumes that there will alsways be a real market for virtual money. As a person that doesn't play EQ I have no need for plat. Only when everyone plays on the same virtual system will such a thing occur. However, in the case of the internet the currency used is real currency. I don't see how that will change anytime soon.
I thought that under certain circumstances smart cards have already been cracked. Additionally, this would still be suceptible to program patches that cause the program to not check for authentication. I guess this should at least make software publishers feel better even if it doesn't prevent copying.
Lastly, wouldn't this make it impossible to make a backup copy of a CD. I'm pretty sure that my burner doesn't write smart cards. Perhaps, they should just give everyone two copies of every piece of software, just in case.
Actually, it is "With great reward comes great risk"
The reverse is not always true.
I just did a few calculations, and unless my usage of math is way off, travelling a distance of 15,000 feet in 60 seconds corresponds to an average speed of 250 ft/s which should be about 170 mph. I haven't calculated the G forces yet, but it sounds like no one on that water rocket would be able to jump out much less live after the ride. I do recognize that the mortality rate depends more on the accleration than the speed, but for now I'm assuming an impulse.
Civ III is many things, but I take exception to calling it a great teacher of military tactics. At best it could be a teacher of military strategy, but even that is a bit unrealistic. World War II lasted about 6 years, and there is no way to do anything approaching World War II in six turns in Civilization.
I love this game, but a military simulation it isn't.
I will agree that the current intellectural property laws can and are abused by record companies and pharmeceutical companies. However, in the abscense of IP laws, why would a company invest millions of dollars in research into a new drug, if someone can just analysis and replicate it for less. Without IP, all of the drug research would be done by the Government and Academic institutions. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I can't say that it would be an improvement.
As for the recording industry, I can't argue with you there. I don't think that we really need it anymore.
My concern is in regards to technical advances and not things of artistic merit, which I think need to and should be handled differently.
The problem with your plan is that there would be no sharing of information. If you outlaw intellectual property, then there is very little incentive to share ideas with others. That would basically mean that companies and people would hide their ideas, and much time would be wasted by having multiple companies repeatedly inventing the same things.
The idea of intellectual property laws is to encourage sharing of ideas by granting exclusivity to the creator for a limited amount of time. I believe that idea has been corrupted by corporate interests, but I don't think we should throw out the baby with the bath water.
I think the first thing that should be done is to greately reduce the amount of time that different works can be protected. Perhaps, you could have software expire after 5 years, and maybe books and movies after 10. I believe that the timeline is currently 75 years which is far longer than is necessary and appropriate.
The guy freely admitted that his was using obscurity to thwart the crackers. Of course, he isn't claiming to have a secure system.