...might be the best description of the Clinton-haters who imagine their fantasies about a top-level plot against Microsoft have some basis in fact.
Before I go further, a little flame-proofing: Do not assume I want to break up MS just because I'm doing a little debunking of pro-Microsoft propaganda. I think MS is guilty as the judge found them. I think they know they are going to lose. And I think they are stalling. But I do not support radical remedies because I think such will delay the decision and its implementation. Open the APIs (with solid methods of monitoring) and I think the rest will follow. (This remedy has the advantage of being immune to any opposition from Redmond because they have claimed under oath that the APIs are open.)
I firmly beleive that this is a little payback to M$ for not being a Gore or H. Clinton supporter in the upcoming campains.
Politicians do not have clean hands on this one, but this statement is so demonstrably false I cannot believe the "insightful" rating it's getting (unless the insight is the need for anti-psychotic drugs for the extreme ends of our political spectrum).
The DoJ investigation of MS dates back to the Bush administration. That administration was very careful not to stick its nose into the Anti-Trust Division. This was primarily driven not by an interest in justice, but because it made it easier to raise money. If you're not involved in those decisions, it's easier to ask for money from corporations. On the one hand, they can say, "Hey, I'm not involved in the investigation against them, so I can ask for the money without a conflict of interest." On the other hand, you can say, "Hey, I'm not the guy who's persecuting you, so you can give me lots of soft money."
This is not to imply that the Clinton administration is any better. They wholeheartedly adopted the same strategy: No pressure on the DoJ (pro or con) and ask corps on both sides of the issue to donate as much as possible.
The two Bills have long traveled in the same circles (Hillary, too) and recently joined in a big party in DC, promoting both of their political agendas. Gore has long enjoyed support from Redmond and is (no doubt, given his leadership style) mighty nervous about the DoJ case. Hillary has MS money in her treasure chest as well.
Shortly after the bulldog Reno was sicked on M$ and a modified special investigator statute was passed to look into the anti-trust issues Netscape brought up.
Reno's interest has always been in criminal justice, not anti-trust law. She has had little or no involvement in the Anti-Trust Division beyond showing up at press conferences and expressing confidence in Joel Klein. And that's the way Clinton wants it. He knows as well as anyone what happened when the tobacco industry and the gun lobby switched from supporting both parties to concentrating on the GOP.
This kind of conspiracy theory ranks up there with those who feel that two Republican special prosecutors who cleared Hillary in the Vince Foster affair were somehow bought off by the Clintons. (Yeah, right. That Ken Starr, he was just a closet Clinton-lover!)
And the comment about "modified special prosecutor statute" just goes a long way to demonstrating just how far out of touch with reality these Clinton-haters really are. Sure, using methods of making the Anti-Trust Division independent of political pressure should always be interpreted as evidence that all Anti-Trust decisions are politically based.
Gates and M$ formally have NEVER backed either party.
This is either demonstrably false or meaningless.
If by "formally backed" you mean that they only support one party and have formally announced such support, of course it is true. Of course, it is equally true of any number of competitors. One does not have to register for a political party to vote in Washington state elections, and very few people do.
If by "formally backed" you mean they don't make political contributions, this is easy to disprove. They have always made political contributions at some level. For a long time, they were famous for not making the kind of big contributions usually associated with American business. That changed about four years ago, and they have made many contributions to candidates of both parties since that time. This is hardly what most of us mean by "NEVER" backing political parties.
Bill Gates has made a lot of money taking advantage of people who made their business decisions based on a view of reality distorted by political ideology rather than sound assessments of what is best for their companies. As much as he may appreciate the propaganda value of 348's comments, I suspect he can appreciate the irony of support from a fan whose view of reality is distorted by their political views in just the same way.
It is likely that many politicians on both sides of the fence would like to meddle in Anti-Trust to guarantee campaign contributions. But most are probably afraid the staff there would react very strongly against any such attempt. Just imagine Joel Klein resigning at a press conference where he denounces Gore for interfering. Al and W don't have the guts to face that firestorm.
I, too, learned from pertoot and the leopard book
on
Object Oriented Perl
·
· Score: 3
And I got a lot from this book.
First off, let me get my biases set forward: I believe strongly in OOP. I believe strongly in OO Perl. And I believe strongly in this book, in Damian Conway (who is an excellent educator from Australia), and in the approach he takes to OOP in this book. I believe that OO is an evolving discipline which changes every year. I believe that many OO implementations do a better job of reproducing a snapshot of where OO theory may have been at any one point.
But it is clear to me that Perl's there-is-more-than-one-way-to-do-it (TIMTOWTDI) philosophy does a better job of presenting a dynamic model for implementing any level of OOP that you would like to use for a particular problem. This means you can use it to do true OO programming no matter what you define as "object oriented." This means it can do what you want to do today and what you may not yet know you will want to do tomorrow.
Perl does not force you to do any of it, but it allows you to do whatever you would like. You may have to do some of the work to set it up, but that's the price you pay for the flexibility it allows. Anyone who tells you Perl cannot implement some important aspect of OO probably is doing nothing more than admitting their own ignorance.
Those biases out of the way, the question is: Does this book take it beyond perltoot and "Advanced Perl Programming" (the leopard book)?
The answer is "yes," but it may not be in the way you are looking for. This book is written very much in the spirit of TIMTOWTDI. Each of the chapters lays out all the ways one might approach the subject of the chapter. This gives a variety of solutions to every problem and a very thorough understanding of every issue. If you want an OO system that just tells you the one way you have to do it, then this is not the book for you. But then, Perl is probably not the language for you, either.
Most of the chapters present their solutions in the form of a kind of limited metaclass (essentially abstract classes from which your classes can inherit to acquire the desired functionality). Those familiar with many of the modules on CPAN will recognize this approach.
In general, I found this book to be exactly what I needed to go beyond pertoot and the leopard book. But I would emphasize that I almost never use Damian's code exactly as he presents it. On the other hand, since I have read this book, I have never written a base class which was not based on what I learned from Conway.
It is clear that Damian knows a great deal about OO theory and teaches it well. (This book is also every bit as funny as the camel book.)
The multimethods chapter is a definitive exploration of multiple inheritance. I never use multiple inheritance, but if I ever try it will be based on the CPAN module he explains in this chapter. As has been pointed out elsewhere, this information can be obtained from CPAN as well (but you lose the excellent explanation available here) or from the paper Conway read at last year's Perl Conference.
Summing up: If you understand what I mean by a dynamic model of OO and want to try it, Perl is a good place to do it. If you want to try but are not sure how to implement it, this is the book for you. If you want a static model of OO that holds your hand and makes you behave, then OO Perl is not for you and you should not waste your money on this book.
Sounds like an inexact definition of the Win32 API to me. If this is in fact what they mean, it raises a number of very interesting questions:
If they only release those parts of the API used by "independent software companies," does that mean the secret APIs stay secret? After all, they are only used by Microsoft. (Well, there may be some others who get leaks, but they would be more accurately described as "painfully dependent software companies.")
But, if they are saying they will only publish the APIs (which they claim they already publish), how can that be considered a punishment or a remedy? What if they just republished what they have released in the past? Are they claiming that would be a remedy?
On the other hand, if they publish all the API, including the hidden parts which have only been used by their own applications division before, that would be a significant remedy. It would not only allow fairer competition in the apps arena, but it would also make it possible to write a DRDOS-style competing operating system which ran everything Windows can run. Are they proposing this?
If they are, does the fact that they are proposing this mean they are admitting they've been lying all these years? Does it undermine their defense? Does it preclude an appeal issue? Does it leave them open to lawsuits by their partners (who have long suspected their assurances were fraudulent)?
Is everybody supposed to accept their promise that the API being released is complete? Are they going to allow impartial experts to look at the source code to verify they're releasing everything? Will that code compile to something which actually matches the binaries they sell? Who tests it?
I have to admit that I believe the Win32 API is the key to any remedy. Source code would be a great source of entertainment, but the API is the key. They only reason we really need the source is to verify the API. (OK, it would help from a security standpoint, too. But that's not really related to the charges against them.)
But we need a way to be sure the API is valid. An independent review of the source code seems to me to be the best method to do this. Bob Lewis has suggested an alternative (putting a bounty on finding an undocumented API with MS paying the bounty).
I can't help wondering whether Microsoft has been lying for so long that they're caught in a place where they can't say anything new without contradicting something they've said in the past. I would hate to be the lawyers trying to suggest a real remedy without stomping on the testimony of one of the people paying my salary. ("Let's see, which one of you wants to go to jail for perjury?")
...an old man, read this little digression into history:
The fundamental question here is: Who owns my company's data? My company or the company which wrote the program which I use to store it? I think few companies would answer that by saying their vendor owns it. (And any who do should have a stockholder revolution tomorrow to throw the idiots out.)
Why then do we allow any company to encrypt our data in proprietary data formats? (It is encryption, even if it is poor encryption which has been broken many times.)
The answer lies in the history of programming: There was a time when many of the developments in computer technology came in the area of file formats. When a company implemented a great new feature, part of the research that went into developing the feature was a file format. And coders, justifiably proud of their research, made those file formats proprietary to help protect their original research.
That day is probably long past. Most proprietary formats still in use today are far inferior technologically to XML. The only purpose they still serve is the form of limited encryption they offer which allows vendors to hold customers' data hostage.
This is wrong. Coders should admit it's wrong. It's wrong whether it's done by Microsoft or some independent programmer working from his basement. The data belongs to the customer. If you can't keep the customer by satisfying his needs, you should not be allowed to keep him by deliberately making it more expensive to change vendors.
Nor should you be allowed to extort more money for upgrades by creating non-compatible formats.
What we really need is a voluntary set of standards for programmers. Such a standard should emphasize the rights of the user, including the right to own the file format for all data storage.
I would suggest a few additional standards as well. Although I prefer open-source and non-proprietary programs, I don't think that should be a part of the standard. But there should be a guarantee that any programmer subscribing to the standard should release all source code at any point where he or his company is no longer going to support it.
I'm sure other standards could be adopted. If we voluntarily subscribed to such a standard, it would make it much harder for any company which did not subscribe to justify its abuses of the user.
The very first Word-for-Windows file format was a step backwards technologically. And the science of file formats has progressed considerably in the years since then. But Microsoft's file formats have not improved. (One could even argue they have taken some giant steps backwards, although some of those backward leaps were probably originally intended to improve things.)
Can you imagine what MS representatives might say if they were asked, "Why don't you subscribe to the Code of Good Programming Practices?"? They certainly couldn't argue their file formats are better technologically.
And then comes the inevitable follow-up question, "Don't you believe that your customers' data is owned by them?"
If they answered "no," any corporate executive who bought a Microsoft product might become civilly liable to a shareholder lawsuit on the grounds that such a purchase put the company at risk for future extortion. If such a risk was not mentioned in quarterly reports, a class-action lawsuit might be possible.
Until coders adopt the kind of standards of professional behavior common in other professions (CPAs, financial advisers, doctors, even CLOWNS, for goodness sake!), they are not going to be successful in convincing consumers that they should not buy products from programmers who do not abide by those standards. If we cannot articulate the standards which we feel Microsoft is violating, how can we expect the pointy-haired bosses to figure it out on their own?
Thanks for the informative post, but...
on
Fighting UCITA
·
· Score: 1
...isn't the idea of calling something "Uniform" and adopting a national standard to follow the standard and expect that every state which adopts the uniform standard use the same meaning for "UCITA"? That way companies can know they are dealing with the same law everywhere.
If Maryland adopted a better version and then gave it a name which implies it follows a bad standard, doesn't that leave them vulnerable to justifiable confusion by those who might assume they were actually adopting the standard they were pretending to adopt?
How about a "UCITA-free" sticker on software found to be free of absurd legal incumbrances?
The statement "[s]he had a great philosophy that doesn't deserve to be reduced to a stereotype" can't help but remind me of the favorite line of so many of Ayn Rand's followers:
"She's not much of a novelist, but she's a great philosopher."
The bizarre thing about about these common impressions is that they are exactly wrong. Rand was a brilliant novelist whose novels could capture people's imaginations. And that very success would translate into a suspension of all disbelief among those who wanted to hear what she was saying. The result was they declared her great as a philosopher.
In fact, her philosophy was primitive and ill-informed (however much it might have struck a chord with libertarians). She thought she was a kind of neo-Aristotlean, but she did not understand Aristotle.
She was unable to defend her philosophical ideas outside of the group of sychophants she gathered around her. And, strangely enough, that group of sychophants was more like the villains of her novels than the heroes.
The Dagny Taggarts of the world (and there really are people like that) do not need to hang out with "philosophers" who tell them they are important to the advancement of culture. The James Taggarts do. "You are rich because you are good," is a reassuring dictum to them because they have good reason to doubt they are good.
So, I suppose we should not be surprised to find the majority of her circle were sychophants of the James-Taggart ilk. (Note that there were exceptions who were able to break free of the very strict regulation she put on thought: Alan Greenspan certainly has been willing to act differently than she might have prescribed when the evidence indicates she was wrong; and her husband has said some very interesting things since he left the fold about how unhappy the whole group was in spite of their hedonistic outlook.)
She called her philosophy "objectivism," but it might be best paraphrased as, "The world is as I perceive it to be." And, strangely enough, her books, which were strengthened by objectivism's influence, are the best evidence against its principles.
Take Dagny Taggart, the heroine of "Atlas Shrugged" (which can still serve as an inspiration to geeks who want more political power, even though it may be flawed in some ways philosophically). At the beginning of the novel, she is depressed. The railroad she runs is beset by problems. All of the good employees have quit (usually leaving unstaffed trains full of passengers stranded in the middle of nowhere). The only employees left are worthless slackers who see no value in hard work. Et cetera, et cetera.
Later in the book, she is in a manic period. She has just built a new line to the rich resources of Colorado out of Reardon steel. Things are going great, and all is right with the world.
Suddenly, the evil union bosses tell her she cannot force their members run trains over the "unsafe and untested" Reardon steel (especially the bridges) even though the steel is better than any previously-known alloy. Because she is no longer depressed, Dagny defiantly tells them she will only use volunteers. And, if she gets no volunteers, then by God she'll drive the first train herself.
So, she puts out a call for a volunteer train crew. Volunteers are supposed to show up in the lobby of her office building. When she gets there, she is met by a cheering mob. Most of her employees have showed up to volunteer. In fact, every qualified employee who is not out running trains at that very moment is there. Indeed, all those out running trains have sent messages they want to participate as well.
Wait a minute! What happened to all those lazy slackers? Where are the union members who had no work ethic? What about the engineers whose union card guaranteed them the only job they could get?
I don't think it should be automatic that such sleazy gimmicks be over-ridden. I'd just like the option, especially when you're talking about a resource-hog like a browser (I hope Mozilla won't be), to not have a web link open a new process or new window or a new browser or whatever.
I think it's safe to assume that someone who is editing advanced options like do-not-open-new-window-for-links would know what the back button was. If the designers don't think so, they could always have a little pop-up warning box ("Do not activate this unless you know how to use the back button or alt-arrow-left -- [C]ancel, [O]K").
And I'm not sure any of the lame sites that use this have any thought of making it easier on newbies. They just want to take advantage of them.
And you know what? I don't think it works. I think this kind of gimmick offends (or at least bothers) newbies as much as anybody.
Further, I suspect this part of the protocol was originally intended for some useful purpose where spawning new browsers would actually be a good thing. But I've never seen such a purpose implemented. If someone has actually come up with a good and valid reason for it, this would be a much better reason not to implement my idea than the fact that there are people who don't know what a back button does.
...to be passed from session to session. This doesn't seem much to ask. New windows should be able to inherit something.
It would also be nice to be able to over-ride these lame sites which open new windows whenever they link to another site. It's such a stupid way to keep you on their site. We all know how to go back to their site if we want to. It's almost like they're assuming we would never want to.
Another thing I've always thought would be cool would be a "sideways" back function. I frequently find myself going back and forth between two branches of a web-site structure. As I get further out on the two branches, I have to use more and more alt-(or meta-)left-arrow-key clicks to get back to the point where they diverged.
Alt-up-arrow and alt-down-arrow could be used to go more quickly between them (if the history was stored as something more than a linear sequence of pages).
I agree with all the analysis here, especially as regards the interests of the stockholders. And we should include Microsoft employees, who might actually be the ones who would benefit most from any breakup. (Can you imagine writing code for a company whose lawyers get to tell you that "integration" has to mean something that violates every rule of modularity and encapsulation?)
However, there is a small group of people for whom a breakup is not in their best interests: the lawyers, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, the DoJ, and Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson.
The Microsoft lawyers who specialize in anti-trust have little to gain from a breakup, which would basically put them out of work. MS would not need them anymore, and who would choose them after the spectacular botch-job they did on this case? (But, hey, have a little sympathy. How would you like the job of coaching Bill before his testimony? It would probably be obvious to you how badly he was going to do. But how do you tell a guy who's worth $70 billion that he's screwing up?)
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer would profit monetarily from a breakup. But that is probably not their greatest interest at this point. To them, a breakup would take The World's Biggest Toy(TM) away from them. (For those of you who have trouble with this point, just imagine what you could do with MS, its programming staff, and the $10 billion in cash they have lying around if you had control of the company.)
For the DoJ and the state attorneys general, a breakup would be a monumental roll of the dice. If it worked, fine. But, if the economy goes south (and from where we are almost any change would be for the worse), if the Baby Bills do poorly, if the tech sector suffers, the DoJ could get blamed. It doesn't matter that MS stock has often been overvalued (according Gates, at least). It doesn't matter that their growth potential has often been overestimated by Wall Street. It doesn't matter that there have been some aspects of their business practices that will prove difficult to sustain no matter what. The general population will believe it was DoJ's fault if MS or the economy tanks. Too big a risk.
And the judge runs all the same set of risks as the DoJ. He has carefully crafted this trial to make his decision appeal-proof. He's not about to set himself up to be overturned by adopting an extreme remedy.
In case you hadn't noticed, all of the people who have anything to do with deciding what the remedy will be just happen to be the only people in the world who wouldn't benefit from a breakup. So, don't expect it to happen.
Fortunately, there is one other small group who will benefit by non-structural remedies: Linux users.
...or prisoners of a static model for Object Orientation?
The beautiful thing about Perl's approach to object orientedness is it doesn't assume any specific definition of OO. You can use whichever features of OO appropriate to the task at hand.
Since OO theory is a developing construct, many other interpretations of OO theory take a snapshot of current OO theory at some given point. But then, as the theory evolves, the static model is left behind. The compiler must then be updated, thrown out, or rewritten.
Because Perl as a language is based on the idea that "there is more than one way to do it," it was only natural that it adopt a dynamic model which allows new developments to be integrated into the OO theory it uses at a later date.
Somebody will get it right. I don't know if it will be Cosource, SourceForge, Asynchro-whatever or some other worthy project.
The tough part is, of course, setting the share value. But I suspect that's not as hard as you might expect. Some kind of reverse auction set-up might do the trick. And even a kind of arbitrary project-manager-god would result in better code than counting bytes or lines of code.
Ultimately, there are two political hurdles which may prove the real stumbling block: history and open-source leadership.
History will work against it because the whole thing works much like a multi-level marketing scheme. While not all of these things are crooked, crooks like 'em well enough to leave a bad taste in many mouths. And most Ponzi schemes and chain letters use some similar methodologies.
And you can expect most of the leadership of the open-source movement to oppose this. I'm not sure exactly why, but they seem to have a kind of knee-jerk reaction about this kind of thing. I once proposed something vaguely like this ("vague" both in the sense that it wasn't exactly the same and in the sense that I had not really thought it through and was not proposing anything this concrete) to Eric Raymond. He didn't even let me finish my sentence before he said something like, "I think I know where you're going, and I don't like it...."
He had some of the same practical objections which have been discussed in this discussion, but I got the impression he had a more visceral reaction against it which he didn't really put into words.
I agree with this analysis from an economic angle (not necessarily from all of the technical angles, like legacy issues).
It is clear to me that a broken-apart Microsoft would no longer have any motivation for some of the bad programming the lawyers and executives have forced on their programmers. I mean, integration may be good, but the form of integration used with IE and Win98 was a violation of every principle of good programming since the term "modularization" was coined.
It's got to be a nightmare to program in that environment.
MS programmers would benefit. MS customers would benefit. MS stockholders would benefit.
But it will never happen because this company is not being run for any of those people.
It is being run by Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. A breakup would mean they don't control it all any more. It would take away the biggest toy in the world from two of the most powerful men in the company.
And it's really hard to tell guys that rich they're wrong.
...is that an operating system ought to cost about a dollar.
(Actually, I think the correct price ought to be between $1.60 and $7, but I suspect they are engaging in dumping in order to obtain marketshare in the case of WinCE.)
Why then can they charge $85 to $200 for Win98SE? Even more for NT? Still more for W2K? And still charge you more for a server edition? And tag on more charges for IIS, etc, etc?
The answer is simple: WinCE is in a competitive market. The difference in price is the overcharge of the monopolist. I wonder if DoJ is paying attention to this.
Remember Apollo 13? The director actually went through the trouble of using NASA's "Vomit Comet" aircraft in order to determine how things REALLY behave in microgravity. As I recall, didn't they actulally [sic] FILM a significant protion [sic] of Apollo 13 IN the "Vomit Comet"???
If the pas-de-deux in "Mission to Mars" was not filmed in the Vomit Comet, then it was a truly incredible piece of filmmaking, worthy of extra recognition for the brilliance of its special effects, especially in the use of those effects to portray science accurately.
This film can be appreciated for its accuracy. Some people just CHOSE not to.
...(that "crap like this" is the cause of scientific ignorance), but I would hope you are willing to entertain other ideas.
Not to do so would be a grave violence against science itself. I would suggest that a better explanation of why people are ignorant of how their world works: Those who (inaccurately) attack those they deem unscientific with rants like this review (please note that I am not including Katz in this, who was much more reasonable).
Instead of using public interest in things like the face on Mars to interest people in things scientific, we use them to ridicule people and call them "ignorant." And, indeed, there is nothing in this film which implies the face in the film is the one which got so much attention from the pseudo-scientists. They don't even look that much alike. And the one in the film is buried at the beginning of the movie.
Which raises an interesting question: If we expect the movie to be scientifically accurate, shouldn't we expect criticisms of its accuracy to be accurate themselves?
...even if you don't mind the scientific innacuracies [sic]...
I never said I didn't mind the inaccuracies. I said I found them minor compared to the inaccuracies in the reviews and in the ensuing discussion. Please don't put words in my mouth.
Finally, I would like to comment on the final line of this post:
Wasn't this movie done before, and a hell of a lot better, in 2010?
This seems to me a much more interesting comment than most of the reviews and the discussion. Much of the film is very derivative: of "2001," of "Apollo 13," of "Touch of Evil," of "Contact" and the list goes on.
I enjoyed this movie a lot more than some of its predecessors. I think a lot of what it incorporated from "Apollo 13" made the "2001" aspects of it much more accurate. I believe it is the movie Kubrick was trying to make.
I would be very interested in knowing why you feel one way while I feel another way. But I doubt we could shed much light on it by making inaccurate statements about the movie or calling those who disagree with us "ignorant."
but I could do a better job a showing rotation is possible than these pseudo-physicists could at showing it couldn't be done. Most of them don't even mention Coriolis effects in their discussion of the physics of a moving model inside a rotating space ship.
Then please do so.
Air friction will very quickly drag each individual M&M into the same inertial frame as the air itself, which had long since adjusted to the normal rotation. (Let's forget about random variations in the airflow caused by ventilation that absolutely must keep the air moving at all times, or cause harmful-or-deadly dust pockets to form; even if the model was connected by something, which people seem to imply it wasn't, the entire model would quickly migrate to other locations.)
I haven't seen the movie but I assume it actually held together, despite a lack of glue. Instead, even if the astronaut could magically (or through extensive practice) nullify the rotation of the spacecraft, in a matter of seconds, the M&M would take the velocity of the air around it and begin hiking back to the outside. The only effect of Coriolis "force" (which isn't, of course) would be if you wanted to compute where it was going to land.
Oh, great. We got a guy challenging me who's not only not seen the movie, he's not read the pseudo-physicists who I was criticizing (who didn't talk about air currents because they at least saw the movie before blasting it and they know the M&Ms were perturbed by air currents and that the rotating model wasn't shown for long enough to require long-term stability and that the astronauts did have a long time to practice).
OK, here's my explanation:
What the pseudo-physicists assumed (despite considerable evidence to the contrary) was that the entire ship was in weightlessness. In fact, as clearly shown in the movie, the only part of the ship which had very low gravity (allowing the M&M hobby to be possible) was the central axis.
Since even the central axis was rotating (and the astronauts were stationary with respect to the walls), any zero-g DNA model not only COULD be rotating, it would HAVE TO BE rotating. The next time I go to see the movie (it was THAT enjoyable) I will time the rotation to see if it matched the rotation of the ship.
Now, admittedly it did not look like this model was oriented along the axis of the ship. But there was nothing in the scene which would have precluded such an orientation.
As for the comments about air friction, the model was rotating slow enough (as it would have to be) that the amount of perturbation caused by air currents would certainly be close to that observed in the movie.
I never said anything about "Coriolis forces." I said "Coriolis effects" which would be significant in a rotating frame of reference like the one depicted and which would have been important considerations based on some of the assumptions which have been made in the pseudo-science rants in this review and in the discussion which followed.
This was a science-fiction movie about science and that's an accomplishment in itself.
Perhaps, but my professors don't think much of that argument. "Well, prof, I did the assignment! Even though it completely failed to meet any of the requirements, I don't think I deserve this flunking grade!"
And your professors would not only have received failing grades but they probably would have been fired if they flunked you without reading your assignment. The point is there was a lot of science and a lot of it was pretty good. Some of it was pretty subtle, too -- like the discussion of the "groups of three" in the discussion of the alien signal, which was never explained, but made sense scientifically. (This subtlety was probably why these pseudo-physicists didn't notice.)
There were some flaws in the science, but the fact that so many people in this discussion (including the reviewers) got more wrong than the movie suggests to me that it wasn't such a bad job. I would quote Teddy Roosevelt on "daring greatly" but I suspect it would be lost on this audience.
This movie sucked me right in, and I enjoyed it (in spite of the self-indulgent tracking shot it opens with). So shoot me.
Accurate != enjoyable, which too many geeks forget aometimes [sic]. But enjoyable != accurate, and for that matter, enjoyable != good. If you want to enjoy it, fine. But it doesn't make it accurate or good.
I never said enjoyable = accurate. I said the movie got many things right which have never been done before in a movie, and that many of the criticisms of its accuracy in this discussion were more inaccurate than the movie itself. And I said I enjoyed the movie even though I was expecting bad science to ruin it for me. I was wrong. But at least I didn't publish me pre-judgment as an indictment of the movie and those who liked it.
The zero-g pas-de-deux was brilliant, and there were a number of things I doubt any of these griping geeks could have done as well in a million years.
Of all the demographics I can think of to say that about, geeks, the culture where prestige is measured in accomplishments, are the last I would say that about.
When geek culture is at its best, prestige is in fact measured in accomplishments. When it is measured in the kind of phony one-up-manship exemplified by this review and the ensuing discussion, it is nothing more than a justification for geeks' reputation for a lack of social skills.
...with no problems in the science, I would be in my backyard building it.
If I came up with an interstellar starship design with just a few flaws in the design, I would write a sci-fi story and gloss over the holes in my science.
The idea of science-fiction is not to do science. It is to present interesting ideas. This film does many things right, including a very good depiction of space flight and some very accurate depictions of how really good astronauts react in emergency situations.
Honestly, I went to this movie fully expecting the science to stink. The trailer had been edited to make it look like they exclaimed, "That's human DNA!" after seeing a tiny fragment of a computer-generated model.
I was surprised at how much they got right, not how much they got wrong. This was a science-fiction movie about science and that's an accomplishment in itself.
This movie sucked me right in, and I enjoyed it (in spite of the self-indulgent tracking shot it opens with). So shoot me.
It's discussions like this that give geeks a bad name. The idea of constructing a model of DNA in zero-gravity is much better evidence of a creative and functioning brain than these inane complaints. I admit I was put off by the fact that it was rotating, but I could do a better job a showing rotation is possible than these pseudo-physicists could at showing it couldn't be done. Most of them don't even mention Coriolis effects in their discussion of the physics of a moving model inside a rotating space ship.
This kind of review is the geek equivalent of the football star who picks on the kid with tape on his glasses. If the athlete wins, nobody's impressed. And, if the physicists find a mistake in a sci-fi movie, nobody's gonna say, "Wow, those physicists know more science than those Hollywood writers!"
But, if the dorky guy with glasses knows judo and gets more right in the fight than the football-head, it is truly embarassing. And that's what's happened this case. This movie has some errors, sure. But nothing near like the number of mistakes made in these threads.
"Mission to Mars" gets many things right which have never been done well in any movie. It has the best orrery I've ever seen. When the asteroid hits Mars I was genuinely impressed (and surprised). The zero-g pas-de-deux was brilliant, and there were a number of things I doubt any of these griping geeks could have done as well in a million years. Of all the attempts to show how first-contact communication could be accomplished quickly, this is the only one I've ever seen that rang true.
The first "way" ATKeiper uses to criticize Jon is as follows:
... unlike ordinary radio and TV broadcasters, Webcasters must pay royalties to record companies. Webcasts are limited to three songs from one album in any three-hour period.
This is false. Radio stations - like TV stations, cable networks, etc. - need to get licenses from performing rights groups like ASCAP or BMI. Even businesses and restaurants larger than a certain size (2000 sq. ft. and 3750 sq. ft., respectively) need to get licenses. Those licenses are not free - they are bought for millions of dollars sometimes, and the money from their purchase goes to the songwriters and performers.
This sounds good, but unfortunately Katz is factually correct. And ATKeiper is factually incorrect (although he is close to getting it right).
Ordinary radio stations etc. do not have to pay money to record companies for playing their songs. They have to pay it to ASCAP and BMI, who pass it on to the copyright owners (who are the songwriters, not the performers). Paul Anka has made more from "My Way" than Frank Sinatra because he wrote it.
This is an important distinction, and (I believe) the one Katz was trying to make. This is the first time an entity not involved in the creative process has been granted copyright interests simply for being the distributor of the intellectual property. Note that the performer (who is probably the one the listener is tuning in to hear) is getting the short end of the stick on both the old radio rules and the new Internet radio rules.
So, the net effect of the DMCA is to restrict artists' ability to get their stuff played on the web (it can't be done without paying their record company). This (I believe) is the point Katz was making in the sentence criticized in point 2 of ATKeiper's rant. And, once again, Katz is factually correct and ATKeiper just doesn't get it, however much his view of the world may be popular with some of the pseudo-Libertarians on/. who don't mind any restrictions to their freedoms as long as they are restrictions which come from corporations rather than governments. In this case, they even seem to be willing to accept the restrictions coming from governments as long as government is acting on behalf of those corporations.
I'm not going to comment on the rest of the items in this rant because they are more opinion-oriented than fact-oriented. But I don't mean to imply by not commenting that I agree with the opinions either.
Does anybody know who this organization he's promoting is? The TESOC?
First we had marketing FUD. Then we had investor-targeted FUD. Then we had legal FUD. Then we had spin-the-results-of-the-failure-of-legal-FUD FUD. Why should we be surprised to have make-unlikely-statements-off-camera-then-deny-it-o n-camera FUD?
Bloomberg is a generally reliable source. And it is a pretty tech-savvy company.
Microsoft is an unreliable source. And Bill Gates is a very bad liar (probably the real reason he turned those duties over to Ballmer).
From the above, one might conclude that MS really is willing to open source (in the sense of letting people see it, not in the GPL sense), except for one fact: It's so unlikely.
Why is it unlikely? Well, consider this: There are four possible settlements (which can, of course, be combined into a large number of permutations) --
Big fines and complex agreements to behave
Breaking up the company
Publishing ALL Windows APIs
Opening up the source
From history we know Microsoft probably prefers the first. The Justice Department has been burned this way before and may be reluctant to accept it easily.
Of the remaining choices, breaking up the company results in massive gains for stockholders. The final two choices are probably the death knell for Windows (and, therefore, MS).
If you discount the Br'er Rabbit strategy ("Please don't throw me into the breakup briar patch, Mr. DoJ"), it seems unlikely that Microsoft would choose the paths most likely to provide outside competition for the Windows-compatible OS market when the breakup path allows stockholders to continue to own the monopoly, while introducing the benefits of competition between the Baby Bills.
The only person who might prefer open source to the breakup scenario might be Bill himself. If you look at MS as a big playground for Gates, breakup would mean going back to a much smaller playpen. You don't suppose he could have let his real hopes slip to Bloomberg's reporter, then gone back to Ballmer and lied about it, do you?.
We should not forget that there was 100 years between Columbus and the British colonies in America. At first the explorers were all trying to find a way to discover riches (spices, cities of gold, whatever) which could be brought back to Europe.
But the real money was made when people began to realize they could go to America and create wealth to be enjoyed there.
The same logic applies in space: As long as we try to justify space exploration by wealth we can transmit back to earth, we will continue to be defeated by the fact that we live at the bottom of a very deep gravity well. And trying to find wealth at the bottom of another gravity well like Mars only doubles the difficulty.
Energy is free in space, and transportation is free as long as you avoid those pores on the face of the space-time continuum we call "planets." So the only question is whether we can find the elements we need out there in the asteroid belt (or the rings of the gas giants, since transport is free).
And the elements we need basically come down to water (which includes oxygen, of course) and a little carbon. There's lots of iron out there, so we can probably avoid using this inconvenient aluminum stuff.
Perhaps it's unfortunate that Americans were the first to discover the means to get to space. They don't want to go there until they build something there that's better than modern America. And, let's face it, the United States is a pretty nice place to live.
Too bad the Haitians don't have space travel. They'd probably be heading out all the time. You think the Challenger disaster shows a risk in spaceflight? Try crossing an ocean in an inner tube sometime.
Many of those who are commenting on the decision are saying the judge was wrong when he said DeCSS is "only" for piracy. But he didn't say that (any more than a vast majority of the mirror sites said it was for piracy, as claimed by Jack Valente in his dishonest piece in the L.A. Times).
Look at what he ruled and address that:
"In October 1999, an individual or group, believed to be in Europe, managed to 'hack' CSS2 and began offering, via the Internet, a software utility called DeCSS that enables users to break the CSS copy protection system and hence to make and distribute digital copies of DVD movies."
That isn't true. And we can prove it. Take a Linux box to court with a DVD player on it. Demonstrate that DeCSS allows the judge to play a legally purchased DVD (note that this step is not needed to prove the judge's statement is false). Then ask any expert witness the MPAA brings in to use it to copy a DVD. They will not be able to do so.
This is all that is needed to show Kaplan's statement is false. We do not need to add the word "only" to the ruling. And we should be careful not to do so because some will assume we need to do so in order to make our point.
I can't help but notice many of the suggestions are particularly good books, but not the best for a teenager to start with. I love Orson Scott Card's "Saints," but I wouldn't recommend it to a young woman without knowing how she would take the tougher scenes. (Although when the book was first sold, it was marketed under the title "Woman of Destiny" in the historical-romance genre. I have no idea how the teenage girls who buy most of those books reacted to some of the more extreme scenes in the book.)
From the classics, look to the Winston juveniles from the '50s. This was a series which was written by the top sci-fi writers of the day for teenagers, often using teens as heroes and heroines and often dealing with issues of interest to the younger set.
One of the main purposes of Winston as a publisher was to produce hardback science-fiction for libraries. So, you can still find many of these in public libraries.
Almost all of them are good, but not all are being reprinted. Most of Heinlein volumes from the series are still in print: "Tunnel in the Sky," "Have Spacesuit Will Travel," "Podkayne of Mars," "Red Planet," "The Star Beast," "Starman Jones," "The Rolling Stones," "Space Cadet," and "Rocket Ship Galileo."
"Pstalemate" by Lester Del Rey is currently out of print, but has been reprinted from time to time. Likewise, "Rite of Passage" has been reprinted, but is not currently available from a publisher (a campaign seems to be under way at Amazon to get it back in print.
In more recent times, of course "Ender's Game" is a classic tale of teenagers being taken advantage of because they are young and idealistic. And "Angel with a Sword" is a much better recommendation for a young person than the C.J. Cherryh stories which have been suggested (as much as I like them). There were a series of Merovingen Nights stories published as sequels to this novel, but they tend to be hard to get (if you ever have the chance, snap them up as the best shared-world tales ever).
From Jerry Pournelle's work, "West of Honor" is a great choice. A lot of people have been suggesting Anne McCaffrey's work and I would second that with particular emphasis on the dragonriders of Pern (these books have repetitive themes involved outcast teens with redeeming qualities best seen by their dragons, but until a kid gets bored with it this is a good theme for them to be interested in).
I'm sure I'm missing some obvious choices, but those are my first thoughts.
Because The Motley Fool is investor-oriented they have brought out some important points which we have been ignoring on/.
DVDCCA has defrauded investors and content-providers by telling them they have a copy-proof technology (when we now know they had a third-rate encryption system). They got people to give them money on false pretenses. They got people to put content out in their format by lying to them.
They also got people to buy DVD players on the premise that the players would be able to play all DVDs. Now, they are threatening to release a new encryption system which would make all current players obsolete. Even if they didn't do this, the companies which have agreed to release material on the format are being harmed by the court actions because those actions restrict the market for their material.
The Motley Fool brings out the real issues by showing that it is economic reasons, not technical reasons, that prevent illegal copying. The article even shows why that will continue to be true in the future.
All of this suggests better strategies for fighting these idiots. Boycotts are all well and good, but only a small percentage of the moviegoing public is going to understand these issues. (Taking back your DVD players and demanding a refund or boycotting the player-makers may prove more useful since geeks are much more likely to be the target market for these kinds of tech.)
How about a class-action lawsuit against the DVDCCA on behalf of everyone who legally owns a DVD but is being prevented from using it legally?
How about suing on behalf of investors who were lied to and whose interests are being undermined by the phony DVDCCA lawsuits? If DVD goes the way of DIVX because these guys are overplaying their hand, some people are gonna lose some big-time money.
How about a lawsuit on behalf of content-providers who were defrauded and then had their markets curtailed by DVDCCA legal actions?
I know most slashdotters are morally opposed to things done by lawyers. I share a certain amount of disdain for some parts of the legal profession. But this may be a time when the courts are the right venue.
Certainly, plenty of lawyers ought to be willing to try it on contingency. It's an easy case. The tech issues are straightforward, and the economic issues (as demonstrated by The Motley Fool) are pretty simple.
Maybe it's time to fight fire with fire.
Any lawyers out there interested? If you've got the credentials, we can probably get you an unusually long list of named plaintiffs for a contingency-based class action. (Remember, this could be a very high-profile case and function as pretty good PR.)
BTW, what about a volunteer lawyer in Norway for Jon Lech? I don't know what the laws there are like for malicious prosecution, but there could be some big money there. Maybe a legal fund isn't even needed.
Slashdot Mirror
...might be the best description of the Clinton-haters who imagine their fantasies about a top-level plot against Microsoft have some basis in fact.
Before I go further, a little flame-proofing: Do not assume I want to break up MS just because I'm doing a little debunking of pro-Microsoft propaganda. I think MS is guilty as the judge found them. I think they know they are going to lose. And I think they are stalling. But I do not support radical remedies because I think such will delay the decision and its implementation. Open the APIs (with solid methods of monitoring) and I think the rest will follow. (This remedy has the advantage of being immune to any opposition from Redmond because they have claimed under oath that the APIs are open.)
I firmly beleive that this is a little payback to M$ for not being a Gore or H. Clinton supporter in the upcoming campains.
Politicians do not have clean hands on this one, but this statement is so demonstrably false I cannot believe the "insightful" rating it's getting (unless the insight is the need for anti-psychotic drugs for the extreme ends of our political spectrum).
The DoJ investigation of MS dates back to the Bush administration. That administration was very careful not to stick its nose into the Anti-Trust Division. This was primarily driven not by an interest in justice, but because it made it easier to raise money. If you're not involved in those decisions, it's easier to ask for money from corporations. On the one hand, they can say, "Hey, I'm not involved in the investigation against them, so I can ask for the money without a conflict of interest." On the other hand, you can say, "Hey, I'm not the guy who's persecuting you, so you can give me lots of soft money."
This is not to imply that the Clinton administration is any better. They wholeheartedly adopted the same strategy: No pressure on the DoJ (pro or con) and ask corps on both sides of the issue to donate as much as possible.
The two Bills have long traveled in the same circles (Hillary, too) and recently joined in a big party in DC, promoting both of their political agendas. Gore has long enjoyed support from Redmond and is (no doubt, given his leadership style) mighty nervous about the DoJ case. Hillary has MS money in her treasure chest as well.
Shortly after the bulldog Reno was sicked on M$ and a modified special investigator statute was passed to look into the anti-trust issues Netscape brought up.
Reno's interest has always been in criminal justice, not anti-trust law. She has had little or no involvement in the Anti-Trust Division beyond showing up at press conferences and expressing confidence in Joel Klein. And that's the way Clinton wants it. He knows as well as anyone what happened when the tobacco industry and the gun lobby switched from supporting both parties to concentrating on the GOP.
This kind of conspiracy theory ranks up there with those who feel that two Republican special prosecutors who cleared Hillary in the Vince Foster affair were somehow bought off by the Clintons. (Yeah, right. That Ken Starr, he was just a closet Clinton-lover!)
And the comment about "modified special prosecutor statute" just goes a long way to demonstrating just how far out of touch with reality these Clinton-haters really are. Sure, using methods of making the Anti-Trust Division independent of political pressure should always be interpreted as evidence that all Anti-Trust decisions are politically based.
Gates and M$ formally have NEVER backed either party.
This is either demonstrably false or meaningless.
If by "formally backed" you mean that they only support one party and have formally announced such support, of course it is true. Of course, it is equally true of any number of competitors. One does not have to register for a political party to vote in Washington state elections, and very few people do.
If by "formally backed" you mean they don't make political contributions, this is easy to disprove. They have always made political contributions at some level. For a long time, they were famous for not making the kind of big contributions usually associated with American business. That changed about four years ago, and they have made many contributions to candidates of both parties since that time. This is hardly what most of us mean by "NEVER" backing political parties.
Bill Gates has made a lot of money taking advantage of people who made their business decisions based on a view of reality distorted by political ideology rather than sound assessments of what is best for their companies. As much as he may appreciate the propaganda value of 348's comments, I suspect he can appreciate the irony of support from a fan whose view of reality is distorted by their political views in just the same way.
It is likely that many politicians on both sides of the fence would like to meddle in Anti-Trust to guarantee campaign contributions. But most are probably afraid the staff there would react very strongly against any such attempt. Just imagine Joel Klein resigning at a press conference where he denounces Gore for interfering. Al and W don't have the guts to face that firestorm.
And I got a lot from this book.
First off, let me get my biases set forward: I believe strongly in OOP. I believe strongly in OO Perl. And I believe strongly in this book, in Damian Conway (who is an excellent educator from Australia), and in the approach he takes to OOP in this book. I believe that OO is an evolving discipline which changes every year. I believe that many OO implementations do a better job of reproducing a snapshot of where OO theory may have been at any one point.
But it is clear to me that Perl's there-is-more-than-one-way-to-do-it (TIMTOWTDI) philosophy does a better job of presenting a dynamic model for implementing any level of OOP that you would like to use for a particular problem. This means you can use it to do true OO programming no matter what you define as "object oriented." This means it can do what you want to do today and what you may not yet know you will want to do tomorrow.
Perl does not force you to do any of it, but it allows you to do whatever you would like. You may have to do some of the work to set it up, but that's the price you pay for the flexibility it allows. Anyone who tells you Perl cannot implement some important aspect of OO probably is doing nothing more than admitting their own ignorance.
Those biases out of the way, the question is: Does this book take it beyond perltoot and "Advanced Perl Programming" (the leopard book)?
The answer is "yes," but it may not be in the way you are looking for. This book is written very much in the spirit of TIMTOWTDI. Each of the chapters lays out all the ways one might approach the subject of the chapter. This gives a variety of solutions to every problem and a very thorough understanding of every issue. If you want an OO system that just tells you the one way you have to do it, then this is not the book for you. But then, Perl is probably not the language for you, either.
Most of the chapters present their solutions in the form of a kind of limited metaclass (essentially abstract classes from which your classes can inherit to acquire the desired functionality). Those familiar with many of the modules on CPAN will recognize this approach.
In general, I found this book to be exactly what I needed to go beyond pertoot and the leopard book. But I would emphasize that I almost never use Damian's code exactly as he presents it. On the other hand, since I have read this book, I have never written a base class which was not based on what I learned from Conway.
It is clear that Damian knows a great deal about OO theory and teaches it well. (This book is also every bit as funny as the camel book.)
The multimethods chapter is a definitive exploration of multiple inheritance. I never use multiple inheritance, but if I ever try it will be based on the CPAN module he explains in this chapter. As has been pointed out elsewhere, this information can be obtained from CPAN as well (but you lose the excellent explanation available here) or from the paper Conway read at last year's Perl Conference.
Summing up: If you understand what I mean by a dynamic model of OO and want to try it, Perl is a good place to do it. If you want to try but are not sure how to implement it, this is the book for you. If you want a static model of OO that holds your hand and makes you behave, then OO Perl is not for you and you should not waste your money on this book.
Sounds like an inexact definition of the Win32 API to me. If this is in fact what they mean, it raises a number of very interesting questions:
If they only release those parts of the API used by "independent software companies," does that mean the secret APIs stay secret? After all, they are only used by Microsoft. (Well, there may be some others who get leaks, but they would be more accurately described as "painfully dependent software companies.")
But, if they are saying they will only publish the APIs (which they claim they already publish), how can that be considered a punishment or a remedy? What if they just republished what they have released in the past? Are they claiming that would be a remedy?
On the other hand, if they publish all the API, including the hidden parts which have only been used by their own applications division before, that would be a significant remedy. It would not only allow fairer competition in the apps arena, but it would also make it possible to write a DRDOS-style competing operating system which ran everything Windows can run. Are they proposing this?
If they are, does the fact that they are proposing this mean they are admitting they've been lying all these years? Does it undermine their defense? Does it preclude an appeal issue? Does it leave them open to lawsuits by their partners (who have long suspected their assurances were fraudulent)?
Is everybody supposed to accept their promise that the API being released is complete? Are they going to allow impartial experts to look at the source code to verify they're releasing everything? Will that code compile to something which actually matches the binaries they sell? Who tests it?
I have to admit that I believe the Win32 API is the key to any remedy. Source code would be a great source of entertainment, but the API is the key. They only reason we really need the source is to verify the API. (OK, it would help from a security standpoint, too. But that's not really related to the charges against them.)
But we need a way to be sure the API is valid. An independent review of the source code seems to me to be the best method to do this. Bob Lewis has suggested an alternative (putting a bounty on finding an undocumented API with MS paying the bounty).
I can't help wondering whether Microsoft has been lying for so long that they're caught in a place where they can't say anything new without contradicting something they've said in the past. I would hate to be the lawyers trying to suggest a real remedy without stomping on the testimony of one of the people paying my salary. ("Let's see, which one of you wants to go to jail for perjury?")
...an old man, read this little digression into history:
The fundamental question here is: Who owns my company's data? My company or the company which wrote the program which I use to store it? I think few companies would answer that by saying their vendor owns it. (And any who do should have a stockholder revolution tomorrow to throw the idiots out.)
Why then do we allow any company to encrypt our data in proprietary data formats? (It is encryption, even if it is poor encryption which has been broken many times.)
The answer lies in the history of programming: There was a time when many of the developments in computer technology came in the area of file formats. When a company implemented a great new feature, part of the research that went into developing the feature was a file format. And coders, justifiably proud of their research, made those file formats proprietary to help protect their original research.
That day is probably long past. Most proprietary formats still in use today are far inferior technologically to XML. The only purpose they still serve is the form of limited encryption they offer which allows vendors to hold customers' data hostage.
This is wrong. Coders should admit it's wrong. It's wrong whether it's done by Microsoft or some independent programmer working from his basement. The data belongs to the customer. If you can't keep the customer by satisfying his needs, you should not be allowed to keep him by deliberately making it more expensive to change vendors.
Nor should you be allowed to extort more money for upgrades by creating non-compatible formats.
What we really need is a voluntary set of standards for programmers. Such a standard should emphasize the rights of the user, including the right to own the file format for all data storage.
I would suggest a few additional standards as well. Although I prefer open-source and non-proprietary programs, I don't think that should be a part of the standard. But there should be a guarantee that any programmer subscribing to the standard should release all source code at any point where he or his company is no longer going to support it.
I'm sure other standards could be adopted. If we voluntarily subscribed to such a standard, it would make it much harder for any company which did not subscribe to justify its abuses of the user.
The very first Word-for-Windows file format was a step backwards technologically. And the science of file formats has progressed considerably in the years since then. But Microsoft's file formats have not improved. (One could even argue they have taken some giant steps backwards, although some of those backward leaps were probably originally intended to improve things.)
Can you imagine what MS representatives might say if they were asked, "Why don't you subscribe to the Code of Good Programming Practices?"? They certainly couldn't argue their file formats are better technologically.
And then comes the inevitable follow-up question, "Don't you believe that your customers' data is owned by them?"
If they answered "no," any corporate executive who bought a Microsoft product might become civilly liable to a shareholder lawsuit on the grounds that such a purchase put the company at risk for future extortion. If such a risk was not mentioned in quarterly reports, a class-action lawsuit might be possible.
Until coders adopt the kind of standards of professional behavior common in other professions (CPAs, financial advisers, doctors, even CLOWNS, for goodness sake!), they are not going to be successful in convincing consumers that they should not buy products from programmers who do not abide by those standards. If we cannot articulate the standards which we feel Microsoft is violating, how can we expect the pointy-haired bosses to figure it out on their own?
...isn't the idea of calling something "Uniform" and adopting a national standard to follow the standard and expect that every state which adopts the uniform standard use the same meaning for "UCITA"? That way companies can know they are dealing with the same law everywhere.
If Maryland adopted a better version and then gave it a name which implies it follows a bad standard, doesn't that leave them vulnerable to justifiable confusion by those who might assume they were actually adopting the standard they were pretending to adopt?
How about a "UCITA-free" sticker on software found to be free of absurd legal incumbrances?
The statement "[s]he had a great philosophy that doesn't deserve to be reduced to a stereotype" can't help but remind me of the favorite line of so many of Ayn Rand's followers:
"She's not much of a novelist, but she's a great philosopher."
The bizarre thing about about these common impressions is that they are exactly wrong. Rand was a brilliant novelist whose novels could capture people's imaginations. And that very success would translate into a suspension of all disbelief among those who wanted to hear what she was saying. The result was they declared her great as a philosopher.
In fact, her philosophy was primitive and ill-informed (however much it might have struck a chord with libertarians). She thought she was a kind of neo-Aristotlean, but she did not understand Aristotle.
She was unable to defend her philosophical ideas outside of the group of sychophants she gathered around her. And, strangely enough, that group of sychophants was more like the villains of her novels than the heroes.
The Dagny Taggarts of the world (and there really are people like that) do not need to hang out with "philosophers" who tell them they are important to the advancement of culture. The James Taggarts do. "You are rich because you are good," is a reassuring dictum to them because they have good reason to doubt they are good.
So, I suppose we should not be surprised to find the majority of her circle were sychophants of the James-Taggart ilk. (Note that there were exceptions who were able to break free of the very strict regulation she put on thought: Alan Greenspan certainly has been willing to act differently than she might have prescribed when the evidence indicates she was wrong; and her husband has said some very interesting things since he left the fold about how unhappy the whole group was in spite of their hedonistic outlook.)
She called her philosophy "objectivism," but it might be best paraphrased as, "The world is as I perceive it to be." And, strangely enough, her books, which were strengthened by objectivism's influence, are the best evidence against its principles.
Take Dagny Taggart, the heroine of "Atlas Shrugged" (which can still serve as an inspiration to geeks who want more political power, even though it may be flawed in some ways philosophically). At the beginning of the novel, she is depressed. The railroad she runs is beset by problems. All of the good employees have quit (usually leaving unstaffed trains full of passengers stranded in the middle of nowhere). The only employees left are worthless slackers who see no value in hard work. Et cetera, et cetera.
Later in the book, she is in a manic period. She has just built a new line to the rich resources of Colorado out of Reardon steel. Things are going great, and all is right with the world.
Suddenly, the evil union bosses tell her she cannot force their members run trains over the "unsafe and untested" Reardon steel (especially the bridges) even though the steel is better than any previously-known alloy. Because she is no longer depressed, Dagny defiantly tells them she will only use volunteers. And, if she gets no volunteers, then by God she'll drive the first train herself.
So, she puts out a call for a volunteer train crew. Volunteers are supposed to show up in the lobby of her office building. When she gets there, she is met by a cheering mob. Most of her employees have showed up to volunteer. In fact, every qualified employee who is not out running trains at that very moment is there. Indeed, all those out running trains have sent messages they want to participate as well.
Wait a minute! What happened to all those lazy slackers? Where are the union members who had no work ethic? What about the engineers whose union card guaranteed them the only job they could get?
I don't think it should be automatic that such sleazy gimmicks be over-ridden. I'd just like the option, especially when you're talking about a resource-hog like a browser (I hope Mozilla won't be), to not have a web link open a new process or new window or a new browser or whatever.
I think it's safe to assume that someone who is editing advanced options like do-not-open-new-window-for-links would know what the back button was. If the designers don't think so, they could always have a little pop-up warning box ("Do not activate this unless you know how to use the back button or alt-arrow-left -- [C]ancel, [O]K").
And I'm not sure any of the lame sites that use this have any thought of making it easier on newbies. They just want to take advantage of them.
And you know what? I don't think it works. I think this kind of gimmick offends (or at least bothers) newbies as much as anybody.
Further, I suspect this part of the protocol was originally intended for some useful purpose where spawning new browsers would actually be a good thing. But I've never seen such a purpose implemented. If someone has actually come up with a good and valid reason for it, this would be a much better reason not to implement my idea than the fact that there are people who don't know what a back button does.
...to be passed from session to session. This doesn't seem much to ask. New windows should be able to inherit something.
It would also be nice to be able to over-ride these lame sites which open new windows whenever they link to another site. It's such a stupid way to keep you on their site. We all know how to go back to their site if we want to. It's almost like they're assuming we would never want to.
Another thing I've always thought would be cool would be a "sideways" back function. I frequently find myself going back and forth between two branches of a web-site structure. As I get further out on the two branches, I have to use more and more alt-(or meta-)left-arrow-key clicks to get back to the point where they diverged.
Alt-up-arrow and alt-down-arrow could be used to go more quickly between them (if the history was stored as something more than a linear sequence of pages).
I agree with all the analysis here, especially as regards the interests of the stockholders. And we should include Microsoft employees, who might actually be the ones who would benefit most from any breakup. (Can you imagine writing code for a company whose lawyers get to tell you that "integration" has to mean something that violates every rule of modularity and encapsulation?)
However, there is a small group of people for whom a breakup is not in their best interests: the lawyers, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, the DoJ, and Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson.
The Microsoft lawyers who specialize in anti-trust have little to gain from a breakup, which would basically put them out of work. MS would not need them anymore, and who would choose them after the spectacular botch-job they did on this case? (But, hey, have a little sympathy. How would you like the job of coaching Bill before his testimony? It would probably be obvious to you how badly he was going to do. But how do you tell a guy who's worth $70 billion that he's screwing up?)
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer would profit monetarily from a breakup. But that is probably not their greatest interest at this point. To them, a breakup would take The World's Biggest Toy(TM) away from them. (For those of you who have trouble with this point, just imagine what you could do with MS, its programming staff, and the $10 billion in cash they have lying around if you had control of the company.)
For the DoJ and the state attorneys general, a breakup would be a monumental roll of the dice. If it worked, fine. But, if the economy goes south (and from where we are almost any change would be for the worse), if the Baby Bills do poorly, if the tech sector suffers, the DoJ could get blamed. It doesn't matter that MS stock has often been overvalued (according Gates, at least). It doesn't matter that their growth potential has often been overestimated by Wall Street. It doesn't matter that there have been some aspects of their business practices that will prove difficult to sustain no matter what. The general population will believe it was DoJ's fault if MS or the economy tanks. Too big a risk.
And the judge runs all the same set of risks as the DoJ. He has carefully crafted this trial to make his decision appeal-proof. He's not about to set himself up to be overturned by adopting an extreme remedy.
In case you hadn't noticed, all of the people who have anything to do with deciding what the remedy will be just happen to be the only people in the world who wouldn't benefit from a breakup. So, don't expect it to happen.
Fortunately, there is one other small group who will benefit by non-structural remedies: Linux users.
...or prisoners of a static model for Object Orientation?
The beautiful thing about Perl's approach to object orientedness is it doesn't assume any specific definition of OO. You can use whichever features of OO appropriate to the task at hand.
Since OO theory is a developing construct, many other interpretations of OO theory take a snapshot of current OO theory at some given point. But then, as the theory evolves, the static model is left behind. The compiler must then be updated, thrown out, or rewritten.
Because Perl as a language is based on the idea that "there is more than one way to do it," it was only natural that it adopt a dynamic model which allows new developments to be integrated into the OO theory it uses at a later date.
...someday.
Somebody will get it right. I don't know if it will be Cosource, SourceForge, Asynchro-whatever or some other worthy project.
The tough part is, of course, setting the share value. But I suspect that's not as hard as you might expect. Some kind of reverse auction set-up might do the trick. And even a kind of arbitrary project-manager-god would result in better code than counting bytes or lines of code.
Ultimately, there are two political hurdles which may prove the real stumbling block: history and open-source leadership.
History will work against it because the whole thing works much like a multi-level marketing scheme. While not all of these things are crooked, crooks like 'em well enough to leave a bad taste in many mouths. And most Ponzi schemes and chain letters use some similar methodologies.
And you can expect most of the leadership of the open-source movement to oppose this. I'm not sure exactly why, but they seem to have a kind of knee-jerk reaction about this kind of thing. I once proposed something vaguely like this ("vague" both in the sense that it wasn't exactly the same and in the sense that I had not really thought it through and was not proposing anything this concrete) to Eric Raymond. He didn't even let me finish my sentence before he said something like, "I think I know where you're going, and I don't like it...."
He had some of the same practical objections which have been discussed in this discussion, but I got the impression he had a more visceral reaction against it which he didn't really put into words.
I agree with this analysis from an economic angle (not necessarily from all of the technical angles, like legacy issues).
It is clear to me that a broken-apart Microsoft would no longer have any motivation for some of the bad programming the lawyers and executives have forced on their programmers. I mean, integration may be good, but the form of integration used with IE and Win98 was a violation of every principle of good programming since the term "modularization" was coined.
It's got to be a nightmare to program in that environment.
MS programmers would benefit. MS customers would benefit. MS stockholders would benefit.
But it will never happen because this company is not being run for any of those people.
It is being run by Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. A breakup would mean they don't control it all any more. It would take away the biggest toy in the world from two of the most powerful men in the company.
And it's really hard to tell guys that rich they're wrong.
...is that an operating system ought to cost about a dollar.
(Actually, I think the correct price ought to be between $1.60 and $7, but I suspect they are engaging in dumping in order to obtain marketshare in the case of WinCE.)
Why then can they charge $85 to $200 for Win98SE? Even more for NT? Still more for W2K? And still charge you more for a server edition? And tag on more charges for IIS, etc, etc?
The answer is simple: WinCE is in a competitive market. The difference in price is the overcharge of the monopolist. I wonder if DoJ is paying attention to this.
..."Deep Impact"?
I should just rest my case there, but:
Remember Apollo 13? The director actually went through the trouble of using NASA's "Vomit Comet" aircraft in order to determine how things REALLY behave in microgravity. As I recall, didn't they actulally [sic] FILM a significant protion [sic] of Apollo 13 IN the "Vomit Comet"???
If the pas-de-deux in "Mission to Mars" was not filmed in the Vomit Comet, then it was a truly incredible piece of filmmaking, worthy of extra recognition for the brilliance of its special effects, especially in the use of those effects to portray science accurately.
This film can be appreciated for its accuracy. Some people just CHOSE not to.
...(that "crap like this" is the cause of scientific ignorance), but I would hope you are willing to entertain other ideas.
Not to do so would be a grave violence against science itself. I would suggest that a better explanation of why people are ignorant of how their world works: Those who (inaccurately) attack those they deem unscientific with rants like this review (please note that I am not including Katz in this, who was much more reasonable).
Instead of using public interest in things like the face on Mars to interest people in things scientific, we use them to ridicule people and call them "ignorant." And, indeed, there is nothing in this film which implies the face in the film is the one which got so much attention from the pseudo-scientists. They don't even look that much alike. And the one in the film is buried at the beginning of the movie.
Which raises an interesting question: If we expect the movie to be scientifically accurate, shouldn't we expect criticisms of its accuracy to be accurate themselves?
I never said I didn't mind the inaccuracies. I said I found them minor compared to the inaccuracies in the reviews and in the ensuing discussion. Please don't put words in my mouth.
Finally, I would like to comment on the final line of this post:
Wasn't this movie done before, and a hell of a lot better, in 2010?
This seems to me a much more interesting comment than most of the reviews and the discussion. Much of the film is very derivative: of "2001," of "Apollo 13," of "Touch of Evil," of "Contact" and the list goes on.
I enjoyed this movie a lot more than some of its predecessors. I think a lot of what it incorporated from "Apollo 13" made the "2001" aspects of it much more accurate. I believe it is the movie Kubrick was trying to make.
I would be very interested in knowing why you feel one way while I feel another way. But I doubt we could shed much light on it by making inaccurate statements about the movie or calling those who disagree with us "ignorant."
but I could do a better job a showing rotation is possible than these pseudo-physicists could at showing it couldn't be done. Most of them don't even mention Coriolis effects in their discussion of the physics of a moving model inside a rotating space ship.
Then please do so.
Air friction will very quickly drag each individual M&M into the same inertial frame as the air itself, which had long since adjusted to the normal rotation. (Let's forget about random variations in the airflow caused by ventilation that absolutely must keep the air moving at all times, or cause harmful-or-deadly dust pockets to form; even if the model was connected by something, which people seem to imply it wasn't, the entire model would quickly migrate to other locations.)
I haven't seen the movie but I assume it actually held together, despite a lack of glue. Instead, even if the astronaut could magically (or through extensive practice) nullify the rotation of the spacecraft, in a matter of seconds, the M&M would take the velocity of the air around it and begin hiking back to the outside. The only effect of Coriolis "force" (which isn't, of course) would be if you wanted to compute where it was going to land.
Oh, great. We got a guy challenging me who's not only not seen the movie, he's not read the pseudo-physicists who I was criticizing (who didn't talk about air currents because they at least saw the movie before blasting it and they know the M&Ms were perturbed by air currents and that the rotating model wasn't shown for long enough to require long-term stability and that the astronauts did have a long time to practice).
OK, here's my explanation:
What the pseudo-physicists assumed (despite considerable evidence to the contrary) was that the entire ship was in weightlessness. In fact, as clearly shown in the movie, the only part of the ship which had very low gravity (allowing the M&M hobby to be possible) was the central axis.
Since even the central axis was rotating (and the astronauts were stationary with respect to the walls), any zero-g DNA model not only COULD be rotating, it would HAVE TO BE rotating. The next time I go to see the movie (it was THAT enjoyable) I will time the rotation to see if it matched the rotation of the ship.
Now, admittedly it did not look like this model was oriented along the axis of the ship. But there was nothing in the scene which would have precluded such an orientation.
As for the comments about air friction, the model was rotating slow enough (as it would have to be) that the amount of perturbation caused by air currents would certainly be close to that observed in the movie.
I never said anything about "Coriolis forces." I said "Coriolis effects" which would be significant in a rotating frame of reference like the one depicted and which would have been important considerations based on some of the assumptions which have been made in the pseudo-science rants in this review and in the discussion which followed.
This was a science-fiction movie about science and that's an accomplishment in itself.
Perhaps, but my professors don't think much of that argument. "Well, prof, I did the assignment! Even though it completely failed to meet any of the requirements, I don't think I deserve this flunking grade!"
And your professors would not only have received failing grades but they probably would have been fired if they flunked you without reading your assignment. The point is there was a lot of science and a lot of it was pretty good. Some of it was pretty subtle, too -- like the discussion of the "groups of three" in the discussion of the alien signal, which was never explained, but made sense scientifically. (This subtlety was probably why these pseudo-physicists didn't notice.)
There were some flaws in the science, but the fact that so many people in this discussion (including the reviewers) got more wrong than the movie suggests to me that it wasn't such a bad job. I would quote Teddy Roosevelt on "daring greatly" but I suspect it would be lost on this audience.
This movie sucked me right in, and I enjoyed it (in spite of the self-indulgent tracking shot it opens with). So shoot me.
Accurate != enjoyable, which too many geeks forget aometimes [sic]. But enjoyable != accurate, and for that matter, enjoyable != good. If you want to enjoy it, fine. But it doesn't make it accurate or good.
I never said enjoyable = accurate. I said the movie got many things right which have never been done before in a movie, and that many of the criticisms of its accuracy in this discussion were more inaccurate than the movie itself. And I said I enjoyed the movie even though I was expecting bad science to ruin it for me. I was wrong. But at least I didn't publish me pre-judgment as an indictment of the movie and those who liked it.
The zero-g pas-de-deux was brilliant, and there were a number of things I doubt any of these griping geeks could have done as well in a million years.
Of all the demographics I can think of to say that about, geeks, the culture where prestige is measured in accomplishments, are the last I would say that about.
When geek culture is at its best, prestige is in fact measured in accomplishments. When it is measured in the kind of phony one-up-manship exemplified by this review and the ensuing discussion, it is nothing more than a justification for geeks' reputation for a lack of social skills.
...with no problems in the science, I would be in my backyard building it.
If I came up with an interstellar starship design with just a few flaws in the design, I would write a sci-fi story and gloss over the holes in my science.
The idea of science-fiction is not to do science. It is to present interesting ideas. This film does many things right, including a very good depiction of space flight and some very accurate depictions of how really good astronauts react in emergency situations.
Thanks to Uruk for saying what needed to be said.
...they're a satire of geek culture.
Honestly, I went to this movie fully expecting the science to stink. The trailer had been edited to make it look like they exclaimed, "That's human DNA!" after seeing a tiny fragment of a computer-generated model.
I was surprised at how much they got right, not how much they got wrong. This was a science-fiction movie about science and that's an accomplishment in itself.
This movie sucked me right in, and I enjoyed it (in spite of the self-indulgent tracking shot it opens with). So shoot me.
It's discussions like this that give geeks a bad name. The idea of constructing a model of DNA in zero-gravity is much better evidence of a creative and functioning brain than these inane complaints. I admit I was put off by the fact that it was rotating, but I could do a better job a showing rotation is possible than these pseudo-physicists could at showing it couldn't be done. Most of them don't even mention Coriolis effects in their discussion of the physics of a moving model inside a rotating space ship.
This kind of review is the geek equivalent of the football star who picks on the kid with tape on his glasses. If the athlete wins, nobody's impressed. And, if the physicists find a mistake in a sci-fi movie, nobody's gonna say, "Wow, those physicists know more science than those Hollywood writers!"
But, if the dorky guy with glasses knows judo and gets more right in the fight than the football-head, it is truly embarassing. And that's what's happened this case. This movie has some errors, sure. But nothing near like the number of mistakes made in these threads.
"Mission to Mars" gets many things right which have never been done well in any movie. It has the best orrery I've ever seen. When the asteroid hits Mars I was genuinely impressed (and surprised). The zero-g pas-de-deux was brilliant, and there were a number of things I doubt any of these griping geeks could have done as well in a million years. Of all the attempts to show how first-contact communication could be accomplished quickly, this is the only one I've ever seen that rang true.
...do you actually increase its credibility?
The first "way" ATKeiper uses to criticize Jon is as follows:
This sounds good, but unfortunately Katz is factually correct. And ATKeiper is factually incorrect (although he is close to getting it right).
Ordinary radio stations etc. do not have to pay money to record companies for playing their songs. They have to pay it to ASCAP and BMI, who pass it on to the copyright owners (who are the songwriters, not the performers). Paul Anka has made more from "My Way" than Frank Sinatra because he wrote it.
This is an important distinction, and (I believe) the one Katz was trying to make. This is the first time an entity not involved in the creative process has been granted copyright interests simply for being the distributor of the intellectual property. Note that the performer (who is probably the one the listener is tuning in to hear) is getting the short end of the stick on both the old radio rules and the new Internet radio rules.
So, the net effect of the DMCA is to restrict artists' ability to get their stuff played on the web (it can't be done without paying their record company). This (I believe) is the point Katz was making in the sentence criticized in point 2 of ATKeiper's rant. And, once again, Katz is factually correct and ATKeiper just doesn't get it, however much his view of the world may be popular with some of the pseudo-Libertarians on /. who don't mind any restrictions to their freedoms as long as they are restrictions which come from corporations rather than governments. In this case, they even seem to be willing to accept the restrictions coming from governments as long as government is acting on behalf of those corporations.
I'm not going to comment on the rest of the items in this rant because they are more opinion-oriented than fact-oriented. But I don't mean to imply by not commenting that I agree with the opinions either.
Does anybody know who this organization he's promoting is? The TESOC?
First we had marketing FUD. Then we had investor-targeted FUD. Then we had legal FUD. Then we had spin-the-results-of-the-failure-of-legal-FUD FUD. Why should we be surprised to have make-unlikely-statements-off-camera-then-deny-it-o n-camera FUD?
Bloomberg is a generally reliable source. And it is a pretty tech-savvy company.
Microsoft is an unreliable source. And Bill Gates is a very bad liar (probably the real reason he turned those duties over to Ballmer).
From the above, one might conclude that MS really is willing to open source (in the sense of letting people see it, not in the GPL sense), except for one fact: It's so unlikely.
Why is it unlikely? Well, consider this: There are four possible settlements (which can, of course, be combined into a large number of permutations) --
From history we know Microsoft probably prefers the first. The Justice Department has been burned this way before and may be reluctant to accept it easily.
Of the remaining choices, breaking up the company results in massive gains for stockholders. The final two choices are probably the death knell for Windows (and, therefore, MS).
If you discount the Br'er Rabbit strategy ("Please don't throw me into the breakup briar patch, Mr. DoJ"), it seems unlikely that Microsoft would choose the paths most likely to provide outside competition for the Windows-compatible OS market when the breakup path allows stockholders to continue to own the monopoly, while introducing the benefits of competition between the Baby Bills.
The only person who might prefer open source to the breakup scenario might be Bill himself. If you look at MS as a big playground for Gates, breakup would mean going back to a much smaller playpen. You don't suppose he could have let his real hopes slip to Bloomberg's reporter, then gone back to Ballmer and lied about it, do you?.
Here's what's left:
"Due to flagrant inaccuracies this article has been pulled and is being re-written.
"Occasionally one of these slips through the editorial process. Computer Currents regrets the error."
Does anybody have a copy of the original article for those of us who missed it to compare with the re-written version?
Thanks,
We should not forget that there was 100 years between Columbus and the British colonies in America. At first the explorers were all trying to find a way to discover riches (spices, cities of gold, whatever) which could be brought back to Europe.
But the real money was made when people began to realize they could go to America and create wealth to be enjoyed there.
The same logic applies in space: As long as we try to justify space exploration by wealth we can transmit back to earth, we will continue to be defeated by the fact that we live at the bottom of a very deep gravity well. And trying to find wealth at the bottom of another gravity well like Mars only doubles the difficulty.
Energy is free in space, and transportation is free as long as you avoid those pores on the face of the space-time continuum we call "planets." So the only question is whether we can find the elements we need out there in the asteroid belt (or the rings of the gas giants, since transport is free).
And the elements we need basically come down to water (which includes oxygen, of course) and a little carbon. There's lots of iron out there, so we can probably avoid using this inconvenient aluminum stuff.
Perhaps it's unfortunate that Americans were the first to discover the means to get to space. They don't want to go there until they build something there that's better than modern America. And, let's face it, the United States is a pretty nice place to live.
Too bad the Haitians don't have space travel. They'd probably be heading out all the time. You think the Challenger disaster shows a risk in spaceflight? Try crossing an ocean in an inner tube sometime.
Many of those who are commenting on the decision are saying the judge was wrong when he said DeCSS is "only" for piracy. But he didn't say that (any more than a vast majority of the mirror sites said it was for piracy, as claimed by Jack Valente in his dishonest piece in the L.A. Times).
Look at what he ruled and address that:
"In October 1999, an individual or group, believed to be in Europe, managed to 'hack' CSS2 and began offering, via the Internet, a software utility called DeCSS that enables users to break the CSS copy protection system and hence to make and distribute digital copies of DVD movies."
That isn't true. And we can prove it. Take a Linux box to court with a DVD player on it. Demonstrate that DeCSS allows the judge to play a legally purchased DVD (note that this step is not needed to prove the judge's statement is false). Then ask any expert witness the MPAA brings in to use it to copy a DVD. They will not be able to do so.
This is all that is needed to show Kaplan's statement is false. We do not need to add the word "only" to the ruling. And we should be careful not to do so because some will assume we need to do so in order to make our point.
We do not.
I can't help but notice many of the suggestions are particularly good books, but not the best for a teenager to start with. I love Orson Scott Card's "Saints," but I wouldn't recommend it to a young woman without knowing how she would take the tougher scenes. (Although when the book was first sold, it was marketed under the title "Woman of Destiny" in the historical-romance genre. I have no idea how the teenage girls who buy most of those books reacted to some of the more extreme scenes in the book.)
From the classics, look to the Winston juveniles from the '50s. This was a series which was written by the top sci-fi writers of the day for teenagers, often using teens as heroes and heroines and often dealing with issues of interest to the younger set.
One of the main purposes of Winston as a publisher was to produce hardback science-fiction for libraries. So, you can still find many of these in public libraries.
Almost all of them are good, but not all are being reprinted. Most of Heinlein volumes from the series are still in print: "Tunnel in the Sky," "Have Spacesuit Will Travel," "Podkayne of Mars," "Red Planet," "The Star Beast," "Starman Jones," "The Rolling Stones," "Space Cadet," and "Rocket Ship Galileo."
"Pstalemate" by Lester Del Rey is currently out of print, but has been reprinted from time to time. Likewise, "Rite of Passage" has been reprinted, but is not currently available from a publisher (a campaign seems to be under way at Amazon to get it back in print.
In more recent times, of course "Ender's Game" is a classic tale of teenagers being taken advantage of because they are young and idealistic. And "Angel with a Sword" is a much better recommendation for a young person than the C.J. Cherryh stories which have been suggested (as much as I like them). There were a series of Merovingen Nights stories published as sequels to this novel, but they tend to be hard to get (if you ever have the chance, snap them up as the best shared-world tales ever).
From Jerry Pournelle's work, "West of Honor" is a great choice. A lot of people have been suggesting Anne McCaffrey's work and I would second that with particular emphasis on the dragonriders of Pern (these books have repetitive themes involved outcast teens with redeeming qualities best seen by their dragons, but until a kid gets bored with it this is a good theme for them to be interested in).
I'm sure I'm missing some obvious choices, but those are my first thoughts.
Because The Motley Fool is investor-oriented they have brought out some important points which we have been ignoring on /.
DVDCCA has defrauded investors and content-providers by telling them they have a copy-proof technology (when we now know they had a third-rate encryption system). They got people to give them money on false pretenses. They got people to put content out in their format by lying to them.
They also got people to buy DVD players on the premise that the players would be able to play all DVDs. Now, they are threatening to release a new encryption system which would make all current players obsolete. Even if they didn't do this, the companies which have agreed to release material on the format are being harmed by the court actions because those actions restrict the market for their material.
The Motley Fool brings out the real issues by showing that it is economic reasons, not technical reasons, that prevent illegal copying. The article even shows why that will continue to be true in the future.
All of this suggests better strategies for fighting these idiots. Boycotts are all well and good, but only a small percentage of the moviegoing public is going to understand these issues. (Taking back your DVD players and demanding a refund or boycotting the player-makers may prove more useful since geeks are much more likely to be the target market for these kinds of tech.)
How about a class-action lawsuit against the DVDCCA on behalf of everyone who legally owns a DVD but is being prevented from using it legally?
How about suing on behalf of investors who were lied to and whose interests are being undermined by the phony DVDCCA lawsuits? If DVD goes the way of DIVX because these guys are overplaying their hand, some people are gonna lose some big-time money.
How about a lawsuit on behalf of content-providers who were defrauded and then had their markets curtailed by DVDCCA legal actions?
I know most slashdotters are morally opposed to things done by lawyers. I share a certain amount of disdain for some parts of the legal profession. But this may be a time when the courts are the right venue.
Certainly, plenty of lawyers ought to be willing to try it on contingency. It's an easy case. The tech issues are straightforward, and the economic issues (as demonstrated by The Motley Fool) are pretty simple.
Maybe it's time to fight fire with fire.
Any lawyers out there interested? If you've got the credentials, we can probably get you an unusually long list of named plaintiffs for a contingency-based class action. (Remember, this could be a very high-profile case and function as pretty good PR.)
BTW, what about a volunteer lawyer in Norway for Jon Lech? I don't know what the laws there are like for malicious prosecution, but there could be some big money there. Maybe a legal fund isn't even needed.