It's not just copies. Here are some things I can do with a toaster that I can't do with software.
I can use my toaster in my house or in my friends house or in my garage.
I can use it make toast for my friends.
I can sell it to somebody else if I get a better toaster.
I can lend it or give it away to anybody I want.
I don't have to tell the manufacturer my name, address, date of birth, social security number etc. I can buy it and use it without them ever knowing who I am.
It it breaks I can take it back and get a another one (if it's under warranty).
It it's not under warranty I can take it to someone and ask them to take it apart and fix it, or I can attempt to fix it myself.
"There has to be some means of protecting the property rights of the producer"
How about this: Property rights only apply to property. If you want property rights protection then treat it like any other property.
Slightly off topic but.
Mr Smith probably would be outrages at how his theories and thoughts have been subverted in the intervening years. He as a pretty smart gentleman by all accounts so if he were trying to make the same point now he would have taken into account the accumulated knowledge of the past couple of hundred years. Most blatantly he like most of his compatriots considered clean air, water, trees, etc to be an infinate resource which we have learned since are not. If he was alive today he might not have written the same books.
It always boggles my mind why people who would never rely on medical techniques of the 1800s would rely on philosophical or political writings of the same period. Our knowledge of the world around us and of the psychology of the human being have grown immensely yet we still point to hundred year old books and say "see he said you should do this".
That was a real live mistake made by a real live human being. I'll take credit (or the blame) for that mistake because I am a human being and have a moral sense. MS OTOH will do no such thing.
They mean in marketing hype not technology.
Surely not even you would claim that MS invented the idea of a web app. MS is following the inovators of the web to try and lock internet users into their own application framework hoping that people will abandon open standards.
XML schema is just this side of useless.
You can specify that some element ought to be text but you can't specify the context. Let's say that you had an element called county. You have to make it text right? Well can somebody put "goatse.cx" into this county field? Will the XML parser say "sorry that's not a county" of course not. Worse yet the US postal office says that there is a county called "lake and peninsula" in alaska does your XML parser reject "lake & peninsula"?
Schemas only enforce trivial rules not real life business rules. There ought to be a schema element that says "this is a county as defined by the USPS URL, the elements must exist in this URL". I suppose you could list all umpteen thousand counties in your schema and be screwed when the USPS creates a new one.
"if MS and Oracle can't agree on their dataset format, that's not really a problem with the underlying technology. "
I disagree vehemently. If the purpose of the technology is to ease interchange and the technology is not able to achieve that then it's a failure. XML is a silly standard because it specifies nothing at all.
"but there's also got to be a better way. "
Here is a better way. Have XMl actually enforce relationships just like a database does. Specify tags that say this element is bound by a relationship to this other element (or url). Have realistic contraints and lookups. Only then will it actually be useful.
XML as it exists now is only a hair above useless. CSV does pretty much the same thing without added bloat and even perl style hashes are more useful ans easier to parse. Any technology which leaves it up to competitors to agree on a standard is doomed to failure. MS and Oracle will never agree and you will be writing translators for their XML formats.
XML is a failure because it does not deliver what it promises.
I can parse delimeted data or fixed length data with one line of code too it really does not matter. Every client who sends me data produces a different object. I have to write my interfaces for each and every XML document my clients send me. Not only that but somebody could send you < name> bob</name> and somebody could send you < name value="bob"/> both are legal XML both require different code. XML is only self documenting to a human.
"Netscape's browser was for all practical purposes free from the beginning. The only people paying for it were large companies."
Are you saying that large companies paying for your product is a trivial source of revenue? A comapny needs every cent it can get.
"Are you saying Netscape couldn't afford to put resources into further developing their web browser? I haven't heard that before."
Any business person would realize that MS was going to win the browser war because they were giving away the product that netscape was trying to sell. Same with web servers. It would have been suicide to budget money towards developing the browser if MS was going to bundle theirs with windows and put it in every desktop in the world. They scambled looking for markets where MS did not play but every time they entered a market MS entered the same market with a similar product and gave it away for free. It was a doomed task. When MS wants to kill a competitor the competitor will die because MS has what amounts to infinate amount of money and they can subsidize any of their products with their office and windows monopoly. Ask Real.
He's a republican he does need facts. If Rush says so it must be true.
Re:Bonobos are more than that; they're people too
on
Bonobo 1.0 released
·
· Score: 2
I saw a show on TV about the extinction of the dinosaurs once. The scientist pointed at a hill side explaining that "in this three inch layer of dirt there is nothing but ferns, below it you can find dinosaurs and above it mostly mammals". I though to myself. Millions of years of domination over the earth and they were wiped out in a massively catastrophic event and in the end what happened? Three inches of dirt!.
We humans will no doubt erase ourselves from this planet and we will do it by eliminating every other creature that we can first. But in the end the earth will recover and some alien or future species might notice the millimeter or so of dirt we will end up as.
BTW it won't take nuclear weapons just a steady elimination of species, poisoning the water and air, and messing with our own food supply.
most likely it's an artifact of frontpage. Frontpage makes it's authors look like morons by trying to get fancy with apostrophes. That's why there is the demoronizer
There are already dozens of standards including the humble comma delimeted file that every body can produce in a hurry. I can't tell you how many interfaces I have built in my life but I know for a fact that XML or SOAP or any other acronym will only mean more work. The single biggest success I have seen so far is HL7 (for the health care industry). They got together and created a massive standard based on fixed length data which specified not only positions and lengths but datatypes and content as well. Only when you enforce data integrity and consistency will you actually have a usable interop tool.
Tagging arbitrary data so that a generic parser can turn it into an object is pretty much useless.
What's needed is not tagging but data integrity and enforcement. Something like constraint rules in a database except over the internet. That would be cool.
By the time IE5.0 came about millions upon millions of homes had IE installed with windows. Netscape was struggling to make money because every time they came out with a product MS came out with the same prduct and gave it away for free. With NS running out of money they could no longer afford to keep NS competitive and started trying to find other markets. But It was moot because MS had an infinate amount of money and kept undercutting their business with giveaways (I guess communism is sometimes good).
In the end all netscape had was a portal and MS was ofcourse attacking that too. AOL bought it pretty much for the portal and the rest is history. How ironic that now MS is facing the same threat except from a bunch of communist, anti-american snot nosed kids.
"I had my best friend die a few weeks before I sold my house. It was a long torturous death that affected everyone around him terribly."
were you underage? were you forced to work long hours in isolated circumstances? were you separated from everybody you knew? were you pressured by your bosses? were you made promises? were you duped adn swindled? If so then yes you could take some leagal action (only if you are rich though in America only the rich win in court).
In most areas of the law taking advantage of unerage kids is illegal. They are deemed unable to provide consent (in statutory rape cases for eaxample) and easily influenced by adults. This kid got raped intellectually there is no two ways about it. They took advantage of an underage person and really should be in jail (not that it would ever happen of course).
How about something like the AMA? Would that work for you? If you organized well paid people you could seriously effect government policies just like the doctors, lawyers, and the CEOs do.
XML does no such thing.
Client 1 insists on sending you ADO XML format datasets, client 2 runs oracle, client 3 rund DB/2 and client 4 uses WDDX. They all send you XML files with different attributes. Worse yet one spells out states the other one put's in a abbreviation. One put "city of New york" and the other puts "new york city" and the other one puts "new york".
Oh yes it's all XML but so what? you still have to write a parser for each and every one of your clients because they sure as hell ain't going to rewrite their app or change the data in their database. Not only that but you have to translate the data itself for each and every client because XML is unable to force them to put "New York" in their city field.
All this talk about a beautiful world full of all singing all dancing interop apps is pure bullshit pitched at PHBs so they can part with shareholders money. It's a fucking lie.
Well netscape was better then IE till IE came out version 5. Until then Netscape was a much better browser and the only way MS could dislogde it from the top was by giving away IE when netscape was trying to sell it. IE came preinstalled while NS was a huge download. Without this bundling IE could never have had market penetration to dominate like they do today.
Unfortunately for NS they did not have a monopoly where they could cram their browser down peoples throats wheather they liked it or not.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just copies. Here are some things I can do with a toaster that I can't do with software.
I can use my toaster in my house or in my friends house or in my garage.
I can use it make toast for my friends.
I can sell it to somebody else if I get a better toaster.
I can lend it or give it away to anybody I want.
I don't have to tell the manufacturer my name, address, date of birth, social security number etc. I can buy it and use it without them ever knowing who I am.
It it breaks I can take it back and get a another one (if it's under warranty).
It it's not under warranty I can take it to someone and ask them to take it apart and fix it, or I can attempt to fix it myself.
"There has to be some means of protecting the property rights of the producer"
How about this: Property rights only apply to property. If you want property rights protection then treat it like any other property.
Slightly off topic but.
Mr Smith probably would be outrages at how his theories and thoughts have been subverted in the intervening years. He as a pretty smart gentleman by all accounts so if he were trying to make the same point now he would have taken into account the accumulated knowledge of the past couple of hundred years. Most blatantly he like most of his compatriots considered clean air, water, trees, etc to be an infinate resource which we have learned since are not. If he was alive today he might not have written the same books.
It always boggles my mind why people who would never rely on medical techniques of the 1800s would rely on philosophical or political writings of the same period. Our knowledge of the world around us and of the psychology of the human being have grown immensely yet we still point to hundred year old books and say "see he said you should do this".
That was a real live mistake made by a real live human being. I'll take credit (or the blame) for that mistake because I am a human being and have a moral sense. MS OTOH will do no such thing.
They mean in marketing hype not technology.
Surely not even you would claim that MS invented the idea of a web app. MS is following the inovators of the web to try and lock internet users into their own application framework hoping that people will abandon open standards.
XML schema is just this side of useless.
You can specify that some element ought to be text but you can't specify the context. Let's say that you had an element called county. You have to make it text right? Well can somebody put "goatse.cx" into this county field? Will the XML parser say "sorry that's not a county" of course not. Worse yet the US postal office says that there is a county called "lake and peninsula" in alaska does your XML parser reject "lake & peninsula"?
Schemas only enforce trivial rules not real life business rules. There ought to be a schema element that says "this is a county as defined by the USPS URL, the elements must exist in this URL". I suppose you could list all umpteen thousand counties in your schema and be screwed when the USPS creates a new one.
"if MS and Oracle can't agree on their dataset format, that's not really a problem with the underlying technology. "
I disagree vehemently. If the purpose of the technology is to ease interchange and the technology is not able to achieve that then it's a failure. XML is a silly standard because it specifies nothing at all.
"but there's also got to be a better way. "
Here is a better way. Have XMl actually enforce relationships just like a database does. Specify tags that say this element is bound by a relationship to this other element (or url). Have realistic contraints and lookups. Only then will it actually be useful.
XML as it exists now is only a hair above useless. CSV does pretty much the same thing without added bloat and even perl style hashes are more useful ans easier to parse. Any technology which leaves it up to competitors to agree on a standard is doomed to failure. MS and Oracle will never agree and you will be writing translators for their XML formats.
XML is a failure because it does not deliver what it promises.
I can parse delimeted data or fixed length data with one line of code too it really does not matter. Every client who sends me data produces a different object. I have to write my interfaces for each and every XML document my clients send me. Not only that but somebody could send you < name> bob</name> and somebody could send you < name value="bob"/> both are legal XML both require different code. XML is only self documenting to a human.
I dont' know if it's true or not but...
When Freud was asked about communism he reportedly said "it won't work because people are not that good".
"Netscape's browser was for all practical purposes free from the beginning. The only people paying for it were large companies."
Are you saying that large companies paying for your product is a trivial source of revenue? A comapny needs every cent it can get.
"Are you saying Netscape couldn't afford to put resources into further developing their web browser? I haven't heard that before."
Any business person would realize that MS was going to win the browser war because they were giving away the product that netscape was trying to sell. Same with web servers. It would have been suicide to budget money towards developing the browser if MS was going to bundle theirs with windows and put it in every desktop in the world. They scambled looking for markets where MS did not play but every time they entered a market MS entered the same market with a similar product and gave it away for free. It was a doomed task. When MS wants to kill a competitor the competitor will die because MS has what amounts to infinate amount of money and they can subsidize any of their products with their office and windows monopoly. Ask Real.
He's a republican he does need facts. If Rush says so it must be true.
I saw a show on TV about the extinction of the dinosaurs once. The scientist pointed at a hill side explaining that "in this three inch layer of dirt there is nothing but ferns, below it you can find dinosaurs and above it mostly mammals". I though to myself. Millions of years of domination over the earth and they were wiped out in a massively catastrophic event and in the end what happened? Three inches of dirt!.
We humans will no doubt erase ourselves from this planet and we will do it by eliminating every other creature that we can first. But in the end the earth will recover and some alien or future species might notice the millimeter or so of dirt we will end up as.
BTW it won't take nuclear weapons just a steady elimination of species, poisoning the water and air, and messing with our own food supply.
most likely it's an artifact of frontpage. Frontpage makes it's authors look like morons by trying to get fancy with apostrophes. That's why there is the demoronizer
There are already dozens of standards including the humble comma delimeted file that every body can produce in a hurry. I can't tell you how many interfaces I have built in my life but I know for a fact that XML or SOAP or any other acronym will only mean more work. The single biggest success I have seen so far is HL7 (for the health care industry). They got together and created a massive standard based on fixed length data which specified not only positions and lengths but datatypes and content as well. Only when you enforce data integrity and consistency will you actually have a usable interop tool.
Tagging arbitrary data so that a generic parser can turn it into an object is pretty much useless.
What's needed is not tagging but data integrity and enforcement. Something like constraint rules in a database except over the internet. That would be cool.
once again no advantage for XML. If I wrote my app using perl or http post it would ignore the extra field too.
By the time IE5.0 came about millions upon millions of homes had IE installed with windows. Netscape was struggling to make money because every time they came out with a product MS came out with the same prduct and gave it away for free. With NS running out of money they could no longer afford to keep NS competitive and started trying to find other markets. But It was moot because MS had an infinate amount of money and kept undercutting their business with giveaways (I guess communism is sometimes good).
In the end all netscape had was a portal and MS was ofcourse attacking that too. AOL bought it pretty much for the portal and the rest is history. How ironic that now MS is facing the same threat except from a bunch of communist, anti-american snot nosed kids.
"I had my best friend die a few weeks before I sold my house. It was a long torturous death that affected everyone around him terribly."
were you underage? were you forced to work long hours in isolated circumstances? were you separated from everybody you knew? were you pressured by your bosses? were you made promises? were you duped adn swindled? If so then yes you could take some leagal action (only if you are rich though in America only the rich win in court).
In most areas of the law taking advantage of unerage kids is illegal. They are deemed unable to provide consent (in statutory rape cases for eaxample) and easily influenced by adults. This kid got raped intellectually there is no two ways about it. They took advantage of an underage person and really should be in jail (not that it would ever happen of course).
How about something like the AMA? Would that work for you? If you organized well paid people you could seriously effect government policies just like the doctors, lawyers, and the CEOs do.
XML does no such thing.
Client 1 insists on sending you ADO XML format datasets, client 2 runs oracle, client 3 rund DB/2 and client 4 uses WDDX. They all send you XML files with different attributes. Worse yet one spells out states the other one put's in a abbreviation. One put "city of New york" and the other puts "new york city" and the other one puts "new york".
Oh yes it's all XML but so what? you still have to write a parser for each and every one of your clients because they sure as hell ain't going to rewrite their app or change the data in their database. Not only that but you have to translate the data itself for each and every client because XML is unable to force them to put "New York" in their city field.
All this talk about a beautiful world full of all singing all dancing interop apps is pure bullshit pitched at PHBs so they can part with shareholders money. It's a fucking lie.
It's called not having a moral compass.
Not true. You'll still have to rewrite your app to take into account the new field. If you are going to rewrite it anyway then what have you gained?
Is there a widely used language without an ORB? Oh yea probably VB.
It really depends on weather or not you want to be paid like an HTML programmer or a Java Programmer.
Well netscape was better then IE till IE came out version 5. Until then Netscape was a much better browser and the only way MS could dislogde it from the top was by giving away IE when netscape was trying to sell it. IE came preinstalled while NS was a huge download. Without this bundling IE could never have had market penetration to dominate like they do today.
Unfortunately for NS they did not have a monopoly where they could cram their browser down peoples throats wheather they liked it or not.
"...yeah, it must have been dirty tricks... "Oh but they gave it away for free!" - you bastards!"
Fucking communist pigs! Don't they realize that it's un-american to give things away for free.