The big players are protecting themsleves against people playing them for patents that they make use of. The lawyers are coming in and seeking to provide revenue for greedy people, and the smaller players are hoping to not get noticed.
I think that a compromise should be sought; the litigation-crazy equivalents of the ambulance chasers need to be eliminated from this game because they do not add value to the computer industry when they sue. The interests of the small players need to be defended against this; the larger players are large because they have defended themselves and the need to defend the money-making side of research in the computer industry will remain.
I suggest a middle ground for patents that reflects the speed of progress in information technology: a three year patent without protection while it is being assessed and which can only be defended by its owners if a product making use of that development is on sale. This supports the people who want to innovate to sell products without being too restrictive on the people who can't afford to protect their developments with extensive litigation.
A more wacky alternative: to include in patent specification that an example of the computer code required to perform the patented task be made available under a free-as-in-both license after a protected period of three or five years.
Consumer systems, eh?!? Running slow? Hit it with AdAware and Spybot to clear the infection. Then stick some more RAM in the system so that big ol' Oracle DB doesn't swap so much...
I think it's all about fear of change. Realistically, considering the pace of progress in today's world, how long does any given piece of technology remain viable, marketwise? Not long, and the curve is accelerating.
Is there a line of compromise between the two positions? Can we set patents that expire one year after being granted? Or that only granted if a sold product makes use of them? Or that must be included in a sold product for which the patent protection lasts only a year?
I think that these suggestions would help balance the investment made by larger companies and yet allow for a presence of flexible and disruptive smaller players.
However, I wouldn't advocate them because I don't believe that the field of software development benefits from being stunted. People who work for companies produce software that carries the company's attitudes. As a consumer I want to have software that is a work of art created by people who love doing what they do, and wish the freedom to do this to be available to anyone.
His company also sells movies on hard disks, which are copied onto the machine, all done by licensed officials of his company:
We deliver movies on hard disks, and so we're able to deliver them at higher bit-rate encoding. A few of our titles come in the high-definition 1080i format, encoded at 35 megabits per second, or double the rate of broadcast HD
But it's not something that's meaningful for them to enforce: I can go all link-crazy in my own space on the internet (blogs, forums, personal web space), and there really is no way to stop me.
In some way it's perverse anti-advertising. If I drive a large volume of people to their site who eventually become customers (or who only help the 'mind-share' of the Red Hat name), they aren't going to be concerned.
However, Centos' site (I haven't seen it before, so don't know) may have featured a recommendation relating to buying less support from the Hat than needed, and using Centos on the spare systems, compromising the Red's support infrastructure and so Centos needed to be challenged about this policy. I don't know where I stand about the morality of this; information is free, but is it okay to support services that make use of that information not free? This can only challenge the business model Red Hat have chosen, potentially to the detriment of the interface of Business and the Open Source movement.
I'm not worried about Napoleon Dynamite. I was worried about the Windows-like look and feel. Everything seems to look the same and is named the same...
More lawsuits? Only against the people who miss the joke here.:P
>Relativism is unavoidable Heh. An absolutist take on relativism. That's good irony. To be frank, mine is an incongruous statement. It's not ironical. See here.
My point was that people who are looking for truth or insight should avoid reading anything Chomsky says on the subjects of history or politics. What if he just has a perspective that is different to yours? Is there no room in your world for that? Aren't people allowed to think differently to you? (mumbles: crusader for liberty and freedom, my foot!;-) )
You no longer see the difference between capital punishment and murder. I choose to label capital punishment as state-sponsored murder. Do you believe it's okay for a government to punish people by death for severe infringement of their laws? What about adultery or apostasy in the Islamic Sharia system? How is that different to the 'righteous' acts of stopping the life of a killer in the USA?
I see both as devaluing human life in such a way that the system wins but humankind do not, and consider both examples (Sharia and U.S. law) to be abuses on citizens. It's this devaluing of human life that allows people to march into foreign countries with guns blazing, or to pack a truck with explosives and park it under a government building, as happened in Oklahoma. When we stop devaluing human life and seek to value and nourish it, then we have a reason to avoid killing and to follow the noble statements made that recognise the value of all human life.
Unfortunately, for many it's too late. You, for example, have been poisoned. You no longer see the difference between capital punishment and murder. You deny that this distinction even exists. Your mind has been poisoned. You've been perverted into something just slightly less than human.
Thank you for debating with me. And considering me worthy of having this discourse with, despite the fact you think I'm slightly less than human.:-P (I will let you make your own mind up about who has been poisoned by what.)
In case you have made assumptions about my attitude and actions with respect to morality and charity in the world we live, may I clarify: I give to charity and I volunteer my time. Right and Wrong are distinctions that aren't helpful to my life: more- and less-helpful, along with more- and less-appropriate guide me to seek to follow my conscience about what is the best for everyone.
I say this because I think that each person has to find their own way through life because the government, any religious order, their friends or their family cannot do it for them. Consequently each person must be the judge of whether or not the institutions around them (from those who supply them with food, news and employment to those who protect and serve them) are trustworthy and are doing a good job. I think it is essential that people are both skeptical and critical to avoid being 'robbed blind' by those wishing to gain advantage over them.
Take the view that an album is a record of artistic work from a period in time by one group of artists. That won't disappear easily. Even if the songs are produced one after the other and made available in online in small batches, there will be a collection at a later point (like a series box for a tv show).
But for sales-oriented radio-play music, where the album tracks are filler material and seen as unimportant, I can see the album disappearing because the investors in the b(r)and don't want to throw money away on unnecessary guff.
What about B-sides on singles? With people not buying (as many) hard copies, there is less need for such bonus material; equally, it can be this bonus material that adds to the package (as with a DVD set).
Ghandi and Luther King are good examples: they didn't need to defend themselves and the crimes they fought against were apparent.
Relativism is unavoidable: we live lives relative to others. I could construct an example of crime committed between two people that, as the story unfolds, the victim is the other person. Ultimately we are left in the position of perpetrators of crime against those less fortunate than us in the rest of the world.
What was your point? That Chomsky is unjustified and unreliable in Manufacturing Consent? Or that governments who kill their citizens by capital punishment (to suppress crime -- the major justification of capital punishment) or those who kill to suppress opposition to those in power are different kettles of fish because of an argument about moral context? (Who gives them the right to claim a higher moral context than any other regime?)
Or that there is a difference between a free society and a totalitarian society? I'll give you that, but don't kid yourself about the perverting influence of the private interests supporting any government, even your own.
[M]oral context matters. You're suggesting that a person who kills in self defense should be subject to the same penalty as someone who kills out of malice, a proposition which is obviously bogus
I understand your perspective but I don't agree with it: in your example, someone ends up dead in both cases. That's obvious. But what of the example set by Ghandi and Martin Luther King who did not respond in self defence to the power wielded against them. Many people died in both causes (one is the freeing India of my government and the other having the US actually follow its "all men equal under God"), but the clarity of the injustices to the innocent people by both (democratic) institutions helped make clear the need for change.
Moral context is a difficult one. I understand why you think it necessary, but unfortunately we have to ask whose moral context is the one that matters? For example, I don't see the need for someone to have the right to bear arms (which the U.S. Constitution states strictly as the right to bear arms as part of an organised militia for defence), but you may disagree with me, on the ground that it saves your life when mine is not at risk.
I suspect Windows Server 2003 was a response to their being embarrassed on their own hardware (x86) by a free piece of hobby software that has grown up.
Doesn't your question also rely on the assumption (fair or not) that server management has to be text-based, not visual?
People say that the NT kernel is actually quite good. Are there any plans to do the opposite of the parent post and buy in a stable and attractive user interface for Windows?
I don't think I made the jump to ignoring the good and evil.
I said that, in the event that a 'good' institution used 'evil' methods -- and I understand that it isn't clearly cut, and even that this 'grey area' commentary is used as an excuse -- then they are no better than the 'evil' people they seek to remove.
Jack Bauer is both a hero and the dirtiest player in the book. I think it is right that he's brought to justice for his actions and face the consequences. It's not okay to say "well done, you stopped the nasty people, take a holiday".
Slashdot Mirror
The big players are protecting themsleves against people playing them for patents that they make use of. The lawyers are coming in and seeking to provide revenue for greedy people, and the smaller players are hoping to not get noticed.
I think that a compromise should be sought; the litigation-crazy equivalents of the ambulance chasers need to be eliminated from this game because they do not add value to the computer industry when they sue. The interests of the small players need to be defended against this; the larger players are large because they have defended themselves and the need to defend the money-making side of research in the computer industry will remain.
I suggest a middle ground for patents that reflects the speed of progress in information technology: a three year patent without protection while it is being assessed and which can only be defended by its owners if a product making use of that development is on sale. This supports the people who want to innovate to sell products without being too restrictive on the people who can't afford to protect their developments with extensive litigation.
A more wacky alternative: to include in patent specification that an example of the computer code required to perform the patented task be made available under a free-as-in-both license after a protected period of three or five years.
I'm still waiting for it to finish Doing It Right The First Time, you insensitive clod!
You mean that their server isn't on the list? Surely they'll fix that by the next time this dupes here.
You can rearrange the information columns and play around with the layout to build your own internal web of information about the topics.
Or, if you knew a little bit you could find out where it sits with the rest of the stuff.
I saw a Gadget Show on Five that featured Sky's HDTV box, but it requires an HDMI interface with glorious DRM. I think that's a no-go.
On my blog today: Robots running on dark energy.
Consumer systems, eh?!? Running slow? Hit it with AdAware and Spybot to clear the infection. Then stick some more RAM in the system so that big ol' Oracle DB doesn't swap so much...
Having read the story, this is more clever than you realise.
I think it's all about fear of change. Realistically, considering the pace of progress in today's world, how long does any given piece of technology remain viable, marketwise? Not long, and the curve is accelerating.
Is there a line of compromise between the two positions? Can we set patents that expire one year after being granted? Or that only granted if a sold product makes use of them? Or that must be included in a sold product for which the patent protection lasts only a year?
I think that these suggestions would help balance the investment made by larger companies and yet allow for a presence of flexible and disruptive smaller players.
However, I wouldn't advocate them because I don't believe that the field of software development benefits from being stunted. People who work for companies produce software that carries the company's attitudes. As a consumer I want to have software that is a work of art created by people who love doing what they do, and wish the freedom to do this to be available to anyone.
I think I will try to avoid anything connected by SDMI - the secure digital multimedia interface - which is DVI with extra DRM connections.
This will contravene the assumed rights of 'Fair Use', but may end up accepted by the masses.
Our New Overlord will be on a home-made Tee soon, with that great quote (FTA):
"Microsoft fully takes care of you"
His company also sells movies on hard disks, which are copied onto the machine, all done by licensed officials of his company:
We deliver movies on hard disks, and so we're able to deliver them at higher bit-rate encoding. A few of our titles come in the high-definition 1080i format, encoded at 35 megabits per second, or double the rate of broadcast HD
IANALOEAUSC.
Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were. My mistake.
But it's not something that's meaningful for them to enforce: I can go all link-crazy in my own space on the internet (blogs, forums, personal web space), and there really is no way to stop me.
In some way it's perverse anti-advertising. If I drive a large volume of people to their site who eventually become customers (or who only help the 'mind-share' of the Red Hat name), they aren't going to be concerned.
However, Centos' site (I haven't seen it before, so don't know) may have featured a recommendation relating to buying less support from the Hat than needed, and using Centos on the spare systems, compromising the Red's support infrastructure and so Centos needed to be challenged about this policy. I don't know where I stand about the morality of this; information is free, but is it okay to support services that make use of that information not free? This can only challenge the business model Red Hat have chosen, potentially to the detriment of the interface of Business and the Open Source movement.
Or did I miss a trick?
I'm "make code not war" and all that jazz, but I'm surprised you didn't put a Google bomb in there too.
I'm not worried about Napoleon Dynamite. I was worried about the Windows-like look and feel. Everything seems to look the same and is named the same...
:P
More lawsuits? Only against the people who miss the joke here.
I misread the names of one of the satelites launched, and wondered if launching SlashSat was worth it: surely a dupe.
I, for one, welcome our new "Yes to All" overlords.
>Relativism is unavoidable
;-) )
:-P (I will let you make your own mind up about who has been poisoned by what.)
Heh. An absolutist take on relativism. That's good irony.
To be frank, mine is an incongruous statement. It's not ironical. See here.
My point was that people who are looking for truth or insight should avoid reading anything Chomsky says on the subjects of history or politics.
What if he just has a perspective that is different to yours? Is there no room in your world for that? Aren't people allowed to think differently to you? (mumbles: crusader for liberty and freedom, my foot!
You no longer see the difference between capital punishment and murder.
I choose to label capital punishment as state-sponsored murder. Do you believe it's okay for a government to punish people by death for severe infringement of their laws? What about adultery or apostasy in the Islamic Sharia system? How is that different to the 'righteous' acts of stopping the life of a killer in the USA?
I see both as devaluing human life in such a way that the system wins but humankind do not, and consider both examples (Sharia and U.S. law) to be abuses on citizens. It's this devaluing of human life that allows people to march into foreign countries with guns blazing, or to pack a truck with explosives and park it under a government building, as happened in Oklahoma. When we stop devaluing human life and seek to value and nourish it, then we have a reason to avoid killing and to follow the noble statements made that recognise the value of all human life.
Unfortunately, for many it's too late. You, for example, have been poisoned. You no longer see the difference between capital punishment and murder. You deny that this distinction even exists. Your mind has been poisoned. You've been perverted into something just slightly less than human.
Thank you for debating with me. And considering me worthy of having this discourse with, despite the fact you think I'm slightly less than human.
In case you have made assumptions about my attitude and actions with respect to morality and charity in the world we live, may I clarify: I give to charity and I volunteer my time. Right and Wrong are distinctions that aren't helpful to my life: more- and less-helpful, along with more- and less-appropriate guide me to seek to follow my conscience about what is the best for everyone.
I say this because I think that each person has to find their own way through life because the government, any religious order, their friends or their family cannot do it for them. Consequently each person must be the judge of whether or not the institutions around them (from those who supply them with food, news and employment to those who protect and serve them) are trustworthy and are doing a good job. I think it is essential that people are both skeptical and critical to avoid being 'robbed blind' by those wishing to gain advantage over them.
Take the view that an album is a record of artistic work from a period in time by one group of artists. That won't disappear easily. Even if the songs are produced one after the other and made available in online in small batches, there will be a collection at a later point (like a series box for a tv show).
But for sales-oriented radio-play music, where the album tracks are filler material and seen as unimportant, I can see the album disappearing because the investors in the b(r)and don't want to throw money away on unnecessary guff.
What about B-sides on singles? With people not buying (as many) hard copies, there is less need for such bonus material; equally, it can be this bonus material that adds to the package (as with a DVD set).
Ghandi and Luther King are good examples: they didn't need to defend themselves and the crimes they fought against were apparent.
Relativism is unavoidable: we live lives relative to others. I could construct an example of crime committed between two people that, as the story unfolds, the victim is the other person. Ultimately we are left in the position of perpetrators of crime against those less fortunate than us in the rest of the world.
What was your point? That Chomsky is unjustified and unreliable in Manufacturing Consent? Or that governments who kill their citizens by capital punishment (to suppress crime -- the major justification of capital punishment) or those who kill to suppress opposition to those in power are different kettles of fish because of an argument about moral context? (Who gives them the right to claim a higher moral context than any other regime?)
Or that there is a difference between a free society and a totalitarian society? I'll give you that, but don't kid yourself about the perverting influence of the private interests supporting any government, even your own.
[M]oral context matters. You're suggesting that a person who kills in self defense should be subject to the same penalty as someone who kills out of malice, a proposition which is obviously bogus
I understand your perspective but I don't agree with it: in your example, someone ends up dead in both cases. That's obvious. But what of the example set by Ghandi and Martin Luther King who did not respond in self defence to the power wielded against them. Many people died in both causes (one is the freeing India of my government and the other having the US actually follow its "all men equal under God"), but the clarity of the injustices to the innocent people by both (democratic) institutions helped make clear the need for change.
Moral context is a difficult one. I understand why you think it necessary, but unfortunately we have to ask whose moral context is the one that matters? For example, I don't see the need for someone to have the right to bear arms (which the U.S. Constitution states strictly as the right to bear arms as part of an organised militia for defence), but you may disagree with me, on the ground that it saves your life when mine is not at risk.
I suspect Windows Server 2003 was a response to their being embarrassed on their own hardware (x86) by a free piece of hobby software that has grown up.
Doesn't your question also rely on the assumption (fair or not) that server management has to be text-based, not visual?
People say that the NT kernel is actually quite good. Are there any plans to do the opposite of the parent post and buy in a stable and attractive user interface for Windows?
I don't think I made the jump to ignoring the good and evil.
I said that, in the event that a 'good' institution used 'evil' methods -- and I understand that it isn't clearly cut, and even that this 'grey area' commentary is used as an excuse -- then they are no better than the 'evil' people they seek to remove.
Jack Bauer is both a hero and the dirtiest player in the book. I think it is right that he's brought to justice for his actions and face the consequences. It's not okay to say "well done, you stopped the nasty people, take a holiday".