Oracle probably has a clients willing to pay for MySQL.
I believe MySQL AB made most of its money licensing MySQL for "embedded" applications. That might mean literal embedded devices, or just any commercial application where MySQL is an integral part of the whole setup, but you don't want to release your proprietary code under the GPL. MySQL AB's interpretation of the GPL was that the only way you could redistribute MySQL embedded in a commercial product was by buying MySQL under a commercial license and redistributing it that way. I think the way they justified this was that, even though the MySQL server might be a standalone application, your own code would need to link to MySQL drivers to access the database, and the drivers came with the same license terms as the server.
Most Americans have $20,000 in their savings account (I don't know any students who do).
Therefore they have money to burn.
Therefore they shouldn't buy anything on credit unless it's going to max out the typical credit card (at $12,500)
I'll bite. Where's the logic in this?
Whereas I use credit whenever I feel it's prudent, because it allows me to:
Offset opportunity costs. (Someone offers to pay me $500 if I sew them a dress by this weekend, but I don't own a sewing machine. A sewing machine costs $100, but I don't have $100 cash.)
Control my cash flow. I pay my bills when I'm ready to, and I never have to empty my accounts to do it, because I can pay larger bills off in increments.
Get rewards points. They're not a particularly good deal, but they're nice when you add up enough of them.
Gain the additional protections afforded me by using a credit card. I want to return something, the store says "Our policy says no returns," I say, "No it doesn't." Either they give me my money back or I have my credit card company negate the charge.
Another delusion anti-credit people suffer is that all credit products are created equal. They are not. It's a huge industry and there are lots of different products to choose from. Some are only available to people with good credit ratings (and you can only really build a good credit rating if you use credit), but even people with no credit history can shop around for a card that comes with good terms. The main card I use today is the first credit card I was ever issued (even though it's since been bought and sold by several different banks). It gives me all of the benefits above, plus my APR is 4.65% -- which is less than half the sales tax rate in my region, spread out over a year.
If you have $1,000, you can buy that laptop you didn't plan for, and so didn't save for, but would be really useful now that you are starting higher education. On the other hand, if your income dictates a 12 month period of saving to get that $1,000, chances are that your window of opportunity for schooling has closed before you have the hardware.
So what you're saying is, maybe all those people who tell you that you should never, ever buy anything on credit (because credit is evil and you should always buy everything with cash), should get a crash course on something called "opportunity cost"? It's not as if it's hard for a student to get a credit card.
Osama's survival for so long so champion at the art of discriminating paranoia. So why didn't he use encryption? If we assume he was acting rationally, it must be because he considered the risk of his computer falling into the hands of the enemy negligible compared to the other risks he was running. Either he got cocky, or he didn't give a damn what happened after he was out of the picture.
It's possible. One rule of thumb that's been practiced by revolutionary cells for years is: Keep quiet for 24 hours. They will torture you. Endure the torture. Do everything within your power to tell them nothing... for 24 hours. Then talk. After 24 hours, tell them anything they want to hear. Tell them everything. It won't matter, because you're just one guy, and after 24 hours, nothing in your head will be of any real use to them anymore.
Modifying the code of an open-source project hardly qualifies as "in secret".
It does if they can sufficiently obfuscate their intentions, as an earlier poster suggested.
It just strikes me as strange that people who would be paranoid enough to encrypt their [probably completely banal and uninteresting] data, when told that their encryption might not actually prevent the world's top spies from accessing said data, would brush off the idea as simple paranoia. Make up your mind, folks: Are you paranoid or aren't you?
While I think the idea of the NSA putting a backdoor into an open source project is pure tin-foil hat territory
Let me get this straight: You think the idea that one of the nation's most secretive intelligence agencies would be doing something in secret that allows them to gain intelligence is "tin-foil hat territory"? How do you know which contributors to TrueCrypt are working for the NSA? How could you ever know?
That's true, but in a criminal trial, if someone gave testimony that they heard me say I wanted to kill my wife, that's pretty thin evidence. If I posted it to Facebook, a good lawyer would probably be able to convince a jury to totally disregard it. By U.S. standards, real evidence consists of more than just the crap that comes out of my mouth. Your country may vary.
Seriously (not trolling, I'm really asking), why would you expect that, if you're smuggling stuff, or have a few grams of cocaine on you, you can walk freely all over the country?
Serious answer: Nobody really expects that. But the United States has certain principles codified into law that U.S. citizens tend to take for granted, once they understand them.
One such principle is the security of your person and belongings against unreasonable search and seizure. If a police officer walks up to you and asks you to empty your pockets, you don't have to. If a police officer wants to enter your home, you don't have to let him in. Neither do you have to let them search the trunk of your car. Police need warrants for this kind of thing. Warrants are issued by judges, and a judge won't issue a warrant unless the police prove they have sufficient evidence to suspect you're guilty of a crime.
Another principle is the freedom of movement around the country. As a general rule, police checkpoints are considered unlawful. Police need to have a reasonable expectation that you have committed a crime to stop and search your vehicle.
Now, these things aren't absolute. Drunk driving checkpoints are now pretty commonplace, especially around major holidays. Some folks have a real problem with this and claim they're unlawful, but somehow, the law seems to recognize it as valid. If a police officer stops you, asks you to step out of the car, and you have a gun in your belt, chances are you're going to jail in most states. He probably still doesn't have the right to search your vehicle -- unless you're arrested for drunk driving, in which case your car can be impounded, and once the car is in police custody they can search it any way they want.
Similarly, if there's a fire in your apartment, the police enter the apartment to assess whether it was arson, and they see a pile of cocaine on the table -- well, chances are that's your cocaine, and you'll probably be arrested. The police don't need a warrant to see something that's sitting right out in the open, as long as they were in your apartment in legal conduct of their duties.
There are a lot more wrinkles, and as usual, lawyers can always add more. But the gist of it is, it's not that we expect to be able to walk around with our pockets full of cocaine with impunity. It's just that, in this country, until the police have a legitimate reason to suspect us of something, we expect them to stay out of our lives.
Only in Europe could 2 women voluntarily have sex with a single man, enjoy themselves, and then a week later say, "I was raped," and the police take her seriously. I thought Europe was more progressive than backwards USA, what with nude television and beaches and such, but I guess not.
My understanding is that Assange's enemies scoured the Swedish law books until they found an obscure, seldom-invoked clause that they could use against him. The charges are very unusual, even within their own jurisdiction.
That's a pretty good analogy. I treat it like one long, endless night at the bar. Half the things I say are just jokes. The other half are half-thoughts and random observations. If you're on my friends list and you pollute my vision with endless rants of malformed political opinions, I'm going to take the bait and call you out on it. If you say something funny, I'm going to LOL it. If I have an important announcement to make, or a request, I'll try to present it as such. But as a general rule, if you take everything I do on Facebook with about as much seriousness as if I was obviously drunk, you're on the right track.
what's the point of even going to university if the end result is discovering that your idea has already been patented ages ago.
Well, if your goal is to create innovative new work, I imagine the point of going to university is learning what has been done before.
On the other hand, if you enroll in an undergraduate program with an amazing, brilliant idea in your head, only to discover that it had already been patented ages ago, maybe it's a wake-up call that you aren't the most brilliant person ever born, after all, and that you still have some studying to do.
Sure, software is math. I'll accept the point as stated.
Likewise, books are language. Can books be copyrighted? No one owns language.
A power drill is metal and plastic. Can a power drill be patented, then?
Patents aren't limited to ideas that have never been remotely observed before in all of human existence. You patent innovations. Many innovations are incremental, probably even the vast majority of them. I don't see how saying "but that's just math" invalidates the significance of a particular innovation. There's a big difference between saying "you could probably do that with a computer" and actually doing it with a computer, which is what a software patent would cover.
You're better off without it because when the player is not installed, all the Flash content that would normally pop up in your browser is invisible. With it installed, you are suddenly aware of the Flash content, and it sucks trying to deal with it on a touchscreen. Also, it seems as though 75 percent of the Flash that you encounter in a browser is advertising, and I don't see why anybody would want to use their bandwidth on a phone -- with the carriers increasingly trying to lock down bandwidth -- to view Flash advertising. It's as if you're paying to allow someone else to telemarket you. Yes, you can set it to on-demand. I'd just like to hear an instance where it's worth your while to agree to see the content.
I'm the guy that wrote the negative review of Flash 10.2 on Android 3.0 a while back. Even back then, the beta version of Flash Player needed Android 3.1. The Android update was released pretty much simultaneously with the beta. And for all you who complained about reviewing a beta product, the beta version of Flash Player was also available for download by anyone for free via the Android Market, so it's not as if today is the first day you could do that, either.
I still stick with my original assessment: Adobe AIR on Android devices seems to make a good deal of sense. As far as the Flash Player for the Android browser, though, I think you're better off without it.
41% devoted to online child porn, 59% for EVERYTHING else.
Correction: 59 percent for everything else online. How many murders do you think take place over TCP/IP? Just how many categories of online crimes are there?
I'm not saying 41 percent sounds like a good number -- in fact I said it didn't. But you're making it sound like the entire FBI isn't doing its job, when really it seems as if a relatively new, poorly funded, and poorly governed sub-branch of the FBI is aiming for the low-hanging fruit. Big surprise there.
The subhead of TFA: "Cyberattacks are at an all time high; FBI spends twice as much effort fighting porn."
According to the report, though, 41 percent of its effort was spent on child pornography, leaving 59 percent for cyber-attacks. "Twice as much"?
Also, would you prefer the FBI not go after child porn? I personally think it's a pretty odious thing, and the Internet is making it easier for pedophiles to indulge (where, for example, in the past they might have had to order magazines or videos from shady overseas sources or something). 41 percent of the FBI's effort sounds like a lot -- I'm not sure there's that much child porn out there -- but it's definitely within the FBI's bailiwick.
TFA seems to argue that the FBI should be doing more to conduct "cyber-warfare" and combat attacks by the Chinese military. But last I heard, the FBI was a law enforcement organization, not a military one. If the CIA wants to run a cyber-war, let it. I'd rather my federal police do what it was created to do: Lock up criminals.
Keeping the IP pool secure is going to be far more difficult in future when not only are those swimming in it poking holes in the side, they are getting positive public recognition for their efforts in many cases.
"Positive public recognition"? You think that's what the Chinese police have been giving these three since December 26?
The database from the phone is stored in the backup of the phone on your desktop, the database on the phone is inaccessible to software on the phone. Hence it requires a desktop application in order to access the database.
OK, I see what you're saying now. But we're back to the fact that the phone records the data in the first place, which I think is the root of the complaint, no? Whether you access it from the desktop or from the phone somehow, the fact that it exists to be accessed is the problem (provided, of course, that this whole issue doesn't turn out to be bullshit, which is starting to sound like is the case...).
1) Any app as in any DESKTOP application on your mac that you willfully install knowing it may do this and provided your backups aren't encrypted. iFarmville (assuming the i means it's for iOS) CANNOT access this database, ever.
How would a desktop application know (quoting GP now) "where you spend most of your time and when you are not home"? Surely you see the difference between "the subject uses his computer at home" and "the subject spends a lot of time at his friend's home while his friend is at work"?
2) Your phone is not pre-tapped, the database cannot be accessed on the phone without hacking/jailbreaking.
I don't know what the GP meant by "pre-tapped," except, I suppose, that there might be legal precedent stating law enforcement has a right to request this data. If you're ever arrested, they can get the data off your phone, at which time it's the equivalent of having followed you around (even when they never did).
3) You could give me a desktop app that does this, provided I don't have my backups encrypted.
Again, what? How could an app that's sitting on your desktop Mac at home know where you are when you're not at home? Clearly this doesn't seem to be an issue for you, but it certainly is for everybody else.
4) This would be no different from someone being hired to follow you, they can draw the same (incorrect) inferences about your habits.
It would be different, and if you don't see that you're blind. A person hired to follow you around actually has to follow you around. That costs time and money. This way, all the attorneys have to do is subpoena the information that they already know is on your phone. Second, an investigator that follows you around has to take the stand and give testimony against you, and your attorney has the right of cross-examination. "Did my client appear to be looking at the children? Which table was he sitting at, and which direction was he facing?" With automatically gathered location data, it merely has to be presented by the prosecuting attorney and, in the jury's eyes, it's up to you to shoot holes in this "factual, computerized data." That's a big, big difference.
Laserdiscs were analog, whereas CDs and DVDs are all digital. CDs and DVDs are just bit buckets where you can put whatever digital data you'd like.
No, this isn't really true. Red Book audio CDs can't store anything but audio, and the data is played back at a consistent rate of speed, in a kind of "mock analog." Laserdiscs also supported digital audio tracts that were encoded in the same way as CD audio, though you are right in that some laserdiscs were pure analog. Still, the CD-ROM format came later, and was more of a "bit bucket," but there was no way for commercial CD players to play back audio from CD-ROMs until the invention of CD players that supported MP3 (or other audio file formats).
This isn't strictly true. Laserdiscs could have either analog or digital audio, and few discs still used analog by the end. When I was a kid (80s and 90s), most laserdisc players could also play audio CDs. And unlike DVDs, neither CDs nor laserdiscs used a filesystem.
They're certainly more similar than the CD is to the DVD (except, obviously, for diameter). I thought it was widely accepted that Philips and Sony collaborated to produce the compact disc, based on the earlier laserdisc work.
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Oracle probably has a clients willing to pay for MySQL.
I believe MySQL AB made most of its money licensing MySQL for "embedded" applications. That might mean literal embedded devices, or just any commercial application where MySQL is an integral part of the whole setup, but you don't want to release your proprietary code under the GPL. MySQL AB's interpretation of the GPL was that the only way you could redistribute MySQL embedded in a commercial product was by buying MySQL under a commercial license and redistributing it that way. I think the way they justified this was that, even though the MySQL server might be a standalone application, your own code would need to link to MySQL drivers to access the database, and the drivers came with the same license terms as the server.
You're going to have to run that by me again.
According to you:
I'll bite. Where's the logic in this?
Whereas I use credit whenever I feel it's prudent, because it allows me to:
Another delusion anti-credit people suffer is that all credit products are created equal. They are not. It's a huge industry and there are lots of different products to choose from. Some are only available to people with good credit ratings (and you can only really build a good credit rating if you use credit), but even people with no credit history can shop around for a card that comes with good terms. The main card I use today is the first credit card I was ever issued (even though it's since been bought and sold by several different banks). It gives me all of the benefits above, plus my APR is 4.65% -- which is less than half the sales tax rate in my region, spread out over a year.
If you have $1,000, you can buy that laptop you didn't plan for, and so didn't save for, but would be really useful now that you are starting higher education. On the other hand, if your income dictates a 12 month period of saving to get that $1,000, chances are that your window of opportunity for schooling has closed before you have the hardware.
So what you're saying is, maybe all those people who tell you that you should never, ever buy anything on credit (because credit is evil and you should always buy everything with cash), should get a crash course on something called "opportunity cost"? It's not as if it's hard for a student to get a credit card.
Osama's survival for so long so champion at the art of discriminating paranoia. So why didn't he use encryption? If we assume he was acting rationally, it must be because he considered the risk of his computer falling into the hands of the enemy negligible compared to the other risks he was running. Either he got cocky, or he didn't give a damn what happened after he was out of the picture.
It's possible. One rule of thumb that's been practiced by revolutionary cells for years is: Keep quiet for 24 hours. They will torture you. Endure the torture. Do everything within your power to tell them nothing... for 24 hours. Then talk. After 24 hours, tell them anything they want to hear. Tell them everything. It won't matter, because you're just one guy, and after 24 hours, nothing in your head will be of any real use to them anymore.
Modifying the code of an open-source project hardly qualifies as "in secret".
It does if they can sufficiently obfuscate their intentions, as an earlier poster suggested.
It just strikes me as strange that people who would be paranoid enough to encrypt their [probably completely banal and uninteresting] data, when told that their encryption might not actually prevent the world's top spies from accessing said data, would brush off the idea as simple paranoia. Make up your mind, folks: Are you paranoid or aren't you?
While I think the idea of the NSA putting a backdoor into an open source project is pure tin-foil hat territory
Let me get this straight: You think the idea that one of the nation's most secretive intelligence agencies would be doing something in secret that allows them to gain intelligence is "tin-foil hat territory"? How do you know which contributors to TrueCrypt are working for the NSA? How could you ever know?
That's true, but in a criminal trial, if someone gave testimony that they heard me say I wanted to kill my wife, that's pretty thin evidence. If I posted it to Facebook, a good lawyer would probably be able to convince a jury to totally disregard it. By U.S. standards, real evidence consists of more than just the crap that comes out of my mouth. Your country may vary.
Seriously (not trolling, I'm really asking), why would you expect that, if you're smuggling stuff, or have a few grams of cocaine on you, you can walk freely all over the country?
Serious answer: Nobody really expects that. But the United States has certain principles codified into law that U.S. citizens tend to take for granted, once they understand them.
One such principle is the security of your person and belongings against unreasonable search and seizure. If a police officer walks up to you and asks you to empty your pockets, you don't have to. If a police officer wants to enter your home, you don't have to let him in. Neither do you have to let them search the trunk of your car. Police need warrants for this kind of thing. Warrants are issued by judges, and a judge won't issue a warrant unless the police prove they have sufficient evidence to suspect you're guilty of a crime.
Another principle is the freedom of movement around the country. As a general rule, police checkpoints are considered unlawful. Police need to have a reasonable expectation that you have committed a crime to stop and search your vehicle.
Now, these things aren't absolute. Drunk driving checkpoints are now pretty commonplace, especially around major holidays. Some folks have a real problem with this and claim they're unlawful, but somehow, the law seems to recognize it as valid. If a police officer stops you, asks you to step out of the car, and you have a gun in your belt, chances are you're going to jail in most states. He probably still doesn't have the right to search your vehicle -- unless you're arrested for drunk driving, in which case your car can be impounded, and once the car is in police custody they can search it any way they want.
Similarly, if there's a fire in your apartment, the police enter the apartment to assess whether it was arson, and they see a pile of cocaine on the table -- well, chances are that's your cocaine, and you'll probably be arrested. The police don't need a warrant to see something that's sitting right out in the open, as long as they were in your apartment in legal conduct of their duties.
There are a lot more wrinkles, and as usual, lawyers can always add more. But the gist of it is, it's not that we expect to be able to walk around with our pockets full of cocaine with impunity. It's just that, in this country, until the police have a legitimate reason to suspect us of something, we expect them to stay out of our lives.
In court for what? Drunk driving? I don't drive.
Only in Europe could 2 women voluntarily have sex with a single man, enjoy themselves, and then a week later say, "I was raped," and the police take her seriously. I thought Europe was more progressive than backwards USA, what with nude television and beaches and such, but I guess not.
My understanding is that Assange's enemies scoured the Swedish law books until they found an obscure, seldom-invoked clause that they could use against him. The charges are very unusual, even within their own jurisdiction.
That's a pretty good analogy. I treat it like one long, endless night at the bar. Half the things I say are just jokes. The other half are half-thoughts and random observations. If you're on my friends list and you pollute my vision with endless rants of malformed political opinions, I'm going to take the bait and call you out on it. If you say something funny, I'm going to LOL it. If I have an important announcement to make, or a request, I'll try to present it as such. But as a general rule, if you take everything I do on Facebook with about as much seriousness as if I was obviously drunk, you're on the right track.
what's the point of even going to university if the end result is discovering that your idea has already been patented ages ago.
Well, if your goal is to create innovative new work, I imagine the point of going to university is learning what has been done before.
On the other hand, if you enroll in an undergraduate program with an amazing, brilliant idea in your head, only to discover that it had already been patented ages ago, maybe it's a wake-up call that you aren't the most brilliant person ever born, after all, and that you still have some studying to do.
Sure, software is math. I'll accept the point as stated.
Likewise, books are language. Can books be copyrighted? No one owns language.
A power drill is metal and plastic. Can a power drill be patented, then?
Patents aren't limited to ideas that have never been remotely observed before in all of human existence. You patent innovations. Many innovations are incremental, probably even the vast majority of them. I don't see how saying "but that's just math" invalidates the significance of a particular innovation. There's a big difference between saying "you could probably do that with a computer" and actually doing it with a computer, which is what a software patent would cover.
You're better off without it because when the player is not installed, all the Flash content that would normally pop up in your browser is invisible. With it installed, you are suddenly aware of the Flash content, and it sucks trying to deal with it on a touchscreen. Also, it seems as though 75 percent of the Flash that you encounter in a browser is advertising, and I don't see why anybody would want to use their bandwidth on a phone -- with the carriers increasingly trying to lock down bandwidth -- to view Flash advertising. It's as if you're paying to allow someone else to telemarket you. Yes, you can set it to on-demand. I'd just like to hear an instance where it's worth your while to agree to see the content.
I'm the guy that wrote the negative review of Flash 10.2 on Android 3.0 a while back. Even back then, the beta version of Flash Player needed Android 3.1. The Android update was released pretty much simultaneously with the beta. And for all you who complained about reviewing a beta product, the beta version of Flash Player was also available for download by anyone for free via the Android Market, so it's not as if today is the first day you could do that, either.
I still stick with my original assessment: Adobe AIR on Android devices seems to make a good deal of sense. As far as the Flash Player for the Android browser, though, I think you're better off without it.
41% devoted to online child porn, 59% for EVERYTHING else.
Correction: 59 percent for everything else online. How many murders do you think take place over TCP/IP? Just how many categories of online crimes are there?
I'm not saying 41 percent sounds like a good number -- in fact I said it didn't. But you're making it sound like the entire FBI isn't doing its job, when really it seems as if a relatively new, poorly funded, and poorly governed sub-branch of the FBI is aiming for the low-hanging fruit. Big surprise there.
The subhead of TFA: "Cyberattacks are at an all time high; FBI spends twice as much effort fighting porn."
According to the report, though, 41 percent of its effort was spent on child pornography, leaving 59 percent for cyber-attacks. "Twice as much"?
Also, would you prefer the FBI not go after child porn? I personally think it's a pretty odious thing, and the Internet is making it easier for pedophiles to indulge (where, for example, in the past they might have had to order magazines or videos from shady overseas sources or something). 41 percent of the FBI's effort sounds like a lot -- I'm not sure there's that much child porn out there -- but it's definitely within the FBI's bailiwick.
TFA seems to argue that the FBI should be doing more to conduct "cyber-warfare" and combat attacks by the Chinese military. But last I heard, the FBI was a law enforcement organization, not a military one. If the CIA wants to run a cyber-war, let it. I'd rather my federal police do what it was created to do: Lock up criminals.
Keeping the IP pool secure is going to be far more difficult in future when not only are those swimming in it poking holes in the side, they are getting positive public recognition for their efforts in many cases.
"Positive public recognition"? You think that's what the Chinese police have been giving these three since December 26?
Sorry to say, this one gave me a little "ugh" -- you are, after all, talking about the space shuttle.
The database from the phone is stored in the backup of the phone on your desktop, the database on the phone is inaccessible to software on the phone. Hence it requires a desktop application in order to access the database.
OK, I see what you're saying now. But we're back to the fact that the phone records the data in the first place, which I think is the root of the complaint, no? Whether you access it from the desktop or from the phone somehow, the fact that it exists to be accessed is the problem (provided, of course, that this whole issue doesn't turn out to be bullshit, which is starting to sound like is the case...).
Or to make the answer a little less obtuse:
The question, in essence, was: Can the government tap my phone?
The answer is: Yes.
Next question?
Errr... what?
1) Any app as in any DESKTOP application on your mac that you willfully install knowing it may do this and provided your backups aren't encrypted. iFarmville (assuming the i means it's for iOS) CANNOT access this database, ever.
How would a desktop application know (quoting GP now) "where you spend most of your time and when you are not home"? Surely you see the difference between "the subject uses his computer at home" and "the subject spends a lot of time at his friend's home while his friend is at work"?
2) Your phone is not pre-tapped, the database cannot be accessed on the phone without hacking/jailbreaking.
I don't know what the GP meant by "pre-tapped," except, I suppose, that there might be legal precedent stating law enforcement has a right to request this data. If you're ever arrested, they can get the data off your phone, at which time it's the equivalent of having followed you around (even when they never did).
3) You could give me a desktop app that does this, provided I don't have my backups encrypted.
Again, what? How could an app that's sitting on your desktop Mac at home know where you are when you're not at home? Clearly this doesn't seem to be an issue for you, but it certainly is for everybody else.
4) This would be no different from someone being hired to follow you, they can draw the same (incorrect) inferences about your habits.
It would be different, and if you don't see that you're blind. A person hired to follow you around actually has to follow you around. That costs time and money. This way, all the attorneys have to do is subpoena the information that they already know is on your phone. Second, an investigator that follows you around has to take the stand and give testimony against you, and your attorney has the right of cross-examination. "Did my client appear to be looking at the children? Which table was he sitting at, and which direction was he facing?" With automatically gathered location data, it merely has to be presented by the prosecuting attorney and, in the jury's eyes, it's up to you to shoot holes in this "factual, computerized data." That's a big, big difference.
Laserdiscs were analog, whereas CDs and DVDs are all digital. CDs and DVDs are just bit buckets where you can put whatever digital data you'd like.
No, this isn't really true. Red Book audio CDs can't store anything but audio, and the data is played back at a consistent rate of speed, in a kind of "mock analog." Laserdiscs also supported digital audio tracts that were encoded in the same way as CD audio, though you are right in that some laserdiscs were pure analog. Still, the CD-ROM format came later, and was more of a "bit bucket," but there was no way for commercial CD players to play back audio from CD-ROMs until the invention of CD players that supported MP3 (or other audio file formats).
LD is analog. CD and DVD are digital.
This isn't strictly true. Laserdiscs could have either analog or digital audio, and few discs still used analog by the end. When I was a kid (80s and 90s), most laserdisc players could also play audio CDs. And unlike DVDs, neither CDs nor laserdiscs used a filesystem.
They're certainly more similar than the CD is to the DVD (except, obviously, for diameter). I thought it was widely accepted that Philips and Sony collaborated to produce the compact disc, based on the earlier laserdisc work.