I regard most forms of "intellectual property" as an artificial government construct superimposed onto pure capitalism. Here's a great case where good old laissez-faire capitalism would work better.
My dad is not a techno-geek, but he and I both share that annoying trait of insisting on accurate use of terms and unintentionally (and occasionally intentionally) misunderstanding people who misuse them. Of course, I have a greater knowledge of technical terms, and he has a greater knowledge of terms in his field, which is sort-of an offshoot of legal work (see, I don't even know what to call it!).
The sad thing is we unintentionally do this to each other constantly. Dad and I are great friends, but it's amazing how he can look at me like I just turned into an orangutan when I ask him a question about his job, or how we can get so frustrated at each other on the phone we get mad and hang up. Took me over a year to get used to him referring to a Powerpoint presentation as a "program," for instance. Each and every time for the first six months or so, I honestly thought he was confused. Once I thought he was telling me he was trying to copy Powerpoint itself (the.exe) to a ZIP disk...
Anyway, enjoyed your comment because it is so true!
Nobody agreed with that stuff griping about Google the other day. At least, noone who was modded up to 5. I think it was posted mostly for discussion (of course, it's a dupe; we'd all seen it before).
Look for release dates. I was running 5.6.0 some time in the last millenium, IIRC. Ran 5.6.1 for a long time after that. 5.6.0 is two major releases behind.
I generally don't worry much about the issues privacy folks raise, aside from keeping an ear open for anything eyebrow raising I haven't heard. In general, I don't care who knows how many bags of instant mashed potatoes I bought last month. (I actually heard a woman almost crying about this on a local news story about grocery store "loyalty" (tracking) cards. Usually this information is used to bring me advertising I'll be interested in, anyway.
But I do practice making things more difficult for the tracking guys, where it's convenient for me. I may not care who knows what about me, but no sense in living in a completely visible fishbowl if I don't have to. So I block cookies that have no use to me, etc.
A long while back I remember noticing that Yahoo was tracking my choices off of their search results page through the use of redirect URLs. That bothered me a bit, and sometimes I would actually type in a URL by hand to avoid giving them the extra information. Usually, I just didn't care.
When I first started using google, I was amazed they didn't do this! No redirect URLs, no way at all to tell what results I was interested in. I appreciated that and took it as a complement: they were treating me like a person, not like a test subject. It amazes me people want to complain about Google's data tracking; what about Yahoo's?
Apparently he doesn't believe in differences of opinion. United sucks, everyone can see that, so obviously the first site that should come up is untied.com.
Ironically, if it were really true that that many people had negative feelings for united, untied.com probably would come up first on google's rankings. I've seen negative sites for a person or institution come up first on a Google search. Try searching for Bernie Shifman.
If his namebase.org site is incredibly useful, then it will certainly rise in the rankings as more and more people discover it and link to it. The best advertising is word of mouth. Marketing folks all over the world would kill to be able to do what word of mouth can do.
Of course, if he tries to game the google algorithms, and gets his sites knocked down in the ratings as compensation, he'll have noone to blame but himself. If he'd just behave himself and concentrate on providing a good service and making people aware of it, his ranking would rise to where it deserves to be.
One thing we learned was that many system administrators will download via FTP from the command line directly from the FTP server, especially during a crisis they are trying to resolve.
That's why one of the first things I try to put on a system is wget. I can ftp or http from the commandline without worrying about the protocol or having an FTP client or web browser installed.
You can complain that you get less of the company profits as an employee than the investors. Again, vote with your feet and start a company.
Or, better yet, take your pay and invest.
Appreciated your post. It kind of jerked me back to reality. I was sitting here becoming dissatisfied with my exempt status, and you reminded me to put things in the right perspective.
Someone found this really cool article about the group that writes the shuttle software. I've always admired CMM level 5, having spent my entire career at level 1.;) I wonder if they need more coders.
Article has nothing to do with Linux on the desktop, at least, not directly. In other words, read the article!! (or at least the headline...)
All the kneejerk reaction posts about whether or not Linux is ready for the desktop just go to show you how many slashdotters actually read before posting....
I hear references to this paradox, but haven't yet heard it explained. I don't think you got it quite right. You are begging the question, that is, proving your result by assuming it. "Einstein already proved there is nothing faster than the speed of light." We are trying to construct a proof, here; you can't just go assuming it. What you have proved is that if information cannot travel faster than light, then gravity cannot. But you have assumed that Einstein's theory (which I thought applied to mass and/or energy... does anyone know if it applies to information?) However, if, in fact gravity can propagate faster than c (I doubt it, but if it could), then information could, in the way you demonstrated, travel faster than light.
Every time I try to customize the seats in my new Lexus, the intellectual property police show up and tell me I have no right to do that. After all, it cost a lot of money to make that Lexus, so they have the right to dictate how I use it after I pay for it. Without the rights to control other people who do business with them, all production in this country might come to a complete stop!
While losing the case now might have ultimately caused the DMCA to be challenged in the Supreme Court, if I understand the law correctly, this sets a precedent that other juridictions will be likely to use. I think if they do not follow the precedent, opponents of the law can later use the inconsistent rulings among the different lower courts to force a later case into a higher court.
Years ago my dad took me to see a replica of the Ezekiel machine, built by a Baptist minister loosely based on a passage in the Bible's book of Ezekiel. Nobody actually knows if the machine ever flew or not, but it's a neat piece of history.
Re:Notice the absence of music notation programs
on
Turn-Key Linux Audio
·
· Score: 2
It's on the way; not sure how long it will take. The GNU Lilypond program does music typesetting. Unfortunately, it's not a GUI program. There is, however, a GUI front end (uses GTK+ I think) called Denemo. Lilypond will also produce MIDIs for you if you're into that (it's not in my list of needed features, so I tend to forget to mention it).
Many Lilypond users claim to love it much more than Finale. I have trouble believing I can sell my friends on it until it's click and drag, though.
Where did you hear that those ROMs are public domain and/or legal? They may be abandoned, and I'll agree they should be legal, but I've never heard anyone say that. Have you got a link?
Slashdot Mirror
I regard most forms of "intellectual property" as an artificial government construct superimposed onto pure capitalism. Here's a great case where good old laissez-faire capitalism would work better.
My dad is not a techno-geek, but he and I both share that annoying trait of insisting on accurate use of terms and unintentionally (and occasionally intentionally) misunderstanding people who misuse them. Of course, I have a greater knowledge of technical terms, and he has a greater knowledge of terms in his field, which is sort-of an offshoot of legal work (see, I don't even know what to call it!).
The sad thing is we unintentionally do this to each other constantly. Dad and I are great friends, but it's amazing how he can look at me like I just turned into an orangutan when I ask him a question about his job, or how we can get so frustrated at each other on the phone we get mad and hang up. Took me over a year to get used to him referring to a Powerpoint presentation as a "program," for instance. Each and every time for the first six months or so, I honestly thought he was confused. Once I thought he was telling me he was trying to copy Powerpoint itself (the .exe) to a ZIP disk...
Anyway, enjoyed your comment because it is so true!
Nobody agreed with that stuff griping about Google the other day. At least, noone who was modded up to 5. I think it was posted mostly for discussion (of course, it's a dupe; we'd all seen it before).
Look for release dates. I was running 5.6.0 some time in the last millenium, IIRC. Ran 5.6.1 for a long time after that. 5.6.0 is two major releases behind.
I generally don't worry much about the issues privacy folks raise, aside from keeping an ear open for anything eyebrow raising I haven't heard. In general, I don't care who knows how many bags of instant mashed potatoes I bought last month. (I actually heard a woman almost crying about this on a local news story about grocery store "loyalty" (tracking) cards. Usually this information is used to bring me advertising I'll be interested in, anyway.
But I do practice making things more difficult for the tracking guys, where it's convenient for me. I may not care who knows what about me, but no sense in living in a completely visible fishbowl if I don't have to. So I block cookies that have no use to me, etc.
A long while back I remember noticing that Yahoo was tracking my choices off of their search results page through the use of redirect URLs. That bothered me a bit, and sometimes I would actually type in a URL by hand to avoid giving them the extra information. Usually, I just didn't care.
When I first started using google, I was amazed they didn't do this! No redirect URLs, no way at all to tell what results I was interested in. I appreciated that and took it as a complement: they were treating me like a person, not like a test subject. It amazes me people want to complain about Google's data tracking; what about Yahoo's?
Apparently he doesn't believe in differences of opinion. United sucks, everyone can see that, so obviously the first site that should come up is untied.com.
Ironically, if it were really true that that many people had negative feelings for united, untied.com probably would come up first on google's rankings. I've seen negative sites for a person or institution come up first on a Google search. Try searching for Bernie Shifman.
If his namebase.org site is incredibly useful, then it will certainly rise in the rankings as more and more people discover it and link to it. The best advertising is word of mouth. Marketing folks all over the world would kill to be able to do what word of mouth can do.
Of course, if he tries to game the google algorithms, and gets his sites knocked down in the ratings as compensation, he'll have noone to blame but himself. If he'd just behave himself and concentrate on providing a good service and making people aware of it, his ranking would rise to where it deserves to be.
wget and curl can help in that situation. It's not the ultimate solution, but it can help.
One thing we learned was that many system administrators will download via FTP from the command line directly from the FTP server, especially during a crisis they are trying to resolve.
That's why one of the first things I try to put on a system is wget. I can ftp or http from the commandline without worrying about the protocol or having an FTP client or web browser installed.
You can complain that you get less of the company profits as an employee than the investors. Again, vote with your feet and start a company.
Or, better yet, take your pay and invest.
Appreciated your post. It kind of jerked me back to reality. I was sitting here becoming dissatisfied with my exempt status, and you reminded me to put things in the right perspective.
Right. 1 is bad. :)
For added fun, see the Capability Im-maturity model.
Someone found this really cool article about the group that writes the shuttle software. I've always admired CMM level 5, having spent my entire career at level 1. ;) I wonder if they need more coders.
The Columbia wasn't a Soyuz.
Article has nothing to do with Linux on the desktop, at least, not directly. In other words, read the article!! (or at least the headline...)
All the kneejerk reaction posts about whether or not Linux is ready for the desktop just go to show you how many slashdotters actually read before posting....
I hear references to this paradox, but haven't yet heard it explained. I don't think you got it quite right. You are begging the question, that is, proving your result by assuming it. "Einstein already proved there is nothing faster than the speed of light." We are trying to construct a proof, here; you can't just go assuming it. What you have proved is that if information cannot travel faster than light, then gravity cannot. But you have assumed that Einstein's theory (which I thought applied to mass and/or energy ... does anyone know if it applies to information?) However, if, in fact gravity can propagate faster than c (I doubt it, but if it could), then information could, in the way you demonstrated, travel faster than light.
Every time I try to customize the seats in my new Lexus, the intellectual property police show up and tell me I have no right to do that. After all, it cost a lot of money to make that Lexus, so they have the right to dictate how I use it after I pay for it. Without the rights to control other people who do business with them, all production in this country might come to a complete stop!
And don't even get me started on airbags.
Same thing we've been doing for thousands of years, Pinky
Sorry, that mouse is copyrighted, too. You can't say that; your idea builds on another without permission.
retroactively extending them surely is unconstitutional
There shall be no ex post facto law, right? Am I the only one who has noticed this and wondered if it applied?
"Americans" surprised by legal limits on 1st amendment.
abridge
While losing the case now might have ultimately caused the DMCA to be challenged in the Supreme Court, if I understand the law correctly, this sets a precedent that other juridictions will be likely to use. I think if they do not follow the precedent, opponents of the law can later use the inconsistent rulings among the different lower courts to force a later case into a higher court.
Years ago my dad took me to see a replica of the Ezekiel machine, built by a Baptist minister loosely based on a passage in the Bible's book of Ezekiel. Nobody actually knows if the machine ever flew or not, but it's a neat piece of history.
It's on the way; not sure how long it will take. The GNU Lilypond program does music typesetting. Unfortunately, it's not a GUI program. There is, however, a GUI front end (uses GTK+ I think) called Denemo. Lilypond will also produce MIDIs for you if you're into that (it's not in my list of needed features, so I tend to forget to mention it).
Many Lilypond users claim to love it much more than Finale. I have trouble believing I can sell my friends on it until it's click and drag, though.
the "blood" for writing on the walls ... Does this differ from the Biblical Writing on the Wall in any way that really matters?
Yes, one significant way, and I'm surprised noone has mentioned it yet. The writing on the wall in the Bible was not written in blood.
Well, given the beating their site is getting right now, I'll bet they wish they had used a better format. :)
Where did you hear that those ROMs are public domain and/or legal? They may be abandoned, and I'll agree they should be legal, but I've never heard anyone say that. Have you got a link?