Copyright lasts for some period of time (say 20 years)
An single individual copyright can be extended perpetually by paying an annual fee (say $10,000)
That way, Disney can keep Mickey Mouse copyrighted forever, but anything that isn't generating more than 10k of revenue a year is cheaper to let lapse. Plus, it's another source of revenue for the government.
Of course, simple solutions never survive politics.
The pendulum swings one way, then back the other...
Side 1: "If I can't wear sweat pants, bring my dog to work, have my own office, telecommute when I feel like it, and drink company-provided beer every day starting at 3:00, then I won't work here."
Side 2: "You're 35 and you haven't had a heart attack yet? Perhaps I should replace you with someone who actually works hard."
The internet was basically built on the GPL, and most of the code that makes it go was built using the GPL
You mean built on things like TCP/IP (BSD 4-clause) and Unix (ATT License) that enabled communication between networks?
Or like sendmail (BSD Licensed) that facilitated adoption of user@example.com email addresses, instead of the dominant mixed!bang!and!right%associative!email addresses and the X.400 C=US;A=IBMX400;P=EMAIL;G=firstname;S=lastname;O=engineering;OU=email;OU=internet-connectivity style of addresses?
Or like Usenet (various parts under various BSD licenses) that facilitated the exchange of information, software, and porn before the web even existed? The one that Linus posted his early Linux sources to?
Or like FTP (BSD license, and/or ATT License) that allowed archiving and known-distribution-points of software way before google made it easy to find things?
Or like web browsers (all derived, more or less from NCSA Mosaic) which was never open-source, but required paying license fees?
Or like web servers, like Apache, which had (has) a license that isn't GPL compatable?
Can you even name any important GPL software (other than emacs) that is in wide use, is important, and is non-derivitive of something already existing under a BSD or proprietatry license?
gcc: derivitive. Every company around provided c compilers.
The moral of this story is that if, in an interview, you're asked "have you ever enslaved a civilization?", you probably don't want to work there, regardless of whether or not they're affiliated with scientology.
Of course, unless they're game developers or recruiting Bond villains.
If performance is your goal, don't look at the "buy-it-at-Frys" level of NAS, or at "roll-your-own."
If you build your own, you'll end up bottle-necked by the performance of the particular OS you use, plus SAMBA or NFS (depending on your needs.) Plus, there's the time factor in putting it together, tuning it, and maintaining it. Granted, this isn't a lot if you're already a tech-head, but your time isn't free.
If you buy one of the consumer-level NAS boxes, what you're getting is the equivalent of building your own, without the ability to tune it, since most are based on the same open-source software you would use yourself. Pretty much every NAS device I've ever seen has the same cyclical bursty transfer profile as a build-it-yourself.
If you want better performance and buzzwords, every major PC vendor now has a SAN solution. You get the benefit of a team of people whose job it is to maximize disk performance, and a nice management system. However, your system head still has the same problems as before - using a general purpose OS and/or open-source software.
If you want pure performance, look at Network Appliance. They've been in the game for a long time, and their hardware/software combination allows them to control/tune the whole environment. To a first approximation, all the cool things in ZFS were done ten years ago by NetApp. You get the benefit of a whole company whose job it is to maximize disk and network performance. You can look at a performance review from earlier this year showing about 30k SPC-1 IOPS.
Personal anecdotes:
Several years ago, we did a benchmark for ClearCase between a Sun hardware head with a (a) directly connected, fibrechannel SCSI RAID array, and (b) a 100G ethernet connection to a NetApp. The performance of the NetApp was about 20% higher than directly connected disk.
NetApp service is incredible. We came in one morning, and there was an email from Network Appliance that basically said "Hello; your NetApp notified us that one of its disks has failed. We have shipped a replacement. Here's your UPS tracking number."
The above also holds for software. There's nothing like "Hello; your NetApp had a software failure. From analyzing the crash dump it sent us, we recommend you install patch xxyyzzz."
Note: My only relation with NetApp is being a very satisfied customer.
Don't use anything not in Bourne shell, for example $(), lest you someday have to fix a problem on an older system that predates bash and you are unable to remember how to do it properly.
I could also say "Don't use any command not available in a miniroot," but then I'm really dating myself... either that, or opening up more "stupid unix tricks," like Identify 3 ways to get a directory listing where the only commands you have available are shell builtins, echo, and dd
I once was a sysadmin at a company where official policy was "every user has the root password."
Since I didn't want people wandering through my pr0n^H^H^H^H work directory, my home directory was empty except for a single directory: "my/directory". Yes, a single directory with a slash embedded in the name.
Only one other user at the company was smart enough to figure out how to cd(1) into the directory. Fortunately, he doubled the size of it.
I live in a rural area in New Brunswick I live in the middle of nowhere; think Landusky, Montana.
the 'health care' that Canada offers hear (sic) is unacceptable Despite living in a town with a population of 35, I feel the other 34 people should be highly trained medical professionals at my beck and call.
the closet Canadian hospital is over an hour and fifteen minutes away I don't want to live in a city, but want to have all the benefits of one.
Treated and released for my condition (Aterial Fib as it's called) I have a generally treatable and usually benign condition that millions of other people also have
I contacted Canadian medicare and was told that the closest appointment they could give me was EIGHT MONTHS away You would have been better to contact a Doctor. "Canadian medicare" (aka Department of Health, NB) is the government agency responsible for reimbursing health professionals for the costs of providing health care. Asking them to schedule an appointment is like asking a bellhop to design a skyscraper.
I had no idea what was wrong with me... I could've been dead the next day from it. The American hospital released me. For liability reasons, they wouldn't have done that if I was still at risk. But I am a hypocondriac, and I want attention NOW!
in a socialist health care system you are at the mercy of the government in terms of your overall health care. As opposed to a for-profit health care system, where you are at the mercy of companies whose goal is to increase their profits.
I know too many friends and family that have been mistreated, and some killed by negligence on the part of the state Some of my overweight, alcoholic, crackhead bungee-jumping buddies have died. I blame the medical system.
Obama said he would vote against Telecom Immunity. Then he voted for it. He is not a man of principles.
McCain has repeated how he has and will fight against earmarks and, as president, would never pass a bill with them. When the first bailout bill failed, he suspended his campaign to "go to Washington and help pass the bill." The bill passed once it had an additional $100 Bn of earmarks. He is not a man of principles.
Thank god I'm a Canadian. Wait; I voted Grit and we still got another Reform^H^H^H^H^H^HTory government.
Each Voyager has three computer systems, with a combined total of around 64k of memory. "The amount of computing power it has is far less that the two gig memory stick you carry around," he told PM.
How can you have less than zero computing power?
Dear Popular Mechanics: Memory != CPU. Go back to reviewing cars.
Day 1: Really excited by my new development job, even though I have no seniority. Was trained by the person with second-least seniority, who told me my job was to access the bug database and make a graph in powerpoint of "severity x days open."
After about 5 minutes of this, I said You know, I could write a perl program to do this in less time than it would take to do it by hand.
He smiled, and said that's what he thought on the his first day. However, we were programmers and the IT people had the responsibility for the bug database and they were in a different union. Ergo, we weren't allowed to build programmatic interfaces to their tools.
Day 10: I've got building the chart down to taking only six hours a day, and have spent my other 30 minutes (minus union-mandated lunch and coffee breaks) a day looking at the code in read-only mode, trying to familiarize myself with it. Having worked on open-source projects, I knew how to use the SVN web-viewer.
Day 20: I noticed a quite-obvious buffer overflow in the code, and went to the developer who wrote it to point it out. She was quite upset that I had been looking at the code, and filed a union grievance about me exceeding my job responsibilities.
Day 22: Grievance day. The shop steward yelled at me for a while. Afterwards, Management took me aside and told me it was nice to see someone who had some initiative, and they'd see if they could find me something interesting to do...
Day 41: Time to build PPT charts now 7 hours. I had gotten it down to 5, but there have been a rash of bugs and features over the past few weeks.
Day 52: Management tells me there's a small feature they've wanted developed for years, but it never seems to get done. It's completely self-contained and sounds pretty simple. They give me the bug # for the requirements list, and caution that I can only work on it in my spare time, and not generate overtime.
Day 56: I've done a bit of looking into it, and now understand how to do the side project. The problem is, I'm already at 15 minutes of overtime a day because of making those stupid charts. I think I'll work on it at home.
Day 57: Tired at work today, since I stayed up until 3 AM working on the side project.
Day 58: Gave the completed side project to Management, along with all the source code. They thanked me profusely, saying it's nice to see people who can get things done.
Day 59: Called into a meeting with the shop steward and one of the senior developers. Apparently, the task that I did had done was assigned to the senior developer, and Management had given him my source and said "We got something off your plate for you." It turns out the task had been on his plate for a year, and he had never done it. I asked "I know it wasn't my responsibility, but isn't it good to have something off your plate so you don't have to deal with it?" He exploded and said he was saving it because it was a simple task, and if he ever had to raise his productivity to meet a quota, he could have done that.
The shop steward said that it didn't look as if I was going to fit in, and they terminated me on the last day of my probationary period.
If you have 100Gb now, edit it down to five minutes. Throw away everything else.
Next year, do the same thing. And every year after that.
By the time the kid is 20, you'll have almost a two hour movie. Then you'll say "my god, who do I want to punish by watching home movies for two hours?" But it's way better than ten tons of footage that you forever ignore because you can't bring yourself to select which of the 18 hours of footage of him/her stuffing food in their mouth is best.
As I understand it (I once dated a teacher,) the history of NCLB is basically:
Congresscritter 1: We should improve education.
Congresscritter 2: How about we tie test scores to school funding?
Rational Person: Wouldn't that just inspire schools to change the tests in order to improve the scores and maximize funding? That's far easier than improving the quality of education, yet it has the same rewards under NCLB.
Congresscritters: Shut up! We've got pork in this bill now!
The writers made other concessions too: they for instance dropped their demand for a higher share of money from DVDs. They also gave up trying to get reality television and animation covered by union terms.
... invent a new one that nobody is interested in.
I think you Brits already have the market cornered on weird sports nobody else is interested in. Let's see, there's:
Bog Snorkelling - Basically, swimming 60 yard laps in glue. World record: 1 min 35. Video
The Eton Wall Game - Spend half an hour pushing schoolboy's faces into a wall. In the rest of the world, this would be called "Bullying," but you have rules and teams, so it's not.
The
Gloucestershire Cheese Race, where people who apparently can't afford to buy cheese instead risk their lives chasing a 7 lb cheese down a hill. Video.
nasagame: use probe messenger
You are now online with Messenger
nasagame (Messenger): where
In slingshot maneuver.
Time to Mercury: 1137 days.
nasagame (Messenger): look
I see stars, albeit not too clearly.
nasagame (Messenger): exit
Messenger is now offline
nasagame: launch rocket
It's too cloudy. And your next rocket launch isn't for 184 days.
nasagame: build interplanetary probe
You don't have Senate Approval to build more probes.
Try going to a Senate Hearing
nasagame: go to senate hearing
You are now at a senate hearing. Senator Lieberschvine asks you to justify section 10.4.3.17.2 of your budget.
nasagame (Senate Hearing): quit
Are you sure you want to quit? There's not many jobs for people with Ph.D's in physics.
Senator Lieberschvine is getting annoyed you haven't answered his question.
nasagame (Senate Hearing): exit
Senate rules forbid you from leaving until you address Senator Lieberschvine's question.
Senator Lieverschvine is pounding on his table.
nasagame (Senate Hearing): request bathroom break
You are in the bathroom.
nasagame (Senate Bathroom): climb through window
You have left Senate Hearings.
You have generated +150 Hate from Senator Lieberschine.
nasagame: build interplanetary probe
You don't have Senate Approval to build more probes.
Try going to a Senate Hearing
nasagame: status of voyager2
Status: Processing "take picture" request you submitted 2 hours ago.
Download status: 371 of 22154 bits received (0.0515 bits per second; 117 hours remaining)
nasagame: watch TV
Senator Lieberschine in on TV calling for your resignation.
President Bush has announced a 40% cut to your current funding to help pay for the Iraq War.
You see an ad for "Truck Driving School" and think it sounds appealing
Every expansion will mean less new players because the investment required to 'catch up' to the rest of the game is growing at a rapid pace.
I disagree - "catching up" is really only for people who want to "race to 70" so they can raid. For everyone else, more expansions mean more content to explore and more playtime until you "hit the brick wall at 70."
In reality, it's only a small percent of people who raid. Most of us can't afford the time investment. Personally, I'd get v. bored doing the same instances over and over and over trying to get the +22 boots of no-real-life.
Additionally, Blizzard is making some of the "old-60-world" grinds easier by increasing reputation gain rates for the old-world factions.
Slashdot Mirror
Simple Solution:
That way, Disney can keep Mickey Mouse copyrighted forever, but anything that isn't generating more than 10k of revenue a year is cheaper to let lapse. Plus, it's another source of revenue for the government.
Of course, simple solutions never survive politics.
The pendulum swings one way, then back the other...
Side 1: "If I can't wear sweat pants, bring my dog to work, have my own office, telecommute when I feel like it, and drink company-provided beer every day starting at 3:00, then I won't work here."
Side 2: "You're 35 and you haven't had a heart attack yet? Perhaps I should replace you with someone who actually works hard."
You mean built on things like TCP/IP (BSD 4-clause) and Unix (ATT License) that enabled communication between networks?
Or like sendmail (BSD Licensed) that facilitated adoption of user@example.com email addresses, instead of the dominant mixed!bang!and!right%associative!email addresses and the X.400 C=US;A=IBMX400;P=EMAIL;G=firstname;S=lastname;O=engineering;OU=email;OU=internet-connectivity style of addresses?
Or like Usenet (various parts under various BSD licenses) that facilitated the exchange of information, software, and porn before the web even existed? The one that Linus posted his early Linux sources to?
Or like FTP (BSD license, and/or ATT License) that allowed archiving and known-distribution-points of software way before google made it easy to find things?
Or like web browsers (all derived, more or less from NCSA Mosaic) which was never open-source, but required paying license fees?
Or like web servers, like Apache, which had (has) a license that isn't GPL compatable?
Can you even name any important GPL software (other than emacs) that is in wide use, is important, and is non-derivitive of something already existing under a BSD or proprietatry license?
gcc: derivitive. Every company around provided c compilers.
linux: derivitive. Ever hear of Unix?
Vista SP2 (or 3): Everyone already using Vista expects it for free
Windows 7: Can charge $249 for this brand spanking new OS
The moral of this story is that if, in an interview, you're asked "have you ever enslaved a civilization?", you probably don't want to work there, regardless of whether or not they're affiliated with scientology.
Of course, unless they're game developers or recruiting Bond villains.
Corporations can get married, just not in states with "defense of marriage" laws, because it's impossible to prove they're of opposite genders.
If performance is your goal, don't look at the "buy-it-at-Frys" level of NAS, or at "roll-your-own."
If you build your own, you'll end up bottle-necked by the performance of the particular OS you use, plus SAMBA or NFS (depending on your needs.) Plus, there's the time factor in putting it together, tuning it, and maintaining it. Granted, this isn't a lot if you're already a tech-head, but your time isn't free.
If you buy one of the consumer-level NAS boxes, what you're getting is the equivalent of building your own, without the ability to tune it, since most are based on the same open-source software you would use yourself. Pretty much every NAS device I've ever seen has the same cyclical bursty transfer profile as a build-it-yourself.
If you want better performance and buzzwords, every major PC vendor now has a SAN solution. You get the benefit of a team of people whose job it is to maximize disk performance, and a nice management system. However, your system head still has the same problems as before - using a general purpose OS and/or open-source software.
If you want pure performance, look at Network Appliance. They've been in the game for a long time, and their hardware/software combination allows them to control/tune the whole environment. To a first approximation, all the cool things in ZFS were done ten years ago by NetApp. You get the benefit of a whole company whose job it is to maximize disk and network performance. You can look at a performance review from earlier this year showing about 30k SPC-1 IOPS.
Personal anecdotes:
Note: My only relation with NetApp is being a very satisfied customer.
Don't use anything not in Bourne shell, for example $(), lest you someday have to fix a problem on an older system that predates bash and you are unable to remember how to do it properly.
I could also say "Don't use any command not available in a miniroot," but then I'm really dating myself... either that, or opening up more "stupid unix tricks," like Identify 3 ways to get a directory listing where the only commands you have available are shell builtins, echo, and dd
I once was a sysadmin at a company where official policy was "every user has the root password."
Since I didn't want people wandering through my pr0n^H^H^H^H work directory, my home directory was empty except for a single directory: "my/directory". Yes, a single directory with a slash embedded in the name.
Only one other user at the company was smart enough to figure out how to cd(1) into the directory. Fortunately, he doubled the size of it.
Here, let me translate for you...
I live in a rural area in New Brunswick
I live in the middle of nowhere; think Landusky, Montana.
the 'health care' that Canada offers hear (sic) is unacceptable
Despite living in a town with a population of 35, I feel the other 34 people should be highly trained medical professionals at my beck and call.
the closet Canadian hospital is over an hour and fifteen minutes away
I don't want to live in a city, but want to have all the benefits of one.
Treated and released for my condition (Aterial Fib as it's called)
I have a generally treatable and usually benign condition that millions of other people also have
I contacted Canadian medicare and was told that the closest appointment they could give me was EIGHT MONTHS away
You would have been better to contact a Doctor. "Canadian medicare" (aka Department of Health, NB) is the government agency responsible for reimbursing health professionals for the costs of providing health care. Asking them to schedule an appointment is like asking a bellhop to design a skyscraper.
I had no idea what was wrong with me... I could've been dead the next day from it.
The American hospital released me. For liability reasons, they wouldn't have done that if I was still at risk. But I am a hypocondriac, and I want attention NOW!
in a socialist health care system you are at the mercy of the government in terms of your overall health care.
As opposed to a for-profit health care system, where you are at the mercy of companies whose goal is to increase their profits.
I know too many friends and family that have been mistreated, and some killed by negligence on the part of the state
Some of my overweight, alcoholic, crackhead bungee-jumping buddies have died. I blame the medical system.
The Lich King! Write in Cheney!
Obama said he would vote against Telecom Immunity. Then he voted for it. He is not a man of principles.
McCain has repeated how he has and will fight against earmarks and, as president, would never pass a bill with them. When the first bailout bill failed, he suspended his campaign to "go to Washington and help pass the bill." The bill passed once it had an additional $100 Bn of earmarks. He is not a man of principles.
Thank god I'm a Canadian. Wait; I voted Grit and we still got another Reform^H^H^H^H^H^HTory government.
How can you have less than zero computing power?
Dear Popular Mechanics: Memory != CPU. Go back to reviewing cars.
Day 1: Really excited by my new development job, even though I have no seniority. Was trained by the person with second-least seniority, who told me my job was to access the bug database and make a graph in powerpoint of "severity x days open."
After about 5 minutes of this, I said You know, I could write a perl program to do this in less time than it would take to do it by hand.
He smiled, and said that's what he thought on the his first day. However, we were programmers and the IT people had the responsibility for the bug database and they were in a different union. Ergo, we weren't allowed to build programmatic interfaces to their tools.
Day 10: I've got building the chart down to taking only six hours a day, and have spent my other 30 minutes (minus union-mandated lunch and coffee breaks) a day looking at the code in read-only mode, trying to familiarize myself with it. Having worked on open-source projects, I knew how to use the SVN web-viewer.
Day 20: I noticed a quite-obvious buffer overflow in the code, and went to the developer who wrote it to point it out. She was quite upset that I had been looking at the code, and filed a union grievance about me exceeding my job responsibilities.
Day 22: Grievance day. The shop steward yelled at me for a while. Afterwards, Management took me aside and told me it was nice to see someone who had some initiative, and they'd see if they could find me something interesting to do...
Day 41: Time to build PPT charts now 7 hours. I had gotten it down to 5, but there have been a rash of bugs and features over the past few weeks.
Day 52: Management tells me there's a small feature they've wanted developed for years, but it never seems to get done. It's completely self-contained and sounds pretty simple. They give me the bug # for the requirements list, and caution that I can only work on it in my spare time, and not generate overtime.
Day 56: I've done a bit of looking into it, and now understand how to do the side project. The problem is, I'm already at 15 minutes of overtime a day because of making those stupid charts. I think I'll work on it at home.
Day 57: Tired at work today, since I stayed up until 3 AM working on the side project.
Day 58: Gave the completed side project to Management, along with all the source code. They thanked me profusely, saying it's nice to see people who can get things done.
Day 59: Called into a meeting with the shop steward and one of the senior developers. Apparently, the task that I did had done was assigned to the senior developer, and Management had given him my source and said "We got something off your plate for you." It turns out the task had been on his plate for a year, and he had never done it. I asked "I know it wasn't my responsibility, but isn't it good to have something off your plate so you don't have to deal with it?" He exploded and said he was saving it because it was a simple task, and if he ever had to raise his productivity to meet a quota, he could have done that.
The shop steward said that it didn't look as if I was going to fit in, and they terminated me on the last day of my probationary period.
If you have 100Gb now, edit it down to five minutes. Throw away everything else.
Next year, do the same thing. And every year after that.
By the time the kid is 20, you'll have almost a two hour movie. Then you'll say "my god, who do I want to punish by watching home movies for two hours?" But it's way better than ten tons of footage that you forever ignore because you can't bring yourself to select which of the 18 hours of footage of him/her stuffing food in their mouth is best.
For people not in the U.S., NCLB is the controversial No Child Left Behind act.
As I understand it (I once dated a teacher,) the history of NCLB is basically:
Let's add a column to your list...
80's - S&L, Junk bonds. Result: Government Bailouts.
90's - Dot Coms. Result: No Government involvement.
00's - Housing/Mortgages/Junk bonds. Result: Government Bailouts.
I think it's high time for me to get out of the IT industry and into finance.
"Someone put a fish in the percolator!"
I actually did this several years ago - three people took coffee before one came back and dumped the pot.
Yay!
I'll be able to watch over-compressed, out of focus home videos at 320x200 blown up to 1920x1200 on my HDTV!
Average American:
Best president Ever!
From The Economist's coverage:
HTH. HAND.
I think you Brits already have the market cornered on weird sports nobody else is interested in. Let's see, there's:
nasagame: use probe messenger
You are now online with Messenger
nasagame (Messenger): where
In slingshot maneuver.
Time to Mercury: 1137 days.
nasagame (Messenger): look
I see stars, albeit not too clearly.
nasagame (Messenger): exit
Messenger is now offline
nasagame: launch rocket
It's too cloudy. And your next rocket launch isn't for 184 days.
nasagame: build interplanetary probe
You don't have Senate Approval to build more probes.
Try going to a Senate Hearing
nasagame: go to senate hearing
You are now at a senate hearing.
Senator Lieberschvine asks you to justify section 10.4.3.17.2 of your budget.
nasagame (Senate Hearing): quit
Are you sure you want to quit? There's not many jobs for people with Ph.D's in physics.
Senator Lieberschvine is getting annoyed you haven't answered his question.
nasagame (Senate Hearing): exit
Senate rules forbid you from leaving until you address Senator Lieberschvine's question.
Senator Lieverschvine is pounding on his table.
nasagame (Senate Hearing): request bathroom break
You are in the bathroom.
nasagame (Senate Bathroom): climb through window
You have left Senate Hearings.
You have generated +150 Hate from Senator Lieberschine.
nasagame: build interplanetary probe
You don't have Senate Approval to build more probes.
Try going to a Senate Hearing
nasagame: status of voyager2
Status: Processing "take picture" request you submitted 2 hours ago.
Download status: 371 of 22154 bits received (0.0515 bits per second; 117 hours remaining)
nasagame: watch TV
Senator Lieberschine in on TV calling for your resignation.
President Bush has announced a 40% cut to your current funding to help pay for the Iraq War.
You see an ad for "Truck Driving School" and think it sounds appealing
nasagame: down not across
You have logged out.
If you play on a PVP server and get ganked, your laptop dies.
I disagree - "catching up" is really only for people who want to "race to 70" so they can raid. For everyone else, more expansions mean more content to explore and more playtime until you "hit the brick wall at 70."
In reality, it's only a small percent of people who raid. Most of us can't afford the time investment. Personally, I'd get v. bored doing the same instances over and over and over trying to get the +22 boots of no-real-life.
Additionally, Blizzard is making some of the "old-60-world" grinds easier by increasing reputation gain rates for the old-world factions.