Cathedral's founding vocalist, Lee Dorrian, was one of the original vocalists of Napalm Death and can be heard on Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration.
If we all had two image/sound/video formats (lossy and non-lossy), one time format, one type of graphics card and CPU, one file format or data transmission format, one (spoken) language (which we'll all move to eventually given enough centuries), or (horror) one OS or programming language, software would be much more exciting to write, knowing it will stand the test of time.
I get dreamy thinking about this. It would simply everything. However, I have one thought of caution.
Standardization creates a single point of failure.
Allowing solutions to exist simultaneously, and develop independently, allows there to be no single point of failure and for multiple solutions to be tried at once.
I think there's a reason nature (insert name of deity or deities if you'd prefer; I'm agnosticism agnostic!) chose to go with natural selection. While less efficient on the surface, it works in every situation and eventually, produces a time-tested quality result.
The combination of Canonical and community is what makes that amazing. There are lots of pure community distro's. And wow, they are full of politics, spite, frustration, venality and disappointment. Why? Because people are people, and work is hard, and collaboration is even harder. That's nothing to do with Canonical, and everything to do with life.
He's side-stepping the issue in that the point is that Canonical wields more power than the average contributor, and thus is in more of an authoritarian relationship.
However, he's hit on a bigger point, which is that in any collaborative software project, someone needs to be the silverback who forces everyone else to focus, or people do only what they want to do and blow off the unfun stuff.
Unfortunately, unfun stuff includes refinements to code to make sure it works well, drivers, documentation, gnarly bug fixes, and the like.
I don't think our problem is a lack of revenue; it's bad spending.
First, government is massively inefficient at every level thanks to the "government job" mentality and the tendency to over-hire bureaucrats.
Second, many government programs are pure pork barrel designed to appease certain special interest groups or make cronies rich.
Finally, government is a self-justifying agenda. In order to justify its cost, it needs to constant invent new mission creep in order to give a "legitimate" need for increased and continuing funding.
Let's do this like we would do in a private business, and get out the red pen and go over the books and cut the fat, not tax people even more. Even if this is a tiny tax, the mental outlook on which we embark with it is a bad precedent and will only get worse.
It's one thing to run the equivalent of an open anonymous FTP site, but once you have an inkling that most users are doing illegal stuff with it, there's a responsibility imposed on you to do something effective about it.
If you don't, the law assumes you're a bad guy.
While I see their point, this blows. Megaupload was the best way to swap all kinds of files. I mainly miss it for the ability to send huge amounts of non-confidential data to clients and friends, and to legally share things like video and audio creations with others.
The problem is that there's no solution for this situation. If you set up an anonymous ftp server, those who need one will most commonly be sharing controversial stuff. Everyone else just publishes the normal way.
Thus, in with those whose use justifies the service existing, there are many whose use will be seen as the purpose. Ultimately, it's a loss for the users.
We never hear about it, and the agent seizes his boat and profits.
Corruption is a very real threat!
So what if this guy is rich? The point is that if they'll do it to rich people, they'll do it to anyone, except little people have no ability to retaliate.
No doctor wants to be on the stand in a courtroom and get asked:
"So, if you'd just done this one easy surgery, the dear deceased might be with us today?"
Inevitably, it ends up looking like the doctor wanted to "save money" by avoiding a $100 test or $500 surgery and that's what killed poor dearly departed.
Also, an order has suppressed evidence that the dearly departed was 500 lbs and smoked 4 packs a day while eating nothing but cheesburgers with bacon.
That kills the cost curve. So does the paperwork, which has hospitals hiring more paper-pushers than doctors and nurses. All of this stuff is backward looking, designed to avoid that one moment in trial where it sounds to 12 half-awake people that maybe the rich evil doctor just didn't care enough.
Liberals tend to seek out novelty and uncertainty, while conservatives exhibit strong changes in attitude to threatening situations.
Novelty-seeking is more useful in social situations, while threat-awareness is more useful when you don't trust social situations and believe the underlying sociological dynamics will be more determinative.
I suffered through the VRML list back in the day when people first wanted to make 3D cyberspace.
There's a conflict: you either model 3D functional worlds, or the underlying structure, or you create a language which can draw things in 3D.
The problem with the latter is that it's not stand alone, but requires people to come up with an intersection of code, resources and aesthetics.
What people actually need is the former, which is the ability to create functional 3D models and describe them in a language like HTML, and have the browser itself create an interactive world from that.
There are many things in Net 2.0 that are very popular, but that do not necessarily have utility or profitability.
For example, just about everyone and their dog (on the internet, no one can tell you're a werewolf) uses Facebook, and before it MySpace, Friendster, Digg, Reddit, etc. But do these services have a working business model? It seems they all flounder at that point.
It seems to me that most Net 2.0 firms have an unsustainable business model, which is:
1. Get really popular. 2. ??? 3. Sell company -> Profit!
In the same way, we know we've got a lot of people who like using their phones to tweet, click, troll, sext, etc. But is this actually useful? And other than the cell phone providers, is anyone making money off this with a sustainable model?
If you're buying something, be very careful but it's acceptable.
However, on freebie sites like Facebook it makes no sense to let them see into your life.
It's amazing how many people will rail against "corporations" and then put their entire life history, home address, pictures of friends and family, etc. into Facebook.
Used to live in a city with "free wifi". It was horrendously slow because everybody used it and most still paid a normal provider.
If you make a public resource, you have what economists call a "free rider" problem: most people aren't obligated to pay in to it, so they simply take advantage of it without paying in.
This causes the quality of service to decline. It is related to the "Tragedy of the Commons" where overconsumption of a public resource results in its depletion.
A better option to "free" internet might be aiming to lower costs and improve performance, and then allow local residents to use additional bandwidth to provide free local hotspots.
Google beat the last challenge from the antitrust attorneys from Texas, but it can't count on the future.
Specifically, other states or federal entities could attack it, and then there's all of the EU, which traditionally takes a harder line on privacy violation and monopoly.
Schmidt is no dummy and so he's divesting a reasonable amount (less than half) of his stock to hedge against a potential catastrophic future decline.
Remember what happened to Microsoft. They basically floundered hard after an assault by the department of justice. If the same happens to Google, they'll have to put most of their plans on hold for a decade as well.
For Apple, and the rest of the corporate world, it's bad news, because it seems it's getting harder and harder to use patents as weapons.
I think this could have a positive effect including for the corporate world. The end of patents-as-weapons will make it easier to introduce new products without getting sued, and mean companies spending less time in expensive courtroom battles.
If I want to introduce the next iPod or Xbox 360 or just about anything, someone out there has a patent that covers something on it, from simple stuff like "the power button flashes twice when the power goes on" to the inner workings. Having less patent power could be a good thing.
Then again, I'm not sure that's what this case is about. The patents themselves were found to be improperly constructed at trial. Thus, this case deals with those patents alone, although I like your spin on it:)
That said, I don't agree with how copyright is used/abused these days and I think it's an outdated idea. Human culture and advancement has always been built on the basic human desire to share good ideas/music/art/recipes etc.
I think this is the core of the issue.
On one hand, sharing information is a great thing.
On the other hand, that information will not get developed if it doesn't pay off handsomely.
My concern is making sure we can continue to fund quality books, movies, etc. We can find people to do it for free, but people who get paid to do it can do it full time and may do a better job.
Some time ago, after the last round of Flash exploits, I de-installed it and resolved to live without it.
There are glitches: I can't get most video content, and Flash-only sites are inaccessible. However, this ended up being not a big issue.
One reason for this is that many YouTube videos play in HTML5 on Firefox. (If you find a video you can't play, try embedding it; this sometimes produces a workable version.)
Overall, the playback on HTML5 is better than Flash. There are fewer random slowdowns and stall-outs. On the downside, not every video is in HTML5.
The most amazing this is that browser crashes have dropped to near zero, either one or zero during this time. Most of what I thought was FF and Opera being buggy was in fact Flash being buggy.
There's not yet enough content switched to HTML5 from Flash to navigate everything, but during my 6 months without Flash, I've noticed that more firms are going away from the Flash-only navigation school of design.
YMMV. For me, life without Flash has been better, although I do miss out on some things.
I would add unhappy to your list of qualities that make up the bulk of social site users. Many of the people I know who are regular users remain in contact with old flames even though they are now like Al Bundy. Here's to hoping these extra opportunities to procreate don't result in the psychologically healthy being out-bred by this genotypical subset.
I've noticed this as well. People tend to try to "justify" their lives using lifestyle and/or perceived success. For example, a recent survey of Facebook friends found that almost 3/4 of the profile pictures contained either (a) alcohol or (b) children. It's like saying "See what I have, I'm doing quite well."
I don't think that sort of pre-emptive bragging happens when people are actually happy. Instead, as you've observed, there are signs of misery. Lots of scheming and pseudo-romance. It's creepy.
The dysgenic effects will undoubtedly be felt by future generations. It's as if we're breeding humanity into obese deskbound drama queens that know how to look successful on Facebook, but not succeed at real-life things like happiness and fidelity!
Slashdot Mirror
Cathedral's founding vocalist, Lee Dorrian, was one of the original vocalists of Napalm Death and can be heard on Scum and From Enslavement to Obliteration.
Most people consider Cathedral to be doom metal.
I must respectfully disagree with Schnier on this one.
A cyber Cold War doesn't come about without another Cold War having occurred first.
In this case, Cold War II is playing out between NATO, the Russians the Chinese.
Just like Cold War I, this one is rooted in a practical geopolitical concern: who will be the ruling superpower for the next century?
Expect a Cold War II, if you're lucky. If not, expect WWIII, which will probably be more limited than the last two but still devastating.
I get dreamy thinking about this. It would simply everything. However, I have one thought of caution.
Standardization creates a single point of failure.
Allowing solutions to exist simultaneously, and develop independently, allows there to be no single point of failure and for multiple solutions to be tried at once.
I think there's a reason nature (insert name of deity or deities if you'd prefer; I'm agnosticism agnostic!) chose to go with natural selection. While less efficient on the surface, it works in every situation and eventually, produces a time-tested quality result.
Just food for thought, not a contrarian argument.
This was the core of his rant:
He's side-stepping the issue in that the point is that Canonical wields more power than the average contributor, and thus is in more of an authoritarian relationship.
However, he's hit on a bigger point, which is that in any collaborative software project, someone needs to be the silverback who forces everyone else to focus, or people do only what they want to do and blow off the unfun stuff.
Unfortunately, unfun stuff includes refinements to code to make sure it works well, drivers, documentation, gnarly bug fixes, and the like.
I don't think our problem is a lack of revenue; it's bad spending.
First, government is massively inefficient at every level thanks to the "government job" mentality and the tendency to over-hire bureaucrats.
Second, many government programs are pure pork barrel designed to appease certain special interest groups or make cronies rich.
Finally, government is a self-justifying agenda. In order to justify its cost, it needs to constant invent new mission creep in order to give a "legitimate" need for increased and continuing funding.
Let's do this like we would do in a private business, and get out the red pen and go over the books and cut the fat, not tax people even more. Even if this is a tiny tax, the mental outlook on which we embark with it is a bad precedent and will only get worse.
It's one thing to run the equivalent of an open anonymous FTP site, but once you have an inkling that most users are doing illegal stuff with it, there's a responsibility imposed on you to do something effective about it.
If you don't, the law assumes you're a bad guy.
While I see their point, this blows. Megaupload was the best way to swap all kinds of files. I mainly miss it for the ability to send huge amounts of non-confidential data to clients and friends, and to legally share things like video and audio creations with others.
The problem is that there's no solution for this situation. If you set up an anonymous ftp server, those who need one will most commonly be sharing controversial stuff. Everyone else just publishes the normal way.
Thus, in with those whose use justifies the service existing, there are many whose use will be seen as the purpose. Ultimately, it's a loss for the users.
Guess what happens when the victim isn't rich?
We never hear about it, and the agent seizes his boat and profits.
Corruption is a very real threat!
So what if this guy is rich? The point is that if they'll do it to rich people, they'll do it to anyone, except little people have no ability to retaliate.
No doctor wants to be on the stand in a courtroom and get asked:
"So, if you'd just done this one easy surgery, the dear deceased might be with us today?"
Inevitably, it ends up looking like the doctor wanted to "save money" by avoiding a $100 test or $500 surgery and that's what killed poor dearly departed.
Also, an order has suppressed evidence that the dearly departed was 500 lbs and smoked 4 packs a day while eating nothing but cheesburgers with bacon.
That kills the cost curve. So does the paperwork, which has hospitals hiring more paper-pushers than doctors and nurses. All of this stuff is backward looking, designed to avoid that one moment in trial where it sounds to 12 half-awake people that maybe the rich evil doctor just didn't care enough.
Novelty-seeking is more useful in social situations, while threat-awareness is more useful when you don't trust social situations and believe the underlying sociological dynamics will be more determinative.
I suffered through the VRML list back in the day when people first wanted to make 3D cyberspace.
There's a conflict: you either model 3D functional worlds, or the underlying structure, or you create a language which can draw things in 3D.
The problem with the latter is that it's not stand alone, but requires people to come up with an intersection of code, resources and aesthetics.
What people actually need is the former, which is the ability to create functional 3D models and describe them in a language like HTML, and have the browser itself create an interactive world from that.
Serious question here. What is the USA doing wrong, and what of that are things that other countries are not doing?
There are many things in Net 2.0 that are very popular, but that do not necessarily have utility or profitability.
For example, just about everyone and their dog (on the internet, no one can tell you're a werewolf) uses Facebook, and before it MySpace, Friendster, Digg, Reddit, etc. But do these services have a working business model? It seems they all flounder at that point.
It seems to me that most Net 2.0 firms have an unsustainable business model, which is:
1. Get really popular.
2. ???
3. Sell company -> Profit!
In the same way, we know we've got a lot of people who like using their phones to tweet, click, troll, sext, etc. But is this actually useful? And other than the cell phone providers, is anyone making money off this with a sustainable model?
Start building them here in the USA.
If labor costs are too high, use robots.
I think it's great: the Earth clearly needs a death star to defend against incoming asteroids, comets and meteorites.
It will also come in handy if we ever have a rebellion against our UN space program...
If you're buying something, be very careful but it's acceptable.
However, on freebie sites like Facebook it makes no sense to let them see into your life.
It's amazing how many people will rail against "corporations" and then put their entire life history, home address, pictures of friends and family, etc. into Facebook.
I think these gentle reminders about security are great and are part of the spirit of hacking.
Which would the USA rather have: (a) goofball hackers create a zombie panic, or (b) our next enemy uses a coordinated attack to create actual panic?
Reminds me of the infamous "War of the Worlds" broadcast by Orson Welles.
I can see Ron Paul's side of things.
He needs to control his brand, and to own it outright. Thus, he benefits not only from having ownership, but having his legal right made clear.
When we first look at this story, it's like "LOL irony afoot. Free market, bitches!"
But after some sober contemplation, one can see the wisdom of the Ron Paul team's position.
I still think that, were Ron Paul to adopt the foreign policy outlook of his son Rand, he would be electable overnight.
If you make a public resource, you have what economists call a "free rider" problem: most people aren't obligated to pay in to it, so they simply take advantage of it without paying in.
This causes the quality of service to decline. It is related to the "Tragedy of the Commons" where overconsumption of a public resource results in its depletion.
A better option to "free" internet might be aiming to lower costs and improve performance, and then allow local residents to use additional bandwidth to provide free local hotspots.
Here's a hypothesis:
Google beat the last challenge from the antitrust attorneys from Texas, but it can't count on the future.
Specifically, other states or federal entities could attack it, and then there's all of the EU, which traditionally takes a harder line on privacy violation and monopoly.
Schmidt is no dummy and so he's divesting a reasonable amount (less than half) of his stock to hedge against a potential catastrophic future decline.
Remember what happened to Microsoft. They basically floundered hard after an assault by the department of justice. If the same happens to Google, they'll have to put most of their plans on hold for a decade as well.
I think this could have a positive effect including for the corporate world. The end of patents-as-weapons will make it easier to introduce new products without getting sued, and mean companies spending less time in expensive courtroom battles.
If I want to introduce the next iPod or Xbox 360 or just about anything, someone out there has a patent that covers something on it, from simple stuff like "the power button flashes twice when the power goes on" to the inner workings. Having less patent power could be a good thing.
Then again, I'm not sure that's what this case is about. The patents themselves were found to be improperly constructed at trial. Thus, this case deals with those patents alone, although I like your spin on it :)
I understand some of their reasoning and am not critical of it.
If anything, I think every FireFox user should try it without Flash. There just are not crashes. It's inspiring.
Yes, but will we get the same quality of work?
Ernest Hemingway was able to devote his life to his writing because it not only paid the bills, but paid comparable to work as an attorney or doctor.
If writing pays nothing, he'll take those other jobs instead, and not have the time to write the masterpieces he would do otherwise.
I think this is the core of the issue.
On one hand, sharing information is a great thing.
On the other hand, that information will not get developed if it doesn't pay off handsomely.
My concern is making sure we can continue to fund quality books, movies, etc. We can find people to do it for free, but people who get paid to do it can do it full time and may do a better job.
Some time ago, after the last round of Flash exploits, I de-installed it and resolved to live without it.
There are glitches: I can't get most video content, and Flash-only sites are inaccessible. However, this ended up being not a big issue.
One reason for this is that many YouTube videos play in HTML5 on Firefox. (If you find a video you can't play, try embedding it; this sometimes produces a workable version.)
Overall, the playback on HTML5 is better than Flash. There are fewer random slowdowns and stall-outs. On the downside, not every video is in HTML5.
The most amazing this is that browser crashes have dropped to near zero, either one or zero during this time. Most of what I thought was FF and Opera being buggy was in fact Flash being buggy.
There's not yet enough content switched to HTML5 from Flash to navigate everything, but during my 6 months without Flash, I've noticed that more firms are going away from the Flash-only navigation school of design.
YMMV. For me, life without Flash has been better, although I do miss out on some things.
I've noticed this as well. People tend to try to "justify" their lives using lifestyle and/or perceived success. For example, a recent survey of Facebook friends found that almost 3/4 of the profile pictures contained either (a) alcohol or (b) children. It's like saying "See what I have, I'm doing quite well."
I don't think that sort of pre-emptive bragging happens when people are actually happy. Instead, as you've observed, there are signs of misery. Lots of scheming and pseudo-romance. It's creepy.
The dysgenic effects will undoubtedly be felt by future generations. It's as if we're breeding humanity into obese deskbound drama queens that know how to look successful on Facebook, but not succeed at real-life things like happiness and fidelity!