I doubt that Europe will ever get it's act together enough to rival the US militarily
Why not? Seriously? Europe does not currently have a strong military because it has chosen not to have one, not because it couldn't have one. Europeans prefer their taxes to go towards social programmes rather than military ones.
I wonder how their economies would take it if ours took a big hit?
They would be affected, no doubt. That's why they don't do these things at the moment. But there may come a point when the USA is abusing its position so much that they are willing to suffer that damage. The USA blocking other countries access to space is the type of thing that could push other countries to do such a thing.
Also, you have to consider that other countries can deliberately change their economies over the years so that they aren't as reliant on the USA. That is one of the objective of the India/China economic pact, and one of the objectives of the European Union.
The current administration seems to be of the opinion that the USA is supremely powerful. Now, only a fool would deny that the USA is in a powerful position at the moment, but it is not supremely powerful.
It is a dangerous state of affairs when the administration thinks that it no longer needs allies. They need to wake up to the fact that the USA is in the position it is in at the moment partly because its allies allowed it to get there, even helped it.
If the USA really does try to pull stunts like denying other countries access to space, then it might just find out what a difference friends can make. Believe me - Europe, China, India, Russia, Japan - they will react if the USA starts to act stupidly like this. We are already seeming some of the effect of this with collaboration between India and China, for instance.
I think the administration thinks that the rest of the world can't survive without it. They need to travel a bit more. They will that that, for instance, Europe isn't as different as the USA in terms of size and economy as they seem to think. They will also find that India and China aren't as backwards as they might imagine (for christsakes, many Slashdotters have lots jobs to people from these countries, and not just manual jobs but sophisticated white collar jobs).
The more the USA talks like this, the more its former allies are going to group together and start collaborating. The USA seems to like to impose sanctions and economic "punishments" on countries that don't collaborate with it at the moment. I wonder how the USA economy would take it if the national governments of places like Europe, Russia, Japan and China start selling their dollar reserves, or imposing import tarrifs on American goods. The USA may find that actually, it does need friends.
Developers may be held liable if software does not work as expected, even if they only participated marginally in the development
followed by:
And buyers of such software must be prepared that liability is limited to the criteria common for items given away for free, i.e. severe negligence only.
These cannot both be true i.e. it cannot be that OSS developers are liable and yet buyers cannot hold anyone liable.
I think the guy is just trying to point out as many possible legal holes as possible. This is what lawyers do. Put any contract in front of a lawyer and they'll find holes it in. If they couldn't they'd be out of a job.
Bill: Thanks. I'm super-serious about my hair. Before it was totally random but now I'm totally dedicated to getting serious about it. My hair has my 100% committment and I'm going to be super-concentrating on that from now on.
Erm, which Radio station are you referring to? Radio one? Isn't that the one with f***ing annoying DJs that talk rubbish all the time? I've never heard it play non-stop music. But you're right that it doesn't have adverts. The annoying DJs make up for that though.
I was referring to standard broadcast radio. Of course it is easier to do subsciption "radio" with other technologies - easy to do with the web for instance, or satellite. I just wondered why it had never been done with ordinary radio.
This has got me thinking. Why isn't there such a thing as a subscription radio station?
The annoying thing about radio is the adverts and the rubbish DJs. In Spain they have at least one radio station that just plays music with no breaks all day. It rocks. But I'm not sure how it pays for itself.
I guess the problem with subscription radio is that the receivers would need descramblers. But can anyone offer any insight as to why this has never happened? Or if it has in any part of the world?
And would this protect the kernel from further attacks?
Perhaps I should have been more specific.
I am suggesting that a new distribution be made without the trouble-causing code until after the case has settled. I think your position overlooks two pragmatic points:
1) This case could go on for years. During that time, organisations will hold back from using Linux because of this case. If they wanted a desktop rollout, for instance, and they knew that there was a codebase that was clean of the IBM code, then they might still be persuaded to go ahead with a Linux rollout.
2) SCO might win. I know that the OSS community doesn't like to think about that, but the legal system doesn't always do the right thing, especially in very complex situations like this. A good strategies plans for all eventualities, even the more unpalatable ones.
One thing I find really annoying about this case is that the Open Source community hasn't been able to point to a bit of code and say, look, there's the problem. Or alternatively, we've looked, and there is no problem. I mean, how hard can that be?
Let's just remind ourselves of the issue here:
SCO's lawsuit claims that IBM broke its contract with SCO by allowing parts of SCO's Unix V source code, licensed to IBM for use in AIX, to be used in the rival Linux operating system kernel.
Ok, I appreciate that SCO's Unix V source code is closed source, and so it is not widely accessible to the OSS community. But someone must have a copy or access to a copy, surely? I'm sure there must be people in the OSS community that actually worked on the original code, isn't there?
At the very least, can't we just highlight the code that IBM has contributed, and then say, if there is a problem, then it must be in there. As far as I am aware, IBMs additions are for "enterprise ready" systems. If that is the case, then I'm sure they could be taken out without affecting the majority of instances of Linux use.
If we had a distribution that was free of the IBM code, then doesn't that mean we have a distribution that is legally untouchable by SCO? I know IBMs contributions are probably very valuable and all, but are they worth risking Linux to vagaries of the increasingly irrational legal system?
Itâ(TM)s no secret. To win at business, you must perform better than your competition. Better. Stronger. Faster. You get the picture.
I hate this kind of truism, because people don't challenge them. The trouble with this approach to business is that it causes businesses to converge on the same thing - Hey, the restaurant next door is now selling tacos as well as burgers! We need to sell tacos too, only, erm, bigger ones! They also start to put more effort into competeting than actually thinking about their own business - Hey, they're selling bigger tacos than us next door! How should we compete with that? In my little illustration here, you end up with two restaurants selling nearly identical products, rather than two completely different restaurants, which is probably what most people walking past (the customers) would prefer.
It is interesting that this business mentality is very prevailent in the US than europe. In most cities in the US there are lots of chain restaurants which are very similar, but in Europe (or at least France, Italy, Spain and places like that) all the restaurant tend to be different and there are fewer chains. And personally, I think Europeans get the better deal.
This has much more to do with hardware than the GUI. If the hardware could dump all memory to disk 'instantly', and read it back at boot time it would be possible. The hibernate feature of many os's does what you're describing, it just isn't instant.
And why the f**k do I, Joe User, care about that? That a problem that needs to be solved. If car designers thought that way people would still be using starting handles to start their car engines.
The general populace tends to be slow to accept radical changes to familiar things like the way a suburban street or a park feels. They have an expectation that has built up over several years, and things that are different (and often much, much better) seem strange, and are sometimes rejected outright. We fear change. Change is bad. The same is often true for things like community zoning boards (made up of average Joe, average Bill, and average Jane).
I'm sorry but this demonstrates an aspect of designers that I find somewhat annoying. If you are designing for the average Joe, Bill and Jane, and they aren't happy with your designs, it's your fault, not theirs.
It's like when I'm working on a piece of multimedia/website with a graphic designer and they come up with some original concept that the client rejects on practical grounds -- the designer goes into a big huff and thinks the client is stupid.
Some designers always tend to think their ideas are the best in the world. Really good designers design what people want and are humble about it. Some designers seem to think that because they can come up with original ideas they are in some way "brilliant", but there are a lot of people with a lot of good ideas and good ideas are not restricted to designers. As my old boss used to say, "ideas are cheap".
(Sorry if this comes over a bit strong. I don't really mean this as an attack on you personally, it's just one of my pet peeves.)
I really wish someone would give these guys a pile of cash to redesign computer GUIs. I can't be the only one that is sick of the slow pace of development of computer interfaces. We really haven't progressed much since the work of Xerox Park.
What we need are some designers - who are not technies or nerds - to sit down and completely redesign the interface from scratch. Forget the "windows" metaphor, forget "icons" and clicking with the mouse - really start from first principals.
If you've ever sat down with someone who hasn't used a computer much and watch them struggle to do the simplest things, you'll understand how bad current GUIs are. The trouble is people that use computers are so used to their bad design that they fail to notice it. For example, when I press the on button, I want it to turn on. Instantly. I don't want to have to wait several minutes for it to "warm up" like the old TVs used to. And when I press the off button, I want it to turn off. Instantly. And if I press the on button again, I want to see the same stuff on the screen as when I last switched it off. And that's just the functionality of the on-off button!
It's 2003 for christsakes. Why am I still using an interface that was designed in the 1970's, when computers had a tiny fraction of the power and functionality they currently have?
Re:Why are we so surprized?
on
Incas Used Binary?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I agree. I still don't think the recent discovery that mehtods to generate electricity were know about 2000 years ago receives enough recognition: More here
The US government isn't any saint when it comes to stifling free speech. The only difference is that the US government does it in an underhand way using whatever tactics it can to bully or coherce to get what it wants, rather than by using laws. Which is better? At least with laws it is out in the open and gets discussed in a transparent manner.
A worrying development: Bush's government are trying to coherce NGOs to promote positive views of the government and the USA, saying that NGOs (that's Non-Governmental Organisations) are just another arm of the government. Read more here:
Google is a brand at this point. It's a verb. It's as ingrained at this point as "Band Aid" for adhesive strip.
I'm afraid that the fact that Google is associated with searching at the moment is not a very strong reason for it to remain. I remember when I would talk to people about the World Wide Web and they would say something like, "oh, you mean Netscape? I've got that on my computer!"
I hate to say it but microsoft are in an extremely strong position to crush Google. Just come up with something that is nearly as good and then integrate it completely into Internet Explorer and the OS. It will be another example of them leveraging their monopoly power, but since they've found they can get away with it, what's to stop them?
Maybe IBM believes that SCO's actions have some merit?
Even if they believe that SCO has a case, SCO still seems to be deliberately try to damage IBM's AIX business without giving IBM a means to address their concerns.
That's a warning shot. They might sue Linus Torvalds.
Now, that would be interesting. I'm sure Linus would have no problem getting a very strong legal team and all the funding he would need to defend himself. Hell, if a legal fund was set up, even I would donate to it, and I've never done anything like that before in my life.
What I don't understand about the SCO/IBM case, is why IBM isn't taking action to immediately stop SCO from doing what they are doing. I am sure it must be affecting their AIX business, and I can't believe that there isn't a legal method they can use to take some kind of cease and desist out on SCO.
If such a law doesn't exist in the USA, does that mean Pepsi can say they have proof that Coke has dog poo in it, but they aren't going to show the proof? I doubt it somehow.
Furthermore, if SCO are doing these things just to manipulate their share price, and the allegations turn out to be baseless, surely that is fraud?
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt that Europe will ever get it's act together enough to rival the US militarily
Why not? Seriously? Europe does not currently have a strong military because it has chosen not to have one, not because it couldn't have one. Europeans prefer their taxes to go towards social programmes rather than military ones.
In a global economy, we all need each other.
You said it. America needs it allies.
I wonder how their economies would take it if ours took a big hit?
They would be affected, no doubt. That's why they don't do these things at the moment. But there may come a point when the USA is abusing its position so much that they are willing to suffer that damage. The USA blocking other countries access to space is the type of thing that could push other countries to do such a thing.
Also, you have to consider that other countries can deliberately change their economies over the years so that they aren't as reliant on the USA. That is one of the objective of the India/China economic pact, and one of the objectives of the European Union.
The world isn't exactly in a boom economy right now.
I think you are confusing the USA with the world.
I believe that the Chinese economy is currently growing at a rate of a couple of hundred percent a year. I think that counts as a boom economy, no?
The phrase "too big for its boots" comes to mind.
The current administration seems to be of the opinion that the USA is supremely powerful. Now, only a fool would deny that the USA is in a powerful position at the moment, but it is not supremely powerful.
It is a dangerous state of affairs when the administration thinks that it no longer needs allies. They need to wake up to the fact that the USA is in the position it is in at the moment partly because its allies allowed it to get there, even helped it.
If the USA really does try to pull stunts like denying other countries access to space, then it might just find out what a difference friends can make. Believe me - Europe, China, India, Russia, Japan - they will react if the USA starts to act stupidly like this. We are already seeming some of the effect of this with collaboration between India and China, for instance.
I think the administration thinks that the rest of the world can't survive without it. They need to travel a bit more. They will that that, for instance, Europe isn't as different as the USA in terms of size and economy as they seem to think. They will also find that India and China aren't as backwards as they might imagine (for christsakes, many Slashdotters have lots jobs to people from these countries, and not just manual jobs but sophisticated white collar jobs).
The more the USA talks like this, the more its former allies are going to group together and start collaborating. The USA seems to like to impose sanctions and economic "punishments" on countries that don't collaborate with it at the moment. I wonder how the USA economy would take it if the national governments of places like Europe, Russia, Japan and China start selling their dollar reserves, or imposing import tarrifs on American goods. The USA may find that actually, it does need friends.
I think I've spotted some uncertainties myself:
Developers may be held liable if software does not work as expected, even if they only participated marginally in the development
followed by:
And buyers of such software must be prepared that liability is limited to the criteria common for items given away for free, i.e. severe negligence only.
These cannot both be true i.e. it cannot be that OSS developers are liable and yet buyers cannot hold anyone liable.
I think the guy is just trying to point out as many possible legal holes as possible. This is what lawyers do. Put any contract in front of a lawyer and they'll find holes it in. If they couldn't they'd be out of a job.
I love the bizarre way Microsofties speak.
Normal person: Hey, like your hair cut Bill!
Bill: Thanks. I'm super-serious about my hair. Before it was totally random but now I'm totally dedicated to getting serious about it. My hair has my 100% committment and I'm going to be super-concentrating on that from now on.
listen to a radio station with non stop music
Erm, which Radio station are you referring to? Radio one? Isn't that the one with f***ing annoying DJs that talk rubbish all the time? I've never heard it play non-stop music. But you're right that it doesn't have adverts. The annoying DJs make up for that though.
XM Radio is a subscription-based "radio" service.
I was referring to standard broadcast radio. Of course it is easier to do subsciption "radio" with other technologies - easy to do with the web for instance, or satellite. I just wondered why it had never been done with ordinary radio.
This has got me thinking. Why isn't there such a thing as a subscription radio station?
The annoying thing about radio is the adverts and the rubbish DJs. In Spain they have at least one radio station that just plays music with no breaks all day. It rocks. But I'm not sure how it pays for itself.
I guess the problem with subscription radio is that the receivers would need descramblers. But can anyone offer any insight as to why this has never happened? Or if it has in any part of the world?
And would this protect the kernel from further attacks?
Perhaps I should have been more specific.
I am suggesting that a new distribution be made without the trouble-causing code until after the case has settled. I think your position overlooks two pragmatic points:
1) This case could go on for years. During that time, organisations will hold back from using Linux because of this case. If they wanted a desktop rollout, for instance, and they knew that there was a codebase that was clean of the IBM code, then they might still be persuaded to go ahead with a Linux rollout.
2) SCO might win. I know that the OSS community doesn't like to think about that, but the legal system doesn't always do the right thing, especially in very complex situations like this. A good strategies plans for all eventualities, even the more unpalatable ones.
One thing I find really annoying about this case is that the Open Source community hasn't been able to point to a bit of code and say, look, there's the problem. Or alternatively, we've looked, and there is no problem. I mean, how hard can that be?
Let's just remind ourselves of the issue here:
SCO's lawsuit claims that IBM broke its contract with SCO by allowing parts of SCO's Unix V source code, licensed to IBM for use in AIX, to be used in the rival Linux operating system kernel.
Ok, I appreciate that SCO's Unix V source code is closed source, and so it is not widely accessible to the OSS community. But someone must have a copy or access to a copy, surely? I'm sure there must be people in the OSS community that actually worked on the original code, isn't there?
At the very least, can't we just highlight the code that IBM has contributed, and then say, if there is a problem, then it must be in there. As far as I am aware, IBMs additions are for "enterprise ready" systems. If that is the case, then I'm sure they could be taken out without affecting the majority of instances of Linux use.
If we had a distribution that was free of the IBM code, then doesn't that mean we have a distribution that is legally untouchable by SCO? I know IBMs contributions are probably very valuable and all, but are they worth risking Linux to vagaries of the increasingly irrational legal system?
Itâ(TM)s no secret. To win at business, you must perform better than your competition. Better. Stronger. Faster. You get the picture.
I hate this kind of truism, because people don't challenge them. The trouble with this approach to business is that it causes businesses to converge on the same thing - Hey, the restaurant next door is now selling tacos as well as burgers! We need to sell tacos too, only, erm, bigger ones! They also start to put more effort into competeting than actually thinking about their own business - Hey, they're selling bigger tacos than us next door! How should we compete with that? In my little illustration here, you end up with two restaurants selling nearly identical products, rather than two completely different restaurants, which is probably what most people walking past (the customers) would prefer.
It is interesting that this business mentality is very prevailent in the US than europe. In most cities in the US there are lots of chain restaurants which are very similar, but in Europe (or at least France, Italy, Spain and places like that) all the restaurant tend to be different and there are fewer chains. And personally, I think Europeans get the better deal.
No, account managers give the client what they want. Designers try to give the client what they need to effectively communicate the message.
Ah. So designers don't try give their client what they want? Sorry that was something I had failed to understand. Now I am enlightened.
Of course, most clients are stupid. Tusk! Clients, hey? Who need 'em?
This has much more to do with hardware than the GUI. If the hardware could dump all memory to disk 'instantly', and read it back at boot time it would be possible. The hibernate feature of many os's does what you're describing, it just isn't instant.
And why the f**k do I, Joe User, care about that? That a problem that needs to be solved. If car designers thought that way people would still be using starting handles to start their car engines.
A computer will never be truely user freindly until it under stands plain spoke words and gives us what we want, not what we asked for.
;-)
Sorry, but that's just bol**cks. Try subsituting anything else in there:
A car will never be truely user freindly until it under stands plain spoke words and gives us what we want, not what we asked for.
A telephone will never be truely user freindly until it under stands plain spoke words and gives us what we want, not what we asked for.
etc.
You seem to be suggesting that it is impossible to create a user friendly interface unless uses plain speech. Have you got a wife/girlfriend?
User friendly does not equal requiring a speech interface.
The feature you are talking about exists in Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It is called hybernating and works marvelously.
Well, I have a new desktop with Windows XP and it doesn't function like that.
I have mapped the on off button on the case of my pc to the hybernate function
Ahh, I see... I can really see the average Joe doing that.
The general populace tends to be slow to accept radical changes to familiar things like the way a suburban street or a park feels. They have an expectation that has built up over several years, and things that are different (and often much, much better) seem strange, and are sometimes rejected outright. We fear change. Change is bad. The same is often true for things like community zoning boards (made up of average Joe, average Bill, and average Jane).
I'm sorry but this demonstrates an aspect of designers that I find somewhat annoying. If you are designing for the average Joe, Bill and Jane, and they aren't happy with your designs, it's your fault, not theirs.
It's like when I'm working on a piece of multimedia/website with a graphic designer and they come up with some original concept that the client rejects on practical grounds -- the designer goes into a big huff and thinks the client is stupid.
Some designers always tend to think their ideas are the best in the world. Really good designers design what people want and are humble about it. Some designers seem to think that because they can come up with original ideas they are in some way "brilliant", but there are a lot of people with a lot of good ideas and good ideas are not restricted to designers. As my old boss used to say, "ideas are cheap".
(Sorry if this comes over a bit strong. I don't really mean this as an attack on you personally, it's just one of my pet peeves.)
I really wish someone would give these guys a pile of cash to redesign computer GUIs. I can't be the only one that is sick of the slow pace of development of computer interfaces. We really haven't progressed much since the work of Xerox Park.
What we need are some designers - who are not technies or nerds - to sit down and completely redesign the interface from scratch. Forget the "windows" metaphor, forget "icons" and clicking with the mouse - really start from first principals.
If you've ever sat down with someone who hasn't used a computer much and watch them struggle to do the simplest things, you'll understand how bad current GUIs are. The trouble is people that use computers are so used to their bad design that they fail to notice it. For example, when I press the on button, I want it to turn on. Instantly. I don't want to have to wait several minutes for it to "warm up" like the old TVs used to. And when I press the off button, I want it to turn off. Instantly. And if I press the on button again, I want to see the same stuff on the screen as when I last switched it off. And that's just the functionality of the on-off button!
It's 2003 for christsakes. Why am I still using an interface that was designed in the 1970's, when computers had a tiny fraction of the power and functionality they currently have?
I agree. I still don't think the recent discovery that mehtods to generate electricity were know about 2000 years ago receives enough recognition: More here
Interestingly, the German geovernment...
The US government isn't any saint when it comes to stifling free speech. The only difference is that the US government does it in an underhand way using whatever tactics it can to bully or coherce to get what it wants, rather than by using laws. Which is better? At least with laws it is out in the open and gets discussed in a transparent manner.
A worrying development: Bush's government are trying to coherce NGOs to promote positive views of the government and the USA, saying that NGOs (that's Non-Governmental Organisations) are just another arm of the government. Read more here:
Now Bush wants to buy the complicity of aid workers
What does Microsoft think it has going to counter that sort of incredible power?
Copy it. Integrate it into IE and the OS. Case closed.
Google is a brand at this point. It's a verb. It's as ingrained at this point as "Band Aid" for adhesive strip.
I'm afraid that the fact that Google is associated with searching at the moment is not a very strong reason for it to remain. I remember when I would talk to people about the World Wide Web and they would say something like, "oh, you mean Netscape? I've got that on my computer!"
I hate to say it but microsoft are in an extremely strong position to crush Google. Just come up with something that is nearly as good and then integrate it completely into Internet Explorer and the OS. It will be another example of them leveraging their monopoly power, but since they've found they can get away with it, what's to stop them?
Maybe IBM believes that SCO's actions have some merit?
Even if they believe that SCO has a case, SCO still seems to be deliberately try to damage IBM's AIX business without giving IBM a means to address their concerns.
That's a warning shot. They might sue Linus Torvalds.
Now, that would be interesting. I'm sure Linus would have no problem getting a very strong legal team and all the funding he would need to defend himself. Hell, if a legal fund was set up, even I would donate to it, and I've never done anything like that before in my life.
Go on SCO, sue Linus. I dare you.
What I don't understand about the SCO/IBM case, is why IBM isn't taking action to immediately stop SCO from doing what they are doing. I am sure it must be affecting their AIX business, and I can't believe that there isn't a legal method they can use to take some kind of cease and desist out on SCO.
If such a law doesn't exist in the USA, does that mean Pepsi can say they have proof that Coke has dog poo in it, but they aren't going to show the proof? I doubt it somehow.
Furthermore, if SCO are doing these things just to manipulate their share price, and the allegations turn out to be baseless, surely that is fraud?