While in you example M$ may end up owning the company, it is still a seperate legal entity and its IP and agreements do not automatically accrue to its owner (ie M$). In order for a full transfer to take place contracts need to be novated and this involves a negotitations step.
Furthermore M$ in their own licensing agreements have set the precedent that the license does not transfer via an aquisition.
Theo will have to speak for himself to this point, nevertheless I have talked with Theo about patenting software and Theo said that there has never been a case of a US firm suing a Canadian individual over patent violations because the way the system works is that in order to do so, the company must pay both sides legal bills. [Theo is very much against software patents as is everyone else that I know with a couple exceptions (and they IMHO are very naive)].
I personally think this argument does not hold water and I hope it is not Theo who becomes a target.
At the time I brought up the idea of we developers in the open source community starting to build a sheaf of our own patents by each of us joining an association and paying say $100 bux per year in order to fund the registration of our patents as well as to litigate infringment.
At the same time, membership in the organisation should give each and every person access to any patents and software held by the organisation while at the same time excuding any companies that want to double dip.
This would mean that if IBM for instance decided to join, then all IBM software patents would become available on a cross licensing basis. Meanwhile if Microsoft choses not to join, then they would be prohibited from using anything "we" might control by way of our patents and agreements.
I feel in very short order the opensource community would hold all the relevant patents.
Of course, there are developers who wish to do proprietary work - these are the startups and small to mid sized companies that Torvalds and Cox warn will be harmed the most by software patents. I suppose that membership in our group could be extended to them. I see no real reason why one could not have 2 classes of software within the patent group: open and closed. So maybe we can solve the problem in this fashion. Remember that the purpose of such an organisation is to create a free patent zone that includes all of Planet earth....companies such as IBM, TI, and M$ basically get this for themselves via their cross licensing agreements.
I will point out that I do see a danger here as well. At some point the organisation could control so many patents that they can force every person on earth who owns a computer to join, in which case it is a licence to essentually tax and who knows - maybe it will grow into a world government eh? haha.
[back to reality] Anyone who thinks this is a good idea is welcome to email me. But remember that if this is going to fly people are going to have to put their money where their opinions are because we will have to hire competant legal staff in perhaps several juridictions.
It would be legal in Saudi Arabia to both download and upload. Since the downloading is legal in Canada there would be no liability under section 80 for a Canadian in Canada to download whatever she wants if she can ascertain the source can legally upload. In fact it would be a real streatch to go after any Canadian who uploads from anyone out of the country.
However, since the communication actually does involve one machine copying from another it would seem the ISP the downloader is connecting to might well be liable for anything downloaded as well as the telecomunications industry. Yet, there are provisions in place so that the telecommunications indusrty has a legal right to copy and cache anything that is put on the net so perhaps they are off the hook too.
It seems the laws with respect to internet content have been designed so that the creators of the work lose the right to control or otherwise profit from the distribution of their content the moment it hits the net. The opportunity to profit transfers to the telecomunications industry.
This means that there is perhaps a business opportunity. If we set up a company in say Saudi Arabia to serve copyrighted material for say a small subscription and legally buy one copy of each CD then any Canadian should be able to rip off the musicians legally. As for Americans, well perhaps we can legally ship pirated music out of Saudia Arabia... I don't know... it is an open question in my mind but I do think it is legal for any American to purchase a legally created CD even if it arrives from Saudi Arabia.
Another way out for Americans might be for each to claim they are offering telecommunications services because under the DMCA they would then gain the right to "cache" any music placed on the net. They might not have the right to listen to it mind you - but then they would have to be caught in the act so to speak.
There is already another business opportunity which is well underway now... this is the resale of used CD's. For about $12 bux I can buy a used CD in the mall near here and then copy it for my personal use and then take it back an hour later for a refund of $6 bux.
Personally I think the spread is too great mindyou. But I suspect the prices will come down with more competition.
If I ever bother to buy a cd burner perhaps I will make some copies but only of material I presently own as albums. I personally consider this fair use. I do not think ripping off artists is morally acceptable but then it was a stoopid liberal politition named Sheila Copps who organised the changes to the copyright act. Thus, WHY the present laws are written the way they are is perfectly understandable.
On the other hand, what this change has accomplished is basically to remove the opportunity to profit from the distribution of copyrighted material away from the recording industry and transfer it without compensation to the retailers who set up little cd exchange shops. In a twist of fate it would seem however that the RIAA effectivly managed to do that to the artistic community because as Janic Ian pointed out, she has never received a royalty cheque where they did not claim she owed them money!
One could argue that this puts recording artists into the same boat as webmasters because webmasters also lose the opportunity to make money from the distribution of their copyrighted materials as soon as they are placed on the net.
Oh well, artists should expect to be poor and die broke!
Anyone who thinks the courts are logical should remember that in France a court found a cow guilty of murder and in Salem a court convicted women of being witches.
There is far more money totally wasted on administration and managment by usless paper pushers than NASA ever had a chance to spend.
Perhaps some of the drones in the civil service could better spend their collective time on social problems. While there is a great deal of good work done by the government it is also true (IMHO) that a huge amount of what the government spends on its payrole would better be classified as welfare.
It looks like they missed one of the most important reasons: energy.
ppl should check out www.hubbertpeak.com
Energy is a BIG problem and the population presently doesn't really grap the issues. Already we have had the 2nd oil war. If anyone doubts this then perhaps a correlation between reserves per captita in Britain and the USA should be done against the reserves in the middle east. Doing same might explain some things.
In my mind - there is zero doubt we need to go nuclear and we need to start now. Yet the biggest nuclear plant in the solar system is the sun and the best way to harness it is from space. So, IMHO space exploration and technology can be used to offset the need for nuclear plants on earth.
Yup - we need nuclear but I prefer to have the plant about 93 million miles from my house and that IMHO is a pretty good reason for a space program.
There is a really good book written by T.A. Heppenheimer that explains this (Colonies in Space). Perhaps with the Chinese planning on a station on the moon the western world will wake up and stop spending their time "administering" and "managing" and start spending more time "doing".
The manhigh project in the late 50's early 60's included a parachute jump from about 100,000 feet. This was about the height that the Challenger exploded and the jump shows that the crew of the Chalenger could have survived had the technology developed in the manhigh project been avilable to them.
The guy who jumped reached a speed of over 700 miles per hour for part of the fall.
I would recomend getting a large unit. You do have alternatives however.
I know for a fact that 2 systems can be run off an MGE EL4 rated at 450 VA or 280 watts. I've run this configuration for several years. So that is the good news.
The bad news is that this is seriously undersized. The consequence of this undersizing is that the batteries are NOT up to snuff and they will be destroyed in very short order. Note that normally the line current is NOT run through the inverters so normally it will appear just fine. Then if it is asked to kick in it will fail and it can fail in under one cycle (1/60th second).
Now, a cheap solution is a bigger battery. For instance I'm now running an SBS60 battery on my little MGE EL4. The EL4 will float this battery the same as the originals. Now the SBS60 was originally something like a $300 battery but I got mine used for about $60 bux. Note that the SBS60 is about 8 times bigger than the 7.2ah batteries that came in the EL4.
Used batteries are not normally good news because they DO WEAR OUT. So I did a load test and from what I can tell my batteries are in very good shape. You can get a 60 page manual on the SBS60 from www.hawker.co.uk. This will give you some idea what is involved with the care and feeding of UPS battery systems.
With this big battery I gain two (2) ways: 1) there is a much longer run time. Power here is very good usually mind you so I don't expect this to be an issue. 2) The battery is very lightly loaded because it is a BIG battery. This means the service life will probably be quite long, perhaps as long as a decade as long as it doesn't get cycled too often.
The downside is that the UPS might overheat and burn out if the power goes out too long. But this would be a problem with the original batteries as well.
Note: the load the UPS has to carry is governed exclusivly by the systems plugged into it and the size of the battery that feeds the UPS is for the most part irrelevant.
So, my two systems have each a 250 watt Powersupply. Of course - these power supplies are not actually producing 250 watts each. I've assumed they are running at about 50% load so the two systems _may_ be drawing say 250 watts together. Hense the load is within the realm of the EL4 - but it is a pretty heavy load for such a little UPS.
To make a long story short - you can find a dead UPS in computer recyclers and even on ebay. Find a BIG one. Then rip the battery out and put in a standard deep cycle that you perhaps can find at walmart. It should do the job just fine. Be careful when you do this because some UPS designs leave the chassis hot even when unplugged from the wall (Battery provides the current).
Alternatively if you happen to find a nice used SBS like I did - pat yourself on the back because you've done well.
As a final point. UPS systems are pretty basic when it comes down to it and there is a lot of marketing "HYPE" surrounding them. Pretty much any RV battery system will do the job of carrying the load and at a much lower price per watt. What the computer UPS adds is the fast switching time and continuity of electrical service. There is a LOT that could have been added to the UPS such as a voltage meter and %charge available, load stats and so forth. But the manufacturers seem to want to treat us like mushrooms. On the EL4 for instance, the specs don't even say how low the cells will be drawn down to. Clearly the voltage is way lower than the battery can handle and the reason they did this is so that they can undersize the battery.
Since the battery is undersized the number of cycles it can handle is severly reduced. So the UPS system dies prematurely and of course most people will simply chuck it and get another... and the manufactures get more sales.
I'll bet there is some sort of deal whereby the BBC gets some compensation for the bandwidth that will be sucked out of the servers. If so, then this concept should extend to _ALL_ servers since content is content is content and what is good for the goose should be good for the gander!
The idea is good but this should take form as a group of open source projects and if it is undertaken I would expect that the bulk of the real work would be done by the open source community.
(And then claimed by SCO if course)
There is probably several orders of magnitude difference in the amount of design work that has to be done between the hardware and the software. In fact - we could probably rather easily build the hardware today.
The software is another issue! We need voice recognition and synthesis, pattern matching, object recognition and so many other major problems solved that we probably cannot even estimate a good count of how much real science would have to be done to accomplish anything meaningful.
To date I don't think we've managed to duplicate many of the abilities of an ant.
But - I think it would be really wonderful to flange up some hardware so that people could start the real work of developing the software.
Third counterclaim para 59 & 60 talk about misappropriation and confusion in the market place due to SCO's campaign of FUD.
A fortune 500 company being extorted like this would seem to support these claims. So clearly it would seem that IBM's case is building.
OTOH, by the time this gets to court there will be no money in the SCO treasury and the A**holes behind this will have long since dumped their shares and left for more pleasant climes. So where is the justice?
IMHO it will become necessary for the US legal system to mature to the point where the perpetrators of this crap are actually held personally responsible. But I'll not hold my breath for that development because I see absolutely no sign there there is anything in the way of "accountability" on the horizon.
As a professional developer with YEARS of experiance, I have to say I am so bloody tired of people trying to make a [bad!] analogy between software development and building houses.
Building a house is not a complicated undertaking. In fact, often house building is undertaken with a considerable amount of unskilled and semi skilled workers. Perhaps this is the case with some software projects as well, but asside from this, the critical difference is that pretty much anyone can see progress when a house is built whereas in a software project, very often things are almost invisible.
Too often in software development there are huge learning curves and a moving target. Often real science has to be done. None of this applies to house building.
Humprey starts his book by talking about putting an addition on a house. If there were an analogy to be made - then it should be in the conceptual process of designing the addition and not on the construction of same. Typically in the building process, design work is not considered to be part of the construction process and in fact you can actually buy the blue prints for a house off the shelf.
This is almost the exact opposite of systems/software development. Often in systems development the "analysis" of the problem is lumped in with the implementation and when it is not, the analysis phase is often so badly botched that it is practically usless.
To illustrate this, on one major project I was involved with, consultants were hired and paid an incredible sum to "do the analysis". After 2 years they had not produced a single line of code. As for their analysis? Well, the truth of the matter is that after two years those people had not even identified the problem!
Systems development is unfortunately somewhat a seat of the pants endevour. Yes, planning is necessary but it is also necessary to get into it and get your hands dirty as soon as reasonably possible. The reason for this is that until you try certain things you can never know they won't work. As Burns wrote: The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft a-gley.
If house builders were faced with blue prints which were as bad as most "systems specs" they would throw their hands up in horror and probably offer to strangle the designer. House building is far more forgiving and far more routine than software development. Hense, trying to use house building as an analogy for systems development is pretty questionable at the best of times.
Very good point. Australia also has some of the most arid agricultural regions in the world. Consequently irrigation is critical and this leads to excess stress on systems like the Murry/Darling as well as serious salinity problems.
Now - if Australians could harness the torrential rains that sometimes inundate Sydney and Brissy as well as some of the NT then maybe some of these problems could be solved.
But this would sort of consitute "terraforming a sub-continent" I suppose and the Aussie tree huggers would of course strenously object! Ah well!
I don't think you know very much about tractors and farming in general. All farm equipment breaks down. It isn't more likely to break down because it happens to have a computer in it unless the computer is not rugedized enuf for the job.
You also reveal your ignorance when you suggest that a "programmer" would have to drive 300KM's to replace the chip. I can assure you that most farmers I know can easily deal with a "chip" that needs to be replaced. If the "chip" only cost $5 bux they would keep some on hand.
It is so amasing how much total CRAP the media puts out. This story is no exception!
First off, driving a tractor is rather boring and even more so when you consider that tilling the soil can take 12 hours per field. So a GPS driven tractor is valuable for one reason and one reason ONLY! It largely removes the need for an operator. Drive by wireless would also do the job and for instance INCO is using this in its underground mines. Surface mining systems are also under development.
The downside of the technology is that if something screws up you literally can have a 20 ton tractor wander into a slough or into your neighbours feilds. Of course, human operators wander into slough's sometimes too in spite of the fact that the water is perfectly obvious as are the consequences. haha.
-------------
Yet the artical states that somehow this is going to reduce soils damage. Why? Where do these idjots get ideas like this? How about salinity? Tilling the soil does not introduce salinity. Irrigation does as do certain fertilizers such as KCl.
It would be really nice if some of the reporters would educate themselves beyond a grade 3 level.
I've read some of the comments and have found so many that I disagree with that I decided to not respond to any of them. IMHO this is a very good artical and he makes an excellent point which I think developers need to heed.
In many cases the OS is not what will lock you in. It depends on the software you are developing. Nevertheless SOMETHING will end up locking the software in unless the developers take special care to avoid this.
I've probably got more experiance than most people in slashdot for a couple reasons: (1) I've lived longer than most who read slashdot and (2) I've been an independant developer and consultant for more than 20 years.
As such I have witnessed many systems that end up integrated so badly into the OS and system tools that there is just no practical way to get them free.
Many of my clients have ended up paying through the nose for years for outdated hardware simply because of this. Of course, the vendors love it and that is why they create the trap. To compound this, many mangers are so technically inept that they can't recognise a trap even after they have fallen into one.
I recomend to anyone who thinks this is NOT the case to re-read the artical and then do a straw poll of the systems they know of. One problem with this however is that when I read some of the comments that were posted, it appears the individuals involved have not seen many systems that have been in place for more than 15 years and which were developed by the businesses who use them.
I'm not talking about the *nix world of course. And the author points out that the *nix world is not a "sharecropper's world". One has to look at the mainframe and mini world to really see this. One of the reasons for this is that companies have often not done serious development in the PC world - tending to use commercial software and general purpose tools whereas in the mini and mainframe world often it was roll your own systems or go without.
At this point in time however, the PC has grown up and Microsoft is very definately trying to lock in developers any way they can. IMHO, things like the windows API, VB, Visual C++ foundation classes and so forth should be avoided like the plague.
There are good cross platform development enviroments out there. Glibc is one tool kit that is safe, and for a full development environment for instance wxWindows can be used (C++, Python, etc.)
I can't comment on Java since I don't use interpreted languages (we have our reasons) so I cannot comment on the potential for platform dependant lock ins. Used properly however, I am sure Java applications can be quite portable.
The last person to make a mod over-rides the ones that come before. Perhaps there is a "troll cutoff" but I'm not exactly sure how the algorithm works.
Thus, we can have a post modded up to say +4 interesting and someone takes issue and mods it to say +3 troll and it will stay labeled as troll unless someone else mods it back up.
This is a little inconsistancy in the moderation system that probably should be fixed. I could see going from say +3 interesting to +2 interesting via applying a "overrated" mod but to go from anything modded positive to "troll" without first going through either 0 or 1 seems to be a little inconsistant.
I think "redundant" works this way too. It would be funny to see a post rated as "+4 redundant" of course. I could waste a mod point to test this but I would not want to to reflect on anyone making a post so I won't.:-)
In reply to your post, you do make a point. However I would like to draw attention to a single aspect of the Drake Equation.
On Earth in the 50's we built powerful transmitters and the planet for decades glowed in the Radio Spectrum. By the year 2000 it was still glowing, but new communications technologies had formed such as satelight and cellular. I suspect that neither satelight nor cellular "leaks" anything near the level of signal that radio and TV still "leak" so I wonder if the Seti program for instance would be able to detect say cellular usage on a nearby planet.
In my mind it is quite possible that a technologically advanced civilization may develope communications technology that doesn't "leak" the way our communications does now. If so, then your point about say a 300 year window is well taken but the disapearance of signals may not indicate the "death" of the civilization... it may simply coincide with an advance in their technology and a phasing out of obsolete technology.
I modded it up earlier but some dickhead changed my mod and the system will not allow me to fix it. Differences of opinion by the moderators should not reflect on the quality of the post and this guy makes a very good point IMHO that most will agree with.
The idea that it is not possible to determine origins is patently absurd and flies in the face of decades of work in Paleontoloy, geology, planetatry geology, atrophysics and so forth.
It is equally patently absurd to label as a "TROLL" someone who takes issue with the closed mind of someone who suggests that:
The creationist and the evolutionist are in the same boat. Neither can observe, record, repeat the process
I can mod the original post as a troll and considered doing so, but the purpose of slashdot is to promote intelligent discussion so I left it as it was and modded up the reply.
All can see the result and form their own personal opinions. I think it is quite clear where my opinions are. The REPLY does not deserve to be labled as a TROLL!
I would not want to invest in M$. Microsoft has about $46 billion in cash apparently, but they also have more than 10 billion shares out there trading at a wee bit over $26 bux. This means if they liquidated their whole nest egg that they could not even offer a 2% rate of return.
Furthermore they have precious little growth opportunities left. Anyone of us can do a straw pole... who is planning on upgrading their OS or M$ office suite any time soon?
The computer world has been filled with random fads that generally crash and burn at a bewildering rate. Why should Microsoft be different.
It might take years before Opensource software makes a real dent in the mass market - but it is inevitable that this paradigm shit will take place. When it happens M$ will probably not have a revenue model left and that will be the end of them.
Personally I beleive there will still be opportunities for commercial software but I feel any opportunities will not likely include operating systems and system software. I don't think these opportunities will include office suites either.
So pass the popcorn because the show will be interesting! I think the future is clear, yet I will admit that the time line is rather fuzzy.
Sure - I'll take this challenge on... I use Debian because I can upgrade it - EASILY.
I have a redhat 6.0 machine. Its the "server" version and I paid over $200 bux for the distro - to make my life easy.
Practically every deamon in that release was broken. I ended up replacing almost every deamon they had, including installing the newest release of apache and mod-ssl - so my $200 bux was basically wasted.
Last Xmas I was at the point of an upgrade. I KNOW that if I tackle an upgrade on that old redhat box that it will break all over the place and I shall lose the services it can provide.
My solution? I bought a new machine and installed Debian via the net. It is just WONDERFUL.
So, for the desktop its DEBIAN all the way! Ya! For the servers... OpenBSD. I like my servers to be lean mean serving machines and not bloated the way desktops tend (need?) to be.
But - there are still issues with Debian (woody). It is still not the desk top machine my daughter for instance needs. Neither is Mandrake 8.1 She wants the video and multimedia plugins and these do not seem to install smoothly.
So at this point she is leaning to (ugghh!) XP. Perhaps some people who read this will be interested in working with me (us) in order to improve the debian desktop environment so that she will be happy... eh?
Her needs are minimal - mine arn't. But then I don't need plugins much. Besides my attitude is that if the website for instance won't run in any old browser then I don't visit. Their loss.
Re:You can see the code too !
on
Settling SCOres
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Since clearly he is not a developer he did not understand what he was looking at and probably cannot remember it anyway. Hense the trade secrets have not been disclosed.
Someone else pointed out that a serious developer will not jeopardize his/her career by signing an NDA. Well said. Nevertheless there is another post where the idea that the NDE is rather meaningless is put forth. This is simply not true. When anyone signs an NDA they open them up to litigation. It is quite trivial to accuse someone of infringment by virtue of the fact that they signed an NDA.
As a developer I would urge any other developer follow two rules: (1) DON'T EVER SIGN AN NDA and (2) If someone tells you they have a secret or a good idea you might be interested in - tell them to KEEP IT TO THEMSELVES. Really, you do not want to know!
Slashdot Mirror
I disagee... but you make an excellent point.
While in you example M$ may end up owning the company, it is still a seperate legal entity and its IP and agreements do not automatically accrue to its owner (ie M$). In order for a full transfer to take place contracts need to be novated and this involves a negotitations step.
Furthermore M$ in their own licensing agreements have set the precedent that the license does not transfer via an aquisition.
Theo will have to speak for himself to this point, nevertheless I have talked with Theo about patenting software and Theo said that there has never been a case of a US firm suing a Canadian individual over patent violations because the way the system works is that in order to do so, the company must pay both sides legal bills. [Theo is very much against software patents as is everyone else that I know with a couple exceptions (and they IMHO are very naive)].
...companies such as IBM, TI, and M$ basically get this for themselves via their cross licensing agreements.
I personally think this argument does not hold water and I hope it is not Theo who becomes a target.
At the time I brought up the idea of we developers in the open source community starting to build a sheaf of our own patents by each of us joining an association and paying say $100 bux per year in order to fund the registration of our patents as well as to litigate infringment.
At the same time, membership in the organisation should give each and every person access to any patents and software held by the organisation while at the same time excuding any companies that want to double dip.
This would mean that if IBM for instance decided to join, then all IBM software patents would become available on a cross licensing basis. Meanwhile if Microsoft choses not to join, then they would be prohibited from using anything "we" might control by way of our patents and agreements.
I feel in very short order the opensource community would hold all the relevant patents.
Of course, there are developers who wish to do proprietary work - these are the startups and small to mid sized companies that Torvalds and Cox warn will be harmed the most by software patents. I suppose that membership in our group could be extended to them. I see no real reason why one could not have 2 classes of software within the patent group: open and closed. So maybe we can solve the problem in this fashion. Remember that the purpose of such an organisation is to create a free patent zone that includes all of Planet earth.
I will point out that I do see a danger here as well. At some point the organisation could control so many patents that they can force every person on earth who owns a computer to join, in which case it is a licence to essentually tax and who knows - maybe it will grow into a world government eh? haha.
[back to reality] Anyone who thinks this is a good idea is welcome to email me. But remember that if this is going to fly people are going to have to put their money where their opinions are because we will have to hire competant legal staff in perhaps several juridictions.
It would be legal in Saudi Arabia to both download and upload. Since the downloading is legal in Canada there would be no liability under section 80 for a Canadian in Canada to download whatever she wants if she can ascertain the source can legally upload. In fact it would be a real streatch to go after any Canadian who uploads from anyone out of the country.
However, since the communication actually does involve one machine copying from another it would seem the ISP the downloader is connecting to might well be liable for anything downloaded as well as the telecomunications industry. Yet, there are provisions in place so that the telecommunications indusrty has a legal right to copy and cache anything that is put on the net so perhaps they are off the hook too.
It seems the laws with respect to internet content have been designed so that the creators of the work lose the right to control or otherwise profit from the distribution of their content the moment it hits the net. The opportunity to profit transfers to the telecomunications industry.
This means that there is perhaps a business opportunity. If we set up a company in say Saudi Arabia to serve copyrighted material for say a small subscription and legally buy one copy of each CD then any Canadian should be able to rip off the musicians legally. As for Americans, well perhaps we can legally ship pirated music out of Saudia Arabia... I don't know... it is an open question in my mind but I do think it is legal for any American to purchase a legally created CD even if it arrives from Saudi Arabia.
Another way out for Americans might be for each to claim they are offering telecommunications services because under the DMCA they would then gain the right to "cache" any music placed on the net. They might not have the right to listen to it mind you - but then they would have to be caught in the act so to speak.
There is already another business opportunity which is well underway now... this is the resale of used CD's. For about $12 bux I can buy a used CD in the mall near here and then copy it for my personal use and then take it back an hour later for a refund of $6 bux.
Personally I think the spread is too great mindyou. But I suspect the prices will come down with more competition.
If I ever bother to buy a cd burner perhaps I will make some copies but only of material I presently own as albums. I personally consider this fair use. I do not think ripping off artists is morally acceptable but then it was a stoopid liberal politition named Sheila Copps who organised the changes to the copyright act. Thus, WHY the present laws are written the way they are is perfectly understandable.
On the other hand, what this change has accomplished is basically to remove the opportunity to profit from the distribution of copyrighted material away from the recording industry and transfer it without compensation to the retailers who set up little cd exchange shops. In a twist of fate it would seem however that the RIAA effectivly managed to do that to the artistic community because as Janic Ian pointed out, she has never received a royalty cheque where they did not claim she owed them money!
One could argue that this puts recording artists into the same boat as webmasters because webmasters also lose the opportunity to make money from the distribution of their copyrighted materials as soon as they are placed on the net.
Oh well, artists should expect to be poor and die broke!
Perhaps this a case of mad judge disease!
Anyone who thinks the courts are logical should remember that in France a court found a cow guilty of murder and in Salem a court convicted women of being witches.
Not much has changed since then it would seem.
There is far more money totally wasted on administration and managment by usless paper pushers than NASA ever had a chance to spend.
Perhaps some of the drones in the civil service could better spend their collective time on social problems. While there is a great deal of good work done by the government it is also true (IMHO) that a huge amount of what the government spends on its payrole would better be classified as welfare.
It looks like they missed one of the most important reasons: energy.
ppl should check out www.hubbertpeak.com
Energy is a BIG problem and the population presently doesn't really grap the issues. Already we have had the 2nd oil war. If anyone doubts this then perhaps a correlation between reserves per captita in Britain and the USA should be done against the reserves in the middle east. Doing same might explain some things.
In my mind - there is zero doubt we need to go nuclear and we need to start now. Yet the biggest nuclear plant in the solar system is the sun and the best way to harness it is from space. So, IMHO space exploration and technology can be used to offset the need for nuclear plants on earth.
Yup - we need nuclear but I prefer to have the plant about 93 million miles from my house and that IMHO is a pretty good reason for a space program.
There is a really good book written by T.A. Heppenheimer that explains this (Colonies in Space). Perhaps with the Chinese planning on a station on the moon the western world will wake up and stop spending their time "administering" and "managing" and start spending more time "doing".
The manhigh project in the late 50's early 60's included a parachute jump from about 100,000 feet. This was about the height that the Challenger exploded and the jump shows that the crew of the Chalenger could have survived had the technology developed in the manhigh project been avilable to them.
The guy who jumped reached a speed of over 700 miles per hour for part of the fall.
I would recomend getting a large unit. You do have alternatives however.
I know for a fact that 2 systems can be run off an MGE EL4 rated at 450 VA or 280 watts. I've run this configuration for several years. So that is the good news.
The bad news is that this is seriously undersized. The consequence of this undersizing is that the batteries are NOT up to snuff and they will be destroyed in very short order. Note that normally the line current is NOT run through the inverters so normally it will appear just fine. Then if it is asked to kick in it will fail and it can fail in under one cycle (1/60th second).
Now, a cheap solution is a bigger battery. For instance I'm now running an SBS60 battery on my little MGE EL4. The EL4 will float this battery the same as the originals. Now the SBS60 was originally something like a $300 battery but I got mine used for about $60 bux. Note that the SBS60 is about 8 times bigger than the 7.2ah batteries that came in the EL4.
Used batteries are not normally good news because they DO WEAR OUT. So I did a load test and from what I can tell my batteries are in very good shape. You can get a 60 page manual on the SBS60 from www.hawker.co.uk. This will give you some idea what is involved with the care and feeding of UPS battery systems.
With this big battery I gain two (2) ways: 1) there is a much longer run time. Power here is very good usually mind you so I don't expect this to be an issue. 2) The battery is very lightly loaded because it is a BIG battery. This means the service life will probably be quite long, perhaps as long as a decade as long as it doesn't get cycled too often.
The downside is that the UPS might overheat and burn out if the power goes out too long. But this would be a problem with the original batteries as well.
Note: the load the UPS has to carry is governed exclusivly by the systems plugged into it and the size of the battery that feeds the UPS is for the most part irrelevant.
So, my two systems have each a 250 watt Powersupply. Of course - these power supplies are not actually producing 250 watts each. I've assumed they are running at about 50% load so the two systems _may_ be drawing say 250 watts together. Hense the load is within the realm of the EL4 - but it is a pretty heavy load for such a little UPS.
To make a long story short - you can find a dead UPS in computer recyclers and even on ebay. Find a BIG one. Then rip the battery out and put in a standard deep cycle that you perhaps can find at walmart. It should do the job just fine. Be careful when you do this because some UPS designs leave the chassis hot even when unplugged from the wall (Battery provides the current).
Alternatively if you happen to find a nice used SBS like I did - pat yourself on the back because you've done well.
As a final point. UPS systems are pretty basic when it comes down to it and there is a lot of marketing "HYPE" surrounding them. Pretty much any RV battery system will do the job of carrying the load and at a much lower price per watt. What the computer UPS adds is the fast switching time and continuity of electrical service. There is a LOT that could have been added to the UPS such as a voltage meter and %charge available, load stats and so forth. But the manufacturers seem to want to treat us like mushrooms. On the EL4 for instance, the specs don't even say how low the cells will be drawn down to. Clearly the voltage is way lower than the battery can handle and the reason they did this is so that they can undersize the battery.
Since the battery is undersized the number of cycles it can handle is severly reduced. So the UPS system dies prematurely and of course most people will simply chuck it and get another... and the manufactures get more sales.
I'll bet there is some sort of deal whereby the BBC gets some compensation for the bandwidth that will be sucked out of the servers. If so, then this concept should extend to _ALL_ servers since content is content is content and what is good for the goose should be good for the gander!
Does anyone know?
The idea is good but this should take form as a group of open source projects and if it is undertaken I would expect that the bulk of the real work would be done by the open source community.
(And then claimed by SCO if course)
There is probably several orders of magnitude difference in the amount of design work that has to be done between the hardware and the software. In fact - we could probably rather easily build the hardware today.
The software is another issue! We need voice recognition and synthesis, pattern matching, object recognition and so many other major problems solved that we probably cannot even estimate a good count of how much real science would have to be done to accomplish anything meaningful.
To date I don't think we've managed to duplicate many of the abilities of an ant.
But - I think it would be really wonderful to flange up some hardware so that people could start the real work of developing the software.
This is basically the same argument that were used when the industrial revolution began and machines started to replace people.
Come to think of it the argument was popular in the 60's and 70's with application to computers and how they would displace so many workers.
IMHO the argument is just as erronous now as it ever has been.
Even though I've been in biz for over 20 years I know dick all about accounting and fully rely on very excellent experts.
Mind you I do know how to program, and 278K of code is not all that big. I've built much bigger systems in the past.
So, in short I think you have a good suggestion here and perhaps if the accounting professionals team up with the developers good things might happen!
Third counterclaim para 59 & 60 talk about misappropriation and confusion in the market place due to SCO's campaign of FUD.
A fortune 500 company being extorted like this would seem to support these claims. So clearly it would seem that IBM's case is building.
OTOH, by the time this gets to court there will be no money in the SCO treasury and the A**holes behind this will have long since dumped their shares and left for more pleasant climes. So where is the justice?
IMHO it will become necessary for the US legal system to mature to the point where the perpetrators of this crap are actually held personally responsible. But I'll not hold my breath for that development because I see absolutely no sign there there is anything in the way of "accountability" on the horizon.
As a professional developer with YEARS of experiance, I have to say I am so bloody tired of people trying to make a [bad!] analogy between software development and building houses.
Building a house is not a complicated undertaking. In fact, often house building is undertaken with a considerable amount of unskilled and semi skilled workers. Perhaps this is the case with some software projects as well, but asside from this, the critical difference is that pretty much anyone can see progress when a house is built whereas in a software project, very often things are almost invisible.
Too often in software development there are huge learning curves and a moving target. Often real science has to be done. None of this applies to house building.
Humprey starts his book by talking about putting an addition on a house. If there were an analogy to be made - then it should be in the conceptual process of designing the addition and not on the construction of same. Typically in the building process, design work is not considered to be part of the construction process and in fact you can actually buy the blue prints for a house off the shelf.
This is almost the exact opposite of systems/software development. Often in systems development the "analysis" of the problem is lumped in with the implementation and when it is not, the analysis phase is often so badly botched that it is practically usless.
To illustrate this, on one major project I was involved with, consultants were hired and paid an incredible sum to "do the analysis". After 2 years they had not produced a single line of code. As for their analysis? Well, the truth of the matter is that after two years those people had not even identified the problem!
Systems development is unfortunately somewhat a seat of the pants endevour. Yes, planning is necessary but it is also necessary to get into it and get your hands dirty as soon as reasonably possible. The reason for this is that until you try certain things you can never know they won't work. As Burns wrote: The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft a-gley.
If house builders were faced with blue prints which were as bad as most "systems specs" they would throw their hands up in horror and probably offer to strangle the designer. House building is far more forgiving and far more routine than software development. Hense, trying to use house building as an analogy for systems development is pretty questionable at the best of times.
Very good point. Australia also has some of the most arid agricultural regions in the world. Consequently irrigation is critical and this leads to excess stress on systems like the Murry/Darling as well as serious salinity problems.
Now - if Australians could harness the torrential rains that sometimes inundate Sydney and Brissy as well as some of the NT then maybe some of these problems could be solved.
But this would sort of consitute "terraforming a sub-continent" I suppose and the Aussie tree huggers would of course strenously object! Ah well!
I don't think you know very much about tractors and farming in general. All farm equipment breaks down. It isn't more likely to break down because it happens to have a computer in it unless the computer is not rugedized enuf for the job.
You also reveal your ignorance when you suggest that a "programmer" would have to drive 300KM's to replace the chip. I can assure you that most farmers I know can easily deal with a "chip" that needs to be replaced. If the "chip" only cost $5 bux they would keep some on hand.
It is so amasing how much total CRAP the media puts out. This story is no exception!
First off, driving a tractor is rather boring and even more so when you consider that tilling the soil can take 12 hours per field. So a GPS driven tractor is valuable for one reason and one reason ONLY! It largely removes the need for an operator. Drive by wireless would also do the job and for instance INCO is using this in its underground mines. Surface mining systems are also under development.
The downside of the technology is that if something screws up you literally can have a 20 ton tractor wander into a slough or into your neighbours feilds. Of course, human operators wander into slough's sometimes too in spite of the fact that the water is perfectly obvious as are the consequences. haha.
-------------
Yet the artical states that somehow this is going to reduce soils damage. Why? Where do these idjots get ideas like this? How about salinity? Tilling the soil does not introduce salinity. Irrigation does as do certain fertilizers such as KCl.
It would be really nice if some of the reporters would educate themselves beyond a grade 3 level.
I've read some of the comments and have found so many that I disagree with that I decided to not respond to any of them. IMHO this is a very good artical and he makes an excellent point which I think developers need to heed.
In many cases the OS is not what will lock you in. It depends on the software you are developing. Nevertheless SOMETHING will end up locking the software in unless the developers take special care to avoid this.
I've probably got more experiance than most people in slashdot for a couple reasons: (1) I've lived longer than most who read slashdot and (2) I've been an independant developer and consultant for more than 20 years.
As such I have witnessed many systems that end up integrated so badly into the OS and system tools that there is just no practical way to get them free.
Many of my clients have ended up paying through the nose for years for outdated hardware simply because of this. Of course, the vendors love it and that is why they create the trap. To compound this, many mangers are so technically inept that they can't recognise a trap even after they have fallen into one.
I recomend to anyone who thinks this is NOT the case to re-read the artical and then do a straw poll of the systems they know of. One problem with this however is that when I read some of the comments that were posted, it appears the individuals involved have not seen many systems that have been in place for more than 15 years and which were developed by the businesses who use them.
I'm not talking about the *nix world of course. And the author points out that the *nix world is not a "sharecropper's world". One has to look at the mainframe and mini world to really see this. One of the reasons for this is that companies have often not done serious development in the PC world - tending to use commercial software and general purpose tools whereas in the mini and mainframe world often it was roll your own systems or go without.
At this point in time however, the PC has grown up and Microsoft is very definately trying to lock in developers any way they can. IMHO, things like the windows API, VB, Visual C++ foundation classes and so forth should be avoided like the plague.
There are good cross platform development enviroments out there. Glibc is one tool kit that is safe, and for a full development environment for instance wxWindows can be used (C++, Python, etc.)
I can't comment on Java since I don't use interpreted languages (we have our reasons) so I cannot comment on the potential for platform dependant lock ins. Used properly however, I am sure Java applications can be quite portable.
The last person to make a mod over-rides the ones that come before. Perhaps there is a "troll cutoff" but I'm not exactly sure how the algorithm works.
:-)
Thus, we can have a post modded up to say +4 interesting and someone takes issue and mods it to say +3 troll and it will stay labeled as troll unless someone else mods it back up.
This is a little inconsistancy in the moderation system that probably should be fixed. I could see going from say +3 interesting to +2 interesting via applying a "overrated" mod but to go from anything modded positive to "troll" without first going through either 0 or 1 seems to be a little inconsistant.
I think "redundant" works this way too. It would be funny to see a post rated as "+4 redundant" of course. I could waste a mod point to test this but I would not want to to reflect on anyone making a post so I won't.
In reply to your post, you do make a point. However I would like to draw attention to a single aspect of the Drake Equation.
On Earth in the 50's we built powerful transmitters and the planet for decades glowed in the Radio Spectrum. By the year 2000 it was still glowing, but new communications technologies had formed such as satelight and cellular. I suspect that neither satelight nor cellular "leaks" anything near the level of signal that radio and TV still "leak" so I wonder if the Seti program for instance would be able to detect say cellular usage on a nearby planet.
In my mind it is quite possible that a technologically advanced civilization may develope communications technology that doesn't "leak" the way our communications does now. If so, then your point about say a 300 year window is well taken but the disapearance of signals may not indicate the "death" of the civilization... it may simply coincide with an advance in their technology and a phasing out of obsolete technology.
Mod this up!
I modded it up earlier but some dickhead changed my mod and the system will not allow me to fix it. Differences of opinion by the moderators should not reflect on the quality of the post and this guy makes a very good point IMHO that most will agree with.
The idea that it is not possible to determine origins is patently absurd and flies in the face of decades of work in Paleontoloy, geology, planetatry geology, atrophysics and so forth.
It is equally patently absurd to label as a "TROLL" someone who takes issue with the closed mind of someone who suggests that:
The creationist and the evolutionist are in the same boat. Neither can observe, record, repeat the process
I can mod the original post as a troll and considered doing so, but the purpose of slashdot is to promote intelligent discussion so I left it as it was and modded up the reply.
All can see the result and form their own personal opinions. I think it is quite clear where my opinions are. The REPLY does not deserve to be labled as a TROLL!
I would not want to invest in M$. Microsoft has about $46 billion in cash apparently, but they also have more than 10 billion shares out there trading at a wee bit over $26 bux. This means if they liquidated their whole nest egg that they could not even offer a 2% rate of return.
Furthermore they have precious little growth opportunities left. Anyone of us can do a straw pole... who is planning on upgrading their OS or M$ office suite any time soon?
The computer world has been filled with random fads that generally crash and burn at a bewildering rate. Why should Microsoft be different.
It might take years before Opensource software makes a real dent in the mass market - but it is inevitable that this paradigm shit will take place. When it happens M$ will probably not have a revenue model left and that will be the end of them.
Personally I beleive there will still be opportunities for commercial software but I feel any opportunities will not likely include operating systems and system software. I don't think these opportunities will include office suites either.
So pass the popcorn because the show will be interesting! I think the future is clear, yet I will admit that the time line is rather fuzzy.
They could do something usful with the tax dollars they spend. At one time they actually supported OpenBSD. Of course - that funding was pulled.
Now they are out looking for better ways to kill people? I think DARPA should be shunned. JMHO.
So my question is: Do the DARPA ppl actually contribute anything positive at this time?
Sure - I'll take this challenge on... I use Debian because I can upgrade it - EASILY.
I have a redhat 6.0 machine. Its the "server" version and I paid over $200 bux for the distro - to make my life easy.
Practically every deamon in that release was broken. I ended up replacing almost every deamon they had, including installing the newest release of apache and mod-ssl - so my $200 bux was basically wasted.
Last Xmas I was at the point of an upgrade. I KNOW that if I tackle an upgrade on that old redhat box that it will break all over the place and I shall lose the services it can provide.
My solution? I bought a new machine and installed Debian via the net. It is just WONDERFUL.
So, for the desktop its DEBIAN all the way! Ya! For the servers... OpenBSD. I like my servers to be lean mean serving machines and not bloated the way desktops tend (need?) to be.
But - there are still issues with Debian (woody). It is still not the desk top machine my daughter for instance needs. Neither is Mandrake 8.1 She wants the video and multimedia plugins and these do not seem to install smoothly.
So at this point she is leaning to (ugghh!) XP. Perhaps some people who read this will be interested in working with me (us) in order to improve the debian desktop environment so that she will be happy... eh?
Her needs are minimal - mine arn't. But then I don't need plugins much. Besides my attitude is that if the website for instance won't run in any old browser then I don't visit. Their loss.
Since clearly he is not a developer he did not understand what he was looking at and probably cannot remember it anyway. Hense the trade secrets have not been disclosed.
Someone else pointed out that a serious developer will not jeopardize his/her career by signing an NDA. Well said. Nevertheless there is another post where the idea that the NDE is rather meaningless is put forth. This is simply not true. When anyone signs an NDA they open them up to litigation. It is quite trivial to accuse someone of infringment by virtue of the fact that they signed an NDA.
As a developer I would urge any other developer follow two rules: (1) DON'T EVER SIGN AN NDA and (2) If someone tells you they have a secret or a good idea you might be interested in - tell them to KEEP IT TO THEMSELVES. Really, you do not want to know!