This seems like one of the places that would truly be helped by the resurrection of the ?software as free speech? argument.
This bill is the equivalent of setting up regulations on software and computer equipment. The only times that products have been regulated is when public safety at-large is in question (i.e., car industry, children?s toys, food suppliers, air travel, etc...). Is there a legitimate reason to think that the public needs protection, M$ jokes aside, from software and hardware developers. There are already regulations in place to make sure computers and their software do their correct job in places where other agencies are already in place. Any company that has to follow FDA regulations has to follow many regulations the make sure that computers used to produce FDA regulated products work correctly. Many other agencies have, or will have, these types of regulations as well. What they end up being is very strict ISO-9000 like documentation systems used to show that a computer works, and here?s the proof.
Public safety is not what is being protected by this bill. The only benefactors of this bill are going to be media corporations and the companies that are going to manufacture the new, much more expensive, computer hardware.
The software side will be no better. In order to compete in a world where development times are artificially longer and testing periods overly regulated a company is going to have to sell this software at sky-high prices. But wait, software giants aren't going to feel this as much as start-ups or other smaller competitors. These larger companies will be able to under cut the competitor?s prices without having to improve anything of real consequence in their software. In fact this will only be validation by congress that M$ tactics are reasonable tactic, and the whole country will have to take a few progress steps backwards.
To think, at the beginning of this century, congress is trying to undo the affirmation of rights (and further even, they are taking them away) given to us at the beginning of last century by the anti-trust laws. In light of this and what has been happening the country and the world, I hope that we will still have our rights. The bill of rights is unchangeable and are copied in the constitution as the first 10 amendments. To change any of the first 10 amendments you would have to change the bill of rights. This is why there are two documents and why one can?t be changed. The rights are in the constitution to make them law but are in the bill of rights to make sure that no one can blur them.
At some point the "Free as in beer" community is going have realize that attacking companies doing good things with software is not in their best intrest. If it keeps happening, the only stuff we will have left are sourceforge/freshmeat type software depositories.
Which gives us a grand total of 40000+ unfinished/barely-started software projects.
I think its amazing that this community, which prides its self on its ability to support one another, couldn't even try and give a company like Eazel their support (Yes Eazel sold no software to consumers, gee I wonder if thats because they already knew that it wouldn't be purchased). Next time you see a great software project that is being developed by a company, ask your self if that $50 bucks would be better spent supporting it or buying Nerf guns and t-shirts at thinkgeek.com.
Lets see... $14.95/shirt, $1.00 to open source projects, $5.00 manufacturing...Ca-Ching, $8.95 in profit
Smarten up people. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over with expectations that it might provide a different result. Attacking a company to the point where they need close down gives us two results:
Company folds, the software stays closed and we lose it, basically, forever.
Company folds, they open the software and it's picked up by a bunch of yahoos. Inovation stalls nothing but bug fixes for the rest of our lives.
I'm Captain Katz on a wild ride to the center of the moon where Pat Robertson is President. Anyone who follows will get a lolly and spanking from my companion Mrs. Hand.
Perl gets its roots from trying to be a Jack-of-all-trades... Think of existing perl as grep, awk, bash scripting, etc... all rolled into one package with terrible OO functionality.
Billy using hashes of hashes is easier than trying to create an object in perl.
All that's happening now with Perl6 is that new tools need to be assimilated, which is to say that perl needs to get a better way to handle objects. If some improvement occurs with the old data types all the better. Also plan to see some of the tried-and-true modules to assimilated into the heat of Perl as well.
I think that a re-working of the existing internet is not what is exactly being called for. An extension of the internet to be used for business purposes is highly feasible. For the mega-corps of the world to unite in the creation of a third internet (remember internet2) would be useful. Not only could it be built to accomodate b2b transactions better, but a governing body just for business could be constructed to help in transactions between J.Q. Public and Omni-Corp X.
Think internet3 for/by business
If you want to get on internet 3 (maybe with its own special TLD;.exploit,.cash,.gimme, etc...) you submit to the internet3 consortium. Main focus, generate cash for companies. Eliminates; cyber-squating, businesses only have control over trademarks in the internet3 TLD and maybe.com not.net,.org,.horse, etc... More distinction for customers that they are going to be dealing with a corp while surfing the internet3 TLD (not that there is confusion now but they will expect pop-unders, massive banner ads, etc.. while on the internet3 TLD). The companies can regulate what is more important on internet3 while not lousing up the great (original) info super highway. The internet (as in the original) may be able to become more like all the people with pie-in-the-sky ideas want it to be like.
Or Corp America could continue screwing up our backyard
Nothing better than hours of jerky animation that's done with a handful of frames.
You'll love the seizures Jimmy
How the hell can you like crap like Dragonball Z, I watched about five minutes of it once. All I saw was a guy who looked constipated with flashing hair and a eyebrow twitch. Are the animators just lazy?
Wait, they want to make the voting system easier to use and less error prone. How come they're using Debian? Next thing you know they'll try Slackware. At this rate why try and get Emacs involved as well.
For Democrats press: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+q+p+m+g+t, rub tummy and pat head
Slashdot Mirror
This seems like one of the places that would truly be helped by the resurrection of the ?software as free speech? argument.
This bill is the equivalent of setting up regulations on software and computer equipment. The only times that products have been regulated is when public safety at-large is in question (i.e., car industry, children?s toys, food suppliers, air travel, etc...). Is there a legitimate reason to think that the public needs protection, M$ jokes aside, from software and hardware developers. There are already regulations in place to make sure computers and their software do their correct job in places where other agencies are already in place. Any company that has to follow FDA regulations has to follow many regulations the make sure that computers used to produce FDA regulated products work correctly. Many other agencies have, or will have, these types of regulations as well. What they end up being is very strict ISO-9000 like documentation systems used to show that a computer works, and here?s the proof.
Public safety is not what is being protected by this bill. The only benefactors of this bill are going to be media corporations and the companies that are going to manufacture the new, much more expensive, computer hardware.
The software side will be no better. In order to compete in a world where development times are artificially longer and testing periods overly regulated a company is going to have to sell this software at sky-high prices. But wait, software giants aren't going to feel this as much as start-ups or other smaller competitors. These larger companies will be able to under cut the competitor?s prices without having to improve anything of real consequence in their software. In fact this will only be validation by congress that M$ tactics are reasonable tactic, and the whole country will have to take a few progress steps backwards.
To think, at the beginning of this century, congress is trying to undo the affirmation of rights (and further even, they are taking them away) given to us at the beginning of last century by the anti-trust laws. In light of this and what has been happening the country and the world, I hope that we will still have our rights. The bill of rights is unchangeable and are copied in the constitution as the first 10 amendments. To change any of the first 10 amendments you would have to change the bill of rights. This is why there are two documents and why one can?t be changed. The rights are in the constitution to make them law but are in the bill of rights to make sure that no one can blur them.
All I buy are AMD chips, this makes me not want to.
p.s. Cameros suck!
Just think, when this if finally done we will have something that comes close to IE5 four years late.
Of course we are talking about Australia here. Nothing but thieves and beggers.
I'd almost give people from AU a nickel so they could go move to a real country.
It's really to bad we can't do anything about the content
Honk Honk!
My diabolical plan is working!
At some point the "Free as in beer" community is going have realize that attacking companies doing good things with software is not in their best intrest. If it keeps happening, the only stuff we will have left are sourceforge/freshmeat type software depositories.
I think its amazing that this community, which prides its self on its ability to support one another, couldn't even try and give a company like Eazel their support (Yes Eazel sold no software to consumers, gee I wonder if thats because they already knew that it wouldn't be purchased). Next time you see a great software project that is being developed by a company, ask your self if that $50 bucks would be better spent supporting it or buying Nerf guns and t-shirts at thinkgeek.com.
Smarten up people. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over with expectations that it might provide a different result. Attacking a company to the point where they need close down gives us two results:
I'm Captain Katz on a wild ride to the center of the moon where Pat Robertson is President. Anyone who follows will get a lolly and spanking from my companion Mrs. Hand.
Pi is exactly 3
Perl gets its roots from trying to be a Jack-of-all-trades... Think of existing perl as grep, awk, bash scripting, etc... all rolled into one package with terrible OO functionality.
All that's happening now with Perl6 is that new tools need to be assimilated, which is to say that perl needs to get a better way to handle objects. If some improvement occurs with the old data types all the better. Also plan to see some of the tried-and-true modules to assimilated into the heat of Perl as well.
I think that a re-working of the existing internet is not what is exactly being called for. An extension of the internet to be used for business purposes is highly feasible. For the mega-corps of the world to unite in the creation of a third internet (remember internet2) would be useful. Not only could it be built to accomodate b2b transactions better, but a governing body just for business could be constructed to help in transactions between J.Q. Public and Omni-Corp X.
If you want to get on internet 3 (maybe with its own special TLD; .exploit, .cash, .gimme, etc...) you submit to the internet3 consortium. Main focus, generate cash for companies. Eliminates; cyber-squating, businesses only have control over trademarks in the internet3 TLD and maybe .com not .net, .org, .horse, etc... More distinction for customers that they are going to be dealing with a corp while surfing the internet3 TLD (not that there is confusion now but they will expect pop-unders, massive banner ads, etc.. while on the internet3 TLD). The companies can regulate what is more important on internet3 while not lousing up the great (original) info super highway. The internet (as in the original) may be able to become more like all the people with pie-in-the-sky ideas want it to be like.
Nothing better than hours of jerky animation that's done with a handful of frames.
How the hell can you like crap like Dragonball Z, I watched about five minutes of it once. All I saw was a guy who looked constipated with flashing hair and a eyebrow twitch. Are the animators just lazy?
Wait, they want to make the voting system easier to use and less error prone. How come they're using Debian? Next thing you know they'll try Slackware. At this rate why try and get Emacs involved as well.