To perhaps save some people the trip to the Circuit City web site to dig up some details, it looks like it's actually $299 with $100 back from CC and $100 back from TiVo if you activate their programming. I, for one, primarily find the TiVo interesting because of its digital VCR features, not because it can record every damn episode of ST:TNG that airs this week. Still might be worth it at $199, and maybe you can just sign up for a month . . .
The sealed envelope with a dated postal mark on it would be rather good proof that the enclosed items existed on the date of stamping.
Actually, no, it wouldn't and that is why that form of "protection" is nothing but an urban legend. If you doubt this for a second, just mail yourself an unsealed envelope, wait 10 years, and seal up the script for the big blockbuster in 2010. If you think you'll be walking away with millions, think again. Actually write the script and try to "protect" it that way and you'll suffer the same fate.
Hopefully this story is dead enough so that there isn't any Slashdot effect, but we've put a bit of that kind of thought into www.datafetish.com. We are looking to build a library of encoded, esentially anonymous information. Is DeCSS up there? Well, let's just say we didn't bother to put up the one that removes Cascading Style Sheets from HTML. But, like PAD, MIME, gzip, and all other software that does some form of encoding, it is possible some algorithm will turn the bits on some page into either one of the DeCSS programs, or maybe even the source code to Microsoft Office 2000. Who knows?:-)
That's just silly. Excessively broad patents need not concern applicants or employees. If challenged by enforcement of an NDA or Non-Comp, the company loses big when their patent is invalidated (it never should have been granted in the first place). They might drop the cash for a suit with some multi-billion dollar competitor, but they're not risking it because Joe Interviewee start working with ones and zeros at some other company.
Apple's AirPort comes closest to this, the only "catch" being that the devices it connects to the network must support wireless networking. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because I would prefer a network appliance that I could put in the kitchen or bathroom without having to drag a lot of wiring around.
You can't blame Napster or the music consumer (to use Prince's phrasing) for popular music being so widespread as MP3s. The record companies put a lot of effort into directing the market that way, and the consumers are accepting the message, but switching their supplier. What I think Prince is trying to say is that free exchange of music allows a music consumer to become a music lover, and in the process advance the art. The consumer can use Napster to get *any* artist with the same ease, so the challenge to the consumer-turned-lover is to figure out their own tastes in music and support (be in money or mindshare) the artist that created it.
Actually, you're looking at the wrong level for analogy. If you talk about infrastructure for cars (gas, roads, etc.), then you should talk about infrastructure for computers (electricity, microchips, etc.). I'm targetting a level above that: purpose. You buy a car to get you from A to B. A particular style is nice (as the new Macs have shown), but if you can't get it out of the garage it isn't very useful.
The purpose of a computer is many. People want to write reports, surf the web, send messages to friends, listen to music. These things have nothing to do with anything below the application layer. While geeks like us might know and care about how a particular OS make it easy to develop applications that twiddle bits in particular ways, the user still just wants to get from point A to point B without having to be a mechanic. From that perspective, they should be buying systems that do the things they need done, and do them well. We don't see them doing that, though, and I find that very strange. They shop for a long time to buy a machine that moves their bodies from place to place, but don't think twice about the machine they use to move their ideas from person to person.
I almost pity the new car buyer. BMW, Toyota, Volkswagen, Mazda, and all the GM models out there. Is it too much? I loved my Kia, but will it be profitable now that the market has been beaten with the Honda stick?
In case it's not blindingly obvious, your argument is silly. Consumer choice is not a bad thing, as there are an exceedingly large number of automotive makers and models, and most of those "systems" sell in even very small quantities for $20,000+. Yet, strangely, Wintel systems have an 85% market share. This should shock everyone who doesn't own a Honda Civic.
The last thing I want to do is type out extremely long sentences to accomplish simple tasks like the example notes. However, it is a much shorter leap to say what I'm thinking ("move all . ..") and have the computer go off of that. I'm comfortable with the mental translation of my intentions to computer commands when I'm typing things in. When I'm talking (or writing), I prefer stream of consciousness. So keep the C in CLI and use natural language for speaking, like I do.
And now you couldn't be more wrong. If you don't know anything about a subject, please remain silent. OpenStep is both open and a published specification, and if you would have looked at the GNUstep site for even a minute you would have found it here.
Could Apple start implementing extensions or a completely new class hierarchy? Sure, and they already have extensions, which they have grouped along with their standard OpenStep implementation, and called it Cocoa. All Jobs was saying is that they will advance the technology as they see fit. It would be nice if they didn't make any restrictions to the API extensions (and I don't know that they have), but they're the ones who decide what is best for their business model.
Anything graphical is written using Apple's proprietary APIs.
You couldn't be more wrong. The MacOS X GUI classes are contained in the AppKit, which is part of the OpenStep standard. For (rough) implementations of this for Linux and other OSes, see the GNUstep site.
Of course, that has nothing to do with QuickTime, since it is using the Carbon API instead of the Cocoa API.
It's a Mac FS, not a Unix FS. Support for it is really only to transition old MacOS users. If you use HFS+ as your primary FS and have those kinds of problems, don't expect much sympathy.
And that applies to any technology. You say your company looked 2 months for WO consulting, but they didn't look hard enought to find us at Subsume Technologies. I have to assume you looked in all the wrong places, which is easy to do in a world full of posers. It's also possible the work you had was crap work that nobody wanted to do, which is also becoming too common, regardless of the technology.
I'd give it a month before someone reverse engineers the protocol and puts out some free software for Linux that also allows you to "view" the ads. As if/dev/null wasn't popular enough . . .
I'm no lawyer, but I've been known to write a bit so I know a little about copyrights. In the scenario you describe, your really have no right to order the ISP to monitor the files of their clients, and it might even be illegal to listen to you (even if you were willing to pay for such a "monitoring service") as it would violate the privacy of the clients. All you can do is, once you are aware of specific violations of your copyright, compel them to remove the illegal material. Any ISP who begins working outside the common-carrier scope opens up an even bigger can of worms for themselves than if you decide to sue them should you discover a violation.
Who's idea was it to make the ps command inconsistent when it came to handling switches and complain about using it the standard way? The dash is used so often and (otherwise) consistently that it will always be "ps -ax" to me.
Maybe for management, but I like my t-shirts laundered normally, thanks. You want to give a geek a perk, allow us to use whatever computer/OS we can best use to get our job done. I don't care if the IS department can only "profit" from installing NT everywhere; I've got work to do that is best done with a more useful OS (Mac OS X Server, in my particular case).
How can you say in the same note that 80% of development is for vertical market apps and that it doesn't hurt companies to give it away if they aren't in the software business? If Walmart develops a program to make their cashiers and customer service personnel five times more productive, do you honestly think giving it away improves their position in the marketplace? They will care like hell if you burn a CD and ship it off to Kmart, let alone open source the product to every single one of their competetors.
Why do you assume that they are willing to give it away if they aren't willing to market it? This is about business, and it takes money to run a business. That is why companies are so eager to use free software, but so unwilling to fund free software. Honestly, how much open source do you see carrying the copyright of a company vs. an individual? Where are your PR machines announcing the selfless efforts of Alcatel and Cisco? While companies like Apple are trying to be more open with their (internally developed) source, they don't like the standard GPL, so the lawyers start twisting . . .
Every time these pie-in-the-sky "companies might pay for free software" discussions come up, the usually fail to answer the overwhelming question that is of concern to the companies involved: How does funding open source give my business an advantage in the marketplace? If the advantage is provided by software, bought or built, they will do everything they can to keep others from realizing the same advantage. Until that one question can be adequately answered, the only pay-for-free future open source will have is through individual donations, and the companies will continue on the ride at no cost.
I can't take the time to dissect the article right now, but any developer experienced in writing both free and commercial software should be able to see that this person's arguments are way off base.
In my experience (and I have mentioned this in other discussions), the single biggest problem with the "Bounty Model" is getting someone to pay the bounty. That's it. It's not all the work that goes on after it, it's getting someone to pony up the dough.
You see, companies don't want to give things away. If they give you cash, they want you to give them, and only them, something in return. They don't give a damn about giving back to the "open source software community." In fact, not caring just makes good sense.
If a business sees an advantage in developing a piece of software, they are *not* going to pay to have it developed and then just give it freely to their competetors. That is the reality of the situation as I have seen it, and I've been trying to actually do this sort of thing for longer than the PR machines of sourcXchange (et al.) have been running.
The whole nature of the discussion changes, of course, when we move away from corporate participation to individual participation. Let's save that for another discussion.:-)
Although I tend to call myself a computer geek (in the positive sense as given in the Jargon File), I don't think that'll ever get the media's attention in that sense, so neither it nor "nerd" are worthy of a fight. It is reasonable to assume that any positive role model that is "worthy of mention" in traditional media is bound to be someone of guru-level skills, so that's where I'm casting my vote.
Slashdot Mirror
To perhaps save some people the trip to the Circuit City web site to dig up some details, it looks like it's actually $299 with $100 back from CC and $100 back from TiVo if you activate their programming. I, for one, primarily find the TiVo interesting because of its digital VCR features, not because it can record every damn episode of ST:TNG that airs this week. Still might be worth it at $199, and maybe you can just sign up for a month . . .
The sealed envelope with a dated postal mark on it would be rather good proof that the enclosed items existed on the date of stamping.
Actually, no, it wouldn't and that is why that form of "protection" is nothing but an urban legend. If you doubt this for a second, just mail yourself an unsealed envelope, wait 10 years, and seal up the script for the big blockbuster in 2010. If you think you'll be walking away with millions, think again. Actually write the script and try to "protect" it that way and you'll suffer the same fate.
Hopefully this story is dead enough so that there isn't any Slashdot effect, but we've put a bit of that kind of thought into www.datafetish.com. We are looking to build a library of encoded, esentially anonymous information. Is DeCSS up there? Well, let's just say we didn't bother to put up the one that removes Cascading Style Sheets from HTML. But, like PAD, MIME, gzip, and all other software that does some form of encoding, it is possible some algorithm will turn the bits on some page into either one of the DeCSS programs, or maybe even the source code to Microsoft Office 2000. Who knows? :-)
That's just silly. Excessively broad patents need not concern applicants or employees. If challenged by enforcement of an NDA or Non-Comp, the company loses big when their patent is invalidated (it never should have been granted in the first place). They might drop the cash for a suit with some multi-billion dollar competitor, but they're not risking it because Joe Interviewee start working with ones and zeros at some other company.
Apple's AirPort comes closest to this, the only "catch" being that the devices it connects to the network must support wireless networking. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because I would prefer a network appliance that I could put in the kitchen or bathroom without having to drag a lot of wiring around.
You can't blame Napster or the music consumer (to use Prince's phrasing) for popular music being so widespread as MP3s. The record companies put a lot of effort into directing the market that way, and the consumers are accepting the message, but switching their supplier. What I think Prince is trying to say is that free exchange of music allows a music consumer to become a music lover, and in the process advance the art. The consumer can use Napster to get *any* artist with the same ease, so the challenge to the consumer-turned-lover is to figure out their own tastes in music and support (be in money or mindshare) the artist that created it.
It might be a trick of the lighting, but the damn thing looks like it's an inch thick. It shouldn't be a watch, it should be a belt buckle!
Actually, you're looking at the wrong level for analogy. If you talk about infrastructure for cars (gas, roads, etc.), then you should talk about infrastructure for computers (electricity, microchips, etc.). I'm targetting a level above that: purpose. You buy a car to get you from A to B. A particular style is nice (as the new Macs have shown), but if you can't get it out of the garage it isn't very useful.
The purpose of a computer is many. People want to write reports, surf the web, send messages to friends, listen to music. These things have nothing to do with anything below the application layer. While geeks like us might know and care about how a particular OS make it easy to develop applications that twiddle bits in particular ways, the user still just wants to get from point A to point B without having to be a mechanic. From that perspective, they should be buying systems that do the things they need done, and do them well. We don't see them doing that, though, and I find that very strange. They shop for a long time to buy a machine that moves their bodies from place to place, but don't think twice about the machine they use to move their ideas from person to person.
I almost pity the new car buyer. BMW, Toyota, Volkswagen, Mazda, and all the GM models out there. Is it too much? I loved my Kia, but will it be profitable now that the market has been beaten with the Honda stick?
In case it's not blindingly obvious, your argument is silly. Consumer choice is not a bad thing, as there are an exceedingly large number of automotive makers and models, and most of those "systems" sell in even very small quantities for $20,000+. Yet, strangely, Wintel systems have an 85% market share. This should shock everyone who doesn't own a Honda Civic.
The last thing I want to do is type out extremely long sentences to accomplish simple tasks like the example notes. However, it is a much shorter leap to say what I'm thinking ("move all . . .") and have the computer go off of that. I'm comfortable with the mental translation of my intentions to computer commands when I'm typing things in. When I'm talking (or writing), I prefer stream of consciousness. So keep the C in CLI and use natural language for speaking, like I do.
Both xxxmen.com and xxx-men.com are taken. Damn! Oh, well. At least I got thematrixxx.com...
And now you couldn't be more wrong. If you don't know anything about a subject, please remain silent. OpenStep is both open and a published specification, and if you would have looked at the GNUstep site for even a minute you would have found it here.
Could Apple start implementing extensions or a completely new class hierarchy? Sure, and they already have extensions, which they have grouped along with their standard OpenStep implementation, and called it Cocoa. All Jobs was saying is that they will advance the technology as they see fit. It would be nice if they didn't make any restrictions to the API extensions (and I don't know that they have), but they're the ones who decide what is best for their business model.
Anything graphical is written using Apple's proprietary APIs.
You couldn't be more wrong. The MacOS X GUI classes are contained in the AppKit, which is part of the OpenStep standard. For (rough) implementations of this for Linux and other OSes, see the GNUstep site.
Of course, that has nothing to do with QuickTime, since it is using the Carbon API instead of the Cocoa API.
It's a Mac FS, not a Unix FS. Support for it is really only to transition old MacOS users. If you use HFS+ as your primary FS and have those kinds of problems, don't expect much sympathy.
And that applies to any technology. You say your company looked 2 months for WO consulting, but they didn't look hard enought to find us at Subsume Technologies. I have to assume you looked in all the wrong places, which is easy to do in a world full of posers. It's also possible the work you had was crap work that nobody wanted to do, which is also becoming too common, regardless of the technology.
Yes, that sort of OS was very popular the first time it was released, when it was called . . . DOS.
I'd give it a month before someone reverse engineers the protocol and puts out some free software for Linux that also allows you to "view" the ads. As if /dev/null wasn't popular enough . . .
How right you are. Netcraft reports:
www.toysrus.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
Don't know how fast their connection is, but *I* certainly wouldn't waste a T3 on NT.
I'm no lawyer, but I've been known to write a bit so I know a little about copyrights. In the scenario you describe, your really have no right to order the ISP to monitor the files of their clients, and it might even be illegal to listen to you (even if you were willing to pay for such a "monitoring service") as it would violate the privacy of the clients. All you can do is, once you are aware of specific violations of your copyright, compel them to remove the illegal material. Any ISP who begins working outside the common-carrier scope opens up an even bigger can of worms for themselves than if you decide to sue them should you discover a violation.
when you pry it from my cold dead fingers!
Who's idea was it to make the ps command inconsistent when it came to handling switches and complain about using it the standard way? The dash is used so often and (otherwise) consistently that it will always be "ps -ax" to me.
In light of the /. effect, the error and Zeus link arerather humorous!
"Zeus' performance is god-like", Infoworld Review
I guess they're expect you to pray that it works, but don't expect an answer.
Maybe for management, but I like my t-shirts laundered normally, thanks. You want to give a geek a perk, allow us to use whatever computer/OS we can best use to get our job done. I don't care if the IS department can only "profit" from installing NT everywhere; I've got work to do that is best done with a more useful OS (Mac OS X Server, in my particular case).
Why do you assume that they are willing to give it away if they aren't willing to market it? This is about business, and it takes money to run a business. That is why companies are so eager to use free software, but so unwilling to fund free software. Honestly, how much open source do you see carrying the copyright of a company vs. an individual? Where are your PR machines announcing the selfless efforts of Alcatel and Cisco? While companies like Apple are trying to be more open with their (internally developed) source, they don't like the standard GPL, so the lawyers start twisting . . .
Every time these pie-in-the-sky "companies might pay for free software" discussions come up, the usually fail to answer the overwhelming question that is of concern to the companies involved: How does funding open source give my business an advantage in the marketplace? If the advantage is provided by software, bought or built, they will do everything they can to keep others from realizing the same advantage. Until that one question can be adequately answered, the only pay-for-free future open source will have is through individual donations, and the companies will continue on the ride at no cost.
I can't take the time to dissect the article right now, but any developer experienced in writing both free and commercial software should be able to see that this person's arguments are way off base.
:-)
In my experience (and I have mentioned this in other discussions), the single biggest problem with the "Bounty Model" is getting someone to pay the bounty. That's it. It's not all the work that goes on after it, it's getting someone to pony up the dough.
You see, companies don't want to give things away. If they give you cash, they want you to give them, and only them, something in return. They don't give a damn about giving back to the "open source software community." In fact, not caring just makes good sense.
If a business sees an advantage in developing a piece of software, they are *not* going to pay to have it developed and then just give it freely to their competetors. That is the reality of the situation as I have seen it, and I've been trying to actually do this sort of thing for longer than the PR machines of sourcXchange (et al.) have been running.
The whole nature of the discussion changes, of course, when we move away from corporate participation to individual participation. Let's save that for another discussion.
Although I tend to call myself a computer geek (in the positive sense as given in the Jargon File), I don't think that'll ever get the media's attention in that sense, so neither it nor "nerd" are worthy of a fight. It is reasonable to assume that any positive role model that is "worthy of mention" in traditional media is bound to be someone of guru-level skills, so that's where I'm casting my vote.