and the reason for that is Adobe actually worked with browser makers to have Flash pre-installed, pre-loaded and, if it is not, easy to install. They actually did QA to ensure that the plugins work in all the different configurations of hardware and OS that people run browsers on.
As far as I can tell, Sun never did that for Java.
It's just confusing to them.. and it has a negative effect on performance when they fiddle with it.
More importantly, it's a change to their desktop which happens outside the browser window in response to going to a web page. Users don't really understand that it is the browser that spawned this.. they think that it was the web page that spawned this, and they understand that web pages shouldn't be able to put icons into their systray.
All in all, it's a dumb idea.. and Sun should have done some user testing to see what the user's reaction to it was.
It's the first instantiation that matters.. Applets are so uncommon that the average user will only come across them once per reboot.
Also, because of the most stupid thing Sun ever did, people tend to deliberately close the JVM after that first initiation. Why? Cause Sun puts a stupid little Java icon into the systray. It immediately draws attention to the fact that the JVM is in memory and people think they might get a speed boost or something by closing it. (Or something equally irrational that users think.) This was a pretty predictable result.. and the icon serves no purpose anyway, so why bother?
The argument against all ID is that it eventually becomes mandatory. These days we are required to identify ourselves to our governments. This is demeaning as it is too much like stock keeping of people. Every year that goes by people forget about this. They start to think of themselves as belonging to a government instead of the government belonging to them. In the end, we accept requirements being placed on us by the government, and this inevitably leads to dictatorship and fascism.
So yes, it's not specifically the fact that this ID is federal that is the problem, but I hope you can see that the abuse of power is easier. More efficient is something people are taught is a good thing. We live by the clock. But when it comes to government, more efficient is the opposite of what you want.
The 20th century loot activity was steel. Entire communities were set up to ensure a steady supply of coal. The people who ran these "mining towns" used to talk about the importance of production like they were developing "a cure for cancer" too. Steel, and the coal used to make it, was the most important thing in the world 50 years ago.
Guess what's the most important activity of the 21st century?
McNealy used to say plenty of stupid shit too. Just because some high level executive expresses his personal opinion, it does not mean that he is talking for the company.
If the Open Source Market Development Manager for Sun had said something like this, then we'd have something to talk about.
Instead, people make want to make out that companies are individuals with single opinions.
One thing that does produce a continuous revenue stream and always have is land.
You only have to look at the difference between US and European land laws (in particular, squatting laws) to see the way the US has a much greater tendency to disregard the public good. As copyright is all about the public good, and the US dominates international copyright treaties, it is pretty clear why copyright is so fucked up.
So much so, that any copyright law is guaranteed to change into this total travesty that we have today.
Creators of tv shows and movies always kind of remind me of coffee growers.
They set out to make a product with little to no idea of:
1. how many other people are making similar products 2. what price the market will bare when the product is ready 3. how the price will change once the product is released
The result of this, in the case of coffee, is entire nations like Brazil starving (why they don't grow food instead of coffee is beyond me, but that's another argument).
Of course, digital products (which tv shows and movies most definitely are these days) have a different problem to coffee.. they can be copied. The way to make digital products like coffee is to prohibit the copying.. and you need the big invasive police force to do it.
Thing is, why should we put so much resources, and tolerate so much concentration of power, just to make something as bad as a coffee market?
There are alternatives. I think a system where the creators control the release until a specific number of "preorders" have been met (a subscription system is essentially a preorder system) then the price can be controlled before, during and after production. The inevitable copying can be ignored. As long as there are sufficient preorders to justify the production (and return a profit) then it doesn't matter how many people get a free ride.
What's most interesting about this concept is the game theory. This applies more to tv series than it does to one-off productions. The more free riders there are, the more the producers will try to up the price. With the price going up, the mainstream will jump ship. This will result in more free riders and that will encourage the producers to up the price more. At some point the hard core fan base recognise the imminent demise of the series. We've all seen what happens next. There's no more powerful force in our culture than this. So the hard core start recruiting what's left of the mainstream back to the core and the free riders back to the mainstream. Eventually an equilibrium is reached and the price stablises.
Succinctly: If copyright goes, the protection provided by the GPL goes with it. As does the need for it.
And that's the point. If people didn't have the power to restrict what others can and can't copy then you wouldn't need the concept of copyleft to balance that power.
As for stalking, all I can say is that if you don't want people visiting your page no, no, it's more the people following me around and attacking me whenever I open my mouth. Not to mention the guy who dug up and posted my phone number in a comment earlier tonight. I don't think I'm out of line calling that behaviour stalking.
First, it's not the modern age, it's the post-modern age.. we live in the greatest technological era ever to occur in human history. If you want a mass market, go build it, and use the power of that technology to find people who are willing to pay you to create, instead of trying to force people to pay you after you have already created.
Secondly, you'll note the person you are replying to will not reply. That's because you broke Godwin's Law.
What you are observing is the simple difference between idealism and pragmatism.
Although it would be lovely if the world was instantly the way it should be, it is not.
We live in a world of artifical scarcity. People can and do use the power of copyright law to increase that scarcity.
As such, although the BSD license is a great ideal, it is not terribly pragmatic for people who care about software freedom. The GPL addresses the reality of copyright by using the devil's tools against him.
As for TcpSafe, congratulations, you've just participated in an experiment I set up a number of years ago to test the shareware market for trivial tools that any reasonable person seek a free alternative to.
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There's 2 seconds different from what I said and what you said, how the hell isn't that "about".
It's still a shitload shorter than the 20 to 30 seconds it takes for the JVM to start up.
and the reason for that is Adobe actually worked with browser makers to have Flash pre-installed, pre-loaded and, if it is not, easy to install. They actually did QA to ensure that the plugins work in all the different configurations of hardware and OS that people run browsers on.
As far as I can tell, Sun never did that for Java.
The average user will never do that.
It's just confusing to them.. and it has a negative effect on performance when they fiddle with it.
More importantly, it's a change to their desktop which happens outside the browser window in response to going to a web page. Users don't really understand that it is the browser that spawned this.. they think that it was the web page that spawned this, and they understand that web pages shouldn't be able to put icons into their systray.
All in all, it's a dumb idea.. and Sun should have done some user testing to see what the user's reaction to it was.
If it means I can write web apps in a statically typed language that is compiled I'm all for it too.
It's the first instantiation that matters.. Applets are so uncommon that the average user will only come across them once per reboot.
Also, because of the most stupid thing Sun ever did, people tend to deliberately close the JVM after that first initiation. Why? Cause Sun puts a stupid little Java icon into the systray. It immediately draws attention to the fact that the JVM is in memory and people think they might get a speed boost or something by closing it. (Or something equally irrational that users think.) This was a pretty predictable result.. and the icon serves no purpose anyway, so why bother?
Applets, and Java in general, are notorious for long startup times.
It has been found that people give a web site about 2 seconds to respond before they determine it is not going to load and surf away.
Yep.. six years ago "land of the free" wasn't smirk-worthy.
The argument against all ID is that it eventually becomes mandatory. These days we are required to identify ourselves to our governments. This is demeaning as it is too much like stock keeping of people. Every year that goes by people forget about this. They start to think of themselves as belonging to a government instead of the government belonging to them. In the end, we accept requirements being placed on us by the government, and this inevitably leads to dictatorship and fascism.
So yes, it's not specifically the fact that this ID is federal that is the problem, but I hope you can see that the abuse of power is easier. More efficient is something people are taught is a good thing. We live by the clock. But when it comes to government, more efficient is the opposite of what you want.
Well, for a start, I work in the computer industry and that inevitably means I have to visit your country for work now and then.
But, more importantly, a number of countries look to the US for a model of what it means to be free.
Because it takes too long.
Really, the JVM does not take a lot of memory to pre-load.. that argument is just premature optimization.
Why Sun never recognized this as a problem and did something about it, like working with browser makers to pre-load the JVM, I don't know.
It's the no1 reason why Applets died.. and because of that we had to wait until the Javascript/XML fightback to get Web 2.0.
Is this just another example of corporate culture getting in the way of seeing reality?
Yep, it's not like Sun is the biggest contributor to Open Source in the world.
The 20th century loot activity was steel. Entire communities were set up to ensure a steady supply of coal. The people who ran these "mining towns" used to talk about the importance of production like they were developing "a cure for cancer" too. Steel, and the coal used to make it, was the most important thing in the world 50 years ago.
Guess what's the most important activity of the 21st century?
Yeah, that's right, software development.
McNealy used to say plenty of stupid shit too. Just because some high level executive expresses his personal opinion, it does not mean that he is talking for the company.
If the Open Source Market Development Manager for Sun had said something like this, then we'd have something to talk about.
Instead, people make want to make out that companies are individuals with single opinions.
One thing that does produce a continuous revenue stream and always have is land.
You only have to look at the difference between US and European land laws (in particular, squatting laws) to see the way the US has a much greater tendency to disregard the public good. As copyright is all about the public good, and the US dominates international copyright treaties, it is pretty clear why copyright is so fucked up.
So much so, that any copyright law is guaranteed to change into this total travesty that we have today.
Ya know, it really does sound like you're using the term "copyright" to mean something completely different to the rest of the world.
I did not say "Society no longer wants to pay for entertainment"..
Creators of tv shows and movies always kind of remind me of coffee growers.
They set out to make a product with little to no idea of:
1. how many other people are making similar products
2. what price the market will bare when the product is ready
3. how the price will change once the product is released
The result of this, in the case of coffee, is entire nations like Brazil starving (why they don't grow food instead of coffee is beyond me, but that's another argument).
Of course, digital products (which tv shows and movies most definitely are these days) have a different problem to coffee.. they can be copied. The way to make digital products like coffee is to prohibit the copying.. and you need the big invasive police force to do it.
Thing is, why should we put so much resources, and tolerate so much concentration of power, just to make something as bad as a coffee market?
There are alternatives. I think a system where the creators control the release until a specific number of "preorders" have been met (a subscription system is essentially a preorder system) then the price can be controlled before, during and after production. The inevitable copying can be ignored. As long as there are sufficient preorders to justify the production (and return a profit) then it doesn't matter how many people get a free ride.
What's most interesting about this concept is the game theory. This applies more to tv series than it does to one-off productions. The more free riders there are, the more the producers will try to up the price. With the price going up, the mainstream will jump ship. This will result in more free riders and that will encourage the producers to up the price more. At some point the hard core fan base recognise the imminent demise of the series. We've all seen what happens next. There's no more powerful force in our culture than this. So the hard core start recruiting what's left of the mainstream back to the core and the free riders back to the mainstream. Eventually an equilibrium is reached and the price stablises.
I bet that just blows your mind doesn't it?
The idea that people should be free to consume whatever they want.
The idea that they should be free from persecution because they choose to obtain their bliss from a chemical instead of cleaning out their fish tank.
The law is not, and should not be, your moral compass.
And that's the point. If people didn't have the power to restrict what others can and can't copy then you wouldn't need the concept of copyleft to balance that power. As for stalking, all I can say is that if you don't want people visiting your page no, no, it's more the people following me around and attacking me whenever I open my mouth. Not to mention the guy who dug up and posted my phone number in a comment earlier tonight. I don't think I'm out of line calling that behaviour stalking.
First, it's not the modern age, it's the post-modern age.. we live in the greatest technological era ever to occur in human history. If you want a mass market, go build it, and use the power of that technology to find people who are willing to pay you to create, instead of trying to force people to pay you after you have already created.
Secondly, you'll note the person you are replying to will not reply. That's because you broke Godwin's Law.
Good night.
You're replying to a troll who has sunk to the depths of stalking me.
I'm hoping he threatens my life next so I can use some of the laws I've criticised in other posts today to have him arrested.
No.. the analogy fails simply because it is false.
We don't all steal cars. We don't all openly discuss how we steal cars and hope that one day the law will get off our backs about it.
In fact, if he really wanted to make a sensible analogy, he'd talk about recreational drug use.
What you are observing is the simple difference between idealism and pragmatism.
Although it would be lovely if the world was instantly the way it should be, it is not.
We live in a world of artifical scarcity. People can and do use the power of copyright law to increase that scarcity.
As such, although the BSD license is a great ideal, it is not terribly pragmatic for people who care about software freedom. The GPL addresses the reality of copyright by using the devil's tools against him.
As for TcpSafe, congratulations, you've just participated in an experiment I set up a number of years ago to test the shareware market for trivial tools that any reasonable person seek a free alternative to.
Except for the word 'unnecessary'.