> but to think that many ordinary Americans are writing their own blogs... nope. I don't buy it
It is true, many many ordinary people around the world have a personal blog. This was an online survey, so the article is a little misleading: it is actually the 80% of internet users that "know what a blog is".
The numbers of bloggers are definetely high though: According to www.technorati.com there are more than 100 million blogs around the world. Even if many of them are dead, we are talking tens of millions active blogs -there is no question about it- and a large percentage of them has to be from US.
>You can improve a patent and then get a different patent for it
Even if "improving" an invention was as simple as you make it sound you still can't use your own improvements without a license from the original inventor. Patents are not holding anyone back as long as they have the money to pay for the license, and the patent is offered for a fee.
However many companies choose simply *not* to license their patents. Even if they all did, the price of the resulting product would have to cover for all those fees.
> But we already know what happens when something becomes non-scarce - it's price > drops to zero, as can be seen by logging onto any big filesharing network
Really? potatoes are not scarce, but i don't see the price dropping to zero anytime soon... What is different with this, is that the actuall *cost* of producing it is zero. And there is no logic in DRM.. you simply cannot put the worms back in the box. The music and movie industry will simply have to cope with selling for much lower prices... There is still a lot of money to earn, *if* they provide something for the consumers money.
There is still the question though, whether the patent system *can* actually promote innovation when it comes to software. That is, even if the system worked perfectly well.
> we've just spent trillions... > the optimum may be to make it less bad and not spend money on trying to slow it down... Is this a joke? we should suffer the climate change but at least our money will be safe?!?!
> a religious belief in a single monolithic truth religion have many beliefs, scientists have thruths, and no matter how convenient it would be to be able to afford many of them, scientists can only have one. And if the truth is that we cannot continue like this, tough.
>It's easy to suspect that fertiliser and pesticide that is easy to suspect? another joke i presume. i heard another one today, something about the cows emmitting CO2...
>A few big volcanoes randomly going off you forgot the aliens with the planet-size microwave ovens... Get serious, the worst thing that volcanos might have done is teaching the ape about the fire...
>What if we spend some vast amount of money changing the global economy This is not spending money, this kind of spending is money moving around.
>I guess the odds are 99% that it's humans that are causing all this stuff we see. Well, it wouldn't be the dolphins, they are nice...
>a more insidious view that there is a SINGLE TRUTH
Well, this is true. You cannot have two truths. That is, if you are a scientist. Religious people can have as many truths as they like, but they are not "truths"
as in "the sun will explode in the future" truths. There is a single truth for everything, although it's never simple one.
germany didn't have an advantage over the rest of europe. Against the combined french and english forces, they were outnumbered and outgunned in every way... they didn't even have a technological advantage, at least against england. They won that fight however, which clearly shows that it's not about size, it's the way you use it that counts... On the other hand, they did loose the war, so you can say that size actually matters in the end...
>But if the question is putting together an alliance to attack the US, >expecting decimation of the US, I'd rethink it.
Why on earth would someone even consider that is beyond me... I'm pretty sure that even in the cold war, Soviet Union never actually considered to attack US, just as US never considered to take military actions against Soviet Union... Terrorist attacks aside, you can be certain that no one will threaten US for the forseable future.
>Kerry supporters were more likely to participate and complete an exit poll
This is not a problem for a survey. In exit polls, voters are chosen in a random way, (say every 5th that comes out the door), it's not up to them. And if someone diclines to answer, it is noted, and counted in the statistical error: from 100 ppl, 40 voted for A, 30 voted for B, 20 for C and 10 refused, so you have a 40% +- 10% for A. You can further narrow down the error, but the point is that whether A's are more likely to participate is of no importance in a correct survey: If there were such errors the survey methodology was wrong.
>strong correllation between the age of the poll volunteer and the pollee's willingness to participate
Again, no problem with that if you corectly analyze the data.
There is however, one way for such a survey to be wrong: If a huge number of B voters, decide to vote in, say, the last hour of the vote, which is clearly a possibility, as they are worried by earlier exit polls that show that A>B. Even so, if the survey continues untill the end of the process, the final data will be correct.
> but come on, let's not jump to conclusions here.
I agree, i say let's leave the conclusions to those that actually have all the facts. Let's see whether they think that the problem is the lack of good programmers... (..reading TFA..) well, there it is: apparently they believe that it is the lack of proper protocol documentation that causes the "sub-par performance of third party applications on Microsoft server software". At least we cleared this one up.
>It would bring MS down to its knees in maybe 20 years, laying waste to all of Europe in the process. Do you think it would be that easy?
The only problem would be that EU consumers will not have a chance to buy vista when it gets out. apart from that, existing software will continue to work, and the move to another system would be quite smooth.
On the other hand, MS would loose a third of its income instantly, and the monopoly status in time. In a day apple, redhat and novell would multiply their income forecasts and become powerful competitors for the US and rest-of-the-world market. and, of course the issue in debate, MS protocols would be reversed engineered eventually...
>the comepition woln't open up their software to the extent they want MS to
Nobody cares about MS's software. EU wants the protocols opened: it goes like this, they don't care how a mouth moves the lips and speaks, they want to be able to understand what amouths say to each other. They don't want to know how to build a telegraph, they only want a manual for the morse code. They don't need a television, just the frequency of the channel.
Surely you can understand now, how simple it is for MS to comply with the order?
That they had the right to impose a fine up to 10% of MS *global income* ? If they wanted money, they could have (if my calculations are correct) more than $10 million per day. Instead they went for a moderate "you are guilty, but we will fine you only for the money you make in EU" punishment... It's a warning: MS might choose to simply pay the fines each day and accept that they only have a 70% profit margin in EU (as opposed to 80% in the rest of the world). Even if they imposed the largest possible fine MS would still be very much profitable though..
>This is more akin to MS leaving a brocheure in the car urging you to use the MS gas stations.
The analogy would be that your car can only use MS gas by default but you can easily install the google gas device if you go to the appropriate shop. IANAL: this could be legal, but it isn't obvious.
A worm is not a virus. A virus doesn't exploit holes in web servers, it just infects binaries. There are challenges in making a virus for both windows and linux, although it is definetely possible: A while ago it was the winux virus (also a proof of concept) Unlike a worm though, a virus would have a hard time to spread in a linux environment, as it is highly unlikely that enterprize linux users have write access to any kind of binaries... There is however a dangerous situation i can think of: a system running windows that has access to linux system binaries through samba or nfs...
Slashdot Mirror
> but to think that many ordinary Americans are writing their own blogs... nope. I don't buy it
It is true, many many ordinary people around the world have a personal blog. This was an online survey, so the article is a little misleading: it is actually the 80% of internet users that "know what a blog is".
The numbers of bloggers are definetely high though: According to www.technorati.com there are more than 100 million blogs around the world. Even if many of them are dead, we are talking tens of millions active blogs -there is no question about it- and a large percentage of them has to be from US.
Sysadmins are much like guards. They are paid just to be there. Also, they carry shells, and know how to use them ..
>You can improve a patent and then get a different patent for it
Even if "improving" an invention was as simple as you make it sound
you still can't use your own improvements without a license from the original inventor.
Patents are not holding anyone back as long as they have the money
to pay for the license, and the patent is offered for a fee.
However many companies choose simply *not* to license their patents. Even if
they all did, the price of the resulting product would have to cover for all
those fees.
that would be "as KFC is to chicken *meat*".
A lot of time has passed, since a microsoft partner "got rich"... nowadays they just get some discount when they are buying office.
So what? who would need methane in a space colony?
> But we already know what happens when something becomes non-scarce - it's price
> drops to zero, as can be seen by logging onto any big filesharing network
Really? potatoes are not scarce, but i don't see the price dropping to zero anytime soon...
What is different with this, is that the actuall *cost* of producing it is zero. And there is no
logic in DRM.. you simply cannot put the worms back in the box. The music and movie industry
will simply have to cope with selling for much lower prices... There is still a lot of money
to earn, *if* they provide something for the consumers money.
I can feel the heat in that computer room from here ...
What if you have a tv tuner in your computer?
What if you never watch tv, but your laptop came with a tv tuner. are you supposed to pay as well?
There is still the question though, whether the patent system *can* actually promote innovation when it comes to software. That is, even if the system worked perfectly well.
Could you define marketing? It is my experience that marketing has a great influence in the development of the software ...
> we've just spent trillions ... ...
> the optimum may be to make it less bad and not spend money on trying to slow it down
Is this a joke? we should suffer the climate change but at least our money will be safe?!?!
> a religious belief in a single monolithic truth
religion have many beliefs, scientists have thruths, and no matter how convenient it would be to be able to afford many of them,
scientists can only have one. And if the truth is that we cannot continue like this, tough.
>It's easy to suspect that fertiliser and pesticide
that is easy to suspect? another joke i presume. i heard another one today, something about the cows emmitting CO2...
>A few big volcanoes randomly going off
you forgot the aliens with the planet-size microwave ovens... Get serious, the worst thing that volcanos might have done is teaching the ape about the fire...
>What if we spend some vast amount of money changing the global economy
...
This is not spending money, this kind of spending is money moving around.
>I guess the odds are 99% that it's humans that are causing all this stuff we see.
Well, it wouldn't be the dolphins, they are nice
>a more insidious view that there is a SINGLE TRUTH
Well, this is true. You cannot have two truths. That is, if you are a scientist.
Religious people can have as many truths as they like, but they are not "truths"
as in "the sun will explode in the future" truths. There is a single truth
for everything, although it's never simple one.
germany didn't have an advantage over the rest of europe. Against the combined french and english forces, they were outnumbered and outgunned in every way... they didn't even have a technological advantage, at least against england. They won that fight however, which clearly shows that it's not about size, it's the way you use it that counts... On the other hand, they did loose the war, so you can say that size actually matters in the end...
>But if the question is putting together an alliance to attack the US,
>expecting decimation of the US, I'd rethink it.
Why on earth would someone even consider that is beyond me... I'm pretty sure that even in the cold war, Soviet Union never actually considered to attack US, just as US never considered to take military actions against Soviet Union... Terrorist attacks aside, you can be certain that no one will threaten US for the forseable future.
>Kerry supporters were more likely to participate and complete an exit poll
This is not a problem for a survey. In exit polls, voters are chosen in a random way, (say every 5th that comes out the door), it's not up to them. And if someone diclines to answer, it is noted, and counted in the statistical error:
from 100 ppl, 40 voted for A, 30 voted for B, 20 for C and 10 refused, so you have a 40% +- 10% for A. You can further narrow down the error, but the point is that whether A's are more likely to participate is of no importance in a correct survey:
If there were such errors the survey methodology was wrong.
>strong correllation between the age of the poll volunteer and the pollee's willingness to participate
Again, no problem with that if you corectly analyze the data.
There is however, one way for such a survey to be wrong:
If a huge number of B voters, decide to vote in, say, the last hour of the vote, which is clearly a possibility, as they are worried by earlier exit polls that show that A>B. Even so, if the survey continues untill the end of the process, the final data will be correct.
> but come on, let's not jump to conclusions here.
..)
I agree, i say let's leave the conclusions to those that actually have all the facts.
Let's see whether they think that the problem is the lack of good programmers...
(..reading TFA
well, there it is: apparently they believe that it is the lack of proper protocol documentation
that causes the "sub-par performance of third party applications on Microsoft server software".
At least we cleared this one up.
>It would bring MS down to its knees in maybe 20 years, laying waste to all of Europe in the process. Do you think it would be that easy?
...
...
The only problem would be that EU consumers will not have a chance to buy vista when it gets out.
apart from that, existing software will continue to work, and the move to another system would
be quite smooth.
On the other hand, MS would loose a third of its income instantly, and the monopoly status in time.
In a day apple, redhat and novell would multiply their income forecasts and become powerful
competitors for the US and rest-of-the-world market.
and, of course the issue in debate, MS protocols would be reversed engineered eventually
i think i could live with that
>the comepition woln't open up their software to the extent they want MS to
Nobody cares about MS's software. EU wants the protocols opened:
it goes like this, they don't care how a mouth moves the lips and speaks,
they want to be able to understand what amouths say to each other.
They don't want to know how to build a telegraph, they only want a
manual for the morse code.
They don't need a television, just the frequency of the channel.
Surely you can understand now, how simple it is for MS to comply with
the order?
That they had the right to impose a fine up to 10% of MS *global income* ? ..
If they wanted money, they could have (if my calculations are correct) more than $10 million per day.
Instead they went for a moderate "you are guilty, but we will fine you only for the money you make in EU" punishment...
It's a warning: MS might choose to simply pay the fines each day and accept that they only have a
70% profit margin in EU (as opposed to 80% in the rest of the world).
Even if they imposed the largest possible fine MS would still be very much profitable though
Apple might have a dominant position in the audio-device market,
but it's not a monopoly. The market is doing great.
I agree that MS will have a very hard time gaining market share, in the expense of google,
without actually having a *better* product.
However i understand why google is worried: If somebody takes a shot at you,
you will press charges, even if you don't get hit.
>This is more akin to MS leaving a brocheure in the car urging you to use the MS gas stations.
The analogy would be that your car can only use MS gas by default but you can easily install
the google gas device if you go to the appropriate shop. IANAL: this could be legal, but it
isn't obvious.
>I don't see IE anywhere on the list of software available in the Google Pack.
IE is installed by default, everywhere it can be installed. Why on earth would someone
distibute it in a software pack ?!?!?
>Oh, how about Google using it's dominant market position in Search to push Firefox?
which is perfectly legal. Google is *not* a monopoly.
> nobody has ever said that Linux is immune to viruses.
...
Nobody said immune, many people say "practically immune" and they are right..
> That said, an effective (ie. turn it lose and watch it spread) virus would be very difficult to achieve on Linux
practically impossible you might say
> because there isn't just one flavor of Linux,
no, simply because linux users don't browse the internet logged in as root...
A worm is not a virus. A virus doesn't exploit holes in web servers, it just infects binaries. ...
There are challenges in making a virus for both windows and linux, although it is definetely possible:
A while ago it was the winux virus (also a proof of concept)
Unlike a worm though, a virus would have a hard time to spread in a linux environment, as it is
highly unlikely that enterprize linux users have write access to any kind of binaries... There is however
a dangerous situation i can think of: a system running windows that has access to linux system binaries through
samba or nfs