On the positive side of international development: The US IT service market is largely saturated. Over the next decade, I would expect the biggest growth of IT will be in the international market. US companies are wise to invest internationally and develop an international infrastructure to take advantage of this growth.
As for people in the US working in IT, we simply have to realize that our degrees and MCSE certs are worth 60% of what they were worth in 1999. American IT workers have to learn to compete on value.
The main concern for American IT is whether or not it will be able to retain a good share of the international market, or if the industry will go the way of steel.
I wasn't trying to raise alarm...just pointing out that organic compounds don't just "burn up." They continue to react with the environment. For that matter, what we call "burning up" is reacting with the environment. Burning up means a state change...and not necessarily a state change for the better.
I pretty much stick with the whole conservation of energy and conservation of mass point of view. That is, all the matter that we work with will pretty much end up back in the environment, and that you have to think about how things really react and not just say...oh, it will burn up, or, oh, we will just bury it...
Fluttering like rather strong sheets of paper sounds a lot more like what would happen. Sci Fi books often have strings of fiber which are extremely dangerous as they tend to slice through people rather quickly...aka Ringworld... The scifi alarmist would have this 3 inch pieces of string floating around in the world slicing everyone to piece...worse than asbestos in the lung.
Just because something is made of carbon doesn't mean that it will "burn up." This is especially true for stable forms of carbon like diamonds and, say, nanotubes.
Many of the deadliest things on this planet are basically weird variations of carbon.
I suspect that such chains would break, but create a really weird dust...they would not actually burn into CO2.
I suspect that the biggest use for GPS, and similar tracking technology, is for people to track stolen goods. In such cases the tracking device is in the goods. I understand that the courts look favorably on this use of technology.
Seems to me that this story only applies to cases of police intruding to install devices. This sounds quite reasonable to me, although I admit I can see reasons why the police would want to be able to install a tracking device when they do not have time to get a warrant.
For example, imagine if the police were in a high speed chase. Rather than risking bystanders, if the police had a good picture of the driver, then tagged the car with a tracking device and let the car go. In such cases, the tracking device is not really gathering evidence but simplifying the act of catching a person who committed a crime.
IANAL, but I could see a court deciding that the use of such technologies to track suspects is okay, but the actual evidence gathered by the devices are not permitted in court as evidence.
do I want the police to have to wait to get a warrant before they can use this technology to trace, say, an actual violent criminal?
With rapid communications, I suspect time it takes to get a warrant will decrease to a point where getting a warrant will take about as long as a technical support call.
he probably used $300,000 worth of the service without paying for it.
This is one of the big problems when trying to create programs that charge for information related products on the Internet. It is very easy to make things that increment counters and add rows to databases. When these activities involve an exchange of cash, there is often an incentive to create false impressions and transactions.
The dot coms discovered quickly that they were paying millions to programs that simply created false ad impressions and false ad clicks.
The telecom industry has similar situations where shady business people do things to create 1-900 calls, or phone calls to Albania just to rack up expenses.
The popup industry is fed largely by people who want to increment counters for various reasons.
By racking up an absurd charge, this case shows what a large number of "business people" are doing every day in smaller ways...ie trying to find clever ways to get the counters to increment.
Adware is not like other advertisements. Adware is an active program that resides in your computer at all times and actively manipulates your behavior.
Someone showed me the way the Kazaa adware program worked a year ago. An end user would go to a web site, and click on an ad. This ad has a tag that says, I came from sitexxx. the adware program would swap out the tag and say. No, I came from kazaa.
Swapping out tags from an ad to claim a commission is not free speach, it is misdirection.
Adware may be helping pay the cost incurred while pirating music, but, if you want to look at it from a free speech point of view, adware is essentially a program sitting in a computer that is limiting the free speech of others.
Adware follows all the activities of a computer user and actively manipulates that behavior. This act of following the user's behavior and programattically manipulating behavior makes it completely different from traditional advertising. The ability of adware to change the advertisements by other companies is the most disturbing part of the industry.
Free speech does not say that you have the ability to block the speech of others.
Personally, I think the biggest problem with adware is that it reduces the ability of other companies to pay for products with advertising. By swapping out the ads that appear on online newspapers, adware virtually destroys the ability for online newspapers to exist.
When adware moves from the computer to the ISP it will get even worse. When the ISP is running programs that manipulate ads, then even Linux boxes will be affected.
As soon as the adware marketing plan is fully legitimized, then there will be tons of things that include adware. All computers will come equipped from the manufacturer with adware installed.
imagine the day when ISPs begin maximizing their profits by piping ad information into your machine. I doubt that the judge (who I suspect will be justly compensated for his ruling) has a clue about what he is unleashing.
Speaking of adware, I installed mouse a month ago. The friggin mouse program had an adware component. It won't be just free ware and trojans. Adware and spyware will be in everything. There will be no consumer choice.
I need to check a history book, but I think both computers and telephone networks existed in 1971. I think maybe there was even color TV. I suspect the reason that people couldn't hook a ton of cool gadgets to the telephone system in the US was more a matter of the AT&T monopoly than lack of imagination.
Most of the ideas that we think are cool today are really just twists or refinement of ideas that have been around for a long time.
The key, however, is that Linux has a very strong, growing and loyal customer base. It has a strong niche in the server market, etc..
The assumption that Linux needs to make its move into the desktop right now is short sighted.
MS is stuck in a track where their entire product is based on a computer configuration with a keyboard, monitor and mouse. By allowing multiple GUIs, Linux will be in a better position to handle things like the voice recognition, and will rule the OS world when the standard configuration of the computer has two legs, a spinning head and the standard user interface includes a death ray and fiendish laugh... or, err, whatever the future holds.
Timing is everything. A consolidated GUI might have been the big thing yesterday. Tomorrow, however, the advantage is the ability to adapt.
Personally, I suspect that if we had a system where a large number of small companies were busily building their components and the IP laws were preventing companies from taking over the market, then/.ers would be cheering on the IP laws. The fact that we have one dominent monopoly essentially controlling the software industry and cutting off opportunities for others, we see only the bad side of IP.
Basically, Microsoft exists because IBM (fearing antitrust lawsuits) contracted with MS, Intel and others so that different companies would own different parts of the IT puzzle. It was this dynamic landscape with multiple companies involved in the development that created the PC revolution.
Microsoft shows very clearly that strong antitrust laws are a necessary component of a intellectual property system. Basically, when one company has grown so powerful that no IP exists outside of that company, then the IP system fails.
Microsoft was made by IBM. Bill Gates turned his attention from reverse engineeting BASIC to reverse engineering Intergallactic Digital Research's DOS because IBM was looking for partners that would create a dynamic business scape in light of anti trust threats.
If the legal community really wanted to create a working system of IP, then they should start by breaking up Microsoft and the cartels and megalyths that control the music industry.
I concur. The big advantage of Linux is that there is choice. This ability to chose is Linux's competitive edge. Tossing out the competitive edge because you don't have the market share you want is absurd. Companies that follow this type of path generally put themselves out of business.
Quite frankly, i have never be thrilled with either KDE or Gnome, and believe the kick ass linux GUI is still waiting its creation. Having an open architecture that allows different GUIs to evolve is the ultimate competitive edge. Choice is good.
Linux's niche market is extremely strong right now. Rather than do it wrong because some people hate Bill Gates so much that they would make any compromise to hurt their enemy, I would rather see people accept that evolution takes time. Allowing multiple GUIs allows for long term evolution of the GUI.
In the long run, Linux is served better by having multiple GUI options. We should be arguing for more not fewer choices of desktops.
hardly see the patent holder writing their own browser or selling their own system
I agree that this patent seems to be frivolous.
However, in a world of components, I don't think it is a necessary requirement that a company must be making an end user application to be considered a legitimate entity. There is legitimacy in designing components.
In some regard, the people making components are in greater need of IP protection than the company that packages and sells systems since they do not have the immediate brand awareness. They are totally at the mercy of the company with the brand name.
Just because a component is dependent on another work does not mean that it is illegitimate. The fact that the patent system is protecting components is good in this regard; otherwise the companies selling systems would be able to trounce all over the subcontractors that make the components.
Just because we haven't heard of a company doesn't mean they are not a major player making major contributions.
The best classes I've had involved a professor who wrote their own textbook. (I have not had any where the professor required their text but did not use it.)
A professor teaching from their textbook is a different from pure graft as the class and book itself is a full creation of the professor.
You are correct, however, if the professor assigns a book that is not related to the class, then he is just using the system.
Textbook sales are another good example of the professor and business. When the prefessor, or department, can dictate the purchase of thousands of dollars in books, you can be certain that there is a great deal of schmoozing going along with the sale. If you want your $100 a pop textbook to be accepted by a major university, you better be prepared to roll out a red carpet for the decision makers.
Often process is more important than raw talent. Or I should say the art is in defining the process. The grand master painters of the Renaissance usually had scores of assistants. The master artist defined the process and the apprentices carried out the process. Chiluly is a good example of this today.
The quality of the recording and playing equipment is also extremely important.
What happens in pop music is that people want young idols. So the industry has a process defined by veterans. The implementation of the process takes place by 'merican idol wannabes.
The RIAA should be extremely scared. Notice how the things that come out of the Star Trek replicators don't have brand names.
Publishing has always been a strange industry because the biggest costs are not in production but in the creation of the works and marketing.
Top 40 music is an even stranger industry as the marketing costs completely ecclipse production costs. American Idol formual is entirely about spending cash to generate hype.
Music is like writing. Writing a book means squat. Most the people who spend a year writing a book lose a year's income and get to be poor. Unforutnately, it is the big marketing channel is more important than the art. I had hoped that the Internet would be an equalizer, but the P2P crowd pretty much just concentrates on stealing the stuff that has been marketed. Online music has not created a good mechanism for new independent voices.
Sorry but the dollar amount matters more than the rock. As I recall, jewlers tell you something like you are supposed to spend a month and a half income on the stone. So if the price drops, you will just have to find something bigger.
The month and a half thing gets troublesome, though. Bill Gates had to buy his sweetheart a caribbean island...as it was the only rock he could find selling for a month and a half of income. The destitute breed fast because a month and a half of nothing, is well, free.
WIPO's ACTIONS show that WIPO intends to protect and expand Intellectual Property rights when they result in profits for WIPO's member states and their corporations.
Which is pretty much exactly the same goal of all trade unions, political action committees and the other odd beasts that dominate the modern intellectual climate.
It is a game where you get funding by saying what people with power and money want to here. To suggest that such organizations should actual spend more time trying to figure out what is right, or what is the best course of action for all will just bring a harangue about one's naivity.
Over priced education is great when you get the government or your parents to pay for it. BTW, I keep hearing students' at the local state run schools complaining about tuition now that the government can no longer pay for it. Tuition has been increasing by 10% a year.
But, in the hey day...man, Universities could really rack up the bills as they lavished the perks on the insiders and administrators.
The best solution is to have a portable number. That way you just point the number to a different location each night. I really would not want to bring a phone other people use home. Most portable numbers let you change the destination with call on via the web.
Slashdot Mirror
On the positive side of international development: The US IT service market is largely saturated. Over the next decade, I would expect the biggest growth of IT will be in the international market. US companies are wise to invest internationally and develop an international infrastructure to take advantage of this growth.
As for people in the US working in IT, we simply have to realize that our degrees and MCSE certs are worth 60% of what they were worth in 1999. American IT workers have to learn to compete on value.
The main concern for American IT is whether or not it will be able to retain a good share of the international market, or if the industry will go the way of steel.
I wasn't trying to raise alarm...just pointing out that organic compounds don't just "burn up." They continue to react with the environment. For that matter, what we call "burning up" is reacting with the environment. Burning up means a state change...and not necessarily a state change for the better.
I pretty much stick with the whole conservation of energy and conservation of mass point of view. That is, all the matter that we work with will pretty much end up back in the environment, and that you have to think about how things really react and not just say...oh, it will burn up, or, oh, we will just bury it...
Fluttering like rather strong sheets of paper sounds a lot more like what would happen. Sci Fi books often have strings of fiber which are extremely dangerous as they tend to slice through people rather quickly...aka Ringworld... The scifi alarmist would have this 3 inch pieces of string floating around in the world slicing everyone to piece...worse than asbestos in the lung.
Just because something is made of carbon doesn't mean that it will "burn up." This is especially true for stable forms of carbon like diamonds and, say, nanotubes.
Many of the deadliest things on this planet are basically weird variations of carbon.
I suspect that such chains would break, but create a really weird dust...they would not actually burn into CO2.
I suspect that the biggest use for GPS, and similar tracking technology, is for people to track stolen goods. In such cases the tracking device is in the goods. I understand that the courts look favorably on this use of technology.
Seems to me that this story only applies to cases of police intruding to install devices. This sounds quite reasonable to me, although I admit I can see reasons why the police would want to be able to install a tracking device when they do not have time to get a warrant.
For example, imagine if the police were in a high speed chase. Rather than risking bystanders, if the police had a good picture of the driver, then tagged the car with a tracking device and let the car go. In such cases, the tracking device is not really gathering evidence but simplifying the act of catching a person who committed a crime.
IANAL, but I could see a court deciding that the use of such technologies to track suspects is okay, but the actual evidence gathered by the devices are not permitted in court as evidence.
Now that Apple computers make music there is confusion between the Apple label and Apple computers.
Things are going to get a lot worse when we start hooking up Macs to food replicators and order lunch by saying:
"Computer, a Big Mac, Fries and a Coke..."
There will also be trademark confusion when trucking companies start using autopilots for their long haul routes. You'll see Macs driving Mack Trucks.
Brand confusion will get ugly I tell ya.
This is one of the big problems when trying to create programs that charge for information related products on the Internet. It is very easy to make things that increment counters and add rows to databases. When these activities involve an exchange of cash, there is often an incentive to create false impressions and transactions.
The dot coms discovered quickly that they were paying millions to programs that simply created false ad impressions and false ad clicks.
The telecom industry has similar situations where shady business people do things to create 1-900 calls, or phone calls to Albania just to rack up expenses.
The popup industry is fed largely by people who want to increment counters for various reasons.
By racking up an absurd charge, this case shows what a large number of "business people" are doing every day in smaller ways...ie trying to find clever ways to get the counters to increment.
Adware is not like other advertisements. Adware is an active program that resides in your computer at all times and actively manipulates your behavior.
Someone showed me the way the Kazaa adware program worked a year ago. An end user would go to a web site, and click on an ad. This ad has a tag that says, I came from sitexxx. the adware program would swap out the tag and say. No, I came from kazaa.
Swapping out tags from an ad to claim a commission is not free speach, it is misdirection.
Adware may be helping pay the cost incurred while pirating music, but, if you want to look at it from a free speech point of view, adware is essentially a program sitting in a computer that is limiting the free speech of others.
Adware follows all the activities of a computer user and actively manipulates that behavior. This act of following the user's behavior and programattically manipulating behavior makes it completely different from traditional advertising. The ability of adware to change the advertisements by other companies is the most disturbing part of the industry.
Free speech does not say that you have the ability to block the speech of others.
Personally, I think the biggest problem with adware is that it reduces the ability of other companies to pay for products with advertising. By swapping out the ads that appear on online newspapers, adware virtually destroys the ability for online newspapers to exist.
When adware moves from the computer to the ISP it will get even worse. When the ISP is running programs that manipulate ads, then even Linux boxes will be affected.
As soon as the adware marketing plan is fully legitimized, then there will be tons of things that include adware. All computers will come equipped from the manufacturer with adware installed.
imagine the day when ISPs begin maximizing their profits by piping ad information into your machine. I doubt that the judge (who I suspect will be justly compensated for his ruling) has a clue about what he is unleashing.
Speaking of adware, I installed mouse a month ago. The friggin mouse program had an adware component. It won't be just free ware and trojans. Adware and spyware will be in everything. There will be no consumer choice.
Remember to wipe when-u...
I need to check a history book, but I think both computers and telephone networks existed in 1971. I think maybe there was even color TV. I suspect the reason that people couldn't hook a ton of cool gadgets to the telephone system in the US was more a matter of the AT&T monopoly than lack of imagination.
Most of the ideas that we think are cool today are really just twists or refinement of ideas that have been around for a long time.
A large number of students seem to be using amazon.com, half.com, powells, and or ebay to sell off and buy text books.
Why not use the blood sucking immoral capitistic programs provided by the free market?
The key, however, is that Linux has a very strong, growing and loyal customer base. It has a strong niche in the server market, etc..
The assumption that Linux needs to make its move into the desktop right now is short sighted.
MS is stuck in a track where their entire product is based on a computer configuration with a keyboard, monitor and mouse. By allowing multiple GUIs, Linux will be in a better position to handle things like the voice recognition, and will rule the OS world when the standard configuration of the computer has two legs, a spinning head and the standard user interface includes a death ray and fiendish laugh... or, err, whatever the future holds.
Timing is everything. A consolidated GUI might have been the big thing yesterday. Tomorrow, however, the advantage is the ability to adapt.
Personally, I suspect that if we had a system where a large number of small companies were busily building their components and the IP laws were preventing companies from taking over the market, then /.ers would be cheering on the IP laws. The fact that we have one dominent monopoly essentially controlling the software industry and cutting off opportunities for others, we see only the bad side of IP.
Basically, Microsoft exists because IBM (fearing antitrust lawsuits) contracted with MS, Intel and others so that different companies would own different parts of the IT puzzle. It was this dynamic landscape with multiple companies involved in the development that created the PC revolution.
Microsoft shows very clearly that strong antitrust laws are a necessary component of a intellectual property system. Basically, when one company has grown so powerful that no IP exists outside of that company, then the IP system fails.
Microsoft was made by IBM. Bill Gates turned his attention from reverse engineeting BASIC to reverse engineering Intergallactic Digital Research's DOS because IBM was looking for partners that would create a dynamic business scape in light of anti trust threats.
If the legal community really wanted to create a working system of IP, then they should start by breaking up Microsoft and the cartels and megalyths that control the music industry.
I concur. The big advantage of Linux is that there is choice. This ability to chose is Linux's competitive edge. Tossing out the competitive edge because you don't have the market share you want is absurd. Companies that follow this type of path generally put themselves out of business. Quite frankly, i have never be thrilled with either KDE or Gnome, and believe the kick ass linux GUI is still waiting its creation. Having an open architecture that allows different GUIs to evolve is the ultimate competitive edge. Choice is good.
Linux's niche market is extremely strong right now. Rather than do it wrong because some people hate Bill Gates so much that they would make any compromise to hurt their enemy, I would rather see people accept that evolution takes time. Allowing multiple GUIs allows for long term evolution of the GUI.
In the long run, Linux is served better by having multiple GUI options. We should be arguing for more not fewer choices of desktops.
I agree that this patent seems to be frivolous.
However, in a world of components, I don't think it is a necessary requirement that a company must be making an end user application to be considered a legitimate entity. There is legitimacy in designing components.
In some regard, the people making components are in greater need of IP protection than the company that packages and sells systems since they do not have the immediate brand awareness. They are totally at the mercy of the company with the brand name.
Just because a component is dependent on another work does not mean that it is illegitimate. The fact that the patent system is protecting components is good in this regard; otherwise the companies selling systems would be able to trounce all over the subcontractors that make the components.
Just because we haven't heard of a company doesn't mean they are not a major player making major contributions.
The best classes I've had involved a professor who wrote their own textbook. (I have not had any where the professor required their text but did not use it.)
A professor teaching from their textbook is a different from pure graft as the class and book itself is a full creation of the professor.
You are correct, however, if the professor assigns a book that is not related to the class, then he is just using the system.
Professors are cheap and the price is dropping.
Textbook sales are another good example of the professor and business. When the prefessor, or department, can dictate the purchase of thousands of dollars in books, you can be certain that there is a great deal of schmoozing going along with the sale. If you want your $100 a pop textbook to be accepted by a major university, you better be prepared to roll out a red carpet for the decision makers.
Often process is more important than raw talent. Or I should say the art is in defining the process. The grand master painters of the Renaissance usually had scores of assistants. The master artist defined the process and the apprentices carried out the process. Chiluly is a good example of this today.
The quality of the recording and playing equipment is also extremely important.
What happens in pop music is that people want young idols. So the industry has a process defined by veterans. The implementation of the process takes place by 'merican idol wannabes.
The RIAA should be extremely scared. Notice how the things that come out of the Star Trek replicators don't have brand names.
Publishing has always been a strange industry because the biggest costs are not in production but in the creation of the works and marketing.
Top 40 music is an even stranger industry as the marketing costs completely ecclipse production costs. American Idol formual is entirely about spending cash to generate hype.
Music is like writing. Writing a book means squat. Most the people who spend a year writing a book lose a year's income and get to be poor. Unforutnately, it is the big marketing channel is more important than the art. I had hoped that the Internet would be an equalizer, but the P2P crowd pretty much just concentrates on stealing the stuff that has been marketed. Online music has not created a good mechanism for new independent voices.
Ride the Wave (MP3)
Sorry but the dollar amount matters more than the rock. As I recall, jewlers tell you something like you are supposed to spend a month and a half income on the stone. So if the price drops, you will just have to find something bigger.
The month and a half thing gets troublesome, though. Bill Gates had to buy his sweetheart a caribbean island...as it was the only rock he could find selling for a month and a half of income. The destitute breed fast because a month and a half of nothing, is well, free.
Which is pretty much exactly the same goal of all trade unions, political action committees and the other odd beasts that dominate the modern intellectual climate.
It is a game where you get funding by saying what people with power and money want to here. To suggest that such organizations should actual spend more time trying to figure out what is right, or what is the best course of action for all will just bring a harangue about one's naivity.
Truly subjective sources are few and far between.
Over priced education is great when you get the government or your parents to pay for it. BTW, I keep hearing students' at the local state run schools complaining about tuition now that the government can no longer pay for it. Tuition has been increasing by 10% a year.
But, in the hey day...man, Universities could really rack up the bills as they lavished the perks on the insiders and administrators.
The best solution is to have a portable number. That way you just point the number to a different location each night. I really would not want to bring a phone other people use home. Most portable numbers let you change the destination with call on via the web.
Only the buzzwords change. The logic pretty much stays the same.
In the war between the government and the bookies, I will give 5 : 1 odds on the bookies...