If you are offended that much by a movie, why rent it in the first place?
There are plenty of movies that have a few minutes of an obligatory sex scene that is completely irrelevant to the plot. Some people have moral beliefs about sex that cause them to want to avoid such scenes - Why are they an "idiot" for having such views? Why are YOU offended by someone else's private moral choices?
Right now you're relying on the good and kind folks at the movie studio. Does their worldview = yours? If you bought one of this things the answer is... NO.
There is an irritating degree of hypocrisy in the/. posts so far on this story. These people are NOT CENSORING YOU! To the degree that/.ers are expressing opposition to such a device you are censoring them.. telling them what they can or can't or MUST watch.
What business is it of yours that someone out there is watching a movie with bits they would have found objectionable edited out? Why do you insist that they MUST have b00bies in their movie when they don't want them? Why do you want to impose your morality on them? If you're advice when they object to something is "then just don't watch it" why do you complain when they want a finer-grained solution than simply avoiding movies altogether?
I'm sorry, but who gives a fuck? I'm not trying to troll here, but if he can't use it that's tough. There are plenty of people using Linux for their day to day work. I'm one of them.
design for the expert or design for the novice, but it's nigh-impossible to do both.
The point of ESR's rant was that presently a lot of open-source does NEITHER. ESR is most certainly NOT a novice, and HE couldn't set up a printer using CUPS.
It's not that it was designed for the expert, it was that it wasn't really designed at all. The GUI was thrown up as an after thought and the word thought being in there at all is being generous.
Why exactly? Because they get no Windows? Isn't that obvious before buying?
I'll admit that I am overstating the case for effect - but did you read ESR's rant? ESR couldn't connect to a shared printer. Not Aunt Tillie, not her script kiddie nephew, not even her IT professional brother. But ESR a geek demi-god. That is a SPECTACULAR usability failure, big enough to be called "broken". And ESR's original point was that it wasn't just CUPS, but MOST open-source software that suffered from this kind of failure.
certainly; but is that all? Think about obfusfacted code, perl one-liners and such?
Have you read any 'Art of... Programming' books?
Sometimes we doodle, we do stuff for fun. We make things for the mere joy of craftsmanship. But CUPS was written, at least in part, for other people to USE.
If Linux is just done only for our own amusement as hackers, as an exercise rather than as an actual useful tool for others then we should stop advocating it as a useful tool for others. We should admit that it is nothing but a bit of "code poetry" and any usefulness is only inadvertent and not to be compared with proprietary software that was originally conceived as a tool rather than as an exercise in programer self-indulgence.
Which brings me back to "ripped-off". Some poor shmoe was so focussed on price that he bought a work of art, a decorative object done for the artists personal amusement rather than a functioning tool designed for HIS use.
I am naive enough to think that open-source software can, and *should* be both. That part of the pride of craftsmanship and joy of creating is in creating something that is fulfills it's function with some grace rather than merely being clever in some way that the user of the tool will never see.
Oh really? So tell me, is Walmart a store that techies currently shop? Cheap $400 computers *are* meant for the non-technical type that wants the cheapest computer they can possibly afford.
Yes, but they are so focussed on price that they don't realize that they are getting ripped-off (to a degree). Which really was the point of ESR's original rant. Linux is BROKEN, It's usability failures makes it unusable (which only makes sense).
Linux hasn't just failed to produce a system that Aunt Tillie can use - it has failed to produce a system that ERIC S. RAYMOND can use! That is a pretty spectacular failure.
Before there was Desktop Linux, there was the kernel itself. Function before style
The failure in understanding that makes you think this statement is relevant is the problem that ESR was complaining about in his original rant. Usability IS function NOT style. To the degree that open-source developers THINK that it is merely "style" they will just throw some "style" at their project and think they have done something worthwhile when they have probably only made crappy software worse.
What is the purpose (or function) of a kernel, or more too the point, a computer itself? It is a TOOL that humans use to accomplish tasks with. If the tool is nearly unusable it's NOT functional. A rock can drive nails but a hammer with it's better "usability" and "user interface" (a handle, decent balance, etc.) is not more stylish - it is more functional. For Aunt Tillie, heck for ESR himself, the same distinction is valid between CUPS printing and Windows printing. CUPS can connect to a shared printer, but windows is more FUNCTIONAL.
Open source developers demand and create excellent usability in those situations where THEY are in fact the users - programming languages, development tools, server software - the things that make Open Source tools superior are in a real way their superior "usability" though we don't think of it that way.
what is the point? what is it that we as developers DO? We are the tool makers. Seeing computers as tools just to write software as an end unto itself is a bit masturbatory. The software we write for end users to preform their tasks should be characterized by the same superiority in the same terms, USABILITY, that we demand from the tools we use for OUR tasks.
Imagine having a small piece of electronics that works on two AA batteries and burns out all RFIDs within a, say, one foot radius. Shouldn't be hard to make, really.
Now imagine running a store. Are you sure you want to charge your customers only for items with intact RFIDs?
Now imagine the response of store security when dozens of items all drop out of the system instantaneously with you standing in the center of sudden "dead" spot in their inventory.
Do they have plans to earn higher returns than interest rate on their pile of cash? If they don't, the money should be returned to the shareholders
Yeah, but it makes sense for Apple to hold on to a large cash reserve. Their business model is largely based on "innovating" - producing and/or popularizing brand new products & technologies. It makes sense that they would like a pile of cash on hand, even if it's getting a lousy return, so that they can be flexible and exploit the opportunity if one of their technology innovations "hits it out of the park". It would be tragic if they come up with that one killer product but then were slow to follow it up because they didn't have the resources on hand to do so. A competitor with deeper pockets and without the R&D costs to recoup could come along and eat their lunch.
Alternatively with that kind of cash they can buy up someone else that "hits one out of the park" but doesn't have the resources to exploit it themselves. Apple is certainly not above buying "innovation" - iTunes itself used to be SoundJam. So far all those purchases have been small, but there may be bigger fish out there that Jobs sees as critical to rounding out his empire. I would not be at all surprised to see Apple making another string of purchases to go after other niches the way they bought up FinalCut Pro, Nothing Real, Emagic, Prismo Graphics etc. in their effort to dominate film/video & audio production. Apple purchasing the market leading 3D software packages wouldn't surprise me at all. Do the same thing they did with the film/video & audio packages - drop the price for the Mac version so much that the difference can buy you a new G5 and eventually drop the Windows version - Get an entire industry to "switch" - they've done it before.
No, prior to OS X they DID need saving. I went through those dark days and they really were "beleaguered". Sure they had money in the bank but weren't going anywhere. We are all fortunate that they pulled out of what really was a death spiral.
The problem with the financial writers is that they sometimes don't get the technology so they don't understand it's potential impact on the company (while the opposite is true of tech writers). The successful transition to OS X puts Apple's technology on a firm foundation and now they can indulge their creative and innovative strengths in a way they couldn't before. This guys analysis assumes that things will stay static - but Apple's whole business model is built on pioneering NEW products. OS X is hugely significant because it lets Apple do this.
If you look at the Google reports for Feb 2004, the Mac users are 4%. Now look at report for June 2001. The amount reported for Mac users....... 4%
But they went down since then and are now on their way back up. Last February they were at 3% according to Zeitgeist, this year they are at 4%. It looks like Google rounds their numbers to the nearest full percentage point so who knows what that really means.
My personal opinion on the matter is that you can't fight a war against terrorism without looking at what the root causes of that terrorism are
True enough, but most people that say so aren't really interested in finding out - they *think* they already know. They'll cite poverty, or income inequality, colonialism and western arrogance. Yet in their own example of patronizing western arrogance they refuse to take the terrorists own statements about motives at face value. Apparently they believe brown people are incapable of self-knowledge and must be deciphered by enlightened western intellectuals to discern their "real" motives. In this regard the conservatives grant the terrorists more dignity as fellow humans - they take the terrorists at their word regarding motives and goals and find no room for compromise.
The islamist terrorists want an end to western colonialism, including not only the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the abolition of Israel (and the withdrawal of Spain from Andalusia) but also to be free from the imposition of western values regarding the status of women in society and quant western notions about "human rights". They want to establish a pure islamic society governed by sharia law as interpreted by the most extreme wahhabi doctrine. Their religion teaches an absolute morality, it teaches that man is not fallen, nor is he good, but that man is weak and needs the help (control) of the theocratic state in order to live a virtuous life. Their doctrine also teaches that those outside of the helpful control of the theocratic state must someday be brought in to it (for their own good of course). Any loss of territory is cause for jihad - holy war to recover land and peoples that had once been under submission to God. The theocratic state must ever expand - never shrink.
The people that believe this and that join al quaeda are NOT the poor and downtrodden but members of the ruling and middle classes. Well educated, reasonably wealthy, even quasi-westernized believers of a triumphalist, extreme Wahabism. They feel humiliated by western success and Islamic failure and by the past and present wrongs of colonialism and the decline of their culture currently and most shockingly represented by westernized women freely going about uncovered against all tradition and religious doctrine.
can't understand why it is necessary to mention that he used to use an Apple in the./ posting
Could it be that it is mentioned because the IIci is a really old, slow relic and that mentioning it's use underlines the fact that this guy was A) ahead of his time and B) doing amazing things with limited resources. I had always understood those two things to be almost the definition of Geekiness and part of the whole point of site devoted to "news for nerds".
Come on, don't you think it is cool, or at least interesting that this guy was successfully making the movie with the awesome computing power of a 25MHz CPU and 128 MB of RAM (assuming he maxed it out - out of the box it had 1MB of RAM). If you don't find that interesting and his achievements with such old hardware impressive are you sure you are reading the right site?
I've looked at several dictionaries online both old and new and none mention permanence as part of their definition of "property" - they all seem to agree that the definition of property is that it is owned:
"That to which a person has a legal title,
whether in his possession or not." - Websters Dictionary 1913 edition
Now I will concede that intellectual property has recently been inserted in the statutes books.
The term "intellectual property" may be recent but copyrights have been treated legally as personal property to be bought, sold, leased etc. at the owners discretion and treated as a part of his estate if he died while they were still in effect since the copyright act of 1790 in the U.S. and I believe (I couldn't find the text) since the Statute of Anne in 1709 in the U.K.
The author and authors of any map, chart, book or books... his executors, administrators or assigns, who hath or
have not transfered to any other person the copy-right of of such map, chart, book or books, shares or shares thereof, and any other person or persons being a citizen or citizens of these united states or residents therein, his or their executors, administrators or assigns who hath or have purchased or legally acquired the copy-right of any such map, chart, book or books in order to print, publish or vend the same shall have the sole right and liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing or vending such map chart, book or books for the term of fourteen years from the recording the title thereof in the Clerk's Office... - Copyright Act of 1790
The courts have also always treated copy-rights and patents as personal property
"For, by the laws of the United States, the rights of a party under a patent are his private property"
- Brown v. Duchesne, 1857
A patent for an invention is as much property as a patent for land
- Consolidated Fruit-Jar Co. v. Wright, 1877
There is one more requirement to consider something property: permanence...
Many types of physical property are no more permanent than copy-rights, or patents. By you're reckoning the meal I ate last night was not my property.
...and ownership... they are not actually owned by their holders...
The "rights" however are owned, can be bought, sold, inherited etc.
...rather they are conceded by the State.
I dispute this, the contents of my mind, my thoughts, my creativity, are my property. The state extends rights of exclusive use that I already owned quite securely in order to enable me and encourage me to share knowledge that was already my own exclusive property.
In another vein I would argue that a common human understanding of justice and propriety artists and inventors have always been held to "own" in some sense the products of their creativity. Take this example - if you write a book and are rejected for publication by a publisher but find out later that they DID publish your book and kept the proceeds themselves they HAVE stolen something from you. Your *natural* rights, NOT derived from the state, have been trampled.
In the natural state one can own by force or tradition; not so with ideas or expression.
And in the natural state one of course owns his own thoughts without needing to resort to either force or tradition.
...nor you will find the term in the statutes books
The courts and the law have always treated such rights as personal property. As for specific mention in the statutes you are mistaken - U.S. Code Title 17, Chapter 2, Sec. 201, clause (d)(1)
The ownership of a copyright may be transferred in whole or in part by any means of conveyance or by operation of law, and may be bequeathed by will or pass as personal
property by the applicable laws of intestate succession.
U.S. Code Title 35, Part III, Chapter 26, Sec. 261
Subject to the provisions of this title,
patents shall have the attributes of personal property.
Instances of the law discussing "ownership" of either patents or copy-rights are too numerous to mention. The actual term "intellectual property" occurs as well in several places but usually to refer to either the name of a bill or as a way to refer generally to the branch of a foreign government responsible for intellectual property law in that country - in other words another nations equivalent of the patent office.
...but intellectual property is just a meaningless agregation of both plus trademarks.
OK, I understand your point better now, but I think you are being (or trying to be) pedantic. Unfortunately, you're still wrong. Intellectual property has all the attributes that define "property" - the rights (even limited rights) are owned, the holder of the rights (patent, trademark, copy-right) has exclusive legal title to them, he can enjoy them or dispose of them as he will, they can be bought or sold or given away as a gift. This is the definition of the term "property".
As for the qualifier "intellectual" - while the law may treat each of the different types of "intellectual property" differently they are obviously of a class that share a lot of attributes and are distinct from other types of property, including other types of intangible property (such as licenses, securities, notes, accounts receivable, etc.) It's nice to have a term for the distinct class as a whole rather than just the individual types or lumping it together in the larger class of "intangible property" or even worse just "property".
Finally, part of my point before is that those rights originate with the inventor, artist, writer not with the state. Aside from the legal idea of "intellectual property" the creator owns the contents of his own head in a more real way and more securely than he does even his physical property. If he can utilize it to his profit without divulging it to anyone else it will always remain his property in the fullest sense of the word. Even if he can't do so he can sell it (as a type of property) prior to divulging it to the person he sold it to. Society has created laws to extend that "property" for the mutual benefit of the creator and the larger society.
For that matter physical property rights are just as much a product of law and society as intellectual property rights. In a Hobbesian state of nature you only "own" it if you have a bigger club, are stronger and can keep someone else from taking it. Finally I'd note that the law also treats different kinds of physical property differently as well. There are distinctions between the owning a piece of real estate as opposed to owning a piece of gum, or owning a piece of a business. Nobody would claim that because of these distinction that these things aren't "property".
I disagree, intellectual property most certainly DOES exist. In it's raw form (the contents of your mind) it is the most secure and private property you have. Of course the moment you communicate this knowledge to someone else they own it just as surely as you do.
This property can be extremely valuable to the individual who has it as well as to society. The problem that Patent laws seek to address is that individuals with valuable knowledge would often seek to keep it secret so as to ensure that whatever the invented or developed benefits them. Some inventors and trade guilds had been spectacularly successful in doing so, take for example the history of the Zildjian cymbal company. Others failed to keep their secrets and died penniless, undercut by competitors that didn't have their R&D costs to recover (Gutenburg) The problem from societies standpoint is that the imperative to keep secrets limited what the inventor could do with his invention meaning it's application was often less useful to society than it otherwise could be. Also, if the secret was well kept there was always the risk that it would die with the inventor. The middle ages is replete with examples of inventions and knowledge that died with their inventors.
Patents offer a solution. The inventor is offered a limited time monopoly on the use of his invention IF he tells everyone else what it is. Now the inventor doesn't have to worry about his secret getting out and dying penniless or go to great lengths to keep his secret. He can sell his invention on an open market and still retain the benefits as though he had kept it secret - for a time. Society can benefit immediately through the inventor's business and through the inventors open sharing of his newfound knowledge and after the monopoly is up that knowledge is in the public domain free for anyone to use.
This is NOT to say that the patent system isn't being abused, just to say that it is itself still valid even if it is at times being used in an invalid way.
Others have already addressed the point that for this application Macs are neither slower nor more expensive.
I'd point out that there are a couple of very good strategic reasons to go with Apple. First off they are in a niche that Apple is intent on dominating and is on the way to succeeding in this desire. Apple produces (or has bought) a lot of technology that is important to the broad category of film/video production that Pixar is part of. Beyond just Apple the other software vendors in this niche support the platform, a few don't support the *other* platforms.
Secondly, of course, is that Steve Jobs - the CEO and majority shareholder of Pixar is also the CEO of Apple. For obvious reasons Pixar is in a good position to get great service and consideration from this particular vendor. The "CEO mandate" dynamic you worry about on behalf of Pixar's shareholders (who are for the most part Mr. Jobs himself) works both ways. Apple which is already focussed on dominating the film/video market can act almost as a HUGE auxiliary R&D department for Pixar. They've already developed a new codec at Pixar's specific request. Apple has a huge amount of relevant technology it has already developed and/or bought. One might also notice that the XServe from the very beginning was configured as much for the video production market as it was for the server market - how many other servers have a FireWire port on the *front*?
but costly to Pixar's shareholders. One wonders what sorts of fudiciary issues such a maneuver might raise.
Since Jobs is himself the majority shareholder at Pixar with 55.4% of the shares not many. I would worry a great deal more about Jobs abusing his position at Apple to benefit Pixar's shareholders (i.e. himself) than vice versa.
Unless you think that the charm of the current system adequately compensates for the fact that 40% of the voters' votes are essentially worthless
I'm not saying there isn't room for reform that makes more peoples votes "count". I just wouldn't want to throw the baby out with the bath-water. The current system is flawed in that ~40% of votes "don't count". (to be fair it's usually less, it's rare that we end up with a winner this early.)
It's just that some "reforms" would discard some very valuable features of the current system. The ability for a campaign of some duration where there is an ongoing debate that voters (rather than pundits) are putting input into (with real votes not opinion polls) where unknown outsiders can break in and make their case. Single-day, nation-wide elections no matter what the clever gimmick ensure the people get their choice would still lock out outsiders and guarantee the victory of insiders, the already well known, celebrities and media darlings. Only someone who already has national name recognition and/or the support of big financial backers or a pet of the pundits need apply.
Well, "organic" processes gave us a system where only landed white men could vote. It took "reforms" to give minorities and women the right to vote.
No that situation was the starting point and the least organically derived decided upon by a committee of the best and brightest. The subsequent reforms weren't hatched full-formed in an ivory tower but evolved slowly under the pressure of the disenfranchised populace. The reforms proceeded gradually and evolved organically over time. I'm not arguing against reform but I'm doubtful of untested schemes advocated by poly-sci professors detached from the pressures of real flesh and blood constituencies.
Of course, claiming that organic systems are always better or worse than "theoretical constructs" is absurd, and you should know that.
I know no such thing and I don't see why I "should". History is replete with utopian "theoretical constructs" that work perfectly on paper and fail spectacularly, tragically, in real life. Slower, evolving, organic systems that don't try to achieve perfection (if there is such a thing) in one fell swoop have a much better track record of success. Human society is a spectacularly complex dynamic system which has repeatedly slammed radical reformers with the law of unintended consequences. Humility is an appropriate attitude when advocating sweeping social reforms.
Sure your system *might* work the way you predict but it is at least as likely that it would end up working the way I predict - reinforcing the primacy of celebrity, and the importance of money while locking out outsider, insurgent candidates.
The issue is that the results of the early elections influence the results of the later elections. If the media didn't report the results, people wouldn't be influenced by it.
Then again that is part of the appeal. The outsiders that can't run a national campaign have a chance to become known and gain "momentum" by winning (and being reported as winning) in the small early states.
I think the horse-race reporting is fine - as long as it's not the ONLY thing being reported. I think voters go to far in jumping on the band-wagon of the perceived front-runner. On the other hand this is an internal vote of party members, they are trying to produce, unite behind, and provide a mandate for a single consensus candidate. It's natural that they factor other peoples votes into their thinking. In this case they have done so very early. In part because of the "front-loading" of the primaries, partly because the desire for consensus was stronger than usual, the party is already united in their dislike of Bush and because Kerry is broadly acceptable. If the party were more fractured ideologically or if a significant percentage found Kerry unacceptable for some reason the process would have taken longer and more candidates would have survived into the "super tuesdays" when the bulk of the electorate gets to vote.
Also, I don't mind quirky political traditions, they can be charming. I like the weirdness - the funny retail politics in Iowa and New Hampshire where real voters usually meet several of the candidates in person and can form judgments on their own without the filter of TV (either news media or the candidates own advertising). A funky system with that kind of early test run on a small scale has value.
The kind of antiseptic *pure* theoretical constructs of poli-sci professors lack any charm or character and given the track record of academic reformers would probably end up with unintended consequences that end up having more problems than the quirky traditions that evolved organically.
All voting for a given election should happen on the same day.
The problem with this is that the only very well funded, insider candidate with national name recognition would have a chance. The candidates that drop out in the current system wouldn't have even bothered running if it was a one-day national election. The current system allows for lesser known, poorly funded outsiders to make their case in smaller states that they have a chance of contesting. If they do well (which they often do) they can carry on and contest the larger and larger states that come later and have a chance on the "super tuesdays" which are essentially national elections.
Most of the problem I have isn't with the system itself but with how it is covered by the media. Horse-race style coverage is perfectly acceptable - it is news after all. But the complete avoidance of coverage of the candidates positions is a problem. Also, the horse race coverage should be about actual results - actual delegates won versus how many are needed, NOT reporting on the endless chatter of pundits chattering about the chattering of the pundits. Winning Iowa is newsworthy and the winner is entitled to some good press out of it. But (in this current race for instance) it only won Kerry 21 delegates, Edwards won 19 and Dean won 11! All that media hype practically anointing Kerry the winner just because he won a net advantage over his nearest competitor of 2 delegates! out of 4,332!!! Lets have a little perspective!
It seems to me that US intelligence will have to do some rethinking on the subject of doing completely without human intel sources.
The fiasco over WMD in Iraq was largely a failure of HUMINT. We had LOTS of Human Intelligence in Iraq (defectors, POW's captured by the Kurds, as well as assets within the Iraqi military). A fair number of their stories made it into the press so we know from newspaper accounts at least some of the HUMINT that the CIA was getting out of Iraq. They were all telling us that there were ongoing WMD programs in Iraq as well as ties to Al Queada. The problem is that "humble human traitors" have axes to grind (otherwise they wouldn't be traitors) and aren't always trustworthy. In the case of Iraqi WMD it's pretty obvious that a decent number of our HUMINT assets simply lied in order to provoke us into acting against their enemy.
Intelligence is to some degree an impossible job, you are rarely in a position to know what you need to know with any degree of certainty. Even if your intelligence DOES uncover the true facts of a situation you don't necessarily know for sure that it IS the truth. You can only weigh conflicting evidence and to make am informed guess. You are very likely to have a problem with "false negatives" where the people hiding information from you succeed (9/11, the Pakistani bomb, etc.) the only way to avoid that is to lower the standard of proof, which will lead just as inevitably to false positives (Iraqi WMD, probably some detainees in Gitmo & elsewhere).
Slashdot Mirror
If you are offended that much by a movie, why rent it in the first place?
There are plenty of movies that have a few minutes of an obligatory sex scene that is completely irrelevant to the plot. Some people have moral beliefs about sex that cause them to want to avoid such scenes - Why are they an "idiot" for having such views? Why are YOU offended by someone else's private moral choices?
Does their worldview = yours
/. posts so far on this story. These people are NOT CENSORING YOU! To the degree that /.ers are expressing opposition to such a device you are censoring them.. telling them what they can or can't or MUST watch.
If I bought the thing... YES!
Right now you're relying on the good and kind folks at the movie studio. Does their worldview = yours? If you bought one of this things the answer is... NO.
There is an irritating degree of hypocrisy in the
What business is it of yours that someone out there is watching a movie with bits they would have found objectionable edited out? Why do you insist that they MUST have b00bies in their movie when they don't want them? Why do you want to impose your morality on them? If you're advice when they object to something is "then just don't watch it" why do you complain when they want a finer-grained solution than simply avoiding movies altogether?
I'm sorry, but who gives a fuck? I'm not trying to troll here, but if he can't use it that's tough. There are plenty of people using Linux for their day to day work. I'm one of them.
Yes, I'm sure you are far more 1337 than ESR.
design for the expert or design for the novice, but it's nigh-impossible to do both.
The point of ESR's rant was that presently a lot of open-source does NEITHER. ESR is most certainly NOT a novice, and HE couldn't set up a printer using CUPS.
It's not that it was designed for the expert, it was that it wasn't really designed at all. The GUI was thrown up as an after thought and the word thought being in there at all is being generous.
Why exactly? Because they get no Windows? Isn't that obvious before buying?
... Programming' books?
I'll admit that I am overstating the case for effect - but did you read ESR's rant? ESR couldn't connect to a shared printer. Not Aunt Tillie, not her script kiddie nephew, not even her IT professional brother. But ESR a geek demi-god. That is a SPECTACULAR usability failure, big enough to be called "broken". And ESR's original point was that it wasn't just CUPS, but MOST open-source software that suffered from this kind of failure.
certainly; but is that all? Think about obfusfacted code, perl one-liners and such? Have you read any 'Art of
Sometimes we doodle, we do stuff for fun. We make things for the mere joy of craftsmanship. But CUPS was written, at least in part, for other people to USE.
If Linux is just done only for our own amusement as hackers, as an exercise rather than as an actual useful tool for others then we should stop advocating it as a useful tool for others. We should admit that it is nothing but a bit of "code poetry" and any usefulness is only inadvertent and not to be compared with proprietary software that was originally conceived as a tool rather than as an exercise in programer self-indulgence.
Which brings me back to "ripped-off". Some poor shmoe was so focussed on price that he bought a work of art, a decorative object done for the artists personal amusement rather than a functioning tool designed for HIS use.
I am naive enough to think that open-source software can, and *should* be both. That part of the pride of craftsmanship and joy of creating is in creating something that is fulfills it's function with some grace rather than merely being clever in some way that the user of the tool will never see.
Oh really? So tell me, is Walmart a store that techies currently shop? Cheap $400 computers *are* meant for the non-technical type that wants the cheapest computer they can possibly afford.
Yes, but they are so focussed on price that they don't realize that they are getting ripped-off (to a degree). Which really was the point of ESR's original rant. Linux is BROKEN, It's usability failures makes it unusable (which only makes sense).
Linux hasn't just failed to produce a system that Aunt Tillie can use - it has failed to produce a system that ERIC S. RAYMOND can use! That is a pretty spectacular failure.
Before there was Desktop Linux, there was the kernel itself. Function before style
The failure in understanding that makes you think this statement is relevant is the problem that ESR was complaining about in his original rant. Usability IS function NOT style. To the degree that open-source developers THINK that it is merely "style" they will just throw some "style" at their project and think they have done something worthwhile when they have probably only made crappy software worse.
What is the purpose (or function) of a kernel, or more too the point, a computer itself? It is a TOOL that humans use to accomplish tasks with. If the tool is nearly unusable it's NOT functional. A rock can drive nails but a hammer with it's better "usability" and "user interface" (a handle, decent balance, etc.) is not more stylish - it is more functional. For Aunt Tillie, heck for ESR himself, the same distinction is valid between CUPS printing and Windows printing. CUPS can connect to a shared printer, but windows is more FUNCTIONAL.
Open source developers demand and create excellent usability in those situations where THEY are in fact the users - programming languages, development tools, server software - the things that make Open Source tools superior are in a real way their superior "usability" though we don't think of it that way.
what is the point? what is it that we as developers DO? We are the tool makers. Seeing computers as tools just to write software as an end unto itself is a bit masturbatory. The software we write for end users to preform their tasks should be characterized by the same superiority in the same terms, USABILITY, that we demand from the tools we use for OUR tasks.
It doesn't take an Einstein to work out that the end result is to phase out the cheap, low margin, staples that the lower income bracket depend on
And, this explains the utter failure of WalMart and the stunning success of Bread and Circuses.
Imagine having a small piece of electronics that works on two AA batteries and burns out all RFIDs within a, say, one foot radius. Shouldn't be hard to make, really.
Now imagine running a store. Are you sure you want to charge your customers only for items with intact RFIDs?
Now imagine the response of store security when dozens of items all drop out of the system instantaneously with you standing in the center of sudden "dead" spot in their inventory.
Do they have plans to earn higher returns than interest rate on their pile of cash? If they don't, the money should be returned to the shareholders
Yeah, but it makes sense for Apple to hold on to a large cash reserve. Their business model is largely based on "innovating" - producing and/or popularizing brand new products & technologies. It makes sense that they would like a pile of cash on hand, even if it's getting a lousy return, so that they can be flexible and exploit the opportunity if one of their technology innovations "hits it out of the park". It would be tragic if they come up with that one killer product but then were slow to follow it up because they didn't have the resources on hand to do so. A competitor with deeper pockets and without the R&D costs to recoup could come along and eat their lunch.
Alternatively with that kind of cash they can buy up someone else that "hits one out of the park" but doesn't have the resources to exploit it themselves. Apple is certainly not above buying "innovation" - iTunes itself used to be SoundJam. So far all those purchases have been small, but there may be bigger fish out there that Jobs sees as critical to rounding out his empire. I would not be at all surprised to see Apple making another string of purchases to go after other niches the way they bought up FinalCut Pro, Nothing Real, Emagic, Prismo Graphics etc. in their effort to dominate film/video & audio production. Apple purchasing the market leading 3D software packages wouldn't surprise me at all. Do the same thing they did with the film/video & audio packages - drop the price for the Mac version so much that the difference can buy you a new G5 and eventually drop the Windows version - Get an entire industry to "switch" - they've done it before.
No, prior to OS X they DID need saving. I went through those dark days and they really were "beleaguered". Sure they had money in the bank but weren't going anywhere. We are all fortunate that they pulled out of what really was a death spiral.
The problem with the financial writers is that they sometimes don't get the technology so they don't understand it's potential impact on the company (while the opposite is true of tech writers). The successful transition to OS X puts Apple's technology on a firm foundation and now they can indulge their creative and innovative strengths in a way they couldn't before. This guys analysis assumes that things will stay static - but Apple's whole business model is built on pioneering NEW products. OS X is hugely significant because it lets Apple do this.
If you look at the Google reports for Feb 2004, the Mac users are 4%. Now look at report for June 2001. The amount reported for Mac users....... 4%
But they went down since then and are now on their way back up. Last February they were at 3% according to Zeitgeist, this year they are at 4%. It looks like Google rounds their numbers to the nearest full percentage point so who knows what that really means.
By the way, one of the penultimate films regarding xenophobia and consumer culture was Romero's Dawn of the Dead.
If "Dawn" was the second best which movie was actually the best?
Sorry, "penultimate" brings out the vocabulary nazi in me.
Then only to have any action vetoed, because Halburton would like to do a business deal for new fossil energies with the aliens.
I think you mean Total Elf Fina.
My personal opinion on the matter is that you can't fight a war against terrorism without looking at what the root causes of that terrorism are
True enough, but most people that say so aren't really interested in finding out - they *think* they already know. They'll cite poverty, or income inequality, colonialism and western arrogance. Yet in their own example of patronizing western arrogance they refuse to take the terrorists own statements about motives at face value. Apparently they believe brown people are incapable of self-knowledge and must be deciphered by enlightened western intellectuals to discern their "real" motives. In this regard the conservatives grant the terrorists more dignity as fellow humans - they take the terrorists at their word regarding motives and goals and find no room for compromise.
The islamist terrorists want an end to western colonialism, including not only the withdrawal of U.S. troops and the abolition of Israel (and the withdrawal of Spain from Andalusia) but also to be free from the imposition of western values regarding the status of women in society and quant western notions about "human rights". They want to establish a pure islamic society governed by sharia law as interpreted by the most extreme wahhabi doctrine. Their religion teaches an absolute morality, it teaches that man is not fallen, nor is he good, but that man is weak and needs the help (control) of the theocratic state in order to live a virtuous life. Their doctrine also teaches that those outside of the helpful control of the theocratic state must someday be brought in to it (for their own good of course). Any loss of territory is cause for jihad - holy war to recover land and peoples that had once been under submission to God. The theocratic state must ever expand - never shrink.
The people that believe this and that join al quaeda are NOT the poor and downtrodden but members of the ruling and middle classes. Well educated, reasonably wealthy, even quasi-westernized believers of a triumphalist, extreme Wahabism. They feel humiliated by western success and Islamic failure and by the past and present wrongs of colonialism and the decline of their culture currently and most shockingly represented by westernized women freely going about uncovered against all tradition and religious doctrine.
can't understand why it is necessary to mention that he used to use an Apple in the ./ posting
Could it be that it is mentioned because the IIci is a really old, slow relic and that mentioning it's use underlines the fact that this guy was A) ahead of his time and B) doing amazing things with limited resources. I had always understood those two things to be almost the definition of Geekiness and part of the whole point of site devoted to "news for nerds".
Come on, don't you think it is cool, or at least interesting that this guy was successfully making the movie with the awesome computing power of a 25MHz CPU and 128 MB of RAM (assuming he maxed it out - out of the box it had 1MB of RAM). If you don't find that interesting and his achievements with such old hardware impressive are you sure you are reading the right site?
Now I will concede that intellectual property has recently been inserted in the statutes books.
The term "intellectual property" may be recent but copyrights have been treated legally as personal property to be bought, sold, leased etc. at the owners discretion and treated as a part of his estate if he died while they were still in effect since the copyright act of 1790 in the U.S. and I believe (I couldn't find the text) since the Statute of Anne in 1709 in the U.K. The courts have also always treated copy-rights and patents as personal property
Many types of physical property are no more permanent than copy-rights, or patents. By you're reckoning the meal I ate last night was not my property.
The "rights" however are owned, can be bought, sold, inherited etc.
I dispute this, the contents of my mind, my thoughts, my creativity, are my property. The state extends rights of exclusive use that I already owned quite securely in order to enable me and encourage me to share knowledge that was already my own exclusive property.
In another vein I would argue that a common human understanding of justice and propriety artists and inventors have always been held to "own" in some sense the products of their creativity. Take this example - if you write a book and are rejected for publication by a publisher but find out later that they DID publish your book and kept the proceeds themselves they HAVE stolen something from you. Your *natural* rights, NOT derived from the state, have been trampled.
In the natural state one can own by force or tradition; not so with ideas or expression.
And in the natural state one of course owns his own thoughts without needing to resort to either force or tradition.
The courts and the law have always treated such rights as personal property. As for specific mention in the statutes you are mistaken - U.S. Code Title 17, Chapter 2, Sec. 201, clause (d)(1) U.S. Code Title 35, Part III, Chapter 26, Sec. 261 Instances of the law discussing "ownership" of either patents or copy-rights are too numerous to mention. The actual term "intellectual property" occurs as well in several places but usually to refer to either the name of a bill or as a way to refer generally to the branch of a foreign government responsible for intellectual property law in that country - in other words another nations equivalent of the patent office.
...but intellectual property is just a meaningless agregation of both plus trademarks.
OK, I understand your point better now, but I think you are being (or trying to be) pedantic. Unfortunately, you're still wrong. Intellectual property has all the attributes that define "property" - the rights (even limited rights) are owned, the holder of the rights (patent, trademark, copy-right) has exclusive legal title to them, he can enjoy them or dispose of them as he will, they can be bought or sold or given away as a gift. This is the definition of the term "property".
As for the qualifier "intellectual" - while the law may treat each of the different types of "intellectual property" differently they are obviously of a class that share a lot of attributes and are distinct from other types of property, including other types of intangible property (such as licenses, securities, notes, accounts receivable, etc.) It's nice to have a term for the distinct class as a whole rather than just the individual types or lumping it together in the larger class of "intangible property" or even worse just "property".
Finally, part of my point before is that those rights originate with the inventor, artist, writer not with the state. Aside from the legal idea of "intellectual property" the creator owns the contents of his own head in a more real way and more securely than he does even his physical property. If he can utilize it to his profit without divulging it to anyone else it will always remain his property in the fullest sense of the word. Even if he can't do so he can sell it (as a type of property) prior to divulging it to the person he sold it to. Society has created laws to extend that "property" for the mutual benefit of the creator and the larger society.
For that matter physical property rights are just as much a product of law and society as intellectual property rights. In a Hobbesian state of nature you only "own" it if you have a bigger club, are stronger and can keep someone else from taking it. Finally I'd note that the law also treats different kinds of physical property differently as well. There are distinctions between the owning a piece of real estate as opposed to owning a piece of gum, or owning a piece of a business. Nobody would claim that because of these distinction that these things aren't "property".
IP doesn't exist. Patents and copyrights yes.
I disagree, intellectual property most certainly DOES exist. In it's raw form (the contents of your mind) it is the most secure and private property you have. Of course the moment you communicate this knowledge to someone else they own it just as surely as you do.
This property can be extremely valuable to the individual who has it as well as to society. The problem that Patent laws seek to address is that individuals with valuable knowledge would often seek to keep it secret so as to ensure that whatever the invented or developed benefits them. Some inventors and trade guilds had been spectacularly successful in doing so, take for example the history of the Zildjian cymbal company. Others failed to keep their secrets and died penniless, undercut by competitors that didn't have their R&D costs to recover (Gutenburg) The problem from societies standpoint is that the imperative to keep secrets limited what the inventor could do with his invention meaning it's application was often less useful to society than it otherwise could be. Also, if the secret was well kept there was always the risk that it would die with the inventor. The middle ages is replete with examples of inventions and knowledge that died with their inventors.
Patents offer a solution. The inventor is offered a limited time monopoly on the use of his invention IF he tells everyone else what it is. Now the inventor doesn't have to worry about his secret getting out and dying penniless or go to great lengths to keep his secret. He can sell his invention on an open market and still retain the benefits as though he had kept it secret - for a time. Society can benefit immediately through the inventor's business and through the inventors open sharing of his newfound knowledge and after the monopoly is up that knowledge is in the public domain free for anyone to use.
This is NOT to say that the patent system isn't being abused, just to say that it is itself still valid even if it is at times being used in an invalid way.
Others have already addressed the point that for this application Macs are neither slower nor more expensive.
I'd point out that there are a couple of very good strategic reasons to go with Apple. First off they are in a niche that Apple is intent on dominating and is on the way to succeeding in this desire. Apple produces (or has bought) a lot of technology that is important to the broad category of film/video production that Pixar is part of. Beyond just Apple the other software vendors in this niche support the platform, a few don't support the *other* platforms.
Secondly, of course, is that Steve Jobs - the CEO and majority shareholder of Pixar is also the CEO of Apple. For obvious reasons Pixar is in a good position to get great service and consideration from this particular vendor. The "CEO mandate" dynamic you worry about on behalf of Pixar's shareholders (who are for the most part Mr. Jobs himself) works both ways. Apple which is already focussed on dominating the film/video market can act almost as a HUGE auxiliary R&D department for Pixar. They've already developed a new codec at Pixar's specific request. Apple has a huge amount of relevant technology it has already developed and/or bought. One might also notice that the XServe from the very beginning was configured as much for the video production market as it was for the server market - how many other servers have a FireWire port on the *front*?
but costly to Pixar's shareholders. One wonders what sorts of fudiciary issues such a maneuver might raise.
Since Jobs is himself the majority shareholder at Pixar with 55.4% of the shares not many. I would worry a great deal more about Jobs abusing his position at Apple to benefit Pixar's shareholders (i.e. himself) than vice versa.
Errr... I hope I'm not being stupid here but surely if Apple increased it's revenue fifty percent it would double to $13.4 billion?
Sorry but you are. Doubling revenue to $13.4 billion would be 100% growth not 50% growth. Growing by 50% from $6.7 billion would be $10.05 billion.
Unless you think that the charm of the current system adequately compensates for the fact that 40% of the voters' votes are essentially worthless
I'm not saying there isn't room for reform that makes more peoples votes "count". I just wouldn't want to throw the baby out with the bath-water. The current system is flawed in that ~40% of votes "don't count". (to be fair it's usually less, it's rare that we end up with a winner this early.)
It's just that some "reforms" would discard some very valuable features of the current system. The ability for a campaign of some duration where there is an ongoing debate that voters (rather than pundits) are putting input into (with real votes not opinion polls) where unknown outsiders can break in and make their case. Single-day, nation-wide elections no matter what the clever gimmick ensure the people get their choice would still lock out outsiders and guarantee the victory of insiders, the already well known, celebrities and media darlings. Only someone who already has national name recognition and/or the support of big financial backers or a pet of the pundits need apply.
Well, "organic" processes gave us a system where only landed white men could vote. It took "reforms" to give minorities and women the right to vote.
No that situation was the starting point and the least organically derived decided upon by a committee of the best and brightest. The subsequent reforms weren't hatched full-formed in an ivory tower but evolved slowly under the pressure of the disenfranchised populace. The reforms proceeded gradually and evolved organically over time. I'm not arguing against reform but I'm doubtful of untested schemes advocated by poly-sci professors detached from the pressures of real flesh and blood constituencies.
Of course, claiming that organic systems are always better or worse than "theoretical constructs" is absurd, and you should know that.
I know no such thing and I don't see why I "should". History is replete with utopian "theoretical constructs" that work perfectly on paper and fail spectacularly, tragically, in real life. Slower, evolving, organic systems that don't try to achieve perfection (if there is such a thing) in one fell swoop have a much better track record of success. Human society is a spectacularly complex dynamic system which has repeatedly slammed radical reformers with the law of unintended consequences. Humility is an appropriate attitude when advocating sweeping social reforms.
Sure your system *might* work the way you predict but it is at least as likely that it would end up working the way I predict - reinforcing the primacy of celebrity, and the importance of money while locking out outsider, insurgent candidates.
The issue is that the results of the early elections influence the results of the later elections. If the media didn't report the results, people wouldn't be influenced by it.
Then again that is part of the appeal. The outsiders that can't run a national campaign have a chance to become known and gain "momentum" by winning (and being reported as winning) in the small early states.
I think the horse-race reporting is fine - as long as it's not the ONLY thing being reported. I think voters go to far in jumping on the band-wagon of the perceived front-runner. On the other hand this is an internal vote of party members, they are trying to produce, unite behind, and provide a mandate for a single consensus candidate. It's natural that they factor other peoples votes into their thinking. In this case they have done so very early. In part because of the "front-loading" of the primaries, partly because the desire for consensus was stronger than usual, the party is already united in their dislike of Bush and because Kerry is broadly acceptable. If the party were more fractured ideologically or if a significant percentage found Kerry unacceptable for some reason the process would have taken longer and more candidates would have survived into the "super tuesdays" when the bulk of the electorate gets to vote.
Also, I don't mind quirky political traditions, they can be charming. I like the weirdness - the funny retail politics in Iowa and New Hampshire where real voters usually meet several of the candidates in person and can form judgments on their own without the filter of TV (either news media or the candidates own advertising). A funky system with that kind of early test run on a small scale has value.
The kind of antiseptic *pure* theoretical constructs of poli-sci professors lack any charm or character and given the track record of academic reformers would probably end up with unintended consequences that end up having more problems than the quirky traditions that evolved organically.
All voting for a given election should happen on the same day.
The problem with this is that the only very well funded, insider candidate with national name recognition would have a chance. The candidates that drop out in the current system wouldn't have even bothered running if it was a one-day national election. The current system allows for lesser known, poorly funded outsiders to make their case in smaller states that they have a chance of contesting. If they do well (which they often do) they can carry on and contest the larger and larger states that come later and have a chance on the "super tuesdays" which are essentially national elections.
Most of the problem I have isn't with the system itself but with how it is covered by the media. Horse-race style coverage is perfectly acceptable - it is news after all. But the complete avoidance of coverage of the candidates positions is a problem. Also, the horse race coverage should be about actual results - actual delegates won versus how many are needed, NOT reporting on the endless chatter of pundits chattering about the chattering of the pundits. Winning Iowa is newsworthy and the winner is entitled to some good press out of it. But (in this current race for instance) it only won Kerry 21 delegates, Edwards won 19 and Dean won 11! All that media hype practically anointing Kerry the winner just because he won a net advantage over his nearest competitor of 2 delegates! out of 4,332!!! Lets have a little perspective!
It seems to me that US intelligence will have to do some rethinking on the subject of doing completely without human intel sources.
The fiasco over WMD in Iraq was largely a failure of HUMINT. We had LOTS of Human Intelligence in Iraq (defectors, POW's captured by the Kurds, as well as assets within the Iraqi military). A fair number of their stories made it into the press so we know from newspaper accounts at least some of the HUMINT that the CIA was getting out of Iraq. They were all telling us that there were ongoing WMD programs in Iraq as well as ties to Al Queada. The problem is that "humble human traitors" have axes to grind (otherwise they wouldn't be traitors) and aren't always trustworthy. In the case of Iraqi WMD it's pretty obvious that a decent number of our HUMINT assets simply lied in order to provoke us into acting against their enemy.
Intelligence is to some degree an impossible job, you are rarely in a position to know what you need to know with any degree of certainty. Even if your intelligence DOES uncover the true facts of a situation you don't necessarily know for sure that it IS the truth. You can only weigh conflicting evidence and to make am informed guess. You are very likely to have a problem with "false negatives" where the people hiding information from you succeed (9/11, the Pakistani bomb, etc.) the only way to avoid that is to lower the standard of proof, which will lead just as inevitably to false positives (Iraqi WMD, probably some detainees in Gitmo & elsewhere).