There are times when it is legitimate for someone to sue because someone violates their patent. There is also a legitimate place in the market for closed source software.
Frankly, I don't like the idea that if I patent something I have to let anyone who writes open source use it royalty free. I think many people will be offended by this license and I certainly won't use it on any open source software I write.
There is some need for something like DRM. I know that I'll be flamed for saying it, but it is a more complicated question than has been presented.
There is some benefit in being able to secure a machine at the hardware level so that unauthorized code cannot be run. The question is, who holds the keys? I think most/.'ers would prefer to hold the keys to their owm machine, as I would. The problem is Palladium, it's who controls the keys to the machine when Palladium reaches it's final form.
If the key holders aren't we who own the computers than things will be very bad indeed, since it could seriously damage the Open Source movement. (Code you compile on your own machine would not be "trusted.")
The way to handle this is vote with your checkbook as usual. Don't purchase DVD's that won't run on a machine you don't have complete control over. Lobbying your congressional representatives probably wouldn't hurt either.
Greg Bear used the methane deposits as an important plot element in Mother of All Storms. It's an interesting read considering about the possible consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect.
I've worked as a programmer, tester, Quality Analyst, designer, etc. over a 20+ year career. What I can tell you for sure is that after about ten hours most programmers stop writing decent code and start making lots of mistakes.
There are exceptions. There are guys I know that purposely put off the really mindless tasks until the wee hours because they figure those are so easy they can't be screwed up. They seem to do better, but even they make lots of mistakes after ten hours.
If your boss wants to improve productivity, hire really experienced programmers. They are immeasurably better than newbies since they get the code right the first time. Pair up your best programmers with the promising newbies so they get trained up right.
Make sure the specifications you work from are complete and testable. Before making something a "requirement", make sure you can think of a test for it.
Those kinds of things aren't as easy, or as dramatic as making everyone work "balls to the wall", but they work better in my experience.
You can have freedom or security. Choosing freedom means that you accept a certain amount of risk in order to maintain that freedom. One of our founding fathers (Too my shame I can't remember which one) said that those who are willing to trade freedom for safety deserve neither one.
Since 9/11 we have allowed our government to reduce our personal freedoms in exchange for a promise of greater security.
Stories like this one are important, since they show that there is a cost for freedom, it shouldn't be taken for granted. The events of 9/11 were part of that cost as well.
By allowing legislation like the Patriot Act to pass without fighting it lots of Americans have given tacit approval to the destruction of the country that I love.
Osama bin Ladin says he wants to destroy this country. Ironically, we seem to be doing the job for him. More and more I see people saying that we have to accept these new restrictions on our privacy.
The real war is not one of terrorism and counter-terrorism, it's a war of ideals and information. The men who attacked our country did so because they had been taught that the U.S. is a great source of evil in the world. We need to find ways to teach people what our country is really about.
We also have to accept responsibility for our mistakes and policy failings.
So yes, there is always a risk that our freedoms can be used against us. Sometimes it's high, but do we really want to trade it away?
I use Opera as my main browser. It is fast, mostly by doing things the smart way, like starting the download of a file you select and downloading in in the background while you figure out where you want to put it on your hard drive.
Opera doesn't always work because there are lots of people who code only to IE rather than to the documented standards. Also, some bugs in the way that IE and Netscape implement the standards make pages written to work with them look bad in standards compliant browsers such as Opera. Opera does have a compabibility mode that it uses to try to accomodate pages written for IE, but you can only go so far.
IE isn't the be all and end all of browsers. Netscape isn't either. It's interesting how slow innovation has become since Netscape got sold to AOL and Microsoft decided that they own the net.
I'd encourage everyone to try Opera out. Try it again if you haven't since version 6.0 came out. You may have to keep IE around for some sites, but then it's not like we have much of a choice on that if we run XP anyway.
Oh, just so that I don't get my meager belongings siezed, all of my statements in my previous posting are my opinion and I may have erred in any and all statements. The story about Ford came from my social sciences text in college, so sue them, not me! Really, I'm poor!!!! Besides, no one ever reads my posts, honest! My karma is only 3!
Limits on judgements... that's a great idea if you are a large corporation. It means that if you are large enough, you need never pay any attention to lawsuits, because none will be big enough to hurt you. Some of you may remmeber the Ford Pinto, the exploding car. Ford knew of the problem before they started selling the car. They estimated that it would take about $30 or so to fix the problem. (The actual fix cost about $6.) They also estimated the number of people that would die because of the problem and how much they would pay out in damages for each person. They figured it would be cheaper just to leave things as they were and let people die and pay the settlements. Fortunately for those of us who travel in automobiles, the first lawsuit kind of blew their estimates away.
If punitive damages don't hurt, they don't help. If companies do not fear paying out enough money to ruin them, they will have no reason to behave.
People have morals, corporations do not.
Corporations are in business to make money. They aren't in business to make safe products or even to abide by laws. They do that only because of the threat of what might happen if they don't make safe products and abide by laws.
I've heard the Republicans cry over how much money the laywers who sued the tobacco companies made, but I haven't heard them even whisper about how much money the tobbacco companies made while killing people, or how much they paid their law firms.
Are there reforms needed? Oh yeah! Are limits on judgements one of them? Not as far as I can see.
How do you prevent companies from abusing the same laws that I say we need to protect us from big companies? I don't know, but it isn't by taking the teeth out of tort law.
Re:Now we know where to land
on
Lots of Ice On Mars
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Actually, once you are in orbit, you are about half-way to anywhere in the solar system. If I remember correctly, the minimum energy orbit to get to Mars is actually less than that to get to the Moon. It's a long flight though, 18 months, I think. That's also only if the Earth and Mars are in the right orientation, which I think happens only about once every three years, so you need to stay on the surface for another year and a half before heading back.
There are already designs for missions that involve manufacturing the fuel for the return mission using materials on Mars. It's reasonably easy to manufacture Methane on the surface. You just need Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen, so if water is there and you can get to it easily, making methane to power a return trip should be easy. Just use the water for Hydrogen and Oxygen and the atmosphere for the Carbon. (Actually you could probably get oxygen from the soil, too, since it's got a lot of oxidized iron, also known as rust, in it.)
The biggest concern that I would have for a Mars mission is the toll it would take on the astronauts. It's a long trip with relatively high radiation. (You can only carry so much shielding.) Unless the crew module is spun to provide some artificial gravity, it's likely that the astronauts would be in pretty bad shape before they even got to Mars. Though there have been some very long stays in space stations, those guys weren't exactly fit for a night of clubbing when they got home.
All that said, I'd go in second! I, uh, just got to get permission from my girl friend first...
It's unlikely that desktop PC's will ever get so cheap as $350. There are fixed costs in distribution and marketing that mean that PC's can't be sold too cheaply or no one will make any money.
Microsoft is aware that for the largest customers, corporations, the total cost of ownership, or TCO, of a PC is far more important than the purchase price. As long as they can portray Linux as a more expensive OS to maintain, they will continue to have customers.
One of the scarrier possible uses of anti-matter is to "pump" a thermonuclear bomb. By using a very small amount of anti-matter, much smaller (in size) hydrogen bombs can be made with greater yields. (You have to have a very powerful explosion to force the hydrogen to fuse in the first place.) Anti-matter by itself could be used to build a bomb, but not very much can be made right now. Its far more likely that it will be used to enhance weapons.
I'll keep hoping that the first real uses are peaceful though.
A couple of points that I'd like to reinforce
on
Read the Fine Print
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Most people will get Windows XP Professional pre-installed on their computer. They won't have the option to change their minds because of the EULA, they'll just have agreed by buying the computer.
This feature should be turned off by default at the very least. It's not. Since the OS will be pre-installed, and updates are not announced unless it's a DRM modification, if I read the article correctly, they won't know anything is going on.
Our current admnistration recently called on the software industry to do more to protect computers from viruses. This change could conceivably be interpreted as a response to that call. Unfortunately, that means that we probably won't get a lot of help from this administration on this issue.
This has happened before, back in the days of Ma Bell you couldn't even attach a piece of equipment to the phone network without explicit permission from Ma Bell. You weren't even allowed to own your own telephone. That kind of arrogance can only exist when a company has a monopoly. The only way to fix it is to eliminate the monopoly.
Microsoft has a long history of making changes in software that break the compeitors software. This change in the EULA gives them a way to automatically distribute such "fixes" without alerting people that its even being done. How long will it be before MS decides that in order to better secure the digital rights of their partners, they should disable any software, such as Gnuetella clients, that might infringe on those rights.
Hopefully, this will cause a backlash from the big corporate buyers that will cause MS to change the EULA, at least for a while. Perhaps we should change the name of the EULA to the Edict of Unlimited Arrogance!
In my experiance as a Quality Assurance geek and programmer, having well defined requirements is vital if you want good code. When the requirements document is written, you should be able to think of a test for every requirement in it. If you can't think of a good test, the requriement isn't clear enough. Enforce that as a manager and your programmers will love you.
Couldn't the retailer be required to disable the RF-Tags at the point of purchase? I would think that would help alleviate privacy concerns. I'm still not thrilled about this technology, either the privacy concerns or taking bandwith from the radio amateurs, but perhaps it can be done in a way that is less intrusive.
Frankly, I'd love it if all computer books came as paper with full text searchable CD-ROMS AND in eBook format for my RCA eBook. Each media type has it's advantages. I love the feel of a book, but it's awfully hard to cut and paste from paper and it messes up the screen with all the glue. It's hard to match the portablility of dead trees, although my eBook comes close. Unfortunately, there are very few computer titles for it. Those animal folks have a couple. It would be nice to have more.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe the patent clause is ill considered.
There are times when it is legitimate for someone to sue because someone violates their patent. There is also a legitimate place in the market for closed source software.
Frankly, I don't like the idea that if I patent something I have to let anyone who writes open source use it royalty free. I think many people will be offended by this license and I certainly won't use it on any open source software I write.
There is some benefit in being able to secure a machine at the hardware level so that unauthorized code cannot be run. The question is, who holds the keys? I think most /.'ers would prefer to hold the keys to their owm machine, as I would. The problem is Palladium, it's who controls the keys to the machine when Palladium reaches it's final form.
If the key holders aren't we who own the computers than things will be very bad indeed, since it could seriously damage the Open Source movement. (Code you compile on your own machine would not be "trusted.")
The way to handle this is vote with your checkbook as usual. Don't purchase DVD's that won't run on a machine you don't have complete control over. Lobbying your congressional representatives probably wouldn't hurt either.
Greg Bear used the methane deposits as an important plot element in Mother of All Storms. It's an interesting read considering about the possible consequences of a runaway greenhouse effect.
I've worked as a programmer, tester, Quality Analyst, designer, etc. over a 20+ year career. What I can tell you for sure is that after about ten hours most programmers stop writing decent code and start making lots of mistakes.
There are exceptions. There are guys I know that purposely put off the really mindless tasks until the wee hours because they figure those are so easy they can't be screwed up. They seem to do better, but even they make lots of mistakes after ten hours.
If your boss wants to improve productivity, hire really experienced programmers. They are immeasurably better than newbies since they get the code right the first time. Pair up your best programmers with the promising newbies so they get trained up right.
Make sure the specifications you work from are complete and testable. Before making something a "requirement", make sure you can think of a test for it.
Those kinds of things aren't as easy, or as dramatic as making everyone work "balls to the wall", but they work better in my experience.
You can have freedom or security. Choosing freedom means that you accept a certain amount of risk in order to maintain that freedom. One of our founding fathers (Too my shame I can't remember which one) said that those who are willing to trade freedom for safety deserve neither one.
Since 9/11 we have allowed our government to reduce our personal freedoms in exchange for a promise of greater security.
Stories like this one are important, since they show that there is a cost for freedom, it shouldn't be taken for granted. The events of 9/11 were part of that cost as well.
By allowing legislation like the Patriot Act to pass without fighting it lots of Americans have given tacit approval to the destruction of the country that I love.
Osama bin Ladin says he wants to destroy this country. Ironically, we seem to be doing the job for him. More and more I see people saying that we have to accept these new restrictions on our privacy.
The real war is not one of terrorism and counter-terrorism, it's a war of ideals and information. The men who attacked our country did so because they had been taught that the U.S. is a great source of evil in the world. We need to find ways to teach people what our country is really about.
We also have to accept responsibility for our mistakes and policy failings.
So yes, there is always a risk that our freedoms can be used against us. Sometimes it's high, but do we really want to trade it away?
I use Opera as my main browser. It is fast, mostly by doing things the smart way, like starting the download of a file you select and downloading in in the background while you figure out where you want to put it on your hard drive.
Opera doesn't always work because there are lots of people who code only to IE rather than to the documented standards. Also, some bugs in the way that IE and Netscape implement the standards make pages written to work with them look bad in standards compliant browsers such as Opera. Opera does have a compabibility mode that it uses to try to accomodate pages written for IE, but you can only go so far.
IE isn't the be all and end all of browsers. Netscape isn't either. It's interesting how slow innovation has become since Netscape got sold to AOL and Microsoft decided that they own the net.
I'd encourage everyone to try Opera out. Try it again if you haven't since version 6.0 came out. You may have to keep IE around for some sites, but then it's not like we have much of a choice on that if we run XP anyway.
Oh, just so that I don't get my meager belongings siezed, all of my statements in my previous posting are my opinion and I may have erred in any and all statements. The story about Ford came from my social sciences text in college, so sue them, not me! Really, I'm poor!!!! Besides, no one ever reads my posts, honest! My karma is only 3!
If punitive damages don't hurt, they don't help. If companies do not fear paying out enough money to ruin them, they will have no reason to behave.
People have morals, corporations do not.
Corporations are in business to make money. They aren't in business to make safe products or even to abide by laws. They do that only because of the threat of what might happen if they don't make safe products and abide by laws.
I've heard the Republicans cry over how much money the laywers who sued the tobacco companies made, but I haven't heard them even whisper about how much money the tobbacco companies made while killing people, or how much they paid their law firms.
Are there reforms needed? Oh yeah! Are limits on judgements one of them? Not as far as I can see.
How do you prevent companies from abusing the same laws that I say we need to protect us from big companies? I don't know, but it isn't by taking the teeth out of tort law.
There are already designs for missions that involve manufacturing the fuel for the return mission using materials on Mars. It's reasonably easy to manufacture Methane on the surface. You just need Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen, so if water is there and you can get to it easily, making methane to power a return trip should be easy. Just use the water for Hydrogen and Oxygen and the atmosphere for the Carbon. (Actually you could probably get oxygen from the soil, too, since it's got a lot of oxidized iron, also known as rust, in it.)
The biggest concern that I would have for a Mars mission is the toll it would take on the astronauts. It's a long trip with relatively high radiation. (You can only carry so much shielding.) Unless the crew module is spun to provide some artificial gravity, it's likely that the astronauts would be in pretty bad shape before they even got to Mars. Though there have been some very long stays in space stations, those guys weren't exactly fit for a night of clubbing when they got home.
All that said, I'd go in second! I, uh, just got to get permission from my girl friend first ...
Microsoft is aware that for the largest customers, corporations, the total cost of ownership, or TCO, of a PC is far more important than the purchase price. As long as they can portray Linux as a more expensive OS to maintain, they will continue to have customers.
I always thought the nastiest side effect of nuclear bombs was all the death and destruction... but that's just me.
One of the scarrier possible uses of anti-matter is to "pump" a thermonuclear bomb. By using a very small amount of anti-matter, much smaller (in size) hydrogen bombs can be made with greater yields. (You have to have a very powerful explosion to force the hydrogen to fuse in the first place.) Anti-matter by itself could be used to build a bomb, but not very much can be made right now. Its far more likely that it will be used to enhance weapons.
I'll keep hoping that the first real uses are peaceful though.
Hopefully, this will cause a backlash from the big corporate buyers that will cause MS to change the EULA, at least for a while. Perhaps we should change the name of the EULA to the Edict of Unlimited Arrogance!
In my experiance as a Quality Assurance geek and programmer, having well defined requirements is vital if you want good code. When the requirements document is written, you should be able to think of a test for every requirement in it. If you can't think of a good test, the requriement isn't clear enough. Enforce that as a manager and your programmers will love you.
Ray Benjamin
Couldn't the retailer be required to disable the RF-Tags at the point of purchase? I would think that would help alleviate privacy concerns. I'm still not thrilled about this technology, either the privacy concerns or taking bandwith from the radio amateurs, but perhaps it can be done in a way that is less intrusive.
Ray Benjamin
Frankly, I'd love it if all computer books came as paper with full text searchable CD-ROMS AND in eBook format for my RCA eBook. Each media type has it's advantages. I love the feel of a book, but it's awfully hard to cut and paste from paper and it messes up the screen with all the glue. It's hard to match the portablility of dead trees, although my eBook comes close. Unfortunately, there are very few computer titles for it. Those animal folks have a couple. It would be nice to have more.