Alpha suffers from what I call the "Apple problem" - it's expensive, not easily available, and it's a lock-in to a single supplier.
To make it competitive, Compaq should drop the price and license any patents in a way that allows binary-compatible clones (without necessarily releasing patents on how to implement the chip). This allows a group of cheapskate cloners to provide a low-speed compatible entry path, while Compaq continues to trade on speed.
Keeping the source out there is not a problem. we need some sort of sneaky CVS to allow it to be actively developed and maintained safe from lawyer attack.
This needs to:
have a replication protocol allowing other machines to automatically mirror it, so the lawyers can't just shutdown one machine and destroy it.
have crypto-signature verified pseudonymous checkins, so that no-one's identities are disclosed if a machine is taken.
otherwise behave like CVS so people understand it.
It just annoys stupid anti-happiness religious nutters and prudes so dry-and-dead below the waist that they fear others gaining what they won't allow themselves. I have no love for those people - if anyone should be censored, their idiot blatherings would be the first on my cutting-room floor.
.. there was both commercial gain to be made from the adding of lock-in "features" and the opportunity to keep changes secret. If they had been GPLed then any nifty features of a forked version would have just been back-ported into the main source-tree.
By changing GPL software it's impossible to get a monopoly lock on a market. It may be possible to screw up the standard, or drag it in odd directions, but there's little to be gained there - especially since a re-standardized version can easily be made and distributed.
disclaimer: I already know the USA law bans export of non-trivial crypto, and products with "hooks" for crypto to be installed.
Is Mozilla's plugin system sufficiently generic and capable to allow a full featured binary crypto plugin to be made? Has it been deliberately crippled to prevent this? Will it be necessary for someone in a sane country to set up a builds-with-crypto system and maintain a set of patches against the main source?
Protecting kids from "smut" is stupid and redundant. Younger kids ignore or giggle at smut, older kids will feel lust regardless - for the cute PE teacher with the tight shorts if not for online porn. Adults of every other species of social ape posture sexually and have sex in the open in full view of the kids, and are always naked. Their kids don't get traumatized by this.
However I'd say there was a good case for protecting kids from the menace of for-profit advertising whilst they are still gullible, especially from advertising aimed direct at kids. There is also a case to be made of course, for the application of the phrases "no, you may'nt have it" and "I don't care that your friends all have one".
When the little display says "ReskueMeKwik status: not transmitting, not responding" will you believe it?
How sure are you that Joe Spook hasn't switched it to full-beacon-without-notification mode, or more cunningly, into "call me back" mode, beaming him your coordinates only on request? (Or for that matter, that an unscrupulous employee of your local ReskueMeKwik store isn't doing likewise.)
They are bound by law to follow their official "mission statement" (I forget the proper term) which usually says nothing about morals, and plenty about maximizing profits. The shareholders will sue if they take action to throw away potential short term profit. Also, the structure of corporations means there is nearly never anyone to whom an appeal can be made on a person-to-person level, who has enough power to change anything.
Why are corporations faceless and un-accountable?
The concept of corporation quite deliberately diffuses responsibility. The law treats the corporation as if it were a person who acts according to the directions of its many owners (the shareholders) and is steered by hired employees (the board of directors). The corporation acts as a sort of standing wave in a sea of people, with no one ever taking ultimate responsibility for the actions of the whole, lacking the ability to question the assumptions coded into its mission statement. The corporation itself is a fiction, but people behave as if it was a person - a person without a heart, interested only in profit.
Can corporations be made moral, personal, accountable?
In my opinion, no. It is possible for corporations to be structured around some charismatic leader (eg: Richard Branson, Steve Jobs) and to temporarily act as though they had a heart. But the situation is unstable, because there is no guarantee this person will stay around - and without them or a replacement, the corporation snaps back to the heartless norm.
What solutions are there?
I can only see three: [1] The corporation has a charismatic leader (and so acts like that person is in charge), [2] All the owners and shareholders (including the corporate shareholders) decide to act morally and act as if they were required to take responsibility, or [3] Delete the legal fiction called "corporations"
Whaaat? You cannot be serious! What will replace them?
There are already two perfectly good ways of doing business apart from corporations - a "sole trader" who owns and is resposible for the whole business, or a "partnership". In either of these cases there are individuals fully responsible and able to make changes.
Won't that just make the fat cats fatter?
No, because they will still need to seek investment, to borrow in return for profit sharing (like shares) etc. They will get richer mostly if at all for the reason that they remain in place longer.
Won't that weaken the economy?
It might in the short run as people become more cautious taking decisions they are actually responsible for. But in the end I think that's a preferable situation to the careless and heartless way decisions are nowadays often made.
I disagree about key navigation
on
Interface Zen
·
· Score: 1
My favourite key navigation system is Windows's.
arrows- move by characters ctrl left/ight - move by words ctrl up/down - move by paragraphs home/end - move by lines ctrl home/end - start and end of document pgup/pgdn - move by pages shift and any of the above - move and select
It has a conceptual unity that eludes vi and definately eludes emacs (except in it's pc-select mode)
Who cares about their profits? Not I.
on
New Patent Treaty
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· Score: 1
Personally I think it is plain wrong to allow patents on genes. It dismally fails on the necessity to be original, non obvious, and a result of invention not mere discovery. Basically there is no excuse for gene patents - except to give biotech companies a license to print money in exchange for their efforts. If it were true that genetics would never be uncovered without this, it might be a dismal and despiccable necessity. But, frankly, genetic science would go ahead regardless - for the spin-off discoveries, and on a non profit basis at universities.
Its basically allowed to continue because some nifty meme-management by these parasites has convinced people they are honest businessmen desiring protection of their inventions, instead of pirates raiding what has been up 'til now common property.
I'm pleased and impressed that China has entered club of spacefaring nations. I'm also thinking: forget "Hilton in space", how about "Happy Good Luck House, Chinese food to eat in or take out";-D
What so many of the replies seem to miss is something which people like Robert Anton Wilson got, as long ago as the hippie heyday - that it's better for people to shoot off at wierd new tangents, than to endlessly grind smaller and smaller the same old knowledge.
It may be full of holes, it may be limited utility - but it may be right. Or it may lead on to something right, after further refinement. If you say "shut up and train your mind into the conventional channels", then valuable better ideas may be lost.
Instead of hand hacking the genes alone, also take away the selection-blocking things (which basically amount to weighting the scales so the weaklings can win).
Ban all guns, make "a duel or a fair fight" legal regardless of outcome, remove all restrictions that force people to be safe (if they wanna remove themselves from the gene pool good for em, if they survive they are at least lucky if not strong and good genetically). Ban medical intervention to gorrect genetic defects unless it is combined with a gene hack to fix it at the germ-line level, or sterilisation. And ban any type of "affirmative action" (for race, sex, disability, anything)
I'm no expert either, but one thing I've consistently seen pointed out in what I've read is: a weak algorithm is weak period. a strong algorithm is strong period - so long as the hard-to-reverse part hasn't been bypassed.
It's better to crypt with GPG and a huge key out in the plain open, than to use some amateur algorithm inside steganography and faked headers. Because if their computers can crack GPG in a year say, they could break "jimbob's cypherhack" on spare cycles overnight.
1) I agree that CATB is oversimplified, particularly the ideas of gift culture and ego-motivation; however,
2) I think this article is a form of subtle FUD. it contains mainly a series of assertions, going way beyond the scope of CATB, supported by quotes from prominent people disgruntled with Open Source - but with little logic to back them up. It covers itself by debunking long-dead FUD, whilst in the hand you're not watching it sets up a fresh batch. Reference to authority (or celebrity) isn't proof.
For my part, if an employer won't treat me like the adult I am, I wish nothing to do with them. I'd rather starve than in effect lie about who I am to get past a "daddy knows best" corporate policy.
Frankly what offends me is puritans who think fun is bad, especially the hegemonistic types who try to make everyone else as dull and dried-up as they are.
It's well thought out, friendly to use, and powerful. It doesn't have "you can't get there from here" sort of feel of VB when you try to do something complex. And if I recall correctly, also unlike VB the visual side builds actual code, and you can get everything about the design just from reading the code, no need to dig through property settings if you don't want to.
Companies make crap because they can con people into giving them money for it.
People buy crap because they are stupid sheep and have been conned by adverts.
Politicians love this because people are employed making crap, feeding in the raw materials, and cleaning up the mess afterwards. And they love the donations from the crap-industry lobbyists.
Meanwhile all the world's resources are funneled into making crap.
The day that I look up and see that some enterprising guy has spotted mirrors over the lunar surface to spell out "buy Coca Cola" will be the day I.. well I'd better not say for legal reasons. But expect mess.
Then you must also agree that one is not free unless until one has the freedom to murder or be murdered.
I would say one must have the right to *consent* to be murdered, and to murder someone who *consents* to it - by equivalent analogy I never said one should have the right to enslave without consent.
Slashdot Mirror
Alpha suffers from what I call the "Apple problem" - it's expensive, not easily available, and it's a lock-in to a single supplier.
To make it competitive, Compaq should drop the price and license any patents in a way that allows binary-compatible clones (without necessarily releasing patents on how to implement the chip). This allows a group of cheapskate cloners to provide a low-speed compatible entry path, while Compaq continues to trade on speed.
This needs to:
It just annoys stupid anti-happiness religious nutters and prudes so dry-and-dead below the waist that they fear others gaining what they won't allow themselves. I have no love for those people - if anyone should be censored, their idiot blatherings would be the first on my cutting-room floor.
.. there was both commercial gain to be made from the adding of lock-in "features" and the opportunity to keep changes secret. If they had been GPLed then any nifty features of a forked version would have just been back-ported into the main source-tree.
By changing GPL software it's impossible to get a monopoly lock on a market. It may be possible to screw up the standard, or drag it in odd directions, but there's little to be gained there - especially since a re-standardized version can easily be made and distributed.
Is it on the whole buggy, or stable?
Is it bleeding edge, recent-but-trustable, or dragging behind for maximum stability?
Does it generally get upgrades and bugfixes faster or slower than RH and Debian? How much are updates released to track the "state of the art"?
How does the number and scope of packages compare to Debian and RH?
Is it pentium optimized?
Does it have any "left out to soothe the braindead newbies" bits?
disclaimer: I already know the USA law bans export of non-trivial crypto, and products with "hooks" for crypto to be installed.
Is Mozilla's plugin system sufficiently generic and capable to allow a full featured binary crypto plugin to be made? Has it been deliberately crippled to prevent this? Will it be necessary for someone in a sane country to set up a builds-with-crypto system and maintain a set of patches against the main source?
And what happened to the "cryptozilla" project?
Protecting kids from "smut" is stupid and redundant. Younger kids ignore or giggle at smut, older kids will feel lust regardless - for the cute PE teacher with the tight shorts if not for online porn. Adults of every other species of social ape posture sexually and have sex in the open in full view of the kids, and are always naked. Their kids don't get traumatized by this.
However I'd say there was a good case for protecting kids from the menace of for-profit advertising whilst they are still gullible, especially from advertising aimed direct at kids. There is also a case to be made of course, for the application of the phrases "no, you may'nt have it" and "I don't care that your friends all have one".
When the little display says "ReskueMeKwik status: not transmitting, not responding" will you believe it?
How sure are you that Joe Spook hasn't switched it to full-beacon-without-notification mode, or more cunningly, into "call me back" mode, beaming him your coordinates only on request? (Or for that matter, that an unscrupulous employee of your local ReskueMeKwik store isn't doing likewise.)
What are the problems with corporations?
They are amoral, faceless and un-accountable.
Why are corporations amoral?
They are bound by law to follow their official "mission statement" (I forget the proper term) which usually says nothing about morals, and plenty about maximizing profits. The shareholders will sue if they take action to throw away potential short term profit. Also, the structure of corporations means there is nearly never anyone to whom an appeal can be made on a person-to-person level, who has enough power to change anything.
Why are corporations faceless and un-accountable?
The concept of corporation quite deliberately diffuses responsibility. The law treats the corporation as if it were a person who acts according to the directions of its many owners (the shareholders) and is steered by hired employees (the board of directors). The corporation acts as a sort of standing wave in a sea of people, with no one ever taking ultimate responsibility for the actions of the whole, lacking the ability to question the assumptions coded into its mission statement. The corporation itself is a fiction, but people behave as if it was a person - a person without a heart, interested only in profit.
Can corporations be made moral, personal, accountable?
In my opinion, no. It is possible for corporations to be structured around some charismatic leader (eg: Richard Branson, Steve Jobs) and to temporarily act as though they had a heart. But the situation is unstable, because there is no guarantee this person will stay around - and without them or a replacement, the corporation snaps back to the heartless norm.
What solutions are there?
I can only see three:
[1] The corporation has a charismatic leader (and so acts like that person is in charge),
[2] All the owners and shareholders (including the corporate shareholders) decide to act morally and act as if they were required to take responsibility, or
[3] Delete the legal fiction called "corporations"
Whaaat? You cannot be serious! What will replace them?
There are already two perfectly good ways of doing business apart from corporations - a "sole trader" who owns and is resposible for the whole business, or a "partnership". In either of these cases there are individuals fully responsible and able to make changes.
Won't that just make the fat cats fatter?
No, because they will still need to seek investment, to borrow in return for profit sharing (like shares) etc. They will get richer mostly if at all for the reason that they remain in place longer.
Won't that weaken the economy?
It might in the short run as people become more cautious taking decisions they are actually responsible for. But in the end I think that's a preferable situation to the careless and heartless way decisions are nowadays often made.
My favourite key navigation system is Windows's.
arrows- move by characters
ctrl left/ight - move by words
ctrl up/down - move by paragraphs
home/end - move by lines
ctrl home/end - start and end of document
pgup/pgdn - move by pages
shift and any of the above - move and select
It has a conceptual unity that eludes vi and definately eludes emacs (except in it's pc-select mode)
Personally I think it is plain wrong to allow patents on genes. It dismally fails on the necessity to be original, non obvious, and a result of invention not mere discovery. Basically there is no excuse for gene patents - except to give biotech companies a license to print money in exchange for their efforts. If it were true that genetics would never be uncovered without this, it might be a dismal and despiccable necessity. But, frankly, genetic science would go ahead regardless - for the spin-off discoveries, and on a non profit basis at universities.
Its basically allowed to continue because some nifty meme-management by these parasites has convinced people they are honest businessmen desiring protection of their inventions, instead of pirates raiding what has been up 'til now common property.
I'm pleased and impressed that China has entered club of spacefaring nations. I'm also thinking: forget "Hilton in space", how about "Happy Good Luck House, Chinese food to eat in or take out" ;-D
What so many of the replies seem to miss is something which people like Robert Anton Wilson got, as long ago as the hippie heyday - that it's better for people to shoot off at wierd new tangents, than to endlessly grind smaller and smaller the same old knowledge.
It may be full of holes, it may be limited utility - but it may be right. Or it may lead on to something right, after further refinement. If you say "shut up and train your mind into the conventional channels", then valuable better ideas may be lost.
Instead of hand hacking the genes alone, also take away the selection-blocking things (which basically amount to weighting the scales so the weaklings can win).
Ban all guns, make "a duel or a fair fight" legal regardless of outcome, remove all restrictions that force people to be safe (if they wanna remove themselves from the gene pool good for em, if they survive they are at least lucky if not strong and good genetically). Ban medical intervention to gorrect genetic defects unless it is combined with a gene hack to fix it at the germ-line level, or sterilisation. And ban any type of "affirmative action" (for race, sex, disability, anything)
I'm no expert either, but one thing I've consistently seen pointed out in what I've read is: a weak algorithm is weak period. a strong algorithm is strong period - so long as the hard-to-reverse part hasn't been bypassed.
It's better to crypt with GPG and a huge key out in the plain open, than to use some amateur algorithm inside steganography and faked headers. Because if their computers can crack GPG in a year say, they could break "jimbob's cypherhack" on spare cycles overnight.
1) I agree that CATB is oversimplified, particularly the ideas of gift culture and ego-motivation; however,
2) I think this article is a form of subtle FUD. it contains mainly a series of assertions, going way beyond the scope of CATB, supported by quotes from prominent people disgruntled with Open Source - but with little logic to back them up. It covers itself by debunking long-dead FUD, whilst in the hand you're not watching it sets up a fresh batch. Reference to authority (or celebrity) isn't proof.
For my part, if an employer won't treat me like the adult I am, I wish nothing to do with them. I'd rather starve than in effect lie about who I am to get past a "daddy knows best" corporate policy.
I may not agree with it in the future, but that is just normal change of opinions. I still stand by it as my genuine opinion at the time.
Frankly what offends me is puritans who think fun is bad, especially the hegemonistic types who try to make everyone else as dull and dried-up as they are.
It's well thought out, friendly to use, and powerful. It doesn't have "you can't get there from here" sort of feel of VB when you try to do something complex. And if I recall correctly, also unlike VB the visual side builds actual code, and you can get everything about the design just from reading the code, no need to dig through property settings if you don't want to.
Companies make crap because they can con people into giving them money for it.
People buy crap because they are stupid sheep and have been conned by adverts.
Politicians love this because people are employed making crap, feeding in the raw materials, and cleaning up the mess afterwards. And they love the donations from the crap-industry lobbyists.
Meanwhile all the world's resources are funneled into making crap.
The day that I look up and see that some enterprising guy has spotted mirrors over the lunar surface to spell out "buy Coca Cola" will be the day I .. well I'd better not say for legal reasons. But expect mess.
Now this is one patent I like. Block doubleclick.net and boom, no more adverts at all :-D
I think I could live with that.
..appoint me King and Emperor. I'll handle things from there-on in :-)
Y'all do trust me, doncha?
Then you must also agree that one is not free unless until one has the freedom to murder or be murdered.
I would say one must have the right to *consent* to be murdered, and to murder someone who *consents* to it - by equivalent analogy I never said one should have the right to enslave without consent.