There's no such thing as "plagiarism" in the business world.. you got the product sold, job done... that's all that matters. Copyright only matters as far as the legal ramifications... if they think nobody will notice, then it's no big deal.. just encrypt THEIR code so nobody can see!
They system is broken, nobody follows the rules.. only the OSS people even care but nobody is listening.
I'd say Billy G started it pulling code print from trash cans. The whole "ethos" of the closed source world is that if you can "see" it, take it.. worry about legality if you get caught later. All the big Windows software companies started with flagrant disregard for IP... especially the "shared credit" kind. Most of the big companies "fixed" that by cross licensing everything and allowing developers to "just rip" whatever they want. Much of Visual Studio can be ripped, "backspaced" whatever you want.. as long as you keep in on WINDOWS... People are used to being serfs on the farm, not free men.
As a IS worker in a Windows shop, I see exactly what they're talking about. Windows users want stuff "free" and to "just work". There's all sorts of "free" windows software, IE, Acrobat Reader, Flash player, Divx.. etc... all that stuff works and requires no input. I mention free software to the in-laws that pirate stuff and it's "not as good as.." expensive Windows program.. they pirate from the web. They're not interested in nursing it along, or building up a community.
Windows people also don't look up help.. at all. Even my co-workers struggle to do proper googling on subjects, let alone normal users. They don't know how or where to look for help and have no practice at it.
This is an invasion of your right to "remain" private. Just because you walk down a public street doesn't mean you have to LET any person solicit you with advertising.. ney stop you on a public street and force you to listen. They can put ads on their buildings all they want, but trying to claim a stake of "their" pubic sidewalk square for advertising is stupid and wrong. They know they can't just put a bunch of speakers out.. we have laws against noise pollution and public nuisance.. this trying to skirt the noise rules by targeting 1 person at a time and trying to call an automated signal a "conversation"... it's not. Imagine having somebody yell out to you on every single sidewalk square... that's abuse.
because they already KNOW people in the public right-of-way won't like it messing with their personal space, so they mount it on their "private" property so you can't get to it.
I suppose it could be nice to have in front of a poster or store window when you stand in just one spot.
But you are correct, too much of this stuff is sensory overload. Think back even 20 years we didn't have the "always on" society we have now.. that takes a toll on perfectly good people and they snap. it's distraction, and invasive... in your face. Advertisers will keep being "edgy" to get responses and unsuspecting, overworked, stressed out people will over react.
they don't want a bunch of cases they can't win. Nobody wants corporate suits telling you how to enforce the law. This puts the Federal DOJ doing the equivalent of "mall cop" for one industry sector. There's already a branch dedicated to IP "crime" where it can be demonstrated that the actions are criminal, not civil matters. The DOJ already seems to agree that the civil cases of the famed "$250,000"(that red FBI screen we all love) per "infringement" meet the criteria of the existing copyright law, so the *IAA has already got all they're going to get from the DOJ.
I think the backer of the change was hoping by waving the carrot of "seizures" free-for-all that they used in the "drug war" the DOJ would be all over it. The DOJ isn't really doing that well with the "drug war" and it's mostly localities that want the feds to assume the criminal cases (and court trials, lawyers, etc) while the local cops get to loot your house. That didn't really work out so well and they'd probably like to get OUT of the seizure business and definitely not be corporate lapdogs.
The key thing to ask is will IP really be protected? If I find Microsoft guilty of stealing my IP, or Warner Brothers making my movie, can I have THEIR stuff seized? if not what's the point if it's not fair for everybody.
to be fair, Apple hasn't really pointed that out. Tiger wasn't certified.. but Apple kept claiming "Unix-like", so fanbois feel the need to correct. The only mention Apple has made in press releases is the logo.... unless you go to the Leopard site.. heck even if you install it, they don't really brag about it.
don't blame the article... that is EXACTLY what Microsoft is doing!!!! Putting the same "compatibility" sticker on PfS and Zune, when they are clearly not compatible.
More to the point, even though European OSS friends have reverse engineered a clean-copyright version of h.246 it is STILL illegal under software patent rules in the USA. People went to a great deal of length to get vorbis and theora released by the IP holders for free to the OSS public. The only reason PNG ever made it was the GIF uproar.. if not for that it would not be included anywhere. All these companies are in the pockets of the spec holders.... free media is not in their interest.
maximum compatibility is the reason.. how about having every broswer be able to play at least 1 type of patent-free media of each type!!! Ask why places like Apple that loves to use OSS would NOT put an open and patent free format into their OS?
it's about arm twisting browser vendors to support FREE data types! Both Apple and Nokia are playing the "we paid for ours" card so why should they support the free and open option. Considering Apple's BROWSER is open sourced, the attitude is incredibly disingenuous on Apple's part. Of course it means that there would be one free, unDRM'd, patent free audio & video codex everywhere. THAT is the win they were looking for. The problem with Ubuntu for instance is that while it supports audio and video apps out of the box, in the US they can't ship USEFUL ones.. so there's no FREE video or audio online anywhere.
They need to put back in the OGG and make the companies deal with it. The web is Open Source to it's core... video and audio are part of that. Of course Apple does everything they can to keep Ogg off Mac... They ship MySql, Apache, Ruby on Rails, KHTML,etc, etc.. but refuse to support Free software, even when the theora/vorbis codex have BSD licensed code. For apple it's in line with their non-support of other vendors for their iLife web apps... or how pages/numbers doesn't support ODF formats. Apple could own the Linux market too, if they'd actually support a few free formats and file types.
Bingo! or how about RIM or apple.. imagine being able to sue a company and then shut them down completely as corporate "piracy" is far more deliberate than individual "piracy" I could see this being shot down by companies in a hot minute.. except it will probably have some "due process" for corporations that citizens can't possibly afford. This is the start of a "nobility" class that is forbidden by the Constitution. The two things they feared were nobility and usury, they managed to build in a ban on nobility, but not usury so it's only a matter of time until we make the "intangible property holders" rights more important that Actual property holder's rights.. in short a "noble" class of corporations that lead us.
because most apps people want rails for involve only dozens of users or maybe hundreds. My entire company with 6 locations only has 300 concurrent users tops. Speed of building an app and ease of UPDATING and app are more important than it being 100% perfect in use of resources or speed. Not that performance isn't important, but in most companies making the app do WHAT the people want, when they want is the more important feature... a second or two of performance time doesn't add up to the company budget as much as getting those new customer shipment requirements online in 2 weeks.. or you get the idea.
the problem is that not all databases have relative record numbers available. On IBM i5 for example, the file system itself keeps that to itself but it's there if you want it. The problem with composite keys comes when last name or company name is part of the key... have fun when a company changes names or an employee gets married.. and you've assumed you could use the entities given "name" as part of the key. Have fun with cascading updates then! Then you end up assigning numbers to things anyway... and when your customers buy each other so even customer numbers have to change?... sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don't thing.
I look at the works more as a critique of corporate culture than raw science. The idea that "all obstacles" to profit have to be avoided rather than simply lampooning scientific achievement in general.
Even in computer science/security/privacy I see the same issues as in his books. Just because we CAN track purchases, google searches, etc. doesn't mean we have to or should. Many "normal" people don't see the difference between the ideas of "can" and "should/should not". Middle management (all the way to guys with big bucks like Gates) want things to be "easy" for the masses so they can get money/not lose money. People keep expecting technology to be "magical" and each new thing is marketed as a "silver bullet" and nobody is expected to understand limitations or to be smart enough to work around them and still be safe (or at least principled).
but these don't seem to be the same composition as the all carbon ones. The chemically made carbon nanotubes have big environmental problems because they're nearly indestructible. One of the original purposes thought of for Buckyballs (the round relative) was to carry molecules of medicine, but in lab rats the balls were so durable they tore thru individual cell walls... perhaps these will have a natural decay rate so they can be widely deployed.
but the USA did NOTHING to the importers of the stuff.. the guys that are legally responsible in the USA to ensure their products comply with USA safety rules. All the corrupted goods should have some importer/broker/exec in jail over here, but there's nothing done... not a peep.. just a bunch of noise on the news. But it's all under the "corporate veil" so the USA won't do anything...it's just paperwork.
meanwhile the Chinese don't care if data is on servers for Yahoo USA or Yahoo China... it's got "yahoo" in the name and they simply start putting guns to people's heads until the corporate veil is pierced... with bullets if necessary. In China govts are treated as hostile orgianizations with owners treated more like mob bosses.. and they go after the owners/execs directly if they want things done. US laws about "privacy" don't work against armed thugs... the congress doesn't quite grasp that they pass the same laws allowing the same force (like the new patriot banking rules for even Swiss banks!) when they feel the need.
then the issue becomes will the US govt protect US citizen employees in other countries? Is the Congress willing to hire out the army out to ANY company following US law or just their favorites? That was the Yahoo issue. The Chinese govt had threatened Yahoo's Chinese employees with prison if Yahoo USA didn't cough up the info. Look at how the DOJ handled the Pirate Bay or UK citizen kidnapping trouble to see that the USA does EXACTLY the same thing when they want to enforce US laws in OTHER countries.
On another note, what happens when China does decide to kick somebody out and seize their assets..and wipe out all of Microsoft or GM's holdings in their country? see how that worked out for the Queen of Hawaii when businesses wanted her out, or how it worked out for Castro when he did kick US business out, or for Chavez..., except China is too big to threaten into submission like them and they can simply cut us off... or take back Taiwan.
I think that would fix itself. We didn't always have "flat" books. People used to use scrolls for a lot longer than sheet paper or book existed. On a medium size format like 13x19 you could put the hardware into one edge and unroll from there... fashion would catch up in a few years. Look at all the purses, pants, jackets with Cell phone/iPod pockets...and before that it was cigarette/lighters, etc.
the "them" is Bill and Steve B. After all, what you described is EXACTLY what they want! Customers fighting over Xbox or Vista Ultimate (there is no more MCE)... either way Billy's piggy bank gets a little fatter.
And nobody else can enter either market because the hardware makers and content producers are "competing" for each M$ division's attention. See how that's worked for PC gaming as M$ split windows games developers in 2000 between DX8 for Windows or Xbox... Mac and Nintendo were pushed aside because they couldn't allocate resources to two MICROSOFT divisions and Sony at the same time.
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There's no such thing as "plagiarism" in the business world.. you got the product sold, job done... that's all that matters. Copyright only matters as far as the legal ramifications... if they think nobody will notice, then it's no big deal.. just encrypt THEIR code so nobody can see!
They system is broken, nobody follows the rules.. only the OSS people even care but nobody is listening.
I'd say Billy G started it pulling code print from trash cans. The whole "ethos" of the closed source world is that if you can "see" it, take it.. worry about legality if you get caught later. All the big Windows software companies started with flagrant disregard for IP... especially the "shared credit" kind. Most of the big companies "fixed" that by cross licensing everything and allowing developers to "just rip" whatever they want. Much of Visual Studio can be ripped, "backspaced" whatever you want.. as long as you keep in on WINDOWS... People are used to being serfs on the farm, not free men.
As a IS worker in a Windows shop, I see exactly what they're talking about. Windows users want stuff "free" and to "just work". There's all sorts of "free" windows software, IE, Acrobat Reader, Flash player, Divx.. etc... all that stuff works and requires no input. I mention free software to the in-laws that pirate stuff and it's "not as good as.." expensive Windows program.. they pirate from the web. They're not interested in nursing it along, or building up a community.
Windows people also don't look up help.. at all. Even my co-workers struggle to do proper googling on subjects, let alone normal users. They don't know how or where to look for help and have no practice at it.
because they WRITE the perl code that way... it doesn't get any better.. the GPL's not designed to fix THAT problem.
exactly... let's start by aiming these at country club tees!!! Most noise rules don't apply out there... see how they like it!
This is an invasion of your right to "remain" private. Just because you walk down a public street doesn't mean you have to LET any person solicit you with advertising.. ney stop you on a public street and force you to listen. They can put ads on their buildings all they want, but trying to claim a stake of "their" pubic sidewalk square for advertising is stupid and wrong. They know they can't just put a bunch of speakers out.. we have laws against noise pollution and public nuisance.. this trying to skirt the noise rules by targeting 1 person at a time and trying to call an automated signal a "conversation"... it's not. Imagine having somebody yell out to you on every single sidewalk square... that's abuse.
because they already KNOW people in the public right-of-way won't like it messing with their personal space, so they mount it on their "private" property so you can't get to it.
I suppose it could be nice to have in front of a poster or store window when you stand in just one spot.
But you are correct, too much of this stuff is sensory overload. Think back even 20 years we didn't have the "always on" society we have now.. that takes a toll on perfectly good people and they snap. it's distraction, and invasive... in your face. Advertisers will keep being "edgy" to get responses and unsuspecting, overworked, stressed out people will over react.
they don't want a bunch of cases they can't win. Nobody wants corporate suits telling you how to enforce the law. This puts the Federal DOJ doing the equivalent of "mall cop" for one industry sector. There's already a branch dedicated to IP "crime" where it can be demonstrated that the actions are criminal, not civil matters. The DOJ already seems to agree that the civil cases of the famed "$250,000"(that red FBI screen we all love) per "infringement" meet the criteria of the existing copyright law, so the *IAA has already got all they're going to get from the DOJ.
I think the backer of the change was hoping by waving the carrot of "seizures" free-for-all that they used in the "drug war" the DOJ would be all over it. The DOJ isn't really doing that well with the "drug war" and it's mostly localities that want the feds to assume the criminal cases (and court trials, lawyers, etc) while the local cops get to loot your house. That didn't really work out so well and they'd probably like to get OUT of the seizure business and definitely not be corporate lapdogs.
The key thing to ask is will IP really be protected? If I find Microsoft guilty of stealing my IP, or Warner Brothers making my movie, can I have THEIR stuff seized? if not what's the point if it's not fair for everybody.
to be fair, Apple hasn't really pointed that out. Tiger wasn't certified.. but Apple kept claiming "Unix-like", so fanbois feel the need to correct. The only mention Apple has made in press releases is the logo.... unless you go to the Leopard site.. heck even if you install it, they don't really brag about it.
don't blame the article... that is EXACTLY what Microsoft is doing!!!! Putting the same "compatibility" sticker on PfS and Zune, when they are clearly not compatible.
More to the point, even though European OSS friends have reverse engineered a clean-copyright version of h.246 it is STILL illegal under software patent rules in the USA. People went to a great deal of length to get vorbis and theora released by the IP holders for free to the OSS public. The only reason PNG ever made it was the GIF uproar.. if not for that it would not be included anywhere. All these companies are in the pockets of the spec holders.... free media is not in their interest.
maximum compatibility is the reason.. how about having every broswer be able to play at least 1 type of patent-free media of each type!!! Ask why places like Apple that loves to use OSS would NOT put an open and patent free format into their OS?
it's about arm twisting browser vendors to support FREE data types! Both Apple and Nokia are playing the "we paid for ours" card so why should they support the free and open option. Considering Apple's BROWSER is open sourced, the attitude is incredibly disingenuous on Apple's part. Of course it means that there would be one free, unDRM'd, patent free audio & video codex everywhere. THAT is the win they were looking for. The problem with Ubuntu for instance is that while it supports audio and video apps out of the box, in the US they can't ship USEFUL ones.. so there's no FREE video or audio online anywhere.
They need to put back in the OGG and make the companies deal with it. The web is Open Source to it's core... video and audio are part of that. Of course Apple does everything they can to keep Ogg off Mac... They ship MySql, Apache, Ruby on Rails, KHTML,etc, etc.. but refuse to support Free software, even when the theora/vorbis codex have BSD licensed code. For apple it's in line with their non-support of other vendors for their iLife web apps... or how pages/numbers doesn't support ODF formats. Apple could own the Linux market too, if they'd actually support a few free formats and file types.
Bingo! or how about RIM or apple.. imagine being able to sue a company and then shut them down completely as corporate "piracy" is far more deliberate than individual "piracy" I could see this being shot down by companies in a hot minute.. except it will probably have some "due process" for corporations that citizens can't possibly afford. This is the start of a "nobility" class that is forbidden by the Constitution. The two things they feared were nobility and usury, they managed to build in a ban on nobility, but not usury so it's only a matter of time until we make the "intangible property holders" rights more important that Actual property holder's rights.. in short a "noble" class of corporations that lead us.
because most apps people want rails for involve only dozens of users or maybe hundreds. My entire company with 6 locations only has 300 concurrent users tops. Speed of building an app and ease of UPDATING and app are more important than it being 100% perfect in use of resources or speed. Not that performance isn't important, but in most companies making the app do WHAT the people want, when they want is the more important feature... a second or two of performance time doesn't add up to the company budget as much as getting those new customer shipment requirements online in 2 weeks.. or you get the idea.
the problem is that not all databases have relative record numbers available. On IBM i5 for example, the file system itself keeps that to itself but it's there if you want it. The problem with composite keys comes when last name or company name is part of the key... have fun when a company changes names or an employee gets married.. and you've assumed you could use the entities given "name" as part of the key. Have fun with cascading updates then! Then you end up assigning numbers to things anyway... and when your customers buy each other so even customer numbers have to change?... sort of a damned if you do, damned if you don't thing.
I look at the works more as a critique of corporate culture than raw science. The idea that "all obstacles" to profit have to be avoided rather than simply lampooning scientific achievement in general.
Even in computer science/security/privacy I see the same issues as in his books. Just because we CAN track purchases, google searches, etc. doesn't mean we have to or should. Many "normal" people don't see the difference between the ideas of "can" and "should/should not". Middle management (all the way to guys with big bucks like Gates) want things to be "easy" for the masses so they can get money/not lose money. People keep expecting technology to be "magical" and each new thing is marketed as a "silver bullet" and nobody is expected to understand limitations or to be smart enough to work around them and still be safe (or at least principled).
they sort of put the escape in the second movie when the pterodactyls followed the black helicopters to the mainland.
but these don't seem to be the same composition as the all carbon ones. The chemically made carbon nanotubes have big environmental problems because they're nearly indestructible. One of the original purposes thought of for Buckyballs (the round relative) was to carry molecules of medicine, but in lab rats the balls were so durable they tore thru individual cell walls... perhaps these will have a natural decay rate so they can be widely deployed.
but the USA did NOTHING to the importers of the stuff.. the guys that are legally responsible in the USA to ensure their products comply with USA safety rules. All the corrupted goods should have some importer/broker/exec in jail over here, but there's nothing done... not a peep.. just a bunch of noise on the news. But it's all under the "corporate veil" so the USA won't do anything...it's just paperwork.
meanwhile the Chinese don't care if data is on servers for Yahoo USA or Yahoo China... it's got "yahoo" in the name and they simply start putting guns to people's heads until the corporate veil is pierced... with bullets if necessary. In China govts are treated as hostile orgianizations with owners treated more like mob bosses.. and they go after the owners/execs directly if they want things done. US laws about "privacy" don't work against armed thugs... the congress doesn't quite grasp that they pass the same laws allowing the same force (like the new patriot banking rules for even Swiss banks!) when they feel the need.
then the issue becomes will the US govt protect US citizen employees in other countries? Is the Congress willing to hire out the army out to ANY company following US law or just their favorites? That was the Yahoo issue. The Chinese govt had threatened Yahoo's Chinese employees with prison if Yahoo USA didn't cough up the info. Look at how the DOJ handled the Pirate Bay or UK citizen kidnapping trouble to see that the USA does EXACTLY the same thing when they want to enforce US laws in OTHER countries.
On another note, what happens when China does decide to kick somebody out and seize their assets..and wipe out all of Microsoft or GM's holdings in their country? see how that worked out for the Queen of Hawaii when businesses wanted her out, or how it worked out for Castro when he did kick US business out, or for Chavez..., except China is too big to threaten into submission like them and they can simply cut us off... or take back Taiwan.
I think that would fix itself. We didn't always have "flat" books. People used to use scrolls for a lot longer than sheet paper or book existed. On a medium size format like 13x19 you could put the hardware into one edge and unroll from there... fashion would catch up in a few years. Look at all the purses, pants, jackets with Cell phone/iPod pockets...and before that it was cigarette/lighters, etc.
the "them" is Bill and Steve B. After all, what you described is EXACTLY what they want! Customers fighting over Xbox or Vista Ultimate (there is no more MCE)... either way Billy's piggy bank gets a little fatter.
And nobody else can enter either market because the hardware makers and content producers are "competing" for each M$ division's attention. See how that's worked for PC gaming as M$ split windows games developers in 2000 between DX8 for Windows or Xbox... Mac and Nintendo were pushed aside because they couldn't allocate resources to two MICROSOFT divisions and Sony at the same time.