Question for you:
provided that an automated anti-spam tool is a bandwidth-and-time saving process
provided that to definte an email as spam or not, you may have to read/download most of it
wouldn't you say the human who DEFINES the spam has a ZERO chance of success in this test, as to define the spam, he just may have to read most of it, saving little time and no bandwidth?
With that in mind, wouldn't it make sense to leave a standing order to the demo developers to: use the same game engine as the final game?
It would prevent some promises you can't keep, would allow the demo to sorta pre-beta the engine of the game(hence you'd make sure the beta is out first...), and you'd save on work, as your demo developers wouldn't have to develop the engine, just the demo scenario...(Code and skills re-use) ?
I'm sure some games already follow this model, and save money to the developers, by not being detrimental to the game release, but instead, by being a part of it...
I found an interesting contradiction in this article... In one line he speaks of the defense fund for developers, and mentions they aren't likely to get sued. And in another he mentions Linus Torvalds and Andrew Morton by name as likely to get sued... Just who did he think they are? Another case of someone WAYYYYYYYYY out of their depth...
What he probably meant to say was "my intended audience of (frightful?) enterprise users of Linux are NOT developers, so they don't want to know who is gonna get sued, they only care if they are gonna get sued..."
I also found it odd(in the sense that it indicates his research was skewed as not to sound alarmist) that he spent so little time speaking about how vital a part of a proper support contract indemnity used to be (in Mainframe and Minicomputer environments, which aren't as plentiful now) and are now being forgotten because people think anyone MCSE can run what they call "a departmental server" on 2000$ hardware with no backup or redudancy... As for indemnification I always thought a good rule of thumb was if your computers systems total 50000$ of book value, or handle more than a million a year in money value, you should either get indemnification, or negotiate an equivalent value out of your support contract(equivalent to the indemnification, not the 50000)
You certainly make a case for remote network displays. I'd like to point out that the accelerated 3d, multimonitor uses of X are some places where window systems might want to grow. Anyone have a multi-monitor x client? cygwin 's startx -multiwindow doesn't count...
Wouldn't redefining a new client/server protocol where accel, multi-monitors, and other "high-traffic" use get their own special plugins so they don't either get so slow as to be unusuable, or get hobbled in the sake of compatibility?
I certainly think having user's modern usage being reflected in at least a modern version of the protocol makes sense. Last I checked, the protocol for X was also used in VNC, and that beast also needs a little tweaking. Wouldn't a new version of the X protocol, perhaps with hooks for encryption/authentication/compression where it makes sense, be a boon for the users of those software? It's obvious that new ideas have been made in desktop-over-network since X11R6 was specced, as well as local-desktop aka framebuffer uses. It's also obvious that another area where a windows system is useful is embedded devices, as X is already used in a few of them. These are high-growth-potential industries, shouldn't the people(that includes us) with interest in open standards, open source, freedom and interoperability already look to co-opt those people? Build a platform for those people to interoperate now, with low overhead, and expandability now, instead of wait for the "tyrant" to provide us with something to wail and bitch about?
IANAL, but I thought court rulings were closer to interpretations of fact. As such they are arbitrary(although judge are in theory chosen because they are fair, objective and evenhanded individuals, everyone is subjective on some issues). They are tend to be booed on slashdot when they ignore the realities of computing, and the (written or not) rules geek want enforced. They tend to be cheered when they help police the "pack". Microsoft being a particularly loose cannon in this regard, and court decisions being their modus operandi for many things, court decisions where Microsoft is involved tend to get booed more often.
As a layperson, I was disappointed that a court finding that Microsoft being in illegal monopoly could not do anything to remove that monopoly, just light fines, and wait for the market(and Geeks working on open alternatives) to correct itself. Now I imagine lawyers find this make perfect sense, but to me, any fine below the size of Microsoft's publically known "war chest" was ridiculously small, considering the nature of the offense.
of course, the fact that Napster was pushing a format which Microsoft owns, and quite possibly patented(I didn't check) means that HP would have been independant from microsoft, right?</sarcasm>
IMHO Microsoft didn't miss the music download biz, they're just betting the boat on how they can hobble everyone's offerings down the line and profit from other people's work. Something to keep in mind, should TCPA ever come to life: how many slashdotters are taking bets that iTunes's "fair-use-friendly" drm gets either neutered, or prevents apple from offering it at all?
While you may be able to find ERP and other software that will do some of what you want. I do believe there is one aspect I didn't see covered in this thread: phone billing standards are expensive, and OSS billing applications for such are few. What can you tell us about the output of your VOIP gateway when it comes to measuring calls? Long Distance? Finding a match for such might be harder than writing something yourself in some cases.
I'd look for it again, in another form, in a few years:)
I will too, most likely somewhere in Europe or Australia, or maybe Canada, backed by private enterprise, not an organisation that's part of the Americian Politico-military complex. (Not that public funds couldn't be involved, but government control in this paranoid age doesn't seem likely to me.
Wouldn't just polluting bayes(not the per-user bayes slashdot users are likely to have), but the per-enterprise-appliance-bayes(a small device shared by a bunch of people) or per-webmail-bayes shared by say, yahoo or brightmail. Wouldn't sending two emails, one which increase the chances the other gets through not be a waste, in a spammer's eyes? Think of it as a one-two punch against your email box.
well many of those costs are hidden on the bill the client gets. One that's not hidden, is the IRS(at least for american companies outsourcing to India). Since outsourcing is usually company to company, it's a company expense. Canada also has per-employee training minima and other fees that start ramping up the more you grow a business in terms of people. And finally, let's not forget that the outsourcing company has a LOT more leverage against its employees. i.e. You called in sick yesterday, and because of that, we lost the client, you're fired cuz you lost us 123000$ and we can't afford you anymore! wouldn't sink as an argument the same was as: You missed one day, you're fired. In terms of employment rights anyway.
without using the same hardware configuration, we're going to see a few discrepancies in here. My scsi card adds 15 seconds by itself to the booting process, for one... I'm sure there are others.
in English(the one I learned in school), a bar and a Bar can mean different things, depending on where in the sentence they are(and in what sentence, ask any lawyer who'se been de-barred what he calls a "Bar"). That's called syntax, and it is both
1) more specific than simple case-sensitivity, it's context-sensitivity 2) implies more knowledge of the language by the person interpreting the words and their use
Living languages also have several case of homonyms that would drive your usual compiler crazy
What proper computer language design allows is for code that is LESS sensitive to those factors, as copy-paste, printouts on fanfold paper and several other factors can obscure the context of each line of code, and make them less obvious to whoever has to maintain it.
All proper text-editors differentiate between all 8 bits of a character, therefore they are stringently case-sensitive. Since my text editor is case sensitive, I can enter "Perlchild" as a string value, different from "perlchild". That is good. My editor is not limited to entering identifiers, I can also enter values, I can also edit actual text with it, not just programs(which are specialized forms of text). My text editor is not expected to know what purpose each text has, although if I issue the proper commands to it, it can handle each purpose the way I like, that is also good:)
Having a specialised editor, called an ide, who would know the specifics of one or more particular languages, and would apply case-insensitivity properly according to the language's rules, and highlight keywords according to syntax, would be a useful tool. But we were arguing if case-insensitivity was a good rule to have for a language, so I'll shut up now
Try removing comments from shorewall first. Not only is it very featureful, and the default configs rather well documented, but there is a lot of "by format" comments which indicate to shorewall itself that a file ended.
My 3-interface shorewall on debian's config is only 1561 lines btw... With the comments. 450 lines of which is the shorewall.conf, a long long config file... Without the comments, I have 171 lines of config, for a four-interface, 3 zone firewall with vpn. The script for shorewall itself is only 961 lines(yes that means my config is larger than the script if you count the comments)
A few notes: since for now, very few people obscure the same way, those ten lines of perl actually are probably closer to 30, just to eliminate the creative obsc. that get done, it's not worth it.
Should we all pick ONE true way to obscure, you can expect methods to defeat it to gain popularity.
Recently there was another slashdot about why lots more random "legal" words were introduced in spam, and how it might affect bayes. Many replies correctly pointed out that a correct bayes(individual token lists for each user, who might each have a different spam tolerance level and spam definition) would simply ignore that.
What it does change, is that many "automated" systems, which do not have per-user settings, will now have more false-positives. Which in any case, will require more user intervention, and more work per spam.
That's exactly what spammers want, that the ones making an effort, are the ones NOT getting the spam, and the ones getting the spam being the effortless case. As long as that's what's true, they win.
irst, the existing patent system is widely complained about. This patent probably shouldn't have been granted in the first place. However, if Microsoft had won this case, all that would have happened is that this particular patent would have been invalidated. Now, a major tech company just took a half million dollar loss because the PTO is using silly rules. The tech industry now has serious reasons to argue for modification of tech patents. Microsoft's patent portfolio is doubtlessly valuable in terms of preventing newcomers from entering the market, but there's a significant question as to whether it's worth half a billion dollars (plus all the other copycats that are likely to run out and start suing large companies).
Yes, that LOOKS like it's a Geek's dream come true, but that's just an illusion. Even if everyone realizes how screwed up the system is, and how much change is required, there is no guarantee the change will be to any geek's benefit, because representation is not in our favor, nor are dollars. On top of that, most geek opinions I've seen favor radical changes to the system. The system itself's best interest is to mitigate the radicalness of all changes. Just because everyone is screwed equally doesn't mean we'll all agree to get unscrewed together. We're a lot more likely to get screwed again, and again, individually. The tech sector's interest is segmented, that means that someone throwing enough money and PR at the situation can make us say what they want us to say, by choosing the venue.
Such a restriction would also block current, commerical rescue-offerings, at least, UNLESS they licensed the driver themselves, somehow. And you would be committing a felony unknowingly just by using such software, until those software companies declared their (up to now anyways) secret licensing of this driver. It just isn't worth the political trouble for Microsoft. As long as captive-ntfs requires ntfs.sys from microsoft, Microsoft would be harming its friends more than its enemies by fighting it.
I bet they regret not patenting ntfs though:) Did they file patent on winfs??
I called their toll-free number to inquire whether I could get access to their data. No, I cannot. All I can do is try to use less bandwidth and hope I do not see any more of these letters. 2 more and my service will be terminated."
Am I the only one who thinks that if the isp can't produce numbers to back up that kind of claim, it makes the claim invalid? How can you know you're above the national median if: 1) you don't know what the median is? 2) you don't have an accurate picture of your usage?
What you need is a place in your area that knows about these things, slashdot is international. I doubt someone in Japan could help you. Ask slashdot is international, deal. There are local techie groups for most about everything, if not, you got a great excuse to start one don't you?
Because you can get an old mac anywhere in the world? Whereas your cable ISP is something you have to qualify by geographical location. I'm thinking that's just the beginning.
I'm starting to get worried - Nevermind that the GPL was not invoked in the SCO case(it wouldn't make sense, as both sides used it at one point), that SCO's lawers's "evidence" is often presented through a logic that can only be genereously described as "twisted", and that SCO's tactics look like a way to hold users of technology hostage... The case is going on, and on and on... And that's getting me worried that technophiles are going to pay a price for judges, etc... not understanding technology, or at least, not understanding it from the same perspective as technologists do.
Let's just look at it from a conceptual standpoint.
Microsoft, whose business model is based on ownership of technology, not knowledge(the two are slightly different, and I'll explain later) appeared to be lose momentum upon the monopoly judgement, and the introduction of their new pricing model, yet now they are going strong again.
We can also see SCO, whose business model is even more strongly tied to ownership of technology. One could most likely make a case that most of intellectual property SCO owns was created at the behest of someone other than SCO, and later acquired.
On the other side, we have the free software/open software people, who say, technology can only improperly be owned, and should not EVER be owned(well some of them do). Those same people say: it's in everyone's interest to pay for knowledge, not the technology the knowledge built.
And in the middle, we have the less informed, who usually go for the first group, usually through ignorance, lack of interest, or a host of other reasons, some of which is resentment of the technoscient and technophile "classes".
Now seeing this discussion, I'm beginning to see that the "profit-generating" angles for investors make the "anti-ownership of technology, pro-ownership of knowledge"-bias of technophiles automatically opposed to the investors point of view. Its however natural that they do so, from the point of view of technology workers, knowledge is something they have, and which is more lightly regulatable(hard to regulate what goes on in someone's brain). From an investor's point of view, owning the technology used by corporations makes them potential "profit-making hostages".
On the other side, the technophiles, many of which style themselves as intellectuals, like to say they see long-term. As a society it's in our interest not to be held hostage to single corporations, professional groups with properly defined standards tend to be less harmful, because the group defining the entire profession does not have the luxury to go bankrupt, or any of those things corporations do to avoid what they've done. The technophiles also feel more comfortable with the idea of "if I'm not happy I still own everything I need to go someplace else", the technophobe's motto is usually "If I'm not happy who will I sue?". The fact that one group prefers to use a technological solution to a business continuation problem, and the other prefers a legal one highlights the different focus of both groups.
From the point of view of this interested observer, recent events highlight the fact that the technophiles haven't been able to convince everyone of the truth of their arguments. And that to use an investment buisness term: a correction is expected against the technophiles. The decline of Microsoft and SCO would signal that their attempts to keep technologists in line have failed, and that while technologists are law-abiding citizens as a rule, they consider themselves, like most other professional groups, the only ones abilitated to make the rules of their profession. Please keep in mind that I don't want to hate Microsoft, but I do find many of their practices aborrent and their treatment of third party vendors execrable.
While keeping this in mind, I think we "technos" got to get our act together, and start educating people on the realities of technologies. So far, the only message that's going through is one hostile to our interests.
That is like having a fee to be listed in the phone book You pay a fee to be listed in the phone book in a lot of places, along with your phone line charges.
A better way to express this would be that you'd pay to your hosting provider to be listed on search engines. But since there are so many search engines, and hosting presence providers are so many, you don't and you get to choose in what phone book, if any, you are listed in.
Slashdot Mirror
Question for you:
provided that an automated anti-spam tool is a bandwidth-and-time saving process
provided that to definte an email as spam or not, you may have to read/download most of it
wouldn't you say the human who DEFINES the spam has a ZERO chance of success in this test, as to define the spam, he just may have to read most of it, saving little time and no bandwidth?
I agree with you, I expected Humans to rate an even 90% at best...
With that in mind, wouldn't it make sense to leave a standing order to the demo developers to: use the same game engine as the final game?
It would prevent some promises you can't keep, would allow the demo to sorta pre-beta the engine of the game(hence you'd make sure the beta is out first...), and you'd save on work, as your demo developers wouldn't have to develop the engine, just the demo scenario...(Code and skills re-use) ?
I'm sure some games already follow this model, and save money to the developers, by not being detrimental to the game release, but instead, by being a part of it...
I found an interesting contradiction in this article... In one line he speaks of the defense fund for developers, and mentions they aren't likely to get sued. And in another he mentions Linus Torvalds and Andrew Morton by name as likely to get sued... Just who did he think they are? Another case of someone WAYYYYYYYYY out of their depth...
What he probably meant to say was "my intended audience of (frightful?) enterprise users of Linux are NOT developers, so they don't want to know who is gonna get sued, they only care if they are gonna get sued..."
I also found it odd(in the sense that it indicates his research was skewed as not to sound alarmist) that he spent so little time speaking about how vital a part of a proper support contract indemnity used to be (in Mainframe and Minicomputer environments, which aren't as plentiful now) and are now being forgotten because people think anyone MCSE can run what they call "a departmental server" on 2000$ hardware with no backup or redudancy... As for indemnification I always thought a good rule of thumb was if your computers systems total 50000$ of book value, or handle more than a million a year in money value, you should either get indemnification, or negotiate an equivalent value out of your support contract(equivalent to the indemnification, not the 50000)
If anything, we live in interesting times...
You certainly make a case for remote network displays. I'd like to point out that the accelerated 3d, multimonitor uses of X are some places where window systems might want to grow. Anyone have a multi-monitor x client? cygwin 's startx -multiwindow doesn't count...
Wouldn't redefining a new client/server protocol where accel, multi-monitors, and other "high-traffic" use get their own special plugins so they don't either get so slow as to be unusuable, or get hobbled in the sake of compatibility?
I certainly think having user's modern usage being reflected in at least a modern version of the protocol makes sense. Last I checked, the protocol for X was also used in VNC, and that beast also needs a little tweaking. Wouldn't a new version of the X protocol, perhaps with hooks for encryption/authentication/compression where it makes sense, be a boon for the users of those software?
It's obvious that new ideas have been made in desktop-over-network since X11R6 was specced, as well as local-desktop aka framebuffer uses.
It's also obvious that another area where a windows system is useful is embedded devices, as X is already used in a few of them. These are high-growth-potential industries, shouldn't the people(that includes us) with interest in open standards, open source, freedom and interoperability already look to co-opt those people? Build a platform for those people to interoperate now, with low overhead, and expandability now, instead of wait for the "tyrant" to provide us with something to wail and bitch about?
IANAL, but I thought court rulings were closer to interpretations of fact. As such they are arbitrary(although judge are in theory chosen because they are fair, objective and evenhanded individuals, everyone is subjective on some issues). They are tend to be booed on slashdot when they ignore the realities of computing, and the (written or not) rules geek want enforced. They tend to be cheered when they help police the "pack". Microsoft being a particularly loose cannon in this regard, and court decisions being their modus operandi for many things, court decisions where Microsoft is involved tend to get booed more often.
As a layperson, I was disappointed that a court finding that Microsoft being in illegal monopoly could not do anything to remove that monopoly, just light fines, and wait for the market(and Geeks working on open alternatives) to correct itself. Now I imagine lawyers find this make perfect sense, but to me, any fine below the size of Microsoft's publically known "war chest" was ridiculously small, considering the nature of the offense.
of course, the fact that Napster was pushing a format which Microsoft owns, and quite
possibly patented(I didn't check) means that HP would have been independant from microsoft, right?</sarcasm>
IMHO Microsoft didn't miss the music download biz, they're just betting the boat on how they can hobble everyone's offerings down the line and profit from other people's work. Something to keep in mind, should TCPA ever come to life:
how many slashdotters are taking bets that iTunes's "fair-use-friendly" drm gets either neutered, or prevents apple from offering it at all?
While you may be able to find ERP and other software that will do some of what you want. I do believe there is one aspect I didn't see covered in this thread: phone billing standards are expensive, and OSS billing applications for such are few.
What can you tell us about the output of your VOIP gateway when it comes to measuring calls? Long Distance? Finding a match for such might be harder than writing something yourself in some cases.
I'd look for it again, in another form, in a few years :)
I will too, most likely somewhere in Europe or Australia, or maybe Canada, backed by private enterprise, not an organisation that's part of the Americian Politico-military complex. (Not that public funds couldn't be involved, but government control in this paranoid age doesn't seem likely to me.
You're short several minors... but that's a quibble.
Wouldn't just polluting bayes(not the per-user bayes slashdot users are likely to have), but the per-enterprise-appliance-bayes(a small device shared by a bunch of people) or per-webmail-bayes shared by say, yahoo or brightmail. Wouldn't sending two emails, one which increase the chances the other gets through not be a waste, in a spammer's eyes?
Think of it as a one-two punch against your email box.
well many of those costs are hidden on the bill the client gets. One that's not hidden, is the IRS(at least for american companies outsourcing to India). Since outsourcing is usually company to company, it's a company expense. Canada also has per-employee training minima and other fees that start ramping up the more you grow a business in terms of people. And finally, let's not forget that the outsourcing company has a LOT more leverage against its employees. i.e. You called in sick yesterday, and because of that, we lost the client, you're fired cuz you lost us 123000$ and we can't afford you anymore! wouldn't sink as an argument the same was as: You missed one day, you're fired.
In terms of employment rights anyway.
without using the same hardware configuration, we're going to see a few discrepancies in here. My scsi card adds 15 seconds by itself to the booting process, for one... I'm sure there are others.
in English(the one I learned in school), a bar and a Bar can mean different things, depending on where in the sentence they are(and in what sentence, ask any lawyer who'se been de-barred what he calls a "Bar"). That's called syntax, and it is both
:)
1) more specific than simple case-sensitivity, it's context-sensitivity
2) implies more knowledge of the language by the person interpreting the words and their use
Living languages also have several case of homonyms that would drive your usual compiler crazy
What proper computer language design allows is for code that is LESS sensitive to those factors, as copy-paste, printouts on fanfold paper and several other factors can obscure the context of each line of code, and make them less obvious to whoever has to maintain it.
All proper text-editors differentiate between all 8 bits of a character, therefore they are stringently case-sensitive. Since my text editor is case sensitive, I can enter
"Perlchild" as a string value, different from "perlchild". That is good. My editor is not limited to entering identifiers, I can also enter values, I can also edit actual text with it, not just programs(which are specialized forms of text). My text editor is not expected to know what purpose each text has, although if I issue the proper commands to it, it can handle each purpose the way I like, that is also good
Having a specialised editor, called an ide, who would know the specifics of one or more particular languages, and would apply case-insensitivity properly according to the language's rules, and highlight keywords according to syntax, would be a useful tool. But we were arguing if case-insensitivity was a good rule to have for a language, so I'll shut up now
Try removing comments from shorewall first. Not only is it very featureful, and the default configs rather well documented, but there is a lot of "by format" comments which indicate to shorewall itself that a file ended.
My 3-interface shorewall on debian's config is only 1561 lines btw... With the comments. 450 lines of which is the shorewall.conf, a long long config file... Without the comments, I have 171 lines of config, for a four-interface, 3 zone firewall with vpn.
The script for shorewall itself is only 961 lines(yes that means my config is larger than the script if you count the comments)
A few notes:
since for now, very few people obscure the same way, those ten lines of perl actually are probably closer to 30, just to eliminate the creative obsc. that get done, it's not worth it.
Should we all pick ONE true way to obscure, you can expect methods to defeat it to gain popularity.
Recently there was another slashdot about why lots more random "legal" words were introduced in spam, and how it might affect bayes. Many replies correctly pointed out that a correct bayes(individual token lists for each user, who might each have a different spam tolerance level and spam definition) would simply ignore that.
What it does change, is that many "automated" systems, which do not have per-user settings, will now have more false-positives. Which in any case, will require more user intervention, and more work per spam.
That's exactly what spammers want, that the ones making an effort, are the ones NOT getting the spam, and the ones getting the spam being the effortless case. As long as that's what's true, they win.
Yes, that LOOKS like it's a Geek's dream come true, but that's just an illusion. Even if everyone realizes how screwed up the system is, and how much change is required, there is no guarantee the change will be to any geek's benefit, because representation is not in our favor, nor are dollars. On top of that, most geek opinions I've seen favor radical changes to the system. The system itself's best interest is to mitigate the radicalness of all changes. Just because everyone is screwed equally doesn't mean we'll all agree to get unscrewed together. We're a lot more likely to get screwed again, and again, individually. The tech sector's interest is segmented, that means that someone throwing enough money and PR at the situation can make us say what they want us to say, by choosing the venue.
Such a restriction would also block current, commerical rescue-offerings, at least, UNLESS they licensed the driver themselves, somehow. And you would be committing a felony unknowingly just by using such software, until those software companies declared their (up to now anyways) secret licensing of this driver. It just isn't worth the political trouble for Microsoft. As long as captive-ntfs requires ntfs.sys from microsoft, Microsoft would be harming its friends more than its enemies by fighting it.
:)
I bet they regret not patenting ntfs though
Did they file patent on winfs??
Sounds like the prices round here too(Montreal) companies just pay more in Canada, it seems.
Am I the only one who thinks that if the isp can't produce numbers to back up that kind of claim, it makes the claim invalid? How can you know you're above the national median if:
1) you don't know what the median is?
2) you don't have an accurate picture of your usage?
What you need is a place in your area that knows about these things, slashdot is international. I doubt someone in Japan could help you.
Ask slashdot is international, deal.
There are local techie groups for most about everything, if not, you got a great excuse to start one don't you?
Because you can get an old mac anywhere in the world? Whereas your cable ISP is something you have to qualify by geographical location. I'm thinking that's just the beginning.
I'm starting to get worried
- Nevermind that the GPL was not invoked in the SCO case(it wouldn't make sense, as both sides used it at one point), that SCO's lawers's "evidence" is often presented through a logic that can only be genereously described as "twisted", and that SCO's tactics look like a way to hold users of technology hostage...
The case is going on, and on and on...
And that's getting me worried that technophiles are going to pay a price for judges, etc... not understanding technology, or at least, not understanding it from the same perspective as technologists do.
Let's just look at it from a conceptual standpoint.
Microsoft, whose business model is based on ownership of technology, not knowledge(the two are slightly different, and I'll explain later) appeared to be lose momentum upon the monopoly judgement, and the introduction of their new pricing model, yet now they are going strong again.
We can also see SCO, whose business model is even more strongly tied to ownership of technology. One could most likely make a case that most of intellectual property SCO owns was created at the behest of someone other than SCO, and later acquired.
On the other side, we have the free software/open software people, who say, technology can only improperly be owned, and should not EVER be owned(well some of them do). Those same people say: it's in everyone's interest to pay for knowledge, not the technology the knowledge built.
And in the middle, we have the less informed, who usually go for the first group, usually through ignorance, lack of interest, or a host of other reasons, some of which is resentment of the technoscient and technophile "classes".
Now seeing this discussion, I'm beginning to see that the "profit-generating" angles for investors make the "anti-ownership of technology, pro-ownership of knowledge"-bias of technophiles automatically opposed to the investors point of view. Its however natural that they do so, from the point of view of technology workers, knowledge is something they have, and which is more lightly regulatable(hard to regulate what goes on in someone's brain). From an investor's point of view, owning the technology used by corporations makes them potential "profit-making hostages".
On the other side, the technophiles, many of which style themselves as intellectuals, like to say they see long-term. As a society it's in our interest not to be held hostage to single corporations, professional groups with properly defined standards tend to be less harmful, because the group defining the entire profession does not have the luxury to go bankrupt, or any of those things corporations do to avoid what they've done. The technophiles also feel more comfortable with the idea of "if I'm not happy I still own everything I need to go someplace else", the technophobe's motto is usually "If I'm not happy who will I sue?". The fact that one group prefers to use a technological solution to a business continuation problem, and the other prefers a legal one highlights the different focus of both groups.
From the point of view of this interested observer, recent events highlight the fact that the technophiles haven't been able to convince everyone of the truth of their arguments. And that to use an investment buisness term: a correction is expected against the technophiles. The decline of Microsoft and SCO would signal that their attempts to keep technologists in line have failed, and that while technologists are law-abiding citizens as a rule, they consider themselves, like most other professional groups, the only ones abilitated to make the rules of their profession. Please keep in mind that I don't want to hate Microsoft, but I do find many of their practices aborrent and their treatment of third party vendors execrable.
While keeping this in mind, I think we "technos" got to get our act together, and start educating people on the realities of technologies. So far, the only message that's going through is one hostile to our interests.
Service(and ethics) cost money.
"The Masses" haven't resorted to boycotting people for lack of either nearly enough yet.
That is like having a fee to be listed in the phone book
You pay a fee to be listed in the phone book in a lot of places, along with your phone line charges.
A better way to express this would be that you'd pay to your hosting provider to be listed on search engines. But since there are so many search engines, and hosting presence providers are so many, you don't and you get to choose in what phone book, if any, you are listed in.