It's so easy to forget the original economic rationale for patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. The rationale has *little or nothing* to do with fair/deserved (or outrageous/undeserved, whatever the case may be!) compensation for the intellectual rights holders. It has *everything* to do with solving a fundamental economic problem with the provision of (nearly) public goods; goods with high initial/fixed costs and near-zero marginal costs.
Intellectual rights protections are about providing incentives for innovation and production. Perhaps it's fashionable to talk about "tropicalizing" (yes, I read TFA), but we should always ask what the incentive structure for innovation/production will look like when rights protections are changed. Perhaps there's a viable model of software development (open-source) outside traditional copyright law, but is there a viable model for producing books, music, movies, technological innovation, and all the other activities protected by IP laws?
In this Washington Post Writeup", they clearly refer to the "island rule: animals smaller than rabbits get larger; animals larger than rabbits get smaller."
At a basic level, marketing is about conveying information to the consumer, and consumers make decisions in their self-interest. The economic history of the world pretty much confirms the truth of this.
A well-designed marketing campaign may increase Coke's market share over Pepsi, and may even expand the overall market for soft drinks, but fundamentally, consumers drink soft drinks because they enjoy them, and any market expansion is likely the result of increased awareness that such enjoyable consumables exist. To the extent that Coke actually differs from Pepsi (I'm not saying it does), competitive marketing is useful in highlighting the difference, to the benefit of the consumer.
Speaking as a consumer, I resent the implication that I'm some sort of automaton influenced by "neuro-advertising", and that I need government protection from the big, bad, marketers. I can handle my own consumption decisions, thankyouverymuch.
Sorry for replying to my own post, but the natural conclusion to what I just said is that Google may have a serious corporate market for this software. Since this actually fills a serious need for many corporate users, I'm sure IT departments may be willing to spend on licensing a version that doesn't transmit *any* info back to Google.
Both the NYT and Washington Post have frontpage articles on this. From the WPost article:
"Once the Google search technology is installed for free on a personal computer, it will transmit basic data daily about usage patterns. For example, it will tell the company how often Google is being used to search personal computers, how often it is used to search the Web, and how often simultaneous searches are done. Google lets users opt out of sending some usage data, but not all of it.
However, Mayer said the data collected will be aggregated so that the company knows where to focus its efforts on upgrading the search technology. She emphasized that the daily up-loading will not transmit any personal information to Google and said it is typical for major software programs that offer voluntary upgrades and fixes for bugs to capture that sort of information as a matter of routine."
This makes me hesitate to install it on my work PC, even though indexing Outlook is soooo tempting...
Correct. To elaborate, the 'rubber-stamp' DMCA subpoena process still applies to copyright infringements hosted on the ISPs servers, but not to P2P content, which is hosted on the user's computer.
That's because any FAQ that needs to ask if the answer was helpful is not really a FAQ; it's documentation (good or bad) disguised as a FAQ. A true FAQ answer would never make it on a real FAQ if it hadn't *already* proved its usefulness.
Try returning the rental to a different location, then try to specify that location on the next screen using their "Hertz location list" or "find a neighborhood location" links. These show as javascript:changeRightLayer('xxxx.jsp') but nothing shows up in Firefox.
In any case, you're missing the point. There are still many important sites that require you to fire up IE. Until there are zero important sites, the article is correct that many (most?) of us still need IE occasionally.
One (failing) multi-billion dollar company has just won a billion dollar lawsuit against another multi-billion dollar company. Cry me a river.
Rants aside, the raison d'etre of patents is to promote innovation. Now I don't see how patents have fostered software innovation in the US; copyrights seem to be sufficient protection for that. On the other hand, where is the *evidence* that patents have choked-off software innovation? What developer did not pursue an idea for fear of a patent-infringement lawsuit?
I'm not trolling. If we're going to argue against patents, then let's see the evidence that they actually choked-off innovation; the linked "industry at risk" story makes some cogent arguments, but read closely and you'll find it's mostly speculation about what *will* happen in the next decade.
An aside, but check out this quote the "industry at risk" story uses to bolster its POV: "Thus, if a small company tries to use a patent to "protect" itself against competition from IBM, IBM can usually find patents in its collection which the small company is infringing, and thus obtain a cross-license. Besides which, if you are a small company, do you really want to try taking IBM to court?"
Ok Mr. Knowledgeable. How about this? I'm glad you're setting all those market analysts straight. What was the Wall Street Journal editorial board thinking when it booted Kodak off the Dow?!
Yup, they really fumbled their opportunity for jumping on the early digital bandwagon. Here's proof that they're dying, and it has taken a toll on the city of Rochester, NY. Kodak used to be one of the Dow Jones 30 component stocks, but no longer as of this year. Another nail in the coffin...
Don't Bitch About Outsourcing Until ...
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
... you're willing to give up all those cheap imports (including practically all your PC and electronic hardware) and live in economic isolation from the rest of the world. THERE IS NO ECONOMIC DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OUTSOURCING A JOB AND IMPORTING A GOOD. Here's a short argument to convince you. If you're still not convinced, ask your favorite Econ professor, or even anyone who paid attention in their International Trade class.
I'm always amused when presidents take credit for good economic times, and receive blame for bad times. Fact of the matter is, despite what the campaigns would like you to think, the Fed chairman probably has more influence on the economy than the president, and even the Fed chairman probably doesn't have that much influence. I say, by all means, go ahead and vote Bush out of office for the mess he created in the world and the assault on civil liberties at home, but don't think protectionism is good for the country, or that Kerry will solve the unemployment problem.
This may seem obvious, but legislators seem to forget (boy do they ever!) that the rationale for IP protections (patents, copyrights, trademarks, etc) has nothing to do with who deserves compensation for their work, and everything to do with guaranteeing that markets provide certain types of innovative goods for consumers. This is even codified in the US constitution:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Of course, the "limited Times" phrase is there because protections prevent other types of innovation (based on immitation) from taking place. It is there so that (sadly) politicians can decide where to strike that balance for each market.
So the main question about software patents should be: to what extent has the absence of software patents negatively impacted the pace of software innovation? As far as I can tell, copyrights have been more than sufficient to strike the balance I talked about earlier, and patents would simply tilt the balance and harm innovation. European legislators should understand this and avoid going down the misguided path of the US congress in their counterproductive copyright extension route.
You have three categories of choices, depending on your background and the type of data and analysis you want to conduct. I made up the category names, but I think they're reasonable:
1) Matrix languages (e.g. Matlab, Gauss): These have C-like syntax with the basic data object being an nxn matrix (so, internally, a scalar is a 1x1 matrix). These languages are the way to go if you want to write your own statistical/simulation algorithms. They do have extensive pre-written routines for many statistical tasks, but they're mainly for people who know that a regression coefficient vector is given by inv(X'X)X'y and aren't afraid to code that. Nice thing is that it would be a single line of code to do this computation. I believe GNU/Octave belongs to this category.
2) Data languages (SAS, SPSS): The basic object here is a dataset with variables. Inverting a data matrix here is essentially a meaningless concept, and would be extremely difficult to do, but creating a new variable that sums sales for different people by division for certain months is straightforward (note that this is very difficult in a matrix language). Beyond trivial manipulations, you'd store code in procedures like any programming language.
3) Menu-Driven languages (e.g. EViews): The basic object is still a dataset with variables, but your primary method of manipulation is menu-driven. Want to run a regression?, just select your dependent and independent variables from dropdown lists and click.
There's some area of overlap between 2 and 3. 2-type programs provide a rudimentary menu-driven system for those who don't want to code everything, and 3-type languages will allow you to store some command line instructions for future use.
In terms of learning curves, they get progressively flatter (easier) from 1 to 2 to 3.
Um, why would he recognize the *old* Anakin as his father?! There's at least a chance he remembers his young father from the Episode III timeframe.
Frankly, the only bitch I have is that Greedo shoots (first or at all) because it changes the essential character of who Solo is. Other than that, all the other cosmetic changes are fine by me.
Many popular anti-spam systems, e.g. those implemented by webmail services, are already indirectly human-powered. Users classify their own spam emails and the everyone benefits system-wide without privacy concerns.
I'd say the system works pretty well. My Yahoo account, which was unusable after being harvested from my Usenet postings, is usable again. I just checked, and I have 426 messages in my bulk (spam) folder and 9 in my inbox. Of the nine, half (ok, 4!) are auto-responses from mail daemons to messages I never sent, while the other half are spam that escaped the filters. Not bad at all for a few days' worth of mail.
I think a sensible business model is for the webmail services to leverage their huge, continually updated, spam database and license them to ISPs, who can then filter spam at the server level before users download anything. I think that's much more elegant than software+community based solutions implemented at the user level.
This is not a census, and the sample is obviously self-selected and therefore completely biased. It's like asking people to make testimonials about how they *didn't* take any printer paper from their office, then concluding from the data collected that most people don't take office supplies home.
I suppose it bears repeating: information goods (music, movies, software, books) are pure public goods, and therefore a well-documented case of market failure (for example, demand in this situation will not necessarily create supply). P2P, binary usenet groups, warez sites, and before then bootleg tapes and photocopies, are all manifestations of this fact. Information good producers and distributors are attempting to solve the problem by making their products "excludable" again (see the Wikipedia article for the definition of excludable) with mixed success. There might be other ways, but for P2P advocates to declare "there is no problem except the refusal by media companies to adapt" is delusional.
First, about comment moderation. I don't know if pro-SCO comments in the past year were consistently modded down, but if they were, then it's not surprising to find no pro-SCO comments in these threads anymore. What's the point of posting if you know you'll be blasted to -1 oblivion? People learn. Anecdotal evidence: when my parent comment was at +3 (with Karma bonus), a mod saw fit to mod it down 'overrated'. Not 'troll' mind you (it wasn't) but overrated. This despite the fact that 14 people saw fit to reply to it, mostly disagreeing but not flaming.
Second, about Groklaw. It's admirable that the site has made all the public documents of the case easily available, and perhaps the analysis used to be balanced, but I made my comment based on the posting linked to in the announcement. There, all I saw was ad hominem attacks on reporters and a quote about how Forbes magazine is "corporate pornography". With no wall separating news/analysis and opinion, this is hardly the hallmark of a website I'd want to get my news/analysis from.
Third, about the case. I'm not a lawyer, but would a completely and utterly meritless case continue to be litigated for 1.5 years with no signs of ending any time soon, and attract an attorney of the pedigree of David Boies? How come Boies, who's taken on such high profile and important cases as Bush v. Gore, DOJ v. Microsoft, and Napster, how come he doesn't see that his claims are obviously (even to non-lawyer slashdot readers!) frivolous and simply save his reputation and cut his losses?
On almost every topic that's discussed on Slashdot, the comments will generally reflect opposing points of view. Even Microsoft, Real, Spammers, and the anti-Apple crowd get a hearing, notwithstanding that opinions are skewed against them 99:1.
Except in the case of SCO. Here, the comments are 100:0. There is no discussion, only exhortations to the faithful, followed by a large chorus of 'Amen', all modded +5. Visiting the site that's supposed to provide serious legal background, Groklaw, is like visiting a very learned religious site inquiring about the existense of God: long, incomprehensible, philosophical discussions invariably concluding that God indeed exists based on incontrovertible evidence, that all doubters' motives are suspect, and that they'll probably all burn in Hell anyway.
I'm writing this comment from frustration. Not because I want SCO to win (my homebrew server is running Linux, after all), but because I want to be informed. I want to get a somewhat balanced view generated from opposing opinions. I don't really know what to suggest. Maybe mods shouldn't be so quick to tag any vaguely pro-SCO comments as trolls? Are there even any pro-SCO comments to begin with?! Maybe a Slashdot Interview with a SCO rep?
If SCO wins in any of its legal claims, I don't want to sit there blaming the stupidy of the US justice system and impugning the motives of the presiding judge. I want to know where such a SCO victory could come from. I can't be the only one who believes that there are at least two sides to every issue, even if they're not equally reasonable.
OK. Enough of this 'I want' 'I don't want' 'I want' post. Let the flames begin, if this even gets noticed!
Actually, it's better if IE retains the top spot, thus continuing to attract the majority of hacks and intrusions, while Firefox gets a solid #2 with, say, 20% of the market so that all websites would have to dump their IE-specific content and start coding to standards. THAT would be ideal.
Also, while we're talking wishlist, I wish Firefox would support saving web pages as a single archive (.mht). Very valuable for saving copies of pages that change frequently. This is a standard format that IE already supports.
This guy is the CEO of a $.78 billion company (look up RNWK on Yahoo finance). I think it's cool he took the time to answer a bunch of questions from anonymous geeks. Being a little sympathetic to his 'spin' isn't selling out, rather it's closer to reasonable politeness.
"Now if we could just get our government out of the gambling business..."
Modded funny, but the fact is the US government (at least state governments) have a *monopoly* on gambling. They share it with Native Americans as a form of compensation (Indian casinos), but note that no private entity is allowed to run a lottery, for example. State lotteries are a significant source of income (aka voluntaru taxes) for state governments.
I was browsing at B&N and noticed the Fahrenheit 451 is out with a 50th anniversary edition. After bitching about Moore appropriating his title, guess who's going to cash in on the buzz associated with the name these days?
Unless Bradbury was complaining about his title being associated with a particular political point of view. In that case, more power to him.
Again with the 'liberal press bias' bull. I get my news (online) from the Washington Post and the New York Times, and whenever there's been a story about Nader recently, it's always been about how the Republicans are (cynically) trying to get him on ballots, and the Democrats are (cynically) trying to deny him the opportunity. To the extent that Nader gets any press at all, that's all they talk about!
Yeah, the so-called 'liberal' WP and NYT are just now coming out with investigations (see the NYT ombudsman, and WP's Howard Kurtz) about how their own editors burried stories questioning the administration's WMD claims, while writing blaring headlines about how Saddam was on the verge of bringing down a WMD apocalypse upon the US whenever Bush, Cheney, et al. made such a declaration.
I'd hate to see what a conservative press looks like if the NYT and WP have a liberal bias in their news stories (remember, there's a church-state firewall between news and editorials in these organizations). I'm sure they'd claim that they report and we decide...
Mods, bear with me if this seems OT. A history buff friend of mine tells me that there are two main theories of historical development. One is the 'great man theory', where the course of history is determined by great (as in influential, not necessarily nice) individuals. The other is a view that history is inexorably driven by economic and social conditions that lead to inevitable outcomes (think Asimov's 'psychohistory'). Clearly, we're no where close to being able to test these theories empirically.
It strikes me that creating this model for olympic medal winners could provide an excellent 'lab expermient' to test this outstanding question in the philosophy of history. In many ways, international sports resemble international relations (rivalry, preparation, 'war', great (wo)men, winners, losers, etc.). If models can predict medal outcomes with acceptable accuracy, it could provide evidence against the 'great man theory' of history, and imply that a version of 'psychohistory' might be possible in the future!
Slashdot Mirror
It's so easy to forget the original economic rationale for patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. The rationale has *little or nothing* to do with fair/deserved (or outrageous/undeserved, whatever the case may be!) compensation for the intellectual rights holders. It has *everything* to do with solving a fundamental economic problem with the provision of (nearly) public goods; goods with high initial/fixed costs and near-zero marginal costs.
Intellectual rights protections are about providing incentives for innovation and production. Perhaps it's fashionable to talk about "tropicalizing" (yes, I read TFA), but we should always ask what the incentive structure for innovation/production will look like when rights protections are changed. Perhaps there's a viable model of software development (open-source) outside traditional copyright law, but is there a viable model for producing books, music, movies, technological innovation, and all the other activities protected by IP laws?
In this Washington Post Writeup", they clearly refer to the "island rule: animals smaller than rabbits get larger; animals larger than rabbits get smaller."
At a basic level, marketing is about conveying information to the consumer, and consumers make decisions in their self-interest. The economic history of the world pretty much confirms the truth of this.
A well-designed marketing campaign may increase Coke's market share over Pepsi, and may even expand the overall market for soft drinks, but fundamentally, consumers drink soft drinks because they enjoy them, and any market expansion is likely the result of increased awareness that such enjoyable consumables exist. To the extent that Coke actually differs from Pepsi (I'm not saying it does), competitive marketing is useful in highlighting the difference, to the benefit of the consumer.
Speaking as a consumer, I resent the implication that I'm some sort of automaton influenced by "neuro-advertising", and that I need government protection from the big, bad, marketers. I can handle my own consumption decisions, thankyouverymuch.
Sorry for replying to my own post, but the natural conclusion to what I just said is that Google may have a serious corporate market for this software. Since this actually fills a serious need for many corporate users, I'm sure IT departments may be willing to spend on licensing a version that doesn't transmit *any* info back to Google.
"Once the Google search technology is installed for free on a personal computer, it will transmit basic data daily about usage patterns. For example, it will tell the company how often Google is being used to search personal computers, how often it is used to search the Web, and how often simultaneous searches are done. Google lets users opt out of sending some usage data, but not all of it.
However, Mayer said the data collected will be aggregated so that the company knows where to focus its efforts on upgrading the search technology. She emphasized that the daily up-loading will not transmit any personal information to Google and said it is typical for major software programs that offer voluntary upgrades and fixes for bugs to capture that sort of information as a matter of routine."
This makes me hesitate to install it on my work PC, even though indexing Outlook is soooo tempting ...
Correct. To elaborate, the 'rubber-stamp' DMCA subpoena process still applies to copyright infringements hosted on the ISPs servers, but not to P2P content, which is hosted on the user's computer.
That's because any FAQ that needs to ask if the answer was helpful is not really a FAQ; it's documentation (good or bad) disguised as a FAQ. A true FAQ answer would never make it on a real FAQ if it hadn't *already* proved its usefulness.
Can you reserve a rental from hertz.com?
Try returning the rental to a different location, then try to specify that location on the next screen using their "Hertz location list" or "find a neighborhood location" links. These show as javascript:changeRightLayer('xxxx.jsp') but nothing shows up in Firefox.
In any case, you're missing the point. There are still many important sites that require you to fire up IE. Until there are zero important sites, the article is correct that many (most?) of us still need IE occasionally.
One (failing) multi-billion dollar company has just won a billion dollar lawsuit against another multi-billion dollar company. Cry me a river.
Rants aside, the raison d'etre of patents is to promote innovation. Now I don't see how patents have fostered software innovation in the US; copyrights seem to be sufficient protection for that. On the other hand, where is the *evidence* that patents have choked-off software innovation? What developer did not pursue an idea for fear of a patent-infringement lawsuit?
I'm not trolling. If we're going to argue against patents, then let's see the evidence that they actually choked-off innovation; the linked "industry at risk" story makes some cogent arguments, but read closely and you'll find it's mostly speculation about what *will* happen in the next decade.
An aside, but check out this quote the "industry at risk" story uses to bolster its POV: "Thus, if a small company tries to use a patent to "protect" itself against competition from IBM, IBM can usually find patents in its collection which the small company is infringing, and thus obtain a cross-license. Besides which, if you are a small company, do you really want to try taking IBM to court?"
Ok Mr. Knowledgeable. How about this? I'm glad you're setting all those market analysts straight. What was the Wall Street Journal editorial board thinking when it booted Kodak off the Dow?!
Yup, they really fumbled their opportunity for jumping on the early digital bandwagon. Here's proof that they're dying, and it has taken a toll on the city of Rochester, NY. Kodak used to be one of the Dow Jones 30 component stocks, but no longer as of this year. Another nail in the coffin ...
... you're willing to give up all those cheap imports (including practically all your PC and electronic hardware) and live in economic isolation from the rest of the world. THERE IS NO ECONOMIC DIFFERENCE BETWEEN OUTSOURCING A JOB AND IMPORTING A GOOD. Here's a short argument to convince you. If you're still not convinced, ask your favorite Econ professor, or even anyone who paid attention in their International Trade class.
I'm always amused when presidents take credit for good economic times, and receive blame for bad times. Fact of the matter is, despite what the campaigns would like you to think, the Fed chairman probably has more influence on the economy than the president, and even the Fed chairman probably doesn't have that much influence. I say, by all means, go ahead and vote Bush out of office for the mess he created in the world and the assault on civil liberties at home, but don't think protectionism is good for the country, or that Kerry will solve the unemployment problem.
This may seem obvious, but legislators seem to forget (boy do they ever!) that the rationale for IP protections (patents, copyrights, trademarks, etc) has nothing to do with who deserves compensation for their work, and everything to do with guaranteeing that markets provide certain types of innovative goods for consumers. This is even codified in the US constitution:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Of course, the "limited Times" phrase is there because protections prevent other types of innovation (based on immitation) from taking place. It is there so that (sadly) politicians can decide where to strike that balance for each market.
So the main question about software patents should be: to what extent has the absence of software patents negatively impacted the pace of software innovation? As far as I can tell, copyrights have been more than sufficient to strike the balance I talked about earlier, and patents would simply tilt the balance and harm innovation. European legislators should understand this and avoid going down the misguided path of the US congress in their counterproductive copyright extension route.
You have three categories of choices, depending on your background and the type of data and analysis you want to conduct. I made up the category names, but I think they're reasonable:
.
1) Matrix languages (e.g. Matlab, Gauss): These have C-like syntax with the basic data object being an nxn matrix (so, internally, a scalar is a 1x1 matrix). These languages are the way to go if you want to write your own statistical/simulation algorithms. They do have extensive pre-written routines for many statistical tasks, but they're mainly for people who know that a regression coefficient vector is given by inv(X'X)X'y and aren't afraid to code that. Nice thing is that it would be a single line of code to do this computation. I believe GNU/Octave belongs to this category.
2) Data languages (SAS, SPSS): The basic object here is a dataset with variables. Inverting a data matrix here is essentially a meaningless concept, and would be extremely difficult to do, but creating a new variable that sums sales for different people by division for certain months is straightforward (note that this is very difficult in a matrix language). Beyond trivial manipulations, you'd store code in procedures like any programming language.
3) Menu-Driven languages (e.g. EViews): The basic object is still a dataset with variables, but your primary method of manipulation is menu-driven. Want to run a regression?, just select your dependent and independent variables from dropdown lists and click
There's some area of overlap between 2 and 3. 2-type programs provide a rudimentary menu-driven system for those who don't want to code everything, and 3-type languages will allow you to store some command line instructions for future use.
In terms of learning curves, they get progressively flatter (easier) from 1 to 2 to 3.
Pick your poison!
Um, why would he recognize the *old* Anakin as his father?! There's at least a chance he remembers his young father from the Episode III timeframe.
Frankly, the only bitch I have is that Greedo shoots (first or at all) because it changes the essential character of who Solo is. Other than that, all the other cosmetic changes are fine by me.
Many popular anti-spam systems, e.g. those implemented by webmail services, are already indirectly human-powered. Users classify their own spam emails and the everyone benefits system-wide without privacy concerns.
I'd say the system works pretty well. My Yahoo account, which was unusable after being harvested from my Usenet postings, is usable again. I just checked, and I have 426 messages in my bulk (spam) folder and 9 in my inbox. Of the nine, half (ok, 4!) are auto-responses from mail daemons to messages I never sent, while the other half are spam that escaped the filters. Not bad at all for a few days' worth of mail.
I think a sensible business model is for the webmail services to leverage their huge, continually updated, spam database and license them to ISPs, who can then filter spam at the server level before users download anything. I think that's much more elegant than software+community based solutions implemented at the user level.
This is not a census, and the sample is obviously self-selected and therefore completely biased. It's like asking people to make testimonials about how they *didn't* take any printer paper from their office, then concluding from the data collected that most people don't take office supplies home.
I suppose it bears repeating: information goods (music, movies, software, books) are pure public goods, and therefore a well-documented case of market failure (for example, demand in this situation will not necessarily create supply). P2P, binary usenet groups, warez sites, and before then bootleg tapes and photocopies, are all manifestations of this fact. Information good producers and distributors are attempting to solve the problem by making their products "excludable" again (see the Wikipedia article for the definition of excludable) with mixed success. There might be other ways, but for P2P advocates to declare "there is no problem except the refusal by media companies to adapt" is delusional.
First, about comment moderation. I don't know if pro-SCO comments in the past year were consistently modded down, but if they were, then it's not surprising to find no pro-SCO comments in these threads anymore. What's the point of posting if you know you'll be blasted to -1 oblivion? People learn. Anecdotal evidence: when my parent comment was at +3 (with Karma bonus), a mod saw fit to mod it down 'overrated'. Not 'troll' mind you (it wasn't) but overrated. This despite the fact that 14 people saw fit to reply to it, mostly disagreeing but not flaming.
Second, about Groklaw. It's admirable that the site has made all the public documents of the case easily available, and perhaps the analysis used to be balanced, but I made my comment based on the posting linked to in the announcement. There, all I saw was ad hominem attacks on reporters and a quote about how Forbes magazine is "corporate pornography". With no wall separating news/analysis and opinion, this is hardly the hallmark of a website I'd want to get my news/analysis from.
Third, about the case. I'm not a lawyer, but would a completely and utterly meritless case continue to be litigated for 1.5 years with no signs of ending any time soon, and attract an attorney of the pedigree of David Boies? How come Boies, who's taken on such high profile and important cases as Bush v. Gore, DOJ v. Microsoft, and Napster, how come he doesn't see that his claims are obviously (even to non-lawyer slashdot readers!) frivolous and simply save his reputation and cut his losses?
On almost every topic that's discussed on Slashdot, the comments will generally reflect opposing points of view. Even Microsoft, Real, Spammers, and the anti-Apple crowd get a hearing, notwithstanding that opinions are skewed against them 99:1.
Except in the case of SCO. Here, the comments are 100:0. There is no discussion, only exhortations to the faithful, followed by a large chorus of 'Amen', all modded +5. Visiting the site that's supposed to provide serious legal background, Groklaw, is like visiting a very learned religious site inquiring about the existense of God: long, incomprehensible, philosophical discussions invariably concluding that God indeed exists based on incontrovertible evidence, that all doubters' motives are suspect, and that they'll probably all burn in Hell anyway.
I'm writing this comment from frustration. Not because I want SCO to win (my homebrew server is running Linux, after all), but because I want to be informed. I want to get a somewhat balanced view generated from opposing opinions. I don't really know what to suggest. Maybe mods shouldn't be so quick to tag any vaguely pro-SCO comments as trolls? Are there even any pro-SCO comments to begin with?! Maybe a Slashdot Interview with a SCO rep?
If SCO wins in any of its legal claims, I don't want to sit there blaming the stupidy of the US justice system and impugning the motives of the presiding judge. I want to know where such a SCO victory could come from. I can't be the only one who believes that there are at least two sides to every issue, even if they're not equally reasonable.
OK. Enough of this 'I want' 'I don't want' 'I want' post. Let the flames begin, if this even gets noticed!
Actually, it's better if IE retains the top spot, thus continuing to attract the majority of hacks and intrusions, while Firefox gets a solid #2 with, say, 20% of the market so that all websites would have to dump their IE-specific content and start coding to standards. THAT would be ideal.
Also, while we're talking wishlist, I wish Firefox would support saving web pages as a single archive (.mht). Very valuable for saving copies of pages that change frequently. This is a standard format that IE already supports.
This guy is the CEO of a $.78 billion company (look up RNWK on Yahoo finance). I think it's cool he took the time to answer a bunch of questions from anonymous geeks. Being a little sympathetic to his 'spin' isn't selling out, rather it's closer to reasonable politeness.
"Now if we could just get our government out of the gambling business..."
Modded funny, but the fact is the US government (at least state governments) have a *monopoly* on gambling. They share it with Native Americans as a form of compensation (Indian casinos), but note that no private entity is allowed to run a lottery, for example. State lotteries are a significant source of income (aka voluntaru taxes) for state governments.
I was browsing at B&N and noticed the Fahrenheit 451 is out with a 50th anniversary edition. After bitching about Moore appropriating his title, guess who's going to cash in on the buzz associated with the name these days?
Unless Bradbury was complaining about his title being associated with a particular political point of view. In that case, more power to him.
Again with the 'liberal press bias' bull. I get my news (online) from the Washington Post and the New York Times, and whenever there's been a story about Nader recently, it's always been about how the Republicans are (cynically) trying to get him on ballots, and the Democrats are (cynically) trying to deny him the opportunity. To the extent that Nader gets any press at all, that's all they talk about!
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Yeah, the so-called 'liberal' WP and NYT are just now coming out with investigations (see the NYT ombudsman, and WP's Howard Kurtz) about how their own editors burried stories questioning the administration's WMD claims, while writing blaring headlines about how Saddam was on the verge of bringing down a WMD apocalypse upon the US whenever Bush, Cheney, et al. made such a declaration.
I'd hate to see what a conservative press looks like if the NYT and WP have a liberal bias in their news stories (remember, there's a church-state firewall between news and editorials in these organizations). I'm sure they'd claim that they report and we decide
Mods, bear with me if this seems OT. A history buff friend of mine tells me that there are two main theories of historical development. One is the 'great man theory', where the course of history is determined by great (as in influential, not necessarily nice) individuals. The other is a view that history is inexorably driven by economic and social conditions that lead to inevitable outcomes (think Asimov's 'psychohistory'). Clearly, we're no where close to being able to test these theories empirically.
It strikes me that creating this model for olympic medal winners could provide an excellent 'lab expermient' to test this outstanding question in the philosophy of history. In many ways, international sports resemble international relations (rivalry, preparation, 'war', great (wo)men, winners, losers, etc.). If models can predict medal outcomes with acceptable accuracy, it could provide evidence against the 'great man theory' of history, and imply that a version of 'psychohistory' might be possible in the future!