And nobody grows powerful by using their existing wealth to create an envirinment that is free-er.
There are many, many examples, from politics to the free software movement, that dispute this.
Richard Stallman has used his wealth (in terms of programming time, energy) to create software that is free-er, and is much more powerful than he would have been had he not done it.
Nelson Mandella campaigned and spend years in jail to free South Africa from Apartheid and he grew powerful.
Likewise, Linus would probably have been an anonymous programmer in Finland if he had decided to keep his operating system proprietary.
Power comes from many things in society. Not all of them have to do with money. Sometimes giving things away or doing the right thing makes you powerful.
This sounds like a great tactic for the open source community to adopt. It should patent some key things so that they can defend themselves from closed source competitors.
For the purposes of copyright law, the nub of the definitions, and the heart of any parodist's claim to quote from existing material, is the use of some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author's works. . . . If, on the contrary, the commentary has no critical bearing on the substance or style of the original composition, which the alleged infringer merely uses to get attention or to avoid the drudgery in working up something fresh, the claim to fairness in borrowing from another's work diminishes accordingly (if it does not vanish), and other factors, like the extent of its commerciality, loom larger.
I think that JibJab's work, while also satirizing the candidates, also comments on "This Land is Your Land".
Publishers will resist, but eventually ebooks will take over.
Things like encyclopedias are already doomed. There is simply no way for paper reference material to keep up. The advantages of having digital medium in terms of convience, availablility (never have a book go out of print), and cost make ebooks an inevitability. It is just a question of critical mass for consumer acceptance.
The problem is that ebooks will eventually drive publishers out of business. At first, publishers will have to worry about ebooks promoting piracy, and eliminating premiums. Piracy is pretty easy. Selling music as CD's instead of records eventually made it easier for people to pirate the music. Books are pirated now, but it is difficult to scan in pages. DRM is going to have to be very good before publishers trust this medium.
Also, ebooks eliminate some ways for publishers to make extra profits. They will no longer be able to charge for an expensive hard cover binding (which is really not that expensive for them). Perhaps ebooks get around this by having special editions with extra content, such as the author reading a chapter, notes, commentary, etc, just like DVD's.
Looking into the future, there is a question of whether we need book publishers at all. Perhaps we will still need book promoters, and book editors, but publishing will become obsolete. A huge fear of book publishers has got to be having self publishers on a level playing field with them. Look for publishers to use DRM and other tricks to keep the small guy out.
Ebooks will eventually take over. And it will be a struggle on many fronts.
This is already done for NASCAR drivers. PitCommand uses differential GPS to track all 43 NASCAR Nextel Cup drivers every race. It also uses sensors to monitor throttle, break, and RPM.
Although it is a pay service, you can see a demo here (recent version of the Java plugin required).
Tracking race cars is more difficult than tracking bicycles due to speed. Tracking things at high speed is more difficult, because it is difficult to keep four satellites acquired. Also, race tracks have banking and grandstands, which obscures GPS signals.
SCO says the ELF format was improperly released by the TISC.
But SCO was on the TISC. And so was Novell. And the TISC released ELF before assets were sold.
Plus, any format endorsed by the TISC is property of that committee. And anyone who joins the committee and donates standards must grant the TISC rights.
Finally, the ELF format is an interchange format, and not copywritable.
Hollywood, the RIAA and others would like to charge you every time you use their content. They would like to charge you for every format of their content.
The NFL wants to restrict their content. Make you buy expensive satellite service or go to their games live if they haven't sold enough tickets.
As painful as it sounds, the only way to escape the trap is to stop consuming their content.
I generally agree with the principle that simple things should be easy to do. When you take your keys out of your car, your headlights should go off. That is what 99.9% of the users intend. It should be harder (require a special button or something) to make them go on if the keys are removed.
Mr. Sowell, however, seems pretty reactionary about software change.
He is upset that his scrabble vendor released their game on CD. He would rather have it on floppy disks, which are more expensive to produce. And, some machines now don't have floppy disks. This complait has no merit.
He is upset, that the scrabble game he has plays music. Probably because his old game didn't. What he doesn't consider is that most users of this product probably want the music. Products should ship exactly like this. Turn on all the options that the majority of the users want. Make those in the minority use the preferences.
Software is going to change, and make more use of increased hardware capabilities. There is no stopping that. Although there is some truth here, there is a lot of pointless ranting.
The two operating systems are very similar from a kernel perspective, because as engineers work on problems they look around to see what's working elsewhere. So you end up with a lot of similarities,
What this sounds like is that the Windows team is stealing ideas from Linux.
The main problem with liveness detection methods based on extra hardware, is
that the scanners have to be adjusted to operate e±ciently in different kinds of
environments, leading to problems when using a wafer-thin artifcial fingerprint
glued on to a live finger.
And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin fingerprint. Oh sir...it's only wafer thin.
This professor is going to get a subpoena from the RIAA soon.
"You have unauthorized mp3's available your server. We are suing you for $5,000,000,000."
Although this cloak and dagger stuff is interesting and will be reported widely, the real problem still remains. People are going to pirate movies. No matter what technologies are used to avoid this, people are going to come up with new ways of defeating it.
The reason people pirate movies is probably similar to the reason people pirate compact disks. They want the product in a more convient format, or they want the product at a lower price.
Long term, here are some suggestions to movie studios to avoid piracy. Most of these require the studios to look past the short term bottom line, and try to serve their customers.
1. Release the movie simultaniously world wide. By releasing movies on different days in different parts of the world, movie studios create demand for piracy. It is understandable that a languague translation might take extra time, but there should be no other delays in movie releases.
2. Get rid of region coded DVD's. These are simply pissing off legitimate users of your product. If you want to reduce piracy, make your product available as conviently as posslble.
3. Release the DVD the day the movie is released in the theater. Doesn't have to have all the special features. That way people who can't get to the theater get the product they want.
4. Stream movies over the internet. If the consumer wants to watch movies on the internet, give them a way of doing it legally.
5. Lower prices for movies. If studios want to capture the low end of the market, they need to lower movie prices. Video games can have play times of upwards of 120 hours, yet cost $40. If an average video game lasts only 60 hours, that is still only 66 cents per hour of entertainment. Movies last two hours, yet cost $8. That is four dollars per hour of entertainment. They can make up any lost revenue through merchandising, product placement, enhanced DVD's, etc.
The big problem with almost all of these suggestions is that the cut into revenue sources, such as pay-per-view, TV premieres, etc.
In the long run, customers will demand more convience, just as they are doing with recorded music. The studios will have no choice.
IBM kicked off it's "The Future Is Open" advertising campaign in September of 2004 (as noted here).
One of the key points about this campaign was that it was targeted much more at the masses, trying to explain with metaphor why Linux is so powerful.
Considering that this was a 90 second ad, and that it was run during NFL games, the tab on just this campaign alone could be more than the IBM SCO legal fees.
Sure, this has cost them lots of $$, but they are going to emerge the champions of tech geeks the world over.
It cost them lots of $$? They are getting publicity that money can't buy. Geeks are cheering for IBM. I don't think it is any coincidence that IBM started their Linux advertising bliz after the suit was filed. They are spending millions on those commercials.
You don't seem to understand what patents are. Patents are a limited monopoly granted in exchange for contributing knowledge into the public domain. There most definately is the idea of society when you talk about patents.
In this case, the knowledge Microsoft has contributed is trivial. A completely straight forward way to solve the problem. The problem is, you can't build a system interoperable with theirs without using this knowledge. And their system is a standard. This is similar to patenting a file format, and then suing your competitor when they make a filter to read it.
This is about using patents to do what they weren't ment to do. This isn't about preventing your competition from stealing your idea, this is about preventing your competitions product from working with your product.
Slashdot Mirror
And nobody grows powerful by using their existing wealth to create an envirinment that is free-er.
There are many, many examples, from politics to the free software movement, that dispute this.
Richard Stallman has used his wealth (in terms of programming time, energy) to create software that is free-er, and is much more powerful than he would have been had he not done it.
Nelson Mandella campaigned and spend years in jail to free South Africa from Apartheid and he grew powerful.
Likewise, Linus would probably have been an anonymous programmer in Finland if he had decided to keep his operating system proprietary.
Power comes from many things in society. Not all of them have to do with money. Sometimes giving things away or doing the right thing makes you powerful.
With so many chips so close together, they are certainly going to have heat problems.
Interesting technology, thought.
This sounds like a great tactic for the open source community to adopt. It should patent some key things so that they can defend themselves from closed source competitors.
Quoting from the case, the Supreme Court said:
For the purposes of copyright law, the nub of the definitions, and the heart of any parodist's claim to quote from existing material, is the use of some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on that author's works. . . . If, on the contrary, the commentary has no critical bearing on the substance or style of the original composition, which the alleged infringer merely uses to get attention or to avoid the drudgery in working up something fresh, the claim to fairness in borrowing from another's work diminishes accordingly (if it does not vanish), and other factors, like the extent of its commerciality, loom larger.
I think that JibJab's work, while also satirizing the candidates, also comments on "This Land is Your Land".
Publishers will resist, but eventually ebooks will take over.
Things like encyclopedias are already doomed. There is simply no way for paper reference material to keep up. The advantages of having digital medium in terms of convience, availablility (never have a book go out of print), and cost make ebooks an inevitability. It is just a question of critical mass for consumer acceptance.
The problem is that ebooks will eventually drive publishers out of business. At first, publishers will have to worry about ebooks promoting piracy, and eliminating premiums. Piracy is pretty easy. Selling music as CD's instead of records eventually made it easier for people to pirate the music. Books are pirated now, but it is difficult to scan in pages. DRM is going to have to be very good before publishers trust this medium.
Also, ebooks eliminate some ways for publishers to make extra profits. They will no longer be able to charge for an expensive hard cover binding (which is really not that expensive for them). Perhaps ebooks get around this by having special editions with extra content, such as the author reading a chapter, notes, commentary, etc, just like DVD's.
Looking into the future, there is a question of whether we need book publishers at all. Perhaps we will still need book promoters, and book editors, but publishing will become obsolete. A huge fear of book publishers has got to be having self publishers on a level playing field with them. Look for publishers to use DRM and other tricks to keep the small guy out.
Ebooks will eventually take over. And it will be a struggle on many fronts.
This is already done for NASCAR drivers. PitCommand uses differential GPS to track all 43 NASCAR Nextel Cup drivers every race. It also uses sensors to monitor throttle, break, and RPM.
Although it is a pay service, you can see a demo here (recent version of the Java plugin required).
Tracking race cars is more difficult than tracking bicycles due to speed. Tracking things at high speed is more difficult, because it is difficult to keep four satellites acquired. Also, race tracks have banking and grandstands, which obscures GPS signals.
SCO says the ELF format was improperly released by the TISC.
But SCO was on the TISC. And so was Novell. And the TISC released ELF before assets were sold.
Plus, any format endorsed by the TISC is property of that committee. And anyone who joins the committee and donates standards must grant the TISC rights.
Finally, the ELF format is an interchange format, and not copywritable.
Hollywood, the RIAA and others would like to charge you every time you use their content. They would like to charge you for every format of their content.
The NFL wants to restrict their content. Make you buy expensive satellite service or go to their games live if they haven't sold enough tickets.
As painful as it sounds, the only way to escape the trap is to stop consuming their content.
I generally agree with the principle that simple things should be easy to do. When you take your keys out of your car, your headlights should go off. That is what 99.9% of the users intend. It should be harder (require a special button or something) to make them go on if the keys are removed.
Mr. Sowell, however, seems pretty reactionary about software change.
He is upset that his scrabble vendor released their game on CD. He would rather have it on floppy disks, which are more expensive to produce. And, some machines now don't have floppy disks. This complait has no merit.
He is upset, that the scrabble game he has plays music. Probably because his old game didn't. What he doesn't consider is that most users of this product probably want the music. Products should ship exactly like this. Turn on all the options that the majority of the users want. Make those in the minority use the preferences.
Software is going to change, and make more use of increased hardware capabilities. There is no stopping that. Although there is some truth here, there is a lot of pointless ranting.
Alan Kay says...
"The chances that in the last week or year or month you've used the computer to simulate some interesting idea is zero--but that's what it's for."
I disagree. Many business users use spreadsheets to "what-if". Perhaps he has a different idea of "interesting".
The two operating systems are very similar from a kernel perspective, because as engineers work on problems they look around to see what's working elsewhere. So you end up with a lot of similarities,
What this sounds like is that the Windows team is stealing ideas from Linux.
Try to model anything moderately complex with XML, where things have many to many relationships with each-other. Nesting becomes impossible.
From the thesus...
The main problem with liveness detection methods based on extra hardware, is that the scanners have to be adjusted to operate e±ciently in different kinds of environments, leading to problems when using a wafer-thin artifcial fingerprint glued on to a live finger.
And finally, monsieur, a wafer-thin fingerprint. Oh sir...it's only wafer thin.
Do artists have a viable choice?
This professor is going to get a subpoena from the RIAA soon. "You have unauthorized mp3's available your server. We are suing you for $5,000,000,000."
Although this cloak and dagger stuff is interesting and will be reported widely, the real problem still remains. People are going to pirate movies. No matter what technologies are used to avoid this, people are going to come up with new ways of defeating it.
The reason people pirate movies is probably similar to the reason people pirate compact disks. They want the product in a more convient format, or they want the product at a lower price.
Long term, here are some suggestions to movie studios to avoid piracy. Most of these require the studios to look past the short term bottom line, and try to serve their customers.
1. Release the movie simultaniously world wide. By releasing movies on different days in different parts of the world, movie studios create demand for piracy. It is understandable that a languague translation might take extra time, but there should be no other delays in movie releases.
2. Get rid of region coded DVD's. These are simply pissing off legitimate users of your product. If you want to reduce piracy, make your product available as conviently as posslble.
3. Release the DVD the day the movie is released in the theater. Doesn't have to have all the special features. That way people who can't get to the theater get the product they want.
4. Stream movies over the internet. If the consumer wants to watch movies on the internet, give them a way of doing it legally.
5. Lower prices for movies. If studios want to capture the low end of the market, they need to lower movie prices. Video games can have play times of upwards of 120 hours, yet cost $40. If an average video game lasts only 60 hours, that is still only 66 cents per hour of entertainment. Movies last two hours, yet cost $8. That is four dollars per hour of entertainment. They can make up any lost revenue through merchandising, product placement, enhanced DVD's, etc.
The big problem with almost all of these suggestions is that the cut into revenue sources, such as pay-per-view, TV premieres, etc.
In the long run, customers will demand more convience, just as they are doing with recorded music. The studios will have no choice.
For a virtual crime, the right punishment probably should be virtual death. Lifetime ban on using computers.
That might make a hacker think twice.
Oil gives more bang for the buck then any other fuel source
This is not true. Coal is the least expensive fossil fuel on energy-per-Btu basis
However, oil has a higher btu to weight ratio (see here), and comes naturally as a liquid, which makes it easier to transport.
IBM kicked off it's "The Future Is Open" advertising campaign in September of 2004 (as noted here).
One of the key points about this campaign was that it was targeted much more at the masses, trying to explain with metaphor why Linux is so powerful.
Considering that this was a 90 second ad, and that it was run during NFL games, the tab on just this campaign alone could be more than the IBM SCO legal fees.
Sure, this has cost them lots of $$, but they are going to emerge the champions of tech geeks the world over.
It cost them lots of $$? They are getting publicity that money can't buy. Geeks are cheering for IBM. I don't think it is any coincidence that IBM started their Linux advertising bliz after the suit was filed. They are spending millions on those commercials.
Unfortunately, they might start trying to use other technologies such as flash or java for their pop-up spam.
If the people who are working on this actually cared about offending people, they wouldn't be working in marketing.
That's called communism.
You don't seem to understand what patents are. Patents are a limited monopoly granted in exchange for contributing knowledge into the public domain. There most definately is the idea of society when you talk about patents.
In this case, the knowledge Microsoft has contributed is trivial. A completely straight forward way to solve the problem. The problem is, you can't build a system interoperable with theirs without using this knowledge. And their system is a standard. This is similar to patenting a file format, and then suing your competitor when they make a filter to read it.
This is about using patents to do what they weren't ment to do. This isn't about preventing your competition from stealing your idea, this is about preventing your competitions product from working with your product.
Repeat after me...secrets are not security.
Lazy programmers and closed source shops use methods like this to say the are secure when they are not.
This can be detected and defeated by packet sniffing. So ISP's would be able to find them pretty easily.
This is a baseless complaint, one that any ethical lawyer would not file. Are there any avenues to pursue with the state bar of the lawyers state?
How many roads do you have in where you live that has perfect bumps in it?
Also, steering with this would be impossible. Basically, this goes in a straight line only.
And, this is good food for thought. Perhaps this priciple can be applied to other things.