Complaint ca. 1988 - "If you need a mouse, you're a wuss." Complaint ca. 1995 - "If you don't need a 2-button mouse, you're a wuss." Complaint ca. 1999 - "If you don't need a 3-button mouse, you're a wuss."
Like others, I have been using a 4-button mouse for years, but...
If this makes you more comfortable, try this 3 button Mac mouse from a well known PC vendor.... Yes, it's Microsoft. Yes, it's 3 buttons, and yes, before you add it to your list of must-haves, it scrolls.
And yes, you can buy a Unix-like MacOS to run on a G4 today, or you can wait for the baby version in January. Or you can download an open-source Unix-like OS for a G4 today for free.
If Unisys had used more precise language on their page (anyone remember the flap over the APSL?), then much of this could have been avoided. As it was, it seems to me they were hoping to create the impression that any website with a GIF, a PDF, or a TIFF would need to cough up to get a get-out-of-lawsuit-free card.
When I read the page, I suspected that as long as you use Photoshop or some other licensed program, you're fine, but they made none of the distinctions that Star did in his explanations. The fact is, they were trying to reach a broad audience, and should have written it to make sense to a large audience. I'm really surprised that their counsel let that imprecise a wording escape to the web, but then, that's probably why he's working for a coporation and not a law firm.
Perhaps Unisys should ask themselves if their attitudes and PR strategies as demonstrated here have more to do with their lack of good PR from license giveaways than any lack of appreciation on the part of the recipients.
In context, Navaho was used for a very short time. Expecting to use some encryption method for only a short time and not have it cracked is probably a good example against your argument, rather than for. The Japanese didn't have PentiumIIIs and Linux, so a few years was not much time to work on a crack.
Navaho had another advantage that more relates to STO--the language doesn't employ tenses, which is a very unique aspect. So histogram analysis, hard crunching of common language patterns to guess at meanings wouldn't work, PIII or no PIII. You would have had to account for such an unusual (for languages) aspect of the language's structure to make sense out of it.
...or #4: Force the monopolies at the last mile (who have ALREADY made up the cost of installation of the infrastructure with the value of their monopolies) to lease channels, etc. to other companies.
As to regulation being good for the consumer at a tiny cost, keep in mind that the first cable network went into operation in the 1950's. It's very very old technology. So why did you only get it (at the earliest) in the 1980's? Because established monopolies (broadcast networks) successfully "protected" the consumer through regulation that drove up costs and prevented licensing for a long while.
Usually when this sort of regulation goes through, you have to add the cost of NOT having the service sooner, which you would in an open market. Your parents (and theirs) should have had cable, but didn't because of regulation.
The Post Office claims it is entirely self-financing, but that excludes the value of having a monopoly on all sub-2 lb. mail--which is in effect a staggering subsidy.
So today's cable companies are benefitting from their monopoly status and claiming it's unfair to make them compete with people who didn't have a monopoly to pay for their infrastructure development. Forgive me if I fail to weep over their plight.
This is partly because genes are digital: you can't have half of Huntington's chorea, or have a blood type halfway between A and O (assuming all your cells have pretty much the same DNA).
Can the same be said for memes? [A bunch of things] have borrowed concepts from one another, and then modified the concepts that they borrowed.
Genes may be digital, but gene sequences, and hence traits, can be modified. It is these combinations that are modified and transmitted. While I agree that the meme is hardly the "building block" of ideas that popular conceptions have made it out to be, I think it is useful to look at the spread of ideas the way genetic traits spread through species.
It would be interesting to compare the game of "telephone," for instance, to random mutations in genes, especially in a medium like the internet. There are inherent limits to any such analogy--we can change our ideas over the course of one lifetime, and we can do so consciously in addition to the accumulated noise in transmission--whereas a virus can either only survive or die, and the only changes are due to natural selection and random mutation.
Of course, a memeticist would probably argue that natural selection and the conscious adoption/adaptation/rejection of ideas are equivalent, but I think that's stretching the analogy to the breaking point.
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Complaint ca. 1988 - "If you need a mouse, you're a wuss."
Complaint ca. 1995 - "If you don't need a 2-button mouse, you're a wuss."
Complaint ca. 1999 - "If you don't need a 3-button mouse, you're a wuss."
Like others, I have been using a 4-button mouse for years, but...
If this makes you more comfortable, try this 3 button Mac mouse from a well known PC vendor.... Yes, it's Microsoft. Yes, it's 3 buttons, and yes, before you add it to your list of must-haves, it scrolls.
And yes, you can buy a Unix-like MacOS to run on a G4 today, or you can wait for the baby version in January. Or you can download an open-source Unix-like OS for a G4 today for free.
And the hardware costs $1600.
Nobody in the short history of computing has flaunted inflated benchmarks as shamelessly as Apple.
Ahem, except Microsoft (NT vs. anything).
BTW, they used Intel's spec to make the 2x claim.
If Unisys had used more precise language on their page (anyone remember the flap over the APSL?), then much of this could have been avoided. As it was, it seems to me they were hoping to create the impression that any website with a GIF, a PDF, or a TIFF would need to cough up to get a get-out-of-lawsuit-free card.
When I read the page, I suspected that as long as you use Photoshop or some other licensed program, you're fine, but they made none of the distinctions that Star did in his explanations. The fact is, they were trying to reach a broad audience, and should have written it to make sense to a large audience. I'm really surprised that their counsel let that imprecise a wording escape to the web, but then, that's probably why he's working for a coporation and not a law firm.
Perhaps Unisys should ask themselves if their attitudes and PR strategies as demonstrated here have more to do with their lack of good PR from license giveaways than any lack of appreciation on the part of the recipients.
Navaho had another advantage that more relates to STO--the language doesn't employ tenses, which is a very unique aspect. So histogram analysis, hard crunching of common language patterns to guess at meanings wouldn't work, PIII or no PIII. You would have had to account for such an unusual (for languages) aspect of the language's structure to make sense out of it.
...or #4: Force the monopolies at the last mile (who have ALREADY made up the cost of installation of the infrastructure with the value of their monopolies) to lease channels, etc. to other companies.
As to regulation being good for the consumer at a tiny cost, keep in mind that the first cable network went into operation in the 1950's. It's very very old technology. So why did you only get it (at the earliest) in the 1980's? Because established monopolies (broadcast networks) successfully "protected" the consumer through regulation that drove up costs and prevented licensing for a long while.
Usually when this sort of regulation goes through, you have to add the cost of NOT having the service sooner, which you would in an open market. Your parents (and theirs) should have had cable, but didn't because of regulation.
The Post Office claims it is entirely self-financing, but that excludes the value of having a monopoly on all sub-2 lb. mail--which is in effect a staggering subsidy.
So today's cable companies are benefitting from their monopoly status and claiming it's unfair to make them compete with people who didn't have a monopoly to pay for their infrastructure development. Forgive me if I fail to weep over their plight.
Genes may be digital, but gene sequences, and hence traits, can be modified. It is these combinations that are modified and transmitted. While I agree that the meme is hardly the "building block" of ideas that popular conceptions have made it out to be, I think it is useful to look at the spread of ideas the way genetic traits spread through species.
It would be interesting to compare the game of "telephone," for instance, to random mutations in genes, especially in a medium like the internet. There are inherent limits to any such analogy--we can change our ideas over the course of one lifetime, and we can do so consciously in addition to the accumulated noise in transmission--whereas a virus can either only survive or die, and the only changes are due to natural selection and random mutation.
Of course, a memeticist would probably argue that natural selection and the conscious adoption/adaptation/rejection of ideas are equivalent, but I think that's stretching the analogy to the breaking point.