The paperless manual idea is just so much rubbish. for two reasons, firstlyit's just a marketing exercise. Your software may cost half as much as there's but if i've still got to go out and buy $50 of manuals to get it working, then it's just a coaster, not a CD full of usefull things. the other argument is what happens when the software goes wrong, how do I look in my non working manual to repair my non working computer? searchable manuals are not that graet an advantage, as long as the manual publisher puts a semi decent index in the book, I think I can cope with finding the page I want. PDF manuals are a complete and total pain, I tend to find that they are completely inadequate for any job I have to do. the only advantage that they have is that I can actually turn them into printed manuals
on the other hand if you make it that obvious, then nothing you do there could possibly be secret. and if everyone who's watching was easily dismissed at first hearing as a candidate for the local mental hospital, then it would be an ideal place to fly secret planes from
Let me put a word in from the other side. I amongst other things run a UK university's webserver. I have had to inform my boss that if we get any complaints about the content of any of the student sites then I will have to remove them. As most UK websites we just do not have the cash to fight a costly Libel battle. Our staff time would be much better spent running computers than hanging around with lawyers. You may say that were taking a cowards way out by not fighting but with the way the libel law stands it's probably not worth it.
One of the other strange things that can occur in UK libel law is that as part of the standard writing contract. The author and publisher have to agree to pay the costs of the distributors and printers in the event of libel. So what happens in effect is that the distributors and printers agree out of court to settle and just pass the bill on straight to you
If you want a good reference, try a book called Bare faced Messiah by a bloke called Russell Miller, it's one of the most amusing Autobiography's I've ever read, unfortunately it's out of print,c but with a bit of luck, given this new film, they'll reissue it.
Re:I don't think this is a film about scientology.
on
Battlefield Earth
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· Score: 1
I find it funny that he won his bet to start a believable religion. THAT makes him a good writer
errr..... and shakespear spent all his time in a casino.
If this was idea was followed then we have the problem that we would be in a massively inflationary state permanently, We can see that a significantly large part of the national economy is tied up in software licences. (if not how are Microsoft making all that money.)As this years $100 computer program turned into next years $50 program, Moores law would be hell on the economy. for every percentage of the economy that is made up of software licences you would end up with 1/2% devaluation of your economy. So if the Information industry made up 10% of your economy you'ld be talking about 5% devaluation of your economy and a masive spiraling of inflation. We would also have the problem that to preserve the currency as strong and stable the only thing that would end up happening is small scale software companies would be shut down as their efforts could damage the national economy, by rendering a piece of software obsolete. Open source developers would then be viewed as economic Terrorists.
Well how often does this happen? Twice this century? about once every 40 years, the Government has to act now to keep all the other companies in line or the companies will start to think that putting your opponents out of business by whatever means necessary is an acceptable form of behaviour. We as consumers are only really in a position to hold companies in check by two methods. firstly by stopping buying their products and secondly by leaning on our reprasentatives.
the first approach only has limited milage at the moment. The vast majority of users are unaware of alternatives to Mictosoft existing so they aren't going to change. they are not going to be given the choice to change because unless the DOJ forces them to through the courts, MS are going to act as the courts say they have been.
The other option is to sit down and work out what the difference in votes is between the two parties in each state. That is the number of votes you need on a petition that says, We the undersigned will vote for any candidate who will act to enforce consumer rights in the MS vs DOJ case. Now the individual politician may see some income from letting MS get off but if this is how he makes his money, then a Four year break in his pay is not going to look good.
There is no point in saying that voting won't solve the problem. Try open sourcing your politics, don't just accept on of the closed source parties on offer
One problem with this is that even if we do bring up new words for this debate we still have the problem that with the aid of the media our words can converted back to perjoratives again. It's Ten years to late to be fighting the hackers / crackers debate. To the outside world you just look like a person jumping up and down pointing at a car and shouting 'lion' it's in common usage and they know that lion's do not have four wheels and no matter waht you say they aren't going to believe you. at some point this idea entered the common usage and it is an enormous waste of effort to try and change it back. there are previous examples of this occurring. prior to about 1960 the word terrorism had a completely different meaning to that which it has now. Terrorism was acts that were committed by governments to oppress their own people with extreme violence. Conspiracy theorists amongst you might like to think that with the transition of meaning there is now no longer a single word for governments that have gone bad. as for You can't use the master's tools to take apart the master's house what else is the internet?
Fine, O.K. but if I find your account on my network to be full of cracking tools and virus building kit, then you'll still lose access till you explain to me why you have it on my machine. I have to balance your freedom of speech against my other users freedom of speech. and if you don't explain why you have it to a standard that I find acceptable then there is no one who can make me put you back on. Standing there and saying that I am infringing your freedom of speech will only get you laughed at.
More realistically, if your shop has an S/390 with some excess capacity, you can use it now rather than letting it sit idle. So all we need is a piratical distro with an Eject button for the mane OS. once we've got them to install it then we take over the world.
So when the bubble bursts there's going to be piles of cheap networking kit about. We just have to wait for the corporate world to go belly up. then all we need to do is lay our hands on the hardware that is no longer being used and we can build the new internet, with no ad's and a thrilling lack of spammers.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one group that can save us from this corporate hell. and that is the sharks of capitalism. at some point they are going to turn on all those tasty internet startups, and strip them of everything that isn't nailed down. So far we have seen the startup's getting one over on the financiers because they have managed to sell the idea that pure ideas have a value. however when the time comes for the financiers to rip the guts out of the company, they will find that what they have to sell is more than a little insubstantial. this may be why the bubble has not burst yet. the financiers see there being far too much chance that they will be left carrying the can for the inherant problems in internet company production. They have put vast ammounts of money in, and if one person panics, it might bring the whole system down.
So if this is true then all the software firms that have been aquired in the last twenty years have been bought illegally because there are people out there with licences to their software?
Perhaps they are just being pushed into releasing more regularly by accountants and stockbrokers. after all if you already have 90% of the OS market. the only real way to increase your cashflow is to release them more regularly. (wouldn't like Bills share value to take a tumble because the amount of cash flowing through the company decreases)
In the UK for the last thirty years or thereabouts we have had a TV based university. (the Open University.) No employer thinks that it's students have a lesser degree because they have spent time away from the confines of a traditional campus. In fact because they generally manage to hold down a full time job and manage to spend 20 hours per week on university based work they are seen as more hard working and better prepared than the average student. check them out at http://www.open.ac.uk/
Dosent 5. Nobody, including the owner of the patent should be allowed to sell their own product for less than the combined value of the patents it uses mean that open source becomes unworkable? If you can open source off the patent then individual companies could pass the opened source of competitors patents around leaving the user to compile their competitors products.the result of this would in effect be that as long as you gave away other peoples products, you could charge for your own. This plan has far to many holes for legal vultures to stick hteir claws into.
So what people are complaining about is that the federal government has too much power compared to state governments. Then they want to remove the states ability to raise any revenue through taxation (if you have no internet taxation and 25% of business has moved over to the net, then 25% of the tax income of the states has dissapeared.) The further this continues the more powerless the states become compared to the Federal government and the more people will complain about the irrelevence of the government to their everyday lives. You may think the government in general is taking too much of a bite from your pay. but you get what you pay for. If you pay no taxes, then the corporations pay for the government, and then the customer always being right they tend to get the rules that they want.
All we need to do is get some control on how data is transfered The main problem I can see in this is that other people have the right to produce and collate data about you as an individual.Why not declare your life to be a work of art. then Copyright it. O.K. so you'll have Academics using the Fair use clause and Wannabe's can live up to 10% of your life. but any more and you can sue.
I am in charge of the network at a university.We are forced into the position where we have to remove services because we just cannot get enough bandwidth for accademic purposes, let alone entertainment purposes. For this reason there are various services which to my mind are quite important, which we find ourselves in no position to offer to students. We are stuck in the middle on this problem and it's a situation we just can't win. If we dissallow the services we are censorious fascists. and if we allow these services, then it's our fault that network performance is abysmal. (that's not to mention members of staff downloading several, hundred megabyte files, at times of peak load and wondering why the service falls apart.)
Slashdot Mirror
For something incredibly poorly written, it's done a lot of damage.
The paperless manual idea is just so much rubbish. for two reasons, firstlyit's just a marketing exercise. Your software may cost half as much as there's but if i've still got to go out and buy $50 of manuals to get it working, then it's just a coaster, not a CD full of usefull things.
the other argument is what happens when the software goes wrong, how do I look in my non working manual to repair my non working computer? searchable manuals are not that graet an advantage, as long as the manual publisher puts a semi decent index in the book, I think I can cope with finding the page I want. PDF manuals are a complete and total pain, I tend to find that they are completely inadequate for any job I have to do. the only advantage that they have is that I can actually turn them into printed manuals
on the other hand if you make it that obvious, then nothing you do there could possibly be secret. and if everyone who's watching was easily dismissed at first hearing as a candidate for the local mental hospital, then it would be an ideal place to fly secret planes from
Let me put a word in from the other side. I amongst other things run a UK university's webserver. I have had to inform my boss that if we get any complaints about the content of any of the student sites then I will have to remove them. As most UK websites we just do not have the cash to fight a costly Libel battle. Our staff time would be much better spent running computers than hanging around with lawyers.
You may say that were taking a cowards way out by not fighting but with the way the libel law stands it's probably not worth it.
One of the other strange things that can occur in UK libel law is that as part of the standard writing contract. The author and publisher have to agree to pay the costs of the distributors and printers in the event of libel. So what happens in effect is that the distributors and printers agree out of court to settle and just pass the bill on straight to you
If you want a good reference, try a book called Bare faced Messiah by a bloke called Russell Miller, it's one of the most amusing Autobiography's I've ever read, unfortunately it's out of print,c but with a bit of luck, given this new film, they'll reissue it.
I find it funny that he won his bet to start a believable religion. THAT makes him a good writer
errr..... and shakespear spent all his time in a casino.
If this was idea was followed then we have the problem that we would be in a massively inflationary state permanently, We can see that a significantly large part of the national economy is tied up in software licences. (if not how are Microsoft making all that money.)As this years $100 computer program turned into next years $50 program, Moores law would be hell on the economy. for every percentage of the economy that is made up of software licences you would end up with 1/2% devaluation of your economy. So if the Information industry made up 10% of your economy you'ld be talking about 5% devaluation of your economy and a masive spiraling of inflation.
We would also have the problem that to preserve the currency as strong and stable the only thing that would end up happening is small scale software companies would be shut down as their efforts could damage the national economy, by rendering a piece of software obsolete. Open source developers would then be viewed as economic Terrorists.
Well how often does this happen?
Twice this century?
about once every 40 years, the Government has to act now to keep all the other companies in line or the companies will start to think that putting your opponents out of business by whatever means necessary is an acceptable form of behaviour. We as consumers are only really in a position to hold companies in check by two methods. firstly by stopping buying their products and secondly by leaning on our reprasentatives.
the first approach only has limited milage at the moment. The vast majority of users are unaware of alternatives to Mictosoft existing so they aren't going to change. they are not going to be given the choice to change because unless the DOJ forces them to through the courts, MS are going to act as the courts say they have been.
The other option is to sit down and work out what the difference in votes is between the two parties in each state. That is the number of votes you need on a petition that says, We the undersigned will vote for any candidate who will act to enforce consumer rights in the MS vs DOJ case. Now the individual politician may see some income from letting MS get off but if this is how he makes his money, then a Four year break in his pay is not going to look good.
There is no point in saying that voting won't solve the problem.
Try open sourcing your politics, don't just accept on of the closed source parties on offer
One problem with this is that even if we do bring up new words for this debate we still have the problem that with the aid of the media our words can converted back to perjoratives again. It's Ten years to late to be fighting the hackers / crackers debate. To the outside world you just look like a person jumping up and down pointing at a car and shouting 'lion' it's in common usage and they know that lion's do not have four wheels and no matter waht you say they aren't going to believe you.
at some point this idea entered the common usage and it is an enormous waste of effort to try and change it back.
there are previous examples of this occurring. prior to about 1960 the word terrorism had a completely different meaning to that which it has now. Terrorism was acts that were committed by governments to oppress their own people with extreme violence. Conspiracy theorists amongst you might like to think that with the transition of meaning there is now no longer a single word for governments that have gone bad.
as for You can't use the master's tools to take apart the master's house what else is the internet?
The thing I just can't handle is the fog, the horse drawn taxi's and the chimney sweeps.
Fine, O.K. but if I find your account on my network to be full of cracking tools and virus building kit, then you'll still lose access till you explain to me why you have it on my machine.
I have to balance your freedom of speech against my other users freedom of speech. and if you don't explain why you have it to a standard that I find acceptable then there is no one who can make me put you back on.
Standing there and saying that I am infringing your freedom of speech will only get you laughed at.
More realistically, if your shop has an S/390 with some excess capacity, you can use it now rather than letting it sit idle.
So all we need is a piratical distro with an Eject button for the mane OS. once we've got them to install it then we take over the world.
So when the bubble bursts there's going to be piles of cheap networking kit about. We just have to wait for the corporate world to go belly up. then all we need to do is lay our hands on the hardware that is no longer being used and we can build the new internet, with no ad's and a thrilling lack of spammers.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one group that can save us from this corporate hell. and that is the sharks of capitalism. at some point they are going to turn on all those tasty internet startups, and strip them of everything that isn't nailed down. So far we have seen the startup's getting one over on the financiers because they have managed to sell the idea that pure ideas have a value. however when the time comes for the financiers to rip the guts out of the company, they will find that what they have to sell is more than a little insubstantial. this may be why the bubble has not burst yet. the financiers see there being far too much chance that they will be left carrying the can for the inherant problems in internet company production. They have put vast ammounts of money in, and if one person panics, it might bring the whole system down.
Bring on the Crimson Permanent Assurance
So if this is true then all the software firms that have been aquired in the last twenty years have been bought illegally because there are people out there with licences to their software?
I think not.
probably not, for the same reason that region encoding dosen't count as restraint of trade (quite how that isn't restraint of trade I have no idea)
Perhaps they are just being pushed into releasing more regularly by accountants and stockbrokers. after all if you already have 90% of the OS market. the only real way to increase your cashflow is to release them more regularly. (wouldn't like Bills share value to take a tumble because the amount of cash flowing through the company decreases)
how about bothering to get patents in other countries.
In the UK for the last thirty years or thereabouts we have had a TV based university. (the Open University.) No employer thinks that it's students have a lesser degree because they have spent time away from the confines of a traditional campus. In fact because they generally manage to hold down a full time job and manage to spend 20 hours per week on university based work they are seen as more hard working and better prepared than the average student.
check them out at http://www.open.ac.uk/
I've seen figures that suggest a 20% increase in payload weight on the same size rockets.
Dosent 5. Nobody, including the owner of the patent should be allowed to sell their own product for less than the combined value of the patents it uses mean that open source becomes unworkable?
If you can open source off the patent then individual companies could pass the opened source of competitors patents around leaving the user to compile their competitors products.the result of this would in effect be that as long as you gave away other peoples products, you could charge for your own. This plan has far to many holes for legal vultures to stick hteir claws into.
So what people are complaining about is that the federal government has too much power compared to state governments. Then they want to remove the states ability to raise any revenue through taxation (if you have no internet taxation and 25% of business has moved over to the net, then 25% of the tax income of the states has dissapeared.) The further this continues the more powerless the states become compared to the Federal government and the more people will complain about the irrelevence of the government to their everyday lives.
You may think the government in general is taking too much of a bite from your pay. but you get what you pay for. If you pay no taxes, then the corporations pay for the government, and then the customer always being right they tend to get the rules that they want.
All we need to do is get some control on how data is transfered
The main problem I can see in this is that other people have the right to produce and collate data about you as an individual.Why not declare your life to be a work of art. then Copyright it. O.K. so you'll have Academics using the Fair use clause and Wannabe's can live up to 10% of your life. but any more and you can sue.
I am in charge of the network at a university.We are forced into the position where we have to remove services because we just cannot get enough bandwidth for accademic purposes, let alone entertainment purposes.
For this reason there are various services which to my mind are quite important, which we find ourselves in no position to offer to students.
We are stuck in the middle on this problem and it's a situation we just can't win. If we dissallow the services we are censorious fascists. and if we allow these services, then it's our fault that network performance is abysmal. (that's not to mention members of staff downloading several, hundred megabyte files, at times of peak load and wondering why the service falls apart.)
Best song about Masturbation ever..
First AC i've seen who's admitted he's a Wanker.