It doesn't matter - it's not like you couldn't just put Slackware or *BSD on it, right? The main thing is, the Chinese have a home-grown processor that's good enough to run anything they might want to run. Good for them! And, good for us, too -- it'll give us an alternative to all the DRM crapola the MPAA/RIAA is trying to push. Let's see Wintel try and sell Palladium when you can get a cheap Dragon chip at any self-respecting computer show! Most of the vendors I've seen at the shows in my town are either Chinese or Taiwanese. They've got great stuff, too, gadgets galore. They're SURE to start selling this. I bet they all have it by the end of the year, summer 2004 at the latest.
My favorite kids in the hall sketch is the one with all the businessmen in the conference room, where the little guy yells, "Bring on the whores!" only to be embarassed and scolded by the older guy. Later on in the show, the meeting wraps up and THEN, the older guy yells, "NOW bring on the whores!" Now, THAT was hilarious.
That's not what I meant. Canada's government puts a lot of effort into social programs that most capitalists would consider forms of welfare. These programs are fairly socialist. I mean that as a compliment.
Healthcare, childcare, care for the needy all treated as national priorities. Jobs programs and abolition of all foreign outsourcing and work visas (if you don't have a green card or citizenship, you don't work for a company headquartered here, period). Perhaps use the Switzerland model: tax all noncitizens at 100% for all work done in-country (I love those crazy Swiss!). Unionization across the board for all positions.
A firm, solid, religiously-held commitment to the bill of rights. Respect of real property rights (less "eminent domain" seizures of property). Decriminalization of minor offenses (slow down the prison industry). Eliminate civil forfeiture. Emphasize small businesses instead of large corporations. Reduce emphasis on consumer culture and increase emphasis on personal growth, the arts, technical creativity. Abolition of advertising-driven television (it sucks ass, anyway). Abolition of bans on using home computers as servers when connecting via cable.
In general, a capitalist society in which the capitalism has been reigned in by a largely socialist government, and the needs of the many far outweighing the needs of the wealthy few.
I don't think I'll live to see it, but it's fun to dream.;)
Your argument, "it isn't in use because it isn't practical -- if it was practical, our greedy capitalist rich class would have already implemented it" is specious and extremely naiive.
The reason it hasn't been implemented yet is simple. The companies who have buried the technology are making far too much money on gasoline power to ever change until forced to.
Well, I agree with you on most of these points, but you can use hydrogen with existing rotary motors (they handle the higher heat better than piston engines do) and fuel injection. Hydrogen, then, is just another alternative fuel for internal combustion, fairly interchangeable with natural gas, LP gas, and propane, when you think about it. The difference is in the byproducts. Hydrogen produces steam and not much else. As far as the difficulties in storing it without leakage, you can line your tanks with a thick glass layer, or you can do what Mazda did, which was bind the hydrogen up in a sort of metal matrix, releasing small amounts at a time with an electrical process (that's what the article said, anyway).
But, this speaks to my point: biofuels is just another technology which was never pursued. And, probably won't BE pursued. If you burn corn alcohol in an existing engine type, you're not going to be buying all that expensive fuel-cell gear, or buying a disposable, throwaway car that's 100% electrical. The car companies won't profit as much. Have you no heart? (sarcasm, of course).
This is what I'm talking about. It's about money, not about what is most sensible.
And, as far as generating the hydrogen, well, let me ask you this: we've known how to generate power using wind, waves, geothermal sources, and hydroelectric for decades. Why aren't they in wide use already? Could it be that the oil and coal industries don't want to be replaced, and have enough money to buy politicians? Perhaps? If we were using clean power, we could generate all the hydrogen we wanted. But, we're not, and we don't. And, the reasons for this are exactly the same as the reasons why we're still driving gasoline-powered cars.
Well, "least efficient" is one thing. But, how many electric motors or power cells do you know of that can release as much energy as internal combustion? The inefficiency doesn't matter, when you're releasing that much heat energy. I'm talking power, here, not necessarily efficiency. Anyway, the only byproduct is steam anyway, so it's not like it's a bad thing.;)
745H? That's cool. Actually, Mazda came up with a rotary-engine SUV-kinda thing back in the nineties that could burn hydrogen as fuel. It had a fuel tank that bound the hydrogen in some kind of metallic matrix, so it wasn't as explosive, and Popular Mechanics had a picture of it on the cover. Then, Mazda got bought by Ford and I never heard anything about the hydrogen powered car again. It's nice that at least some car companies are still working on the idea...
I always wondered, why the hell are they futzing around with fuel cells when all they have to do is build the same kind of combustion engines they've been building for a hundred years? You get a lot more power out of combustion than you do from a fuel cell...
Steel is mostly made from carbon and iron, with a few other metals included to form different alloys, like chrome steel. The reason steel is hard is that the forging process hardens it. This forging process requires a FORGE. And, a large part of the process is physical, and requires a large amount of force, thus large, powerful machinery.
Basic physics.
What you *could* create is a hard, nonmetallic, strong material made out of a plastic or a carbon compound. But you're limited to what can be created with a chemical process. This isn't necessarily THAT limiting, but... It is at least slightly limiting.;)
What you are concerned about was "totalitarianism", i.e. the philosophy that the state was all, and all citizens were subservient to it, existing only for the state. This is a separate concept from communism and socialism. The USSR, the Fascists under Mussolini, and the Nazis, were all good examples of totalitarian governments. "1984" was written as a warning against totalitarian policies.
Communism is a little different. It suggests that the means of production should be shared equally by all, and the fruits of the labor be equally divided as well. Communism as suggested by Marx was not evil at all. Modern-day china seems to be making a pretty good go of the idea; I think that aside from being a little overzealous in censorship (and their organ donor program, ha ha), they're doing fairly well.
Socialism (different yet again) suggests that a society's first duty is to its citizens, and that the purpose of government is to take care of the people (rather than, for instance, ensure the welfare of corporations, or wage ridiculous wars to help the oil industry). Canada, the most innocuous nation in the history of nations, is mostly socialist. Do you consider the canucks evil? Aside from the Kids in the Hall, I mean.
This technology is going to be bought out and buried, just like hydrogen combustion engines in the mid-nineties. Big Business will never let this go through, ever. Watch and see: they'll wait until it's perfected before they buy it out, and they'll keep it in their own internal design studios forever after.
This is an enabling technology, which permits ordinary people to create their own design, fabrication, and manufacturing shops -- it reduces the barrier to entry so that anyone can play in the product design game. We've already seen from the open source movement what motivated individuals can do without corporate support. Corporations, with their long product cycles, their relatively low rate of innovation, and their habit of producing products that are "just good enough", would get STOMPED in the market if everyone could start selling their own designs. Also, product designers and engineers wouldn't desire corporate jobs anymore -- they'd strike out on their own, and the corps would have a hell of a time finding talent, even in the third world (in our wired world, *anyone* would be able to start fielding their designs via the internet, so why would a cash-poor engineer in, say, Southeast Asia work for a corp?). These facts are not lost on manufacturing companies, ok?
I think that one of two things are going to happen.
Possibility number 1: the technology and all patents related to it are bought outright by a group of manufacturers, who limit it strictly to their own internal R+D offices. Of course, patents only last 17 years, right? So one would think that eventually, the tech would get out. Perhaps... Unless they manage to legislate increased patent protection, using this specific issue as a wedge ("Senator, this will destroy the whole economy! We have to do something, blah blah"). Result: the public doesn't get their hands on this for decades, if at all, and big business wins.
2. A group of manufacturers act in collusion, purchasing the company that owns the patents, and they drive the price up so high that only industrial design firms can use the device. They use the patents to prevent cheap models from being made, and have the whole thing declared a trade secret to increase their protection beyond that offered by patents. Result: the device is never offered to the public, big business wins.
What personal attacks? I told you how I felt about your FUD (which I still think is reaching, by the way). I thought I was very polite about it. I certainly didn't attack you.
And, you are FUDding. It doesn't matter what offhand comments Sontag might have made to the press. He's just doing his best to confuse the issue and put pressure on companies. Of course he claimed he felt all modern operating systems were derivatives of his. He wants to scare people away from switching to other O/Ses to spite him. Look at it from a soulless business drone's point of view: it's not against the law to lie to the media, it's not against the law to talk nonsense, it's not against the law to totally confuse an issue and say wildly inaccurate things, so why not go for the gusto? Claim that everyone+dog is infringing! There's no downside to it from his point of view. What's the worst that could happen? Everyone already hates him.
It doesn't mean his legal team is going to actually make an ass out of themselves and go to court over something they have zero chance of winning.
And, think: they might fully realize that they're going to lose the Linux case. But it's not coming to court until 2005, and it'll drag on until 2008. So, their best option is to say as many wild, crazy things as possible so that their more gullible targets will fork over the dough "to be safe". They can milk this thing until the judge throws it out, so why not? Again, he's going for the gusto. It doesn't mean *anyone*, even linux users, are actually at risk.
THIS is what I mean when I say you should relax, and just watch the circus unfold. Think of it as a big, stupid soap opera that's not connected to reality and you'll find it much more enjoyable.
My parents have a satellite provider, and I once stupidly told them that if they have any trouble and they can't reach me, they should call tech support. What a mistake... My mother was on hold forever, and when she finally got someone and told them her email wasn't working right, they walked her through installing Outlook Express, obviously following a script. They treated her like a hippie freak because she was using Mozilla -- they were HORRIFIED at it. Amazed, even.
I told her, "Don't touch anything, I'll be down friday night and I'll fix everything". So I drove down to help her out.
All I had to do was tell Mozilla to accept automatic proxy configuration, and her email came right back. That's all it was; a proxy issue.
Here's a tip, by the way: you can't delete Outlook Express once it's installed, and depending on your service pack, it might not even appear in your "add/remove programs" interface (assuming Windows). If you can't just uninstall it, and you try to delete the directory, Windows puts it right back three seconds later. I found this kind of astounding, so I deleted the files in the directory, then changed the permissions on the directory so that no one - not even administrator - had write access to it. That fixed OE's wagon once and for all. Note: if you do this, make sure you undo it before you load a service pack, or the service pack install will choke. Then, kill OE off again after the service pack loads. Alternatively, you can change the permissions, boot from floppy, and kill off the files in the directory that way. Leave the directory in place, though, so it doesn't get put back!
It's kinda fun to do it the hard way, though. You've got three seconds to kill OE before it resurrects itself. That's some fast mousing action!;)
You are missing a pretty big difference between linux and BSD.
With Linux, there is actually a chance (however small) that some infringing code found its way in. I don't believe this is true, but the fact that it hasn't been established yet one way or the other means that SCO has an opening. Whenever there's an opening of this sort, no matter how flaky, you can sue and it won't be settled until a court sees it. If the opening is big enough that the judge doesn't dismiss the case out of hand, you have to trust a jury to make a sensible decision. So, when it comes to Linux, SCO feels it has a chance.
With BSD, the whole question of infringement has already been tested in the courts -- and AT+T (who is much, much more powerful and wealthy than SCO) was humiliated, and forced to settle. So, there isn't any real question over whether the code is infringing -- there is no real opening. Even if something like this were to come to court, it would probably just be thrown out right away anyway. And, SCO is aware of this, otherwise they'd already be suing the BSD's.
Linux types always say that the BSDs are in equal danger, because they want to scare BSD users into joining with them in a united front. They think that merely wanting to help our Linux cousins won't be enough -- they think we need to be frightened into it. So, they spread as much FUD as SCO, and end up looking foolish.
It isn't necessary. Most people who use BSD would back you up on moral grounds alone if you were a gentleman about it. Trying to scare us with poorly-thought-out FUD alienates us and leaves us thinking that you can go to hell -- that you can fight your own battles. Not exactly what you had in mind, I suspect.
Ok, leaving aside your paraphrase, let's consider this in more depth.
SCO is going after BUSINESS customers of Linux distributors. They have claimed that they have no intention of pursuing home users (and, anyway, there are so many it would be a useless gesture). Maybe their pockets aren't deep enough. Regardless, that's what SCO is really about: soaking big business with a bunch of FUD about Linux, and trying to cash in. So don't turn this into "they're coming for you next, BSD-boy" because that's not the case, ok? There is ZERO likelihood that SCO is going to pursue random programmers using Linux in their basement dens, ok? Let's be rational. Don't add your FUD to theirs.
Moving right along, one misstep by Sontag shooting off his mouth about BSD does not a case against BSD make. BSD is unencumbered. Numerous experts who have been involved with Unix and BSD since the seventies have already weighed in on this. I trust their opinions far more than I trust your FUD (or Sontag's). Ok? So, quit trying to say that us FreeBSD guys are going to have to suffer along with you Linux guys.
Linux is NOT a religion. It's a tool. Stop taking all of this so personally. Stop waving the martyr flag around (because that's exactly what you did when you whipped out that old WWII quote). Ok?
Besides, all this SCO crap is going to blow over. THINK! It's going to be 2005 by the time this goes to trial. It'll be 2008 before it's resolved. That is a lot of time for IBM to crush SCO, for any of a hundred other companies to come in and wallop them. ANYTHING could happen, and probably will. So, just step back and watch the circus, and stop freaking out.
Look, Sontag says a lot of things. If he thinks he's going to be able to attack the BSDs with ancient old System V IP, which by the way was covered in the AT+T settlement and anyway, was stripped out of BSD long ago, he's in for a surprise. There is no infringing code in any current BSD. Get over it.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think there's any infringing code in Linux, either. It's just that it's a certainty, a matter of fact and well known, that there is no infringing code in any current BSD. I have this argument every couple of days with one slashdotter or another... I guess all I can really say to you is, it's an OS, not a religion, you know? RELAX.
Well, actually, I don't think SCO's IP lawyers are quite as frightening as the Waffen SS that inspired this famous quote. For instance, I think it's highly unlikely that they'll shoot me in the face, or gas me, or put me in a camp, or perform hideous medical experiments on me. At best, they'll send me a cease and desist letter, assuming they even know I'm using FreeBSD. At which point I send them a photocopy of the original AT+T settlement and tell them to get fucked. Now, to reiterate the difference between SCO's IP lawyers and the SS, if I were to tell the SS to get fucked, they'd probably cut me to pieces with machine guns and feed my component parts to their collection of rabid dobermans. SCO's IP lawyers would just send me another letter, "strongly worded".
See the difference?
Anyway, isn't there a theorem somewhere that as soon as someone makes a comparison to the Nazis, an online discussion is effectively ruined?
1) Since the rich people who run corporations have been trying to eliminate the "overhead" of labor for the past hundred years or so anyway, this is going to seem like a no-brainer to them. So of course they'll try and make it happen, which means it might succeed. If it does, the robots will be doing all the menial work, which means the poor and working class will be jobless and the crime and suicide rates will soar. Since by then all of the middle class jobs will have been outsourced or eliminated by expert systems, the middle classes will already be jobless except for maintenance technicians (at least until the robotic version comes out). Because so few people will actually have any money, corporations will start to collapse and we'll plunge into a huge recession. As a result, the middle-upper classes will be made jobless, and go on their own crime and suicide sprees. Final result: a very, very small elite of fantastically wealthy rich people and a massive, teeming, furious mass of poor people who hate them. It's a short jump from there to "let them eat cake" and the guillotine, then a society something like post-revolution France. Where, I suspect, there won't be many robots at all, and everyone is just trying to rebuild what they used to have. Think of this as a long, ugly road to a crappy town you wouldn't want to live in.
2) The second possibility is, massive public outrage at the trend causes the manufacture of robots to turn into a fiercely punished taboo. Corporations end up scrambling to show the public how "pro-human" they are, and robots get relegated to the jobs nobody ever wants to do, like, say, toxic waste cleanup. People unionize widely to put more public pressure on the government and corporations, and things actually get a little better for us. Robots end up being more of a recreational thing (along the lines of the childhood playmates Arthur C. Clarke and his peers imagined, little robots that would read stories to children and keep the kids out of trouble). Needless to say, this is the outcome I'm hoping for.;)
Thanks! I'm definitely going to go check it out. I'm currently living up in Albany, but I get down to Rockland (and sometimes NYC) just about every weekend to say hi to my folks... This sounds like a cool thing to check out. I really dig trams. I think it's the "hanging at altitude and certain death if anything goes wrong", you know? Kind of a thrill, while knowing that *probably* nothing will happen. I'm morbid, I guess. The same drive that makes me rub my thumb over my foot during a gout attack ("Hmm, I wonder if this'll hurt? YES YES YES OUCH! OUCH! Hmm... But... Will it hurt... NOW? OW, YES YES, OW CRAP!" You know what I mean.;)
The Trader is one of those stealth-kinda stores with only about ten or twenty feet showing on the sidewalk. It's right around the part of Canal where there are a bunch of plastics distributors, across the street and off to the left of Pearl Paint. Sometimes they put a defused WWII bomb out front, looks kinda cool. I hope they're still open... It's been a while since I went in there.
It's definitely not commercial. Behind the counter, last time I was there, they had all kinds of weird samurai swords, bayonets, helmets, old gas masks, and other cool stuff. It's a pretty neat store.
So, when did the term "cloister" become associated with the meditation area? I'm guessing middle ages, because most of the cloisters in the museum date from that period. Interesting...
I think that if I was born in the middle ages, I would have ended up a monk. The monks were the original geeks, you know; they were all about the technical task of transcribing religious texts, studying them, and so on -- the only literate people of their time period (aside from the royalty, who would pay monks to teach their children to read their prayer books, also transcribed by monks).
Or -- better yet! an intern working for Gutenburg! How cool would THAT be?
node159 said, "What a time to go, hope you don't get imprisoned with no rights for being 'combatant' or 'terrorist' or just for being different by all the xenophobes"
Umm, NO. When an American sees an australian, he doesn't think "terrorist". If anything, an American would probably think "Foster's", so most American's first impulse, on meeting an Aussie, would be to bring him bar-hopping.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't matter - it's not like you couldn't just put Slackware or *BSD on it, right? The main thing is, the Chinese have a home-grown processor that's good enough to run anything they might want to run. Good for them! And, good for us, too -- it'll give us an alternative to all the DRM crapola the MPAA/RIAA is trying to push. Let's see Wintel try and sell Palladium when you can get a cheap Dragon chip at any self-respecting computer show! Most of the vendors I've seen at the shows in my town are either Chinese or Taiwanese. They've got great stuff, too, gadgets galore. They're SURE to start selling this. I bet they all have it by the end of the year, summer 2004 at the latest.
Cool.
My favorite kids in the hall sketch is the one with all the businessmen in the conference room, where the little guy yells, "Bring on the whores!" only to be embarassed and scolded by the older guy. Later on in the show, the meeting wraps up and THEN, the older guy yells, "NOW bring on the whores!" Now, THAT was hilarious.
:)
Kids in the hall ROCKS.
That's not what I meant. Canada's government puts a lot of effort into social programs that most capitalists would consider forms of welfare. These programs are fairly socialist. I mean that as a compliment.
Canada is mostly socialist and it isn't totalitarian.
Here's my dream country:
;)
Healthcare, childcare, care for the needy all treated as national priorities. Jobs programs and abolition of all foreign outsourcing and work visas (if you don't have a green card or citizenship, you don't work for a company headquartered here, period). Perhaps use the Switzerland model: tax all noncitizens at 100% for all work done in-country (I love those crazy Swiss!). Unionization across the board for all positions.
A firm, solid, religiously-held commitment to the bill of rights. Respect of real property rights (less "eminent domain" seizures of property). Decriminalization of minor offenses (slow down the prison industry). Eliminate civil forfeiture. Emphasize small businesses instead of large corporations. Reduce emphasis on consumer culture and increase emphasis on personal growth, the arts, technical creativity. Abolition of advertising-driven television (it sucks ass, anyway). Abolition of bans on using home computers as servers when connecting via cable.
In general, a capitalist society in which the capitalism has been reigned in by a largely socialist government, and the needs of the many far outweighing the needs of the wealthy few.
I don't think I'll live to see it, but it's fun to dream.
Your argument, "it isn't in use because it isn't practical -- if it was practical, our greedy capitalist rich class would have already implemented it" is specious and extremely naiive.
The reason it hasn't been implemented yet is simple. The companies who have buried the technology are making far too much money on gasoline power to ever change until forced to.
That won't happen because they have lobbyists.
Get real.
Well, I agree with you on most of these points, but you can use hydrogen with existing rotary motors (they handle the higher heat better than piston engines do) and fuel injection. Hydrogen, then, is just another alternative fuel for internal combustion, fairly interchangeable with natural gas, LP gas, and propane, when you think about it. The difference is in the byproducts. Hydrogen produces steam and not much else. As far as the difficulties in storing it without leakage, you can line your tanks with a thick glass layer, or you can do what Mazda did, which was bind the hydrogen up in a sort of metal matrix, releasing small amounts at a time with an electrical process (that's what the article said, anyway).
But, this speaks to my point: biofuels is just another technology which was never pursued. And, probably won't BE pursued. If you burn corn alcohol in an existing engine type, you're not going to be buying all that expensive fuel-cell gear, or buying a disposable, throwaway car that's 100% electrical. The car companies won't profit as much. Have you no heart? (sarcasm, of course).
This is what I'm talking about. It's about money, not about what is most sensible.
And, as far as generating the hydrogen, well, let me ask you this: we've known how to generate power using wind, waves, geothermal sources, and hydroelectric for decades. Why aren't they in wide use already? Could it be that the oil and coal industries don't want to be replaced, and have enough money to buy politicians? Perhaps? If we were using clean power, we could generate all the hydrogen we wanted. But, we're not, and we don't. And, the reasons for this are exactly the same as the reasons why we're still driving gasoline-powered cars.
Think about it.
Well, "least efficient" is one thing. But, how many electric motors or power cells do you know of that can release as much energy as internal combustion? The inefficiency doesn't matter, when you're releasing that much heat energy. I'm talking power, here, not necessarily efficiency. Anyway, the only byproduct is steam anyway, so it's not like it's a bad thing. ;)
745H? That's cool. Actually, Mazda came up with a rotary-engine SUV-kinda thing back in the nineties that could burn hydrogen as fuel. It had a fuel tank that bound the hydrogen in some kind of metallic matrix, so it wasn't as explosive, and Popular Mechanics had a picture of it on the cover. Then, Mazda got bought by Ford and I never heard anything about the hydrogen powered car again. It's nice that at least some car companies are still working on the idea...
I always wondered, why the hell are they futzing around with fuel cells when all they have to do is build the same kind of combustion engines they've been building for a hundred years? You get a lot more power out of combustion than you do from a fuel cell...
I guess the technology isn't expensive enough?
Umm, NO.
;)
Steel is mostly made from carbon and iron, with a few other metals included to form different alloys, like chrome steel. The reason steel is hard is that the forging process hardens it. This forging process requires a FORGE. And, a large part of the process is physical, and requires a large amount of force, thus large, powerful machinery.
Basic physics.
What you *could* create is a hard, nonmetallic, strong material made out of a plastic or a carbon compound. But you're limited to what can be created with a chemical process. This isn't necessarily THAT limiting, but... It is at least slightly limiting.
No, no, no.
What you are concerned about was "totalitarianism", i.e. the philosophy that the state was all, and all citizens were subservient to it, existing only for the state. This is a separate concept from communism and socialism. The USSR, the Fascists under Mussolini, and the Nazis, were all good examples of totalitarian governments. "1984" was written as a warning against totalitarian policies.
Communism is a little different. It suggests that the means of production should be shared equally by all, and the fruits of the labor be equally divided as well. Communism as suggested by Marx was not evil at all. Modern-day china seems to be making a pretty good go of the idea; I think that aside from being a little overzealous in censorship (and their organ donor program, ha ha), they're doing fairly well.
Socialism (different yet again) suggests that a society's first duty is to its citizens, and that the purpose of government is to take care of the people (rather than, for instance, ensure the welfare of corporations, or wage ridiculous wars to help the oil industry). Canada, the most innocuous nation in the history of nations, is mostly socialist. Do you consider the canucks evil? Aside from the Kids in the Hall, I mean.
Let's be fair, kids.
Oh, NO, we've all been TROLLED!!!
Man, that's just too fucking funny... Holy moses. I'm such a sucker.
Good catch!
This technology is going to be bought out and buried, just like hydrogen combustion engines in the mid-nineties. Big Business will never let this go through, ever. Watch and see: they'll wait until it's perfected before they buy it out, and they'll keep it in their own internal design studios forever after.
This is an enabling technology, which permits ordinary people to create their own design, fabrication, and manufacturing shops -- it reduces the barrier to entry so that anyone can play in the product design game. We've already seen from the open source movement what motivated individuals can do without corporate support. Corporations, with their long product cycles, their relatively low rate of innovation, and their habit of producing products that are "just good enough", would get STOMPED in the market if everyone could start selling their own designs. Also, product designers and engineers wouldn't desire corporate jobs anymore -- they'd strike out on their own, and the corps would have a hell of a time finding talent, even in the third world (in our wired world, *anyone* would be able to start fielding their designs via the internet, so why would a cash-poor engineer in, say, Southeast Asia work for a corp?). These facts are not lost on manufacturing companies, ok?
I think that one of two things are going to happen.
Possibility number 1: the technology and all patents related to it are bought outright by a group of manufacturers, who limit it strictly to their own internal R+D offices. Of course, patents only last 17 years, right? So one would think that eventually, the tech would get out. Perhaps... Unless they manage to legislate increased patent protection, using this specific issue as a wedge ("Senator, this will destroy the whole economy! We have to do something, blah blah"). Result: the public doesn't get their hands on this for decades, if at all, and big business wins.
2. A group of manufacturers act in collusion, purchasing the company that owns the patents, and they drive the price up so high that only industrial design firms can use the device. They use the patents to prevent cheap models from being made, and have the whole thing declared a trade secret to increase their protection beyond that offered by patents. Result: the device is never offered to the public, big business wins.
It's a shame, but it's the way of the world.
What personal attacks? I told you how I felt about your FUD (which I still think is reaching, by the way). I thought I was very polite about it. I certainly didn't attack you.
And, you are FUDding. It doesn't matter what offhand comments Sontag might have made to the press. He's just doing his best to confuse the issue and put pressure on companies. Of course he claimed he felt all modern operating systems were derivatives of his. He wants to scare people away from switching to other O/Ses to spite him. Look at it from a soulless business drone's point of view: it's not against the law to lie to the media, it's not against the law to talk nonsense, it's not against the law to totally confuse an issue and say wildly inaccurate things, so why not go for the gusto? Claim that everyone+dog is infringing! There's no downside to it from his point of view. What's the worst that could happen? Everyone already hates him.
It doesn't mean his legal team is going to actually make an ass out of themselves and go to court over something they have zero chance of winning.
And, think: they might fully realize that they're going to lose the Linux case. But it's not coming to court until 2005, and it'll drag on until 2008. So, their best option is to say as many wild, crazy things as possible so that their more gullible targets will fork over the dough "to be safe". They can milk this thing until the judge throws it out, so why not? Again, he's going for the gusto. It doesn't mean *anyone*, even linux users, are actually at risk.
THIS is what I mean when I say you should relax, and just watch the circus unfold. Think of it as a big, stupid soap opera that's not connected to reality and you'll find it much more enjoyable.
I agree about IT being toast, although you can still get a job in government IT, generally. But you're forgetting some pretty good options:
Blue collar:
Electrician
Plumber
Heating, ventilation, air conditioning
car mechanic (the best of all)
Utility service technician
Sex industry:
hooker
man-whore
pimp/madam
Crime industry:
hacker
mugger
burgular
confidence man
thief
Just a thought...
My parents have a satellite provider, and I once stupidly told them that if they have any trouble and they can't reach me, they should call tech support. What a mistake... My mother was on hold forever, and when she finally got someone and told them her email wasn't working right, they walked her through installing Outlook Express, obviously following a script. They treated her like a hippie freak because she was using Mozilla -- they were HORRIFIED at it. Amazed, even.
;)
I told her, "Don't touch anything, I'll be down friday night and I'll fix everything". So I drove down to help her out.
All I had to do was tell Mozilla to accept automatic proxy configuration, and her email came right back. That's all it was; a proxy issue.
Here's a tip, by the way: you can't delete Outlook Express once it's installed, and depending on your service pack, it might not even appear in your "add/remove programs" interface (assuming Windows). If you can't just uninstall it, and you try to delete the directory, Windows puts it right back three seconds later. I found this kind of astounding, so I deleted the files in the directory, then changed the permissions on the directory so that no one - not even administrator - had write access to it. That fixed OE's wagon once and for all. Note: if you do this, make sure you undo it before you load a service pack, or the service pack install will choke. Then, kill OE off again after the service pack loads. Alternatively, you can change the permissions, boot from floppy, and kill off the files in the directory that way. Leave the directory in place, though, so it doesn't get put back!
It's kinda fun to do it the hard way, though. You've got three seconds to kill OE before it resurrects itself. That's some fast mousing action!
You are missing a pretty big difference between linux and BSD.
With Linux, there is actually a chance (however small) that some infringing code found its way in. I don't believe this is true, but the fact that it hasn't been established yet one way or the other means that SCO has an opening. Whenever there's an opening of this sort, no matter how flaky, you can sue and it won't be settled until a court sees it. If the opening is big enough that the judge doesn't dismiss the case out of hand, you have to trust a jury to make a sensible decision. So, when it comes to Linux, SCO feels it has a chance.
With BSD, the whole question of infringement has already been tested in the courts -- and AT+T (who is much, much more powerful and wealthy than SCO) was humiliated, and forced to settle. So, there isn't any real question over whether the code is infringing -- there is no real opening. Even if something like this were to come to court, it would probably just be thrown out right away anyway. And, SCO is aware of this, otherwise they'd already be suing the BSD's.
Linux types always say that the BSDs are in equal danger, because they want to scare BSD users into joining with them in a united front. They think that merely wanting to help our Linux cousins won't be enough -- they think we need to be frightened into it. So, they spread as much FUD as SCO, and end up looking foolish.
It isn't necessary. Most people who use BSD would back you up on moral grounds alone if you were a gentleman about it. Trying to scare us with poorly-thought-out FUD alienates us and leaves us thinking that you can go to hell -- that you can fight your own battles. Not exactly what you had in mind, I suspect.
Ok, leaving aside your paraphrase, let's consider this in more depth.
SCO is going after BUSINESS customers of Linux distributors. They have claimed that they have no intention of pursuing home users (and, anyway, there are so many it would be a useless gesture). Maybe their pockets aren't deep enough. Regardless, that's what SCO is really about: soaking big business with a bunch of FUD about Linux, and trying to cash in. So don't turn this into "they're coming for you next, BSD-boy" because that's not the case, ok? There is ZERO likelihood that SCO is going to pursue random programmers using Linux in their basement dens, ok? Let's be rational. Don't add your FUD to theirs.
Moving right along, one misstep by Sontag shooting off his mouth about BSD does not a case against BSD make. BSD is unencumbered. Numerous experts who have been involved with Unix and BSD since the seventies have already weighed in on this. I trust their opinions far more than I trust your FUD (or Sontag's). Ok? So, quit trying to say that us FreeBSD guys are going to have to suffer along with you Linux guys.
Linux is NOT a religion. It's a tool. Stop taking all of this so personally. Stop waving the martyr flag around (because that's exactly what you did when you whipped out that old WWII quote). Ok?
Besides, all this SCO crap is going to blow over. THINK! It's going to be 2005 by the time this goes to trial. It'll be 2008 before it's resolved. That is a lot of time for IBM to crush SCO, for any of a hundred other companies to come in and wallop them. ANYTHING could happen, and probably will. So, just step back and watch the circus, and stop freaking out.
Look, Sontag says a lot of things. If he thinks he's going to be able to attack the BSDs with ancient old System V IP, which by the way was covered in the AT+T settlement and anyway, was stripped out of BSD long ago, he's in for a surprise. There is no infringing code in any current BSD. Get over it.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think there's any infringing code in Linux, either. It's just that it's a certainty, a matter of fact and well known, that there is no infringing code in any current BSD. I have this argument every couple of days with one slashdotter or another... I guess all I can really say to you is, it's an OS, not a religion, you know? RELAX.
Well, actually, I don't think SCO's IP lawyers are quite as frightening as the Waffen SS that inspired this famous quote. For instance, I think it's highly unlikely that they'll shoot me in the face, or gas me, or put me in a camp, or perform hideous medical experiments on me. At best, they'll send me a cease and desist letter, assuming they even know I'm using FreeBSD. At which point I send them a photocopy of the original AT+T settlement and tell them to get fucked. Now, to reiterate the difference between SCO's IP lawyers and the SS, if I were to tell the SS to get fucked, they'd probably cut me to pieces with machine guns and feed my component parts to their collection of rabid dobermans. SCO's IP lawyers would just send me another letter, "strongly worded".
See the difference?
Anyway, isn't there a theorem somewhere that as soon as someone makes a comparison to the Nazis, an online discussion is effectively ruined?
Well, there's two possibilities as I see it:
;)
1) Since the rich people who run corporations have been trying to eliminate the "overhead" of labor for the past hundred years or so anyway, this is going to seem like a no-brainer to them. So of course they'll try and make it happen, which means it might succeed. If it does, the robots will be doing all the menial work, which means the poor and working class will be jobless and the crime and suicide rates will soar. Since by then all of the middle class jobs will have been outsourced or eliminated by expert systems, the middle classes will already be jobless except for maintenance technicians (at least until the robotic version comes out). Because so few people will actually have any money, corporations will start to collapse and we'll plunge into a huge recession. As a result, the middle-upper classes will be made jobless, and go on their own crime and suicide sprees. Final result: a very, very small elite of fantastically wealthy rich people and a massive, teeming, furious mass of poor people who hate them. It's a short jump from there to "let them eat cake" and the guillotine, then a society something like post-revolution France. Where, I suspect, there won't be many robots at all, and everyone is just trying to rebuild what they used to have. Think of this as a long, ugly road to a crappy town you wouldn't want to live in.
2) The second possibility is, massive public outrage at the trend causes the manufacture of robots to turn into a fiercely punished taboo. Corporations end up scrambling to show the public how "pro-human" they are, and robots get relegated to the jobs nobody ever wants to do, like, say, toxic waste cleanup. People unionize widely to put more public pressure on the government and corporations, and things actually get a little better for us. Robots end up being more of a recreational thing (along the lines of the childhood playmates Arthur C. Clarke and his peers imagined, little robots that would read stories to children and keep the kids out of trouble). Needless to say, this is the outcome I'm hoping for.
Thanks! I'm definitely going to go check it out. I'm currently living up in Albany, but I get down to Rockland (and sometimes NYC) just about every weekend to say hi to my folks... This sounds like a cool thing to check out. I really dig trams. I think it's the "hanging at altitude and certain death if anything goes wrong", you know? Kind of a thrill, while knowing that *probably* nothing will happen. I'm morbid, I guess. The same drive that makes me rub my thumb over my foot during a gout attack ("Hmm, I wonder if this'll hurt? YES YES YES OUCH! OUCH! Hmm... But... Will it hurt... NOW? OW, YES YES, OW CRAP!" You know what I mean. ;)
The Trader is one of those stealth-kinda stores with only about ten or twenty feet showing on the sidewalk. It's right around the part of Canal where there are a bunch of plastics distributors, across the street and off to the left of Pearl Paint. Sometimes they put a defused WWII bomb out front, looks kinda cool. I hope they're still open... It's been a while since I went in there.
It's definitely not commercial. Behind the counter, last time I was there, they had all kinds of weird samurai swords, bayonets, helmets, old gas masks, and other cool stuff. It's a pretty neat store.
So, when did the term "cloister" become associated with the meditation area? I'm guessing middle ages, because most of the cloisters in the museum date from that period. Interesting...
I think that if I was born in the middle ages, I would have ended up a monk. The monks were the original geeks, you know; they were all about the technical task of transcribing religious texts, studying them, and so on -- the only literate people of their time period (aside from the royalty, who would pay monks to teach their children to read their prayer books, also transcribed by monks).
Or -- better yet! an intern working for Gutenburg! How cool would THAT be?
node159 said, "What a time to go, hope you don't get imprisoned with no rights for being 'combatant' or 'terrorist' or just for being different by all the xenophobes"
Umm, NO. When an American sees an australian, he doesn't think "terrorist". If anything, an American would probably think "Foster's", so most American's first impulse, on meeting an Aussie, would be to bring him bar-hopping.