Maybe my sarcasm filters are a little wacked, but I thought he was trying to ridicule the poster for trying to come up with a wacky name to impress people. It's pretty clear that the combinations of those three fields can lead you a lot of places that aren't completely clear without knowing more about just how they are being combined.
Or maybe that is the point, no matter what you call it, your going to have to explain it. I say go for it, and choose the one that gets you the best milage in the direction your going. Any of the other suggestions are way more interesting and funny than this one. For some, this approach will be a turn-off, but you didn't want to work with them anyway.
It seems that's what a lot of americans, particularly ones with power in Washington think. If we want to have influence on legal matter beyond our borders, then perhaps we should participate in the world more and not just go our own way, or act unilaterally.
We need more uniform treatment of these legal matters in a networked world. It shouldn't be ok for one nation to create laws that protect criminals in their jurisdiction, but you have to be careful with this. If the legal justification of the FBIs actions is say, the DMCA, it's really not reasonable to extend that to every nation. Reasonable legislatures can handle this issue differently, and the FBI should use the Russian standard for actions taken in their country.
How is it right for a US judge to decide which foreign laws do and don't apply to the FBI in a foreign country? This requires an international framework, and there is no way around that. Anything else suggests that US laws and US citizens are above everyone else. Get a grip, your in a world with many voices and they need to be respected.
The threading makes it a little unclear if you were responding to me, but...
The market is the market, and it responds to all the messages that are put out there. My point is not that RMS doesn't deserve the credit, a lot of credit. It's just that his personality works against him, and this is one of the ways that this happens. He's doing great work, and his initiative has taken off to the point that it has a life of its own. Arguing about who deserves what part of the credit is unseamly, whether or not you are stealing someone else's thunder. If credit is really that important to RMS, and is suspect it isn't, then he should take the feedback and adjust to it. Since he probably doesn't actually care that much about this kind of recognition, he should just bask in the glory of his accomplishments and keep being who he is. The mainstream will always be reluctant to fully accept an RMS type, but it doesn't matter because his fans know how it really is.
My claim is that fighting Open/free source will lead to failure, although it may take a long time. The response is driven by fear, which is related to loss of control. If they really had confidence that their products, and more importantly services would continue to have value in the marketplace, they wouldn't react the way they do. Not do overdo the Star Wars analogy, but fear is characteristic of the dark side. They seek to instill fear (FUD) because they are trying to cover up their own fear.
I wish he was the prophet of linux community. He fits the nerd profile so well. It's heartbreaking that one of us is trying to destroy his kind of people.
Who exactly to you mean by 'one of us'? You mean RMS? That's just silly. RMS has a point about the economics of propriatary software even if you don't agree with a lot of his positions and tactics. The GPL is the fuel of the Open/Free source movement for good reasons, and it is really a quite brilliant innovation.
I can't disagree more about who would be a more interesting friend to have. Gates is as boring as all of suburbia, while I'm sure that Linus would have interesting things to say about a lot of topics if you can draw him out.
Gates is only hurting himself and his company by fighting. I suspect the core dynamics relate to control. I've read that customer focus is really the key to his success, but how does actively fighting off Open/Free source help his customers? Clearly it doesn't, so there must be another motivater (control). I don't really care if they (MS) figure it out or not, and it probably doesn't matter much to the Open/free source community. They are driving people to Apple and Linux to a lesser extent, but it's not that significant for most of us.
But the kernel is the OS, the rest is just utilities and tools. Take Windows 3.x, 9[58], etc. vs NT and its follow-ons. They are different OSs, and this has little to do with whether any or all of the other tools are much the same.
It's not really producting to play semantic games with this anyway, but who would claim that you don't have a new OS when the GNU HURD is ready to compete with Linux? All the rest will change little.
Ya gotta love his understated approach. Deflect any idea that this is competing with MS, but then quitely state that MS has the same fate as IBM in their future. It's a prediction, not an attack.
The streets were littered with the carcasses of companies that tried to compete head to head with IBM, while the world was quitely changing under them and they didn't even know. It was open systems and high value UNIX servers that did them in, not MS. Until recently, Windows systems only competed with their terminals, and they were happy to sell PCs as terminals (maybe not happy about competing with generic clones of their own product).
The next transformation involves the OS retreating into the background from the user's point of view. With MS trying to get a bigger and bigger piece of the revenue pie, they are doomed to fail because there isn't that much value in what they are providing. Eventually they just won't have much of a value proposition to sell, and they are already too bloated to become lean and mean and really compete again. This is the eventual fate of any organization that embraces monopoly practices. Gates will still be rich, just a bit less so, but nobody will care and this will make him very unhappy.
Ever notice how people who care too much about the attention they are getting aren't very happy, and it doesn't help them get attention either? RMS has contributed too much to the community to quibble about whether he deserves it or not, but he and he alone is responsible for the situation.
Well, I think he's cool too, but I think if you are cool at slashdot, your probably a geek.
But seriously, the fact that Linus handles himself so well when talking to the 'normals' is a huge plus to the community. Thanks, Linus, keep up the good work.
You know, this is pretty close to what is being called extreme programming. The idea is to get something working quickly, and write lots of tests for each feature/function as you add it. Make the regression tests part of the build process so you are always keeping things in a working state as you go. Expect to throw stuff out and redo it instead of doing extensive rework.
It's never apparent what the best final structure is when you start. Allow the design to evolve. I think you still want to do a fair amount of high level or top down design at the start, but don't worry about getting everything perfect. Part of this model is also working in pairs or teams.
When RMS created the GPL and started emacs and gcc, it looked pretty insane too. Same with Linux. Don't tell him he can't do it, just give him a shove and maybe he'll land on the outside of the bucket.
Come to think of it, the whole think is pretty insane, but it's a wonderful insanity, and it just might work.
I think they can and they would. It's the RIAA that is puruing this, and they would claim you are an evil pirate. That's the thanks you get for helping them market their product.
That would be the ultimate irony if the name in question is yours. I recomend that you claim you were only trying to get back the millions they took from you by illegal price fixing. Got any receipts for CDs from the period covered by that case?
Everything you say may be true, but it is really beside the point. Just because a company has bad practices, or in some cases has suffered from turnover (whether self inflicted or not), doesn't mean they should have to worry about the BSA auditing them. Unless they have a solid legal basis to claim a violation has taken place, the BSA doesn't have any right to make anyone prove they are in compliance. Lots of organizations just don't have the time or talent to do every administrative task (IT, or otherwise) completely right, but they manage to focus on their customers enough to stay in busingess.
In spite of the comment you quote, this is not an intro course. It is a lab course that usually isn't taken until the third of forth year. The studend should know something about OO by the time they get there.
The constitution is not designed to make it easy for law enforcement to catch criminals, it is designed to protect the rights of anyone who is accussed of a crime. If they didn't routinely abuse people's rights, then the courts would not be bending over backwords to make sure the individual's rights are respected.
I don't know anything about the law they are referring to all the sections of, but it seems to me if there were probable cause demonstrated a supena would be issued and executed. Shouldn't it be the governments lawyers (at whatever level) that would be bringing the action?
It just seems strange unless this is only a civil matter, why is the RIAA there? What other standing would they have to issue supenas?
I'm glad the moderator saw fit to mod this up as funny. It's also becoming quite a troll for the humor impaired.
I can't imagine that anyone can get the idea that 'geeks' agree on almost everything from reading slashdot or anything else for that matter. The range of opinion may be considerably different than the mainstream, but there certainly isn't any unity.
It is interesting that a pretty strong consesus is developing about a number of issues. Just because most scientists agree that Darwin or Hubble were right (not withstading refinements to follow) doesn't mean they agree an everything. Once the data is in, some conclusions are obvious to everyone.
When I took it, the language was CLU, which is closer to Java than anything I have seen before or since. It seemed much easier to grok than Java, but maybe this was because I was young and my brain still somewhat empty.
Actually, it was a new course and a new degree requirement when I returned to MIT after two years working full time. My advisor thought it would be good for me to take it even though technically it wasn't a requirement for me.
My actual advice to people who think they might benefit from working through this course online is to go work on an open source project that interests you. The reason is that all the important stuff in software engineering is related to "programmin in the large". If all your experience when you hit the job market is from coursework, you've probably never seen a problem with more that a few hundred or thousand lines of code. That's just the point at which this stuff starts to matter.
Because I had worked for two years, I had a much better appreciation than my classmates of what was important. I wish I knew that before taking the course because the lab course I really wanted to take was Doc Edgerton's strobe lab.
Well, I guess we will have to wait until he is out from under both the sentence and any parole before he can really be candid about this.
I am impressed by his candor with respect to his involvement and responsibility. From what he says, he didn't think very deeply about the implications of what he was doing, ethically or otherwise. Did he think about the possibility of getting arrested? It doesn't even seem like he thought about whether it was right or wrong. Definitely a cautionary tale for anyone who might potentially be in the same (or similar) situation.
I'm also impressed that he doesn't quibble qbout any justifications or the severity of the sentence. In my opinion, 33 months for this is extremely harsh, which goes directly to the question of just how damaged the software publishers are.
The real criminals are the end users who copy this stuff to use in business activities, sometimes with many copies of such software, not people like him who allow for the exchange at no profit to themselves. Sharing for a test drive or when you can't afford it and you want to learn how is probably an economic benefit to the software producers, and they should get a clue and start actually promoting this kind of sharing (some do).
I think his comment about the BSA 'raids' is also a bit naive as well (although he could be holding back here). It is a basic legal principle that you don't have to let anyone snoop around your home or business just because they suspect you of something. Show cause or get off my doorstep.
If the cops come by and are investigating a serious crime (a murder, for example), I'm inclined to help them out if it isn't too much of an imposition. However, if I don't trust their motives, I might say get a warrant and call my lawyer when they go to get it. It is another basic legal principle that this does not say I am trying to hide something.
There is a social obligation to help find murderers and violent criminals that just doesn't apply to enforcing copyrights.
Do you really think he is so dumb that he would publicly announce this and not be carful about staying on the right side of the law? Don't you think "the authorities" will keep an eye on him?
The truth is that when a new distribution comes out, the bandwidth is quickly overwhelmed by everyone wanting to get the latest thing. What's wrong with trying to do this more effectively and efficiently?
The site doesn't say much about how this would work, but I guess if I actually knew anything about the technical aspects of how the illegal networks that he was busted for supporting function, it might be obvious. Doesn't seem like it would be too complex. You just have to have a couple of levels with good fan-out, and some way to find a mirror with capacity and spread the load so no site gets hammered.
Link to 2002 award list
on
Ig Nobels Awarded
·
· Score: 5, Informative
My first impression was that they didn't have the listing of awards on the site, which was disappointing. I tried a google search and was able to find a page with the list, actually links to the current and previous lists.
Very funny. I saw this link on another story here yesterday.
Clearly, radio as well an legal internet radio and download services are a different class of licensing than consumer purchase, but I think this area needs some work as well. The current situation is that they can pretty much ask what they want (dollars and terms).
Broadcast is well established and somewhat competetive. The problems relate to content providers pushing certain content (payola, etc.), and restricting outlets and such. This can be monopolisting and anti-competetive, and as we have seen with Napster, they don't want to sell the appropriate licenses at a reasonable price because they want to monopolize their own outlets.
Not only is this unfair, it is stupid because it looses them money in the long run. It is very similar to the recent drug patents story. If you could get access to the intermediate patents at a reasonable price, it would serve to make the ideas more valuable and useful. Instead, a legal framework that was meant to promote the sharing and exchange of ideas is being used to lock them up and maintain monopolies.
The law (this one or another one) needs to provide for setting reasonable fees. The constitutional foundation of IP law isn't supposed to give the author/inventor a monopoly power, just fair value.
In addition to this, as a consumer, I look through the EULA for clues that there might be trojan processes in the software. Microsoft's Media Player is a good example of this whereby they reveal in their EULA that they can remotely access your machine and install arbitrary "updates." This has been covered here before so there is really no need to retread it again.
This is the real issue with the new EULA language, particularly MS. Normally, they are just saying what you can and can't do and what they won't be responsible for, but here they are saying they can put something on your computer that could be used to invade your privacy. In the normal case, the part that is enforcable probably is enforcable without the agreement, and the agreement serves to notify you or your responsibilities. That helps them if they need to sue you.
The other part seeks to give them a right to your information that would otherwise be very questionable. What does it mean for this to be invalid or unenforcable? If you haven't taken positive steps to reject these terms they might be protected (somewhat) from legal action against them for invasion of privacy. They might even construe this to protect them when a third party hijacks the mechanism to invade your privacy. It may be quite a stretch to you and me, but arguing this still muddies the waters and therefore weakens your privacy rights.
It certainly could just be marketing, but the real question is what should a company that really wants to put eco principles into practice. One organization that I have come across that helps businesses improve there processes is The Natural Step. Part of their pitch is that it is also more efficient==cost effective.
Also, we can't get there in one jump, but need to concentrate on the big ones first and keep going until we get a system that is sustainable. That's the only way we and are descendants will get to stay here in the long run.
Do you mean CDR? Wouldn't you just re-use a CDRW with new data? Assuming it is undamaged, of course.
A while I remember a site that sponsored a contest for the most creative use of AOL CDs. One person covered there car with them. Looked kind of like fish scales, only bigger. I may have even seen it on slashdot, but it is too far back to remember for sure.
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe that is the point, no matter what you call it, your going to have to explain it. I say go for it, and choose the one that gets you the best milage in the direction your going. Any of the other suggestions are way more interesting and funny than this one. For some, this approach will be a turn-off, but you didn't want to work with them anyway.
Good luck.
We need more uniform treatment of these legal matters in a networked world. It shouldn't be ok for one nation to create laws that protect criminals in their jurisdiction, but you have to be careful with this. If the legal justification of the FBIs actions is say, the DMCA, it's really not reasonable to extend that to every nation. Reasonable legislatures can handle this issue differently, and the FBI should use the Russian standard for actions taken in their country.
How is it right for a US judge to decide which foreign laws do and don't apply to the FBI in a foreign country? This requires an international framework, and there is no way around that. Anything else suggests that US laws and US citizens are above everyone else. Get a grip, your in a world with many voices and they need to be respected.
The market is the market, and it responds to all the messages that are put out there. My point is not that RMS doesn't deserve the credit, a lot of credit. It's just that his personality works against him, and this is one of the ways that this happens. He's doing great work, and his initiative has taken off to the point that it has a life of its own. Arguing about who deserves what part of the credit is unseamly, whether or not you are stealing someone else's thunder. If credit is really that important to RMS, and is suspect it isn't, then he should take the feedback and adjust to it. Since he probably doesn't actually care that much about this kind of recognition, he should just bask in the glory of his accomplishments and keep being who he is. The mainstream will always be reluctant to fully accept an RMS type, but it doesn't matter because his fans know how it really is.
My claim is that fighting Open/free source will lead to failure, although it may take a long time. The response is driven by fear, which is related to loss of control. If they really had confidence that their products, and more importantly services would continue to have value in the marketplace, they wouldn't react the way they do. Not do overdo the Star Wars analogy, but fear is characteristic of the dark side. They seek to instill fear (FUD) because they are trying to cover up their own fear.
Who exactly to you mean by 'one of us'? You mean RMS? That's just silly. RMS has a point about the economics of propriatary software even if you don't agree with a lot of his positions and tactics. The GPL is the fuel of the Open/Free source movement for good reasons, and it is really a quite brilliant innovation.
I can't disagree more about who would be a more interesting friend to have. Gates is as boring as all of suburbia, while I'm sure that Linus would have interesting things to say about a lot of topics if you can draw him out.
Gates is only hurting himself and his company by fighting. I suspect the core dynamics relate to control. I've read that customer focus is really the key to his success, but how does actively fighting off Open/Free source help his customers? Clearly it doesn't, so there must be another motivater (control). I don't really care if they (MS) figure it out or not, and it probably doesn't matter much to the Open/free source community. They are driving people to Apple and Linux to a lesser extent, but it's not that significant for most of us.
It's not really producting to play semantic games with this anyway, but who would claim that you don't have a new OS when the GNU HURD is ready to compete with Linux? All the rest will change little.
The streets were littered with the carcasses of companies that tried to compete head to head with IBM, while the world was quitely changing under them and they didn't even know. It was open systems and high value UNIX servers that did them in, not MS. Until recently, Windows systems only competed with their terminals, and they were happy to sell PCs as terminals (maybe not happy about competing with generic clones of their own product).
The next transformation involves the OS retreating into the background from the user's point of view. With MS trying to get a bigger and bigger piece of the revenue pie, they are doomed to fail because there isn't that much value in what they are providing. Eventually they just won't have much of a value proposition to sell, and they are already too bloated to become lean and mean and really compete again. This is the eventual fate of any organization that embraces monopoly practices. Gates will still be rich, just a bit less so, but nobody will care and this will make him very unhappy.
Ever notice how people who care too much about the attention they are getting aren't very happy, and it doesn't help them get attention either? RMS has contributed too much to the community to quibble about whether he deserves it or not, but he and he alone is responsible for the situation.
But seriously, the fact that Linus handles himself so well when talking to the 'normals' is a huge plus to the community. Thanks, Linus, keep up the good work.
It's never apparent what the best final structure is when you start. Allow the design to evolve. I think you still want to do a fair amount of high level or top down design at the start, but don't worry about getting everything perfect. Part of this model is also working in pairs or teams.
Come to think of it, the whole think is pretty insane, but it's a wonderful insanity, and it just might work.
That would be the ultimate irony if the name in question is yours. I recomend that you claim you were only trying to get back the millions they took from you by illegal price fixing. Got any receipts for CDs from the period covered by that case?
Everything you say may be true, but it is really beside the point. Just because a company has bad practices, or in some cases has suffered from turnover (whether self inflicted or not), doesn't mean they should have to worry about the BSA auditing them. Unless they have a solid legal basis to claim a violation has taken place, the BSA doesn't have any right to make anyone prove they are in compliance. Lots of organizations just don't have the time or talent to do every administrative task (IT, or otherwise) completely right, but they manage to focus on their customers enough to stay in busingess.
In spite of the comment you quote, this is not an intro course. It is a lab course that usually isn't taken until the third of forth year. The studend should know something about OO by the time they get there.
If your not joking about that part, I suggest you stop unless you want to share a cell with Mr. Tresco.
I don't know anything about the law they are referring to all the sections of, but it seems to me if there were probable cause demonstrated a supena would be issued and executed. Shouldn't it be the governments lawyers (at whatever level) that would be bringing the action?
It just seems strange unless this is only a civil matter, why is the RIAA there? What other standing would they have to issue supenas?
I can't imagine that anyone can get the idea that 'geeks' agree on almost everything from reading slashdot or anything else for that matter. The range of opinion may be considerably different than the mainstream, but there certainly isn't any unity.
It is interesting that a pretty strong consesus is developing about a number of issues. Just because most scientists agree that Darwin or Hubble were right (not withstading refinements to follow) doesn't mean they agree an everything. Once the data is in, some conclusions are obvious to everyone.
Actually, it was a new course and a new degree requirement when I returned to MIT after two years working full time. My advisor thought it would be good for me to take it even though technically it wasn't a requirement for me.
My actual advice to people who think they might benefit from working through this course online is to go work on an open source project that interests you. The reason is that all the important stuff in software engineering is related to "programmin in the large". If all your experience when you hit the job market is from coursework, you've probably never seen a problem with more that a few hundred or thousand lines of code. That's just the point at which this stuff starts to matter.
Because I had worked for two years, I had a much better appreciation than my classmates of what was important. I wish I knew that before taking the course because the lab course I really wanted to take was Doc Edgerton's strobe lab.
I am impressed by his candor with respect to his involvement and responsibility. From what he says, he didn't think very deeply about the implications of what he was doing, ethically or otherwise. Did he think about the possibility of getting arrested? It doesn't even seem like he thought about whether it was right or wrong. Definitely a cautionary tale for anyone who might potentially be in the same (or similar) situation.
I'm also impressed that he doesn't quibble qbout any justifications or the severity of the sentence. In my opinion, 33 months for this is extremely harsh, which goes directly to the question of just how damaged the software publishers are.
The real criminals are the end users who copy this stuff to use in business activities, sometimes with many copies of such software, not people like him who allow for the exchange at no profit to themselves. Sharing for a test drive or when you can't afford it and you want to learn how is probably an economic benefit to the software producers, and they should get a clue and start actually promoting this kind of sharing (some do).
I think his comment about the BSA 'raids' is also a bit naive as well (although he could be holding back here). It is a basic legal principle that you don't have to let anyone snoop around your home or business just because they suspect you of something. Show cause or get off my doorstep.
If the cops come by and are investigating a serious crime (a murder, for example), I'm inclined to help them out if it isn't too much of an imposition. However, if I don't trust their motives, I might say get a warrant and call my lawyer when they go to get it. It is another basic legal principle that this does not say I am trying to hide something.
There is a social obligation to help find murderers and violent criminals that just doesn't apply to enforcing copyrights.
The truth is that when a new distribution comes out, the bandwidth is quickly overwhelmed by everyone wanting to get the latest thing. What's wrong with trying to do this more effectively and efficiently?
The site doesn't say much about how this would work, but I guess if I actually knew anything about the technical aspects of how the illegal networks that he was busted for supporting function, it might be obvious. Doesn't seem like it would be too complex. You just have to have a couple of levels with good fan-out, and some way to find a mirror with capacity and spread the load so no site gets hammered.
My first impression was that they didn't have the listing of awards on the site, which was disappointing. I tried a google search and was able to find a page with the list, actually links to the current and previous lists.
Clearly, radio as well an legal internet radio and download services are a different class of licensing than consumer purchase, but I think this area needs some work as well. The current situation is that they can pretty much ask what they want (dollars and terms).
Broadcast is well established and somewhat competetive. The problems relate to content providers pushing certain content (payola, etc.), and restricting outlets and such. This can be monopolisting and anti-competetive, and as we have seen with Napster, they don't want to sell the appropriate licenses at a reasonable price because they want to monopolize their own outlets.
Not only is this unfair, it is stupid because it looses them money in the long run. It is very similar to the recent drug patents story. If you could get access to the intermediate patents at a reasonable price, it would serve to make the ideas more valuable and useful. Instead, a legal framework that was meant to promote the sharing and exchange of ideas is being used to lock them up and maintain monopolies.
The law (this one or another one) needs to provide for setting reasonable fees. The constitutional foundation of IP law isn't supposed to give the author/inventor a monopoly power, just fair value.
Or maybe more to the point, makes the 'R' really stand for rights, not restrictions, or whatever the current slashdot mangling of the acronym is.
This is the real issue with the new EULA language, particularly MS. Normally, they are just saying what you can and can't do and what they won't be responsible for, but here they are saying they can put something on your computer that could be used to invade your privacy. In the normal case, the part that is enforcable probably is enforcable without the agreement, and the agreement serves to notify you or your responsibilities. That helps them if they need to sue you.
The other part seeks to give them a right to your information that would otherwise be very questionable. What does it mean for this to be invalid or unenforcable? If you haven't taken positive steps to reject these terms they might be protected (somewhat) from legal action against them for invasion of privacy. They might even construe this to protect them when a third party hijacks the mechanism to invade your privacy. It may be quite a stretch to you and me, but arguing this still muddies the waters and therefore weakens your privacy rights.
Also, we can't get there in one jump, but need to concentrate on the big ones first and keep going until we get a system that is sustainable. That's the only way we and are descendants will get to stay here in the long run.
A while I remember a site that sponsored a contest for the most creative use of AOL CDs. One person covered there car with them. Looked kind of like fish scales, only bigger. I may have even seen it on slashdot, but it is too far back to remember for sure.