You still seem to be missing my point: standards don't force the big vendors to do anything at all ever. The big vendors do what they want to meet their business needs. You can either write a standard that describes that (e.g., SCSI) or write a standard that fails to describe that, and thus generally fails (like HTML in the IE6 years).
Well that's one way of looking at it. Or we could consider that conforming to existing standards helped establish Firefox and Opera and break IE's dominance of the market and the long stagnantion of th Microsoft Years.
So maybe "fail" isn't the best word for what happened:)
I've been a secretary of a standards body working group, if we're appealing to experts here, but I don't see how that's particularly relevant.
I'm delighted that you've been secretary of a standards working group, it doesn't seem to follow that you know more about the SQL standards process that Michael Gorman who was secretary of that particular group.
But the point is that giving the big vendors everything they want does not necessarily result in a useful standard. And to support the point, I thought I'd provide a link to a case where exactly that had happened. And where the secretary of the working group (who might ordinarily be expected to support the standard in question) was the one questioning the validity of the result.
Just to be clear about this: I'm not invoking Gorman's name as an authority on the purpose of standards. I'm citing him as an authority on the standard that he oversaw, and the usefulness of that standard after the approach you advocate.
And while I don't want to belittle your experience as secretary of an unrelated and unnamed group, it's not at all clear how that gives your opinion equal weigh as regards SQL.
"Because the big boys want it" is the only relevant thing for a standard.
We could ask them to keep that shit out of the browser and build their own client.
Ask all you want, standards aren't laws.
Aardvarks aren't kumquats. So what?
Browsers will have to support whatever the big players do, standard or otherwise, and we'll end up with the IE6 problem all over again. No thanks.
The problem with IE6 wasn't so much that the standards were wrong. It was one of wilful non-compliance on MS' part. MS wanted to use their then dominant position to turn IE itself into the de facto standard. That way all their competitors would have been forced to play catch-up with MS. They gambled and lost.
Alternatively, look at the SQL Standards process. The standard committee is composed of representatives of all the major database players, and rather than get into a pissing match about who gets what in the next standard, they've basically adopted the approach you recommend. Whatever any of them is doing or wants to do next goes into the standard.
The result is a standard that's probably unimplementable in its entirety. In fact all the groups represented on the committee announced that they intended to implement "a subset, plus extensions" of the standard. Even the secretary of the standards committee questioned whether the standard was in fact worthy of the name "standard". But don't take my word for it.
I've explained elsewhere why I don't think that "because the big boys want it" is in itself sufficient reason to include something in a standard.
I hope I've shown here that even if that happens, it won't necessarily bring about any benefits.
I suppose if there were any similarities at all between DRM and physical violence, you'd have a point.
The similarities are between standards and laws. While they are not without differences, they have a fundamental similarity in that they outline a common set of behaviours to which it is intended that we adhere.
The question is whether we use them to try and make the world a better place for everyone or do we use them to sanction existing practices?
It works in Ankh-Morpork. And you wouldn't want to argue with Vetinari would you?
So all we need now is a ruthless despot willing to throw anyone caught abusing the standard into a scorpion pit, and all will be well? That could work.
Of course reaching agreement about who to trust in the role of "ruthless despot" might take some time:)
A technical standard is in no way, shape, or form a law. That's probably where your thinking went off.
A technical standard and a law are both ways of defining how we want some aspect of the world be work. That's probably where you've failed to keep up. (BTW, do we really need to do this all snide and sarcastic? I mean I'm up for it if you are, but it's not exactly conducive to a constructive discussion. Your call:))
Standards are useful precisely to the extent they describe what the big players actually do, so that you can code against the standard and be content
Standards are only useful if people follow them yes. But that doesn't mean that we should use them to rubberstamp every counter-productive, short-sighted or destructive practice currently being persued.
Standards are supposed to be about how to make something work well.
A standard that petulantly refuses to describe what the big players are doing anyway is worse than useless. The W3C finally learned this lesson, but apparently/. has a shorter memory.
So presumably we should legalise mugging because muggers are going to rob people with violence whatever we do, and if we're going to have destructive anti-social behavior, it's far better if it's enshrined in some sort of formal framework?
If it's so laughable, then isn't it better to just have it?
Well, the security aspects are laughable. The potential legal follow ons are not. For instance, the next logical step is to insist on digitally signed browsers and declare non-complying browsers illegal as "circumvention tools" under the DMCA or somesuch. You might not be able to detect hack browsers, but you could sure as hell sue anyone distributing binaries or patches. You might have a hard time claiming non-infringing uses as well.
That would pretty much make any new browser impossible to distribute, and potentially puts enough regulatory red-tape on people like mozilla that they'd have difficulty continuing in their current open source form.
Then there's the possibility to pressure ISPs to only allow encrypted content (call it an anti-terrorism measure - that works for most things) and eventually to start chaging for access on a per web-page basis for all content.
From the point of view of some media and content cartels, that's a very desirable outcome. The genie would be back in the bottle.
On the other hand, if we don't have EME then the problems don't arise, so on balance I'd say better not to have it.
So instead of a world where content owners won't publish jack on HTML5
I don't see why that's a problem. There are DRM formats that work with PDFs so it's not as if your content dudes can't publish under DRM. They just can't try and make it apply to the whole web. Nothing of value is being lost here.
you get a world where content owners would and you can somehow mine the keys
Mine the keys illegally I think you mean. Possibly with disproportionate penalties as used by the recording industry in their anti p2p lawsuits.
Let's just not go there. Less effort + less risk == Win
They're strategy is exactly the same as Apple (and now Microsoft).
Well, not exactly the same as Apple. To get an exact
match Apple would
have had to introduced iOS before the launch of the iPhone, adding a
number of increasingly controversial and unpopular changes to their
otherwise beloved OS X. They'd then rename the result "iOS" and launch
a phone around it.
What Ubuntu is doing is closer to MS' strategy. Only without the u-turn to
reinstate a conventional desktop and start menu and without Stephen Elop
waiting in the wings to deliver them a mobile phone manufacturer at
fire sale prices. And also without MS' ability to absorb the losses if
they pour money down the drain developing something that nobody seems to
want.
What was broke was an interface that a user could use on all these
different devices and screen sizes and still maintain some continuity
in it's use.
So "continuity over different devices" is more important than "works
well on the device in question" then? I'm not sure I'd agree. Especially
given that canonical don't seem to have an ecosystem of other devices
to support.
Die-hard Linux geeks may be fleeing Ubuntu and Unity
Nah... the die-hards tend to run Debian or Slackware or Gentoo. Ubuntu has
always been aimed at the non-techies or casual hobbists. I think I might
have mentioned that earlier.
but I'm seeing a lot of non-techies picking it up and asking me about it.
Well, yeah. Non-techies are the core of Ubuntu's users. If the non technical set weren't
still showing interest Ubuntu it would pretty much be the end. No one is denying that Ubuntu has a
lot of momentum. The question is whether they're gaining or losing that
momentum.
Ubuntu is growing in China and several other countries outside the U.S.
I'm sure it is. Linux is growing in those regions, and Ubuntu is one
of the better known distros. But if Ubuntu's share of the market (for want of
a better term) shrinks relative to the other distros, that growth may not count for
much. Just saying.
In the past everyone touted "choice" and freedom of "choice".
Completely off topic, but I love the way you put scarequotes around
"choice". It's like you're saying "I don't really believe in this concept, but I'm going to reluctantly use the word in order to further the discussion".
That aside...
Ubuntu is just another choice among not only Linux, but operating systems
in general. If you can't stand Unity or something Ubuntu does, then by
all means please find an operating system that suites you.
Done and done. I started with RedHat, moved to Gentoo and I've alternated
between Debian and Gentoo ever since. I've never used Ubuntu, although I've
installed it for a fair few friends and family. I think I might mentioned
that in my earlier post as well.
That said, I like Ubuntu. I like the focus on humanity and usability
that the project had when it was launched, and I think Shuttleworth
can Canonical did a lot of good.
As such I'm concerned to see Ubuntu moving away from the principles
that made it so great. They seem to be moving away from "Linux for
Human Beings" and toward "Who cares about the users? They'll
get what they're given and like it!" That may have worked for
Microsoft when they were the only game in town, but as you point out,
those days would seem to be ending.
At least with Ubuntu my grandma or distant cousin has a choice against Apple or Microsoft or even Android!
And you know what? That would still be true if Ubuntu had kept Gnome as
their main desktop and developed Unity as front end for mobile devices.
Their penetration of the device market wouldn't (and couldn't) suck any
more than it does right now, but they'd still have a legion of loyal
and happy users.
How is anyone forced to use Unity in Ubuntu? There's still Kubuntu, lubuntu etc. And even with straight Ubuntu, you can still install whatever desktop you want, and select it at login.
I guess that rather depends on the user. The people posting to Slashdot are savvy enough to vote with their feet, whether it's to another 'buntu, or another distro. But Slashdotters aren't your typical Ubuntu users.
Ubuntu built its rep in no small part as the Linux that you didn't need to know Linux to use. A lot of the Ubuntu userbase are people who don't know how to change desktop environment or window manager. They're people who don't want to know how to do those things. All they know is that they found a computer system that they liked, and each release seems to be taking them further away from that system.
I personally don't mind Unity, I can pretty much work with whatever desktop is installed by default, as I use the apps and not the shell. So long as I can switch easily between apps, who cares.
Well, not the people who work with your computers the way you do, clearly. But not everyone does. I mean I'm happy with an xterm, launching apps from the command line and alt-tabbing between them.
It gives me everything you want in a desktop... but I know from experience that most people hate working that way.
And I guess most none-technical people just don't care either way. If it works, it works.
If that was true, they'd ALL be happy with an xterm, alt-tab and a choice of wallpaper. And the year of Linux On The Desktop(TM) would have happened ten years ago.
Ubuntu worked well for a large set of non-techie users. It wasn't a million miles away from what most of them were used to in Windows, except that for various reasons, it suited them a bit better.
Canonical seem to have an urgent need to fix something that wasn't even remotely broken. And while it doesn't affect me personally I still can't see what they're doing as a viable long term strategy.
So, let's look at your "nothing else!". What does it mean to say that the mind/brain is machine plus software plus "else"? It means that, in reducing the mind to its constituents, you end up with a list of elements we already know: particles, their interactions, plus that "else". Can this "else" in turn be reduced to its own constituents? If yes, then said else is a machine in its own right, built from those "else-parts". If not, then your quest to find stuff ends there.
Now suppose we find that consciousness is an irreducible. That in some way or another there are consciousnesses floating around that get linked to particles in the forming of brains. That being the case, actually understanding consciousness, how and why it works, developing new consciousnesses, improving them, even improving our own, all become unfortunately impossible. They are givens, to be, so to speak, harvested from the source of consciousnesses atomically as such, forever and ever locked in the state they came, unchanging, outside the domain of our technology, intelligence, hopes and wisdom.
That's an extremely sad outcome, which is why I sincerely hope our minds are indeed reducible to machine and software. If they aren't, we'll hit a insurmountable brick wall, and that'll be it.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I don't think I disagree with you on anything important there. There are a few minor issues: is it reasonable to assume that anything that can be understood is necessarily amenable to being modelled in software, for instance. And I'm not sure I'd share your sorrow if some element of our minds does turn out to be irreducible. We'd still be left with an awful lot we can potentially hack, and I quite like to think that there's an element of mystery to the human condition.
However, I can be very hopeful that our minds are indeed machinery and software, to the point of sounding almost certain, due to the researches and advances made in biology, neurology, cognitive sciences etc. in the last few decades. They all point out strongly into this direction, so there's indeed great expectation the mind will be understood in a few more decades and thus opened up for betterment, and strong betterment at that.
I don't think there's much doubt that our minds are largely (perhaps very largely) mechanistic. And I'll accept that there's strong emerging evidence in support of that notion. I'm just not sure that the evidence is also evidence of "nothing else":)
As for the matter of souls, I don't criticize technical versions of the concept, only naive religious ones that think of it as some kind of "non-matter matter". What I said above is all compatible with Platonic, Aristotelian and similar advanced concepts of the soul as truly immaterial.
I think I better take your word for it in this instance:)
Reality is most probably composed, as the sages of yesteryear figured, of matter (ordinary matter, energy, space and time) and form (immaterial math).
Interesting way of looking a it. Personally, I'd have put space and time under "form" since they are basically the shape of the universe rather than the substance thereof. I also find myself uncomfortable with the idea that every non-material entity in the universe can be reduced to mathetics. Unless "math" is a philosophical term of art that I've not encountered, of course. Both minor quibbles in any event:)
The soul of a thing is its mathematical structure, which doesn't depend on the specific particles that are following that structure. Back in the day it was thought this referred to the human shape, but nowadays science advanced enough to translated that fuzzy concept of "shape" into the far more specific notions of DNA, the structure of which (not the actual molecule in your cells) fits Aristotle's concept soul
"This is mysterious! It can't be known! Stop asking the difficult questions!"
Sorry, but no, we won't.:-)
Needless melodrama aside, I think you've got that exactly backwards. You're the one saying "The Brain is a Machine and our Minds are Software, and Nothing Else!"
I'm asking the hard question: "How can you possibly be so sure?"
And to avoid answering that hard question, you're drawing black boxes around everything, and then blaming them on me.
Not unless you go to the trouble of defining your terms. The problem is that words such as "soul", "consciousness", "self awareness" etc. work as black boxes with a "don't look inside" sign hanging from them
Interesting way to look at it. I wouldn't have thought "consciousness" to be particularly awash with ambiguity, given that pretty much every person on the planet would seem to experience the phenomena on a daily basis. "Self awareness" is a little fuzzier, granted, but I'd still have thought the meaning was clear, given the context.
Still, you're quite right in that problem lies with the definitions. Without a definition of "consciousness" (your term, by the way) it's going to be very hard to point to any evidence that the phenomenon arises either "arises from individual particles interacting" or even "from a higher level of organization such as synapses signaling".
So feel free to define your terms and raise the level of the debate. Or if that's too much like hard work, maybe we can argue informally without carping about definitions. Either way is fine by me:)
"On the other a purely MAGIC view of MAGIC where any sufficiently MAGIC must necessarily become MAGIC by some MAGIC? I think there's probably room for some middle ground there. It should be possible to question the idea of MAGIC without bringing OTHER MAGIC into the debate. I also find that in the absence of any evidence for either proposition, I really don't find MAGIC any less convincing as a hypothesis than MAGIC."
I like that! I wonder if there are any other poorly defined sentences
where we could apply that approach?:D
"Your brain is MAGIC. It can be MAGICKED, MAGICKED, MAGICKED, MAGICKED and MAGICKED. You're already MAGIC running on appropriate (and at some point in future becoming outdated) MAGIC."
Great fun, but it doesn't really advance the argument, does it?
At the end of the day, "consciousness" is an intangible abstraction that defies any sort of physical measurement. The only evidence for its existence is either annecdotal or purely subjective. As such I still doubt that you have any evidence to support your assertions over any sort of MAGIC[1], or vice versa for that matter. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and all that.
[1] Where "MAGIC" can be taken to mean "self awareness" , "computational processes", "souls", "particle physics" or "Great Aunt Elsie's Fondue Cake".
Your brain is a machine. It can be understood, decompiled,
analyzed, improved and reimplemented. You're already an AI running on appropriate (and at some point in future becoming outdated) hardware.
Unless you believe in souls. Do you believe in souls?
Are those the only two options then? On the one hand a belief in "souls" with (I assume) all the associated religous baggage of supreme beings, afterlife and organised worship? On the other a purely mechanistic view of consciousness where any sufficiently complex piece of clockwork must necessarily become self aware by some as yet unknown process?
I think there's probably room for some middle ground there. It should be possible to question the idea of purely mechanistic awareness without bringing religion into the debate.
I also find that in the absence of any evidence for either proposition, I really don't find "souls" any less convincing as a hypothesis than magically self aware clockwork. But that's probably just me:)
Microsoft will NEVER make money on the XBox platform overall. They lost close to 8 Billion dollars before they started _small_ quarterly profits which will never ever recoup the money lost.
Thanks. That was more or less my understanding of the matter, but I couldn't back it up and I didn't have time to dig out the numbers.
Past tense. It worked so well for Blackberry that they tried to reposition themselves as a maker of social media devices. Then when that didn't bring in enough money they went looking for someone to buy them out.
I'm not denying that they once made an awful lot of money. I'm just saying that the market place would appear to have moved on since Blackberry's heyday.
This wouldn't be the first time that MS has come from behind: Word utterly crushed Word Perfect to become the standard in the early 90s, Excel pushed Lotus 1-2-3 into has-been status, Internet Explorer killed Netscape as a viable company, and people were surprised when MS released the Xbox and went on to make a fortune in the console industry
Hmm. Of course most of those victories were achieved at least in part by leveraging MS' control of the underlying operating system. Admittedly the Xbox didn't have that advantage. That said, while the platform is certainly making money, it's still not clear that MS have recouped the massive investment they needed to brute force their way into the market.
This situation is different again. MS aren't competing against Apple, Google and Samsung. They're competing against Apple and Android. Every hardware manufacturer in the far east is eyeing Android and thinking "we could sell our phones under our own brand". So all the hardware guys that usually support are potential competitors. That's on top of Apple, Google and Samsung.
Even worse, they're pretty much tied to the windows brand for whatever phone they use. So the symbol that everyone sees when they're bored at school in computer class and the one that everyone sees when they're bored at work and wishing they were elsewhere doing something, anything else... that's going to be the brand on the phone. All the Nokia ads I say downplayed the Windows brand as far as possible, which I think was clever of them. But I don't think MS' corporate pride will allow that.
What might save them in this market is big business. If they can get some large corporations to declare themselves as winphone shops and make everyone use the platform for all work related activities they could use that to make inroads into education and home use. But the business dudes all have iPhones or Android already and it works for them. It's going to be hard work getting them to give up those machines for windows. Especially with BYOD as an emerging trend.
If you ask me, their best hope might be to launch an Xbox phone. Xbox users tend to like the platform; load it up with plenty of free mobile games and they could build a user base pretty quickly, to say nothing of finally finding takers for their app store. But that wouldn't get them a "serious" offering so I don't think they'll do it.
his desire to prioritize the "freedom" of systems over those systems actually doing anything useful is totally unreasonable
It's more like a desire to prioritize the freedoms of software users over those of software distributors. He's not against software doing "useful" things, except where the usefulness lies in somehow exploiting the software user.
Software freedom is so much less importsant than other forms of freedom (freedom from slavery, freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc) in the real world that I can't take his writing seriously.
Of course, freedom from slavery is clearly much less important than freedom from murder. I mean if you are enslaved you can regain your freedom, but if you're dead you're dead. Should we then legalise slavery once again so we can concentrate on the big picture? I'm sure there are lots of other pesky laws that we could get rid of while we're at it. Always assuming your logic of prioritising freedoms holds water, obviously.
The only people who can stand to listen to him are those who forgive those traits because they already agree with what he says.
Counter example right here. I don't agree with everything rms says. I don't believe that proprietary software is necessarily a bad thing, and I take particular issue with him on the "GNU/Linux" thing. In this instance, however, I think he's got it about right.
You can't expect to grow a movement that way, even if your movement has a purpose that makes sense.
So you're saying that popularity is more important than principle? Presumably rms should abandon his notion of the Four Freedoms and adopt something less controversial, like maybe "oxygen is good" in the expectation of seeing the GNU movement expand dramatically. Personally I think it's his refusal to compromise his principles that has gained him so many followers.
Also free speech as I define it only truly exists in the US
so I'm not interested on what other countries did.
Now that's an interesting approach.
So, following your methodology, if I don't like what you're saying I can redefine "intelligence" as something that occurs in people other than yourself and that allows me to disregard anything you say. How useful is that?
Admittedly, it's only formalising an approach that's already ready widely used, so I don't suppose I can claim any great novelty here. Maybe I should redefine "innovation" as something that only happens when I do it. That would work...
For that to be true MSFT would have had to plan that 1.- Nobody would buy WinPhone...okay I see that one, 2.- Nokia would leave them with a product to sell in that gap...which if they wouldn't buy WinPhone on Nokia a change of brand name sure as hell isn't gonna help move units, and 3.- The gap wouldn't just be absorbed by Google, with the CCC Android 2.x phones taking the low end while the more expensive Android and Apple units take the high.
So anyone who proposed such a strategy without taking these factors just wouldn't be all that smart, then?
So you see this is the problem I have when people describe Bill Gates kind of evil moves at MSFT....Ballmer just ain't that smart.
I was trying to find the plant on my S III but I first had to reboot, after which the battery promptly went dead.
I'm just waiting for the new to break that even bigger riots have been reported from at least three Samsung factories. And Samsung senior executives have been personally executing the rioters. By crucifixion, I expect.
C'mon, you Appleturfers! Time to earn your salary!
Isn't it odd that now when Samsung gets attacked these heartwarming stories pop up, but when Foxconn (or rather Apple) was attacked for better working conditions, there was silence.
I wouldn't know about that. I did however think it was interesting that this story gets so much exposure at about the same time as Apple is attacking Samsung in a patent war.
It's almost as if some PR type at Apple had said "we've had a lot of negative publicity over workign condtions in the past, and that seems to be counting against us with the general public. Why don't we see what can dig up on Samsung. If we can't make the public see us as good guys, we can at least make sure that Samsung seem tarred with the same brush". I guess someone's taken a leaf out of the old Microsoft Playbook.
If so, I can't help but find it rather sad. I mean all this effort and the best they can muster "my job is boring, but apart from that it's ok?" I mean seriously?
Slashdot Mirror
Well that's one way of looking at it. Or we could consider that conforming to existing standards helped establish Firefox and Opera and break IE's dominance of the market and the long stagnantion of th Microsoft Years.
So maybe "fail" isn't the best word for what happened :)
I'm delighted that you've been secretary of a standards working group, it doesn't seem to follow that you know more about the SQL standards process that Michael Gorman who was secretary of that particular group.
But the point is that giving the big vendors everything they want does not necessarily result in a useful standard. And to support the point, I thought I'd provide a link to a case where exactly that had happened. And where the secretary of the working group (who might ordinarily be expected to support the standard in question) was the one questioning the validity of the result.
Just to be clear about this: I'm not invoking Gorman's name as an authority on the purpose of standards. I'm citing him as an authority on the standard that he oversaw, and the usefulness of that standard after the approach you advocate. And while I don't want to belittle your experience as secretary of an unrelated and unnamed group, it's not at all clear how that gives your opinion equal weigh as regards SQL.
Citation needed :)
Aardvarks aren't kumquats. So what?
The problem with IE6 wasn't so much that the standards were wrong. It was one of wilful non-compliance on MS' part. MS wanted to use their then dominant position to turn IE itself into the de facto standard. That way all their competitors would have been forced to play catch-up with MS. They gambled and lost.
Alternatively, look at the SQL Standards process. The standard committee is composed of representatives of all the major database players, and rather than get into a pissing match about who gets what in the next standard, they've basically adopted the approach you recommend. Whatever any of them is doing or wants to do next goes into the standard.
The result is a standard that's probably unimplementable in its entirety. In fact all the groups represented on the committee announced that they intended to implement "a subset, plus extensions" of the standard. Even the secretary of the standards committee questioned whether the standard was in fact worthy of the name "standard". But don't take my word for it.
I've explained elsewhere why I don't think that "because the big boys want it" is in itself sufficient reason to include something in a standard. I hope I've shown here that even if that happens, it won't necessarily bring about any benefits.
Really, it's just an all round bad idea.
The similarities are between standards and laws. While they are not without differences, they have a fundamental similarity in that they outline a common set of behaviours to which it is intended that we adhere.
The question is whether we use them to try and make the world a better place for everyone or do we use them to sanction existing practices?
So all we need now is a ruthless despot willing to throw anyone caught abusing the standard into a scorpion pit, and all will be well? That could work.
Of course reaching agreement about who to trust in the role of "ruthless despot" might take some time :)
A technical standard and a law are both ways of defining how we want some aspect of the world be work. That's probably where you've failed to keep up. (BTW, do we really need to do this all snide and sarcastic? I mean I'm up for it if you are, but it's not exactly conducive to a constructive discussion. Your call :))
Standards are only useful if people follow them yes. But that doesn't mean that we should use them to rubberstamp every counter-productive, short-sighted or destructive practice currently being persued.
Standards are supposed to be about how to make something work well.
So presumably we should legalise mugging because muggers are going to rob people with violence whatever we do, and if we're going to have destructive anti-social behavior, it's far better if it's enshrined in some sort of formal framework?
Hey, I know. Since our neighbouring country hasn't much hope of conquoring us, why not let them amass all their tanks on our borders?
I mean they'll never have the nerve to invade, and we can sneak over the border at night and syphon off all the petrol.
Doesn't seem like sound strategy to me
Well, the security aspects are laughable. The potential legal follow ons are not. For instance, the next logical step is to insist on digitally signed browsers and declare non-complying browsers illegal as "circumvention tools" under the DMCA or somesuch. You might not be able to detect hack browsers, but you could sure as hell sue anyone distributing binaries or patches. You might have a hard time claiming non-infringing uses as well.
That would pretty much make any new browser impossible to distribute, and potentially puts enough regulatory red-tape on people like mozilla that they'd have difficulty continuing in their current open source form.
Then there's the possibility to pressure ISPs to only allow encrypted content (call it an anti-terrorism measure - that works for most things) and eventually to start chaging for access on a per web-page basis for all content.
From the point of view of some media and content cartels, that's a very desirable outcome. The genie would be back in the bottle.
On the other hand, if we don't have EME then the problems don't arise, so on balance I'd say better not to have it.
I don't see why that's a problem. There are DRM formats that work with PDFs so it's not as if your content dudes can't publish under DRM. They just can't try and make it apply to the whole web. Nothing of value is being lost here.
Mine the keys illegally I think you mean. Possibly with disproportionate penalties as used by the recording industry in their anti p2p lawsuits.
Let's just not go there. Less effort + less risk == Win
OK, you're right. 5% is not a minority sharholder. %5 is a percentage.
Someone who holds 5% of the stock in a company however IS a minority shareholder. That's going by any definition. I can find, anyway.
Well, not exactly the same as Apple. To get an exact match Apple would have had to introduced iOS before the launch of the iPhone, adding a number of increasingly controversial and unpopular changes to their otherwise beloved OS X. They'd then rename the result "iOS" and launch a phone around it.
What Ubuntu is doing is closer to MS' strategy. Only without the u-turn to reinstate a conventional desktop and start menu and without Stephen Elop waiting in the wings to deliver them a mobile phone manufacturer at fire sale prices. And also without MS' ability to absorb the losses if they pour money down the drain developing something that nobody seems to want.
So "continuity over different devices" is more important than "works well on the device in question" then? I'm not sure I'd agree. Especially given that canonical don't seem to have an ecosystem of other devices to support.
Nah... the die-hards tend to run Debian or Slackware or Gentoo. Ubuntu has always been aimed at the non-techies or casual hobbists. I think I might have mentioned that earlier.
Well, yeah. Non-techies are the core of Ubuntu's users. If the non technical set weren't still showing interest Ubuntu it would pretty much be the end. No one is denying that Ubuntu has a lot of momentum. The question is whether they're gaining or losing that momentum.
I'm sure it is. Linux is growing in those regions, and Ubuntu is one of the better known distros. But if Ubuntu's share of the market (for want of a better term) shrinks relative to the other distros, that growth may not count for much. Just saying.
Completely off topic, but I love the way you put scarequotes around "choice". It's like you're saying "I don't really believe in this concept, but I'm going to reluctantly use the word in order to further the discussion".
That aside...
Done and done. I started with RedHat, moved to Gentoo and I've alternated between Debian and Gentoo ever since. I've never used Ubuntu, although I've installed it for a fair few friends and family. I think I might mentioned that in my earlier post as well.
That said, I like Ubuntu. I like the focus on humanity and usability that the project had when it was launched, and I think Shuttleworth can Canonical did a lot of good.
As such I'm concerned to see Ubuntu moving away from the principles that made it so great. They seem to be moving away from "Linux for Human Beings" and toward "Who cares about the users? They'll get what they're given and like it!" That may have worked for Microsoft when they were the only game in town, but as you point out, those days would seem to be ending.
And you know what? That would still be true if Ubuntu had kept Gnome as their main desktop and developed Unity as front end for mobile devices. Their penetration of the device market wouldn't (and couldn't) suck any more than it does right now, but they'd still have a legion of loyal and happy users.
But hey, users! Who cares about them, right?
I guess that rather depends on the user. The people posting to Slashdot are savvy enough to vote with their feet, whether it's to another 'buntu, or another distro. But Slashdotters aren't your typical Ubuntu users.
Ubuntu built its rep in no small part as the Linux that you didn't need to know Linux to use. A lot of the Ubuntu userbase are people who don't know how to change desktop environment or window manager. They're people who don't want to know how to do those things. All they know is that they found a computer system that they liked, and each release seems to be taking them further away from that system.
Well, not the people who work with your computers the way you do, clearly. But not everyone does. I mean I'm happy with an xterm, launching apps from the command line and alt-tabbing between them. It gives me everything you want in a desktop ... but I know from experience that most people hate working that way.
If that was true, they'd ALL be happy with an xterm, alt-tab and a choice of wallpaper. And the year of Linux On The Desktop(TM) would have happened ten years ago.
Ubuntu worked well for a large set of non-techie users. It wasn't a million miles away from what most of them were used to in Windows, except that for various reasons, it suited them a bit better.
Canonical seem to have an urgent need to fix something that wasn't even remotely broken. And while it doesn't affect me personally I still can't see what they're doing as a viable long term strategy.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I don't think I disagree with you on anything important there. There are a few minor issues: is it reasonable to assume that anything that can be understood is necessarily amenable to being modelled in software, for instance. And I'm not sure I'd share your sorrow if some element of our minds does turn out to be irreducible. We'd still be left with an awful lot we can potentially hack, and I quite like to think that there's an element of mystery to the human condition.
I don't think there's much doubt that our minds are largely (perhaps very largely) mechanistic. And I'll accept that there's strong emerging evidence in support of that notion. I'm just not sure that the evidence is also evidence of "nothing else" :)
I think I better take your word for it in this instance :)
Interesting way of looking a it. Personally, I'd have put space and time under "form" since they are basically the shape of the universe rather than the substance thereof. I also find myself uncomfortable with the idea that every non-material entity in the universe can be reduced to mathetics. Unless "math" is a philosophical term of art that I've not encountered, of course. Both minor quibbles in any event :)
Needless melodrama aside, I think you've got that exactly backwards. You're the one saying "The Brain is a Machine and our Minds are Software, and Nothing Else!"
I'm asking the hard question: "How can you possibly be so sure?"
And to avoid answering that hard question, you're drawing black boxes around everything, and then blaming them on me.
Interesting way to look at it. I wouldn't have thought "consciousness" to be particularly awash with ambiguity, given that pretty much every person on the planet would seem to experience the phenomena on a daily basis. "Self awareness" is a little fuzzier, granted, but I'd still have thought the meaning was clear, given the context.
Still, you're quite right in that problem lies with the definitions. Without a definition of "consciousness" (your term, by the way) it's going to be very hard to point to any evidence that the phenomenon arises either "arises from individual particles interacting" or even "from a higher level of organization such as synapses signaling".
So feel free to define your terms and raise the level of the debate. Or if that's too much like hard work, maybe we can argue informally without carping about definitions. Either way is fine by me :)
I like that! I wonder if there are any other poorly defined sentences where we could apply that approach? :D
Great fun, but it doesn't really advance the argument, does it?
At the end of the day, "consciousness" is an intangible abstraction that defies any sort of physical measurement. The only evidence for its existence is either annecdotal or purely subjective. As such I still doubt that you have any evidence to support your assertions over any sort of MAGIC[1], or vice versa for that matter. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence and all that.
[1] Where "MAGIC" can be taken to mean "self awareness" , "computational processes", "souls", "particle physics" or "Great Aunt Elsie's Fondue Cake".
Are those the only two options then? On the one hand a belief in "souls" with (I assume) all the associated religous baggage of supreme beings, afterlife and organised worship? On the other a purely mechanistic view of consciousness where any sufficiently complex piece of clockwork must necessarily become self aware by some as yet unknown process?
I think there's probably room for some middle ground there. It should be possible to question the idea of purely mechanistic awareness without bringing religion into the debate.
I also find that in the absence of any evidence for either proposition, I really don't find "souls" any less convincing as a hypothesis than magically self aware clockwork. But that's probably just me :)
Hmmm... I could have sworn I just heard something go "whoosh" :D
Thanks. That was more or less my understanding of the matter, but I couldn't back it up and I didn't have time to dig out the numbers.
Past tense. It worked so well for Blackberry that they tried to reposition themselves as a maker of social media devices. Then when that didn't bring in enough money they went looking for someone to buy them out.
I'm not denying that they once made an awful lot of money. I'm just saying that the market place would appear to have moved on since Blackberry's heyday.
Use it freely and with my blessing :)
Hmm. Of course most of those victories were achieved at least in part by leveraging MS' control of the underlying operating system. Admittedly the Xbox didn't have that advantage. That said, while the platform is certainly making money, it's still not clear that MS have recouped the massive investment they needed to brute force their way into the market.
This situation is different again. MS aren't competing against Apple, Google and Samsung. They're competing against Apple and Android. Every hardware manufacturer in the far east is eyeing Android and thinking "we could sell our phones under our own brand". So all the hardware guys that usually support are potential competitors. That's on top of Apple, Google and Samsung.
Even worse, they're pretty much tied to the windows brand for whatever phone they use. So the symbol that everyone sees when they're bored at school in computer class and the one that everyone sees when they're bored at work and wishing they were elsewhere doing something, anything else ... that's going to be the brand on the phone. All the Nokia ads I say downplayed the Windows brand as far as possible, which I think was clever of them. But I don't think MS' corporate pride will allow that.
What might save them in this market is big business. If they can get some large corporations to declare themselves as winphone shops and make everyone use the platform for all work related activities they could use that to make inroads into education and home use. But the business dudes all have iPhones or Android already and it works for them. It's going to be hard work getting them to give up those machines for windows. Especially with BYOD as an emerging trend.
If you ask me, their best hope might be to launch an Xbox phone. Xbox users tend to like the platform; load it up with plenty of free mobile games and they could build a user base pretty quickly, to say nothing of finally finding takers for their app store. But that wouldn't get them a "serious" offering so I don't think they'll do it.
It's more like a desire to prioritize the freedoms of software users over those of software distributors. He's not against software doing "useful" things, except where the usefulness lies in somehow exploiting the software user.
Of course, freedom from slavery is clearly much less important than freedom from murder. I mean if you are enslaved you can regain your freedom, but if you're dead you're dead. Should we then legalise slavery once again so we can concentrate on the big picture? I'm sure there are lots of other pesky laws that we could get rid of while we're at it. Always assuming your logic of prioritising freedoms holds water, obviously.
Counter example right here. I don't agree with everything rms says. I don't believe that proprietary software is necessarily a bad thing, and I take particular issue with him on the "GNU/Linux" thing. In this instance, however, I think he's got it about right.
So you're saying that popularity is more important than principle? Presumably rms should abandon his notion of the Four Freedoms and adopt something less controversial, like maybe "oxygen is good" in the expectation of seeing the GNU movement expand dramatically. Personally I think it's his refusal to compromise his principles that has gained him so many followers.
Now that's an interesting approach.
So, following your methodology, if I don't like what you're saying I can redefine "intelligence" as something that occurs in people other than yourself and that allows me to disregard anything you say. How useful is that?
Admittedly, it's only formalising an approach that's already ready widely used, so I don't suppose I can claim any great novelty here. Maybe I should redefine "innovation" as something that only happens when I do it. That would work ...
So anyone who proposed such a strategy without taking these factors just wouldn't be all that smart, then?
Hmmm ... Explain the problem to me again? :)
Could be. But those people are probably not the same people who are complaining that their facebook account erroneously liked Mr. Romney.
I'm just waiting for the new to break that even bigger riots have been reported from at least three Samsung factories. And Samsung senior executives have been personally executing the rioters. By crucifixion, I expect.
C'mon, you Appleturfers! Time to earn your salary!
I wouldn't know about that. I did however think it was interesting that this story gets so much exposure at about the same time as Apple is attacking Samsung in a patent war.
It's almost as if some PR type at Apple had said "we've had a lot of negative publicity over workign condtions in the past, and that seems to be counting against us with the general public. Why don't we see what can dig up on Samsung. If we can't make the public see us as good guys, we can at least make sure that Samsung seem tarred with the same brush". I guess someone's taken a leaf out of the old Microsoft Playbook.
If so, I can't help but find it rather sad. I mean all this effort and the best they can muster "my job is boring, but apart from that it's ok?" I mean seriously?