Right. But, doing something different (say, making a macro named "current") will sometimes cause someone 15 frustrating minutes at trying to figure out what the heck the absolutely nonsensical error messages that GCC is outputting are supposed to mean.
Which is of course why the convention evolved. It's not necessary, but it is useful. Which was rather my point in the first place.
I think it should be the user's option whether their FS operates in a case-sensitive or case-insensitive manner, but that applications should be written to deal with either.
mmm... but so long as programmers create filenames based on externally supplied strings, then mapping mixed case text onto a case insensitive filesystem is an accident waiting to happen. Don't you think?Of course, you could encode all file names jsut to make sure there were no case issues, but then you have debug problems. Whereas if the filesystem handles the full charset for file names then the problem just goes away.
Now if you could abolish the notion of case throughout the computing world, I could maybe see your point. You might even find some support for the notion among the "OMG!!! WTF!?!" set.
I guess I'm just one of those weirdos then.
That may well be the case, but that's not a name I'm calling you:)
it's exactly when I'm using command line stuff that it'd almost be most useFUL to have a case-insensitive file system, because it means that I'm very likely to be typing file names
In which case, I'd expect you to be more interested in the part of my message you didn't quote; the part where I talked about case-insensitivity in shells and command line tools rather than the file system itself. I think you're trying to fix this problem at the wrong level.
Surely you're not suggesting that file names and C/C++ variable names should use the same conventions, are you?
Of course not. I'm jsut pointing out that there are cases where you can use the same word, differently captialised to represent related concepts. I don't even think it's the best way to solve the problem in a file system, since directories would seem better suited. But that doesn't mean we should remove the capability from our file systems.
It's interesting you bring this up, because in the case of the macro, I think it's a flaw in C and C++ that macros have to be so distinguished from other constructs. But that's another debate.
Well, they don't have to be so distinguished. They do need to be lexically distinct, or else the macro processor will operate over tokens that you didn't intend, but you can use any sort of captialisation you liek for your macro names. We tend to spell constants all in caps because that's a good way to remind ourselves that something is a constant value. But you can make your #defs look just like normal variables or functions if you like, and in the case of pseudo-functions, people often do. But yes, that's another debate.
Can you think of ANY similar conventions for file names? The fact that I don't think there are any means that when you have to come up with a file name, you have to remember the case.
From a user's perspective, perhaps. From a progammer's perspective, you just write the app to organise its internal data directory along the lines of the convention you set out. Certainly there are other ways to achieve the same end - but I don't think that's a good reason to cripple a file system. I mean just because you can drive from A to B, that's not a good reason to take away your car. Or your feet, for that matter. It's useful to have the option.
First, keep in mind that it's not *just* anding against 0x20, you also have to check if it's in the proper range first.
Hardly rocket science, is it? If you're using Java or.NET it gets even easier, since you just use the downshift method built into the string class.
I strongly suspect that there is a "right" way to do case insensitive matching, and I think that it's well worth it to figure out what it is then do it.
Agreed. And I think what you're really looking for is not a case insensitive file system. I think all you need are tools to navigate the file system that are case insensitive by default. In unix terms, you could set an environment variable somewhere such that "vi Readme" and "vi readme" would both open the same file. You'd need something to disambiguate cases where there was a clash, a but like the way zsh prompts you for misspelled commands.
Then again, most people who want case insensitive file systems tend to use GUI file managers anyway. So what you really want is case insensitive search, and that's old news.
Semantic flexibility. If you want you can design an application which uses filenames such that "foobar" means something different to "FooBar" which is different again to "FOOBAR".
Developers have been using this idea for years. In C++, for instance, FOOBAR is (by convention) a macro constant value, FooBar a class name, and foobar a variable, Nor is it entirely unheard of to use all three valiants in one context: FooBar foobar = FOOBAR; You use the same name with different capitalisation to show that the three tokens are related to one another.
The thing is, I don't see anyone criticising Visual C++ for being primitive because it supports case sensitivity. So why is it that you think reducing the expressiveness of a system is a good idea in the case of filesystems? It's not like ANDing a string against 0x20 is
particularly difficuly; even in these days of unicode, it still can't be that hard to downshift a file name. So what's the big deal?
That's an interesting outlook. To what standard are you holding him?
Well... When I did my masters, we were taught that we needed to demonstrate an awareness of the issues surrounding a topic (so that the reader can tell that we do not argue from a position of ignorance) and that we need to treat those issues more or less even handedly (so that the reader can tell that we do not argue based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the issues).
That, I believe, is the basis of a well structured article. Observe the structure and if the reader dislikes your conclusion,
he at least has to acknowledge that the case has been argued fairly. Depart from that structure, and you risk being dismissed out of hand by your readers.
I've read lots of editorials in my day -- in the NYT, Washington Post, and various other well-known newspapers
The editorials I remember reading (The Daily Telegraph, about 10 years ago) seemed pretty well structured from what I can recall.
If you tell me that standards have dropped, I can't really argue with you. On the other hand, I'm not ready to accept the drop in
standards as a justification for that same drop in standards. "Everybody else is doing it" should not be a valid excuse.
these are editorials, not doctoral theses.
Quite. And I don't expect a reference list, although the occasional hyperlink in support of an argument is rarely out of place. But, for reasons I've already explained, I think there is a certain basic structure that is common to all well written articles.
Depart from that structure and there is little that separates you from the legion of angsty, self-important teenagers over on MySpace.
Slanted as it is, this article reads more like propaganda than insight. As such, it damages the reputation of Mr. Kanellos, and since he writes in an editorial capacity, it damages the credibility his publisher. Were I paying his wages, I would less than happy with
his performance in this instance.
To be honest, it's an opinion piece, and the purpose of an opinion piece is to be biased
Umm... actually, no. To be "biased" means to give more weight to one side of an argument than the other, Or, in this particular case, to only consider one side at all. That's acceptable behaviour for someone posting on slashdot who just fancies a quick rant. On the other hand,
to post in your capacity as an editor of what is ostensibly a respectable news source... I think we're entitled to expect a higher standard of debate in such cases,
That's not to say that Kanellos isn't entitled to draw a conclusion; I just expect a little more support than "I've spoken to a lot of patent trolls and they were all nice blokes! Plus there's money to be made, so there!". Ad if you have any expectations at all for professional media, then I think you require higher standards as well.
Sadly, the perception that perception is reality may indeed be widespread. Alas, the reality is that perception is frequently other than reality. If anyone ever tries to sell you on the notion that perception is in fact reality, I advise you to check your wallet and to refuse to sign anything.
the perception is that anyone that owns a copyright is doing whatever they can to fuck their customers over any way they can
Interestingly enough, if perception were reality, than your statement would imply that anyone owing a copyright was indeed trying to fuck their customers over any way they could, and therefore, arguably, justify the very stance you appear to be criticizing. Since that doesn't seem to be your point, perhaps your perception is that perception is not after all reality, your statement to the contrary notwithstanding.
Maybe what you're trying to convey here is that your perception is that the perception is that perception is reality. I don't think anyone could really argue in which case.
Drifting back towards the topic, you could have said something like "a lot of people think the software and media companies have overstepped their bounds of late". Admittedly, that leaves you open to responses like "well they have so overstepped their bounds". Which, while perhaps predictable at least has the merit of being a discussion about behaviours rather than perceptions. You know, about what what people can be observed to do, rather than about what you think they think, and about what you think they think you think.
Because there's a limit to just how meta you can take a debate before it loses all meaning.
supporting both GPL-style sharing & copyright abolition is inconsistent, as they're mutually exclusive
There is no inconsistency - you just need to be clear in your own mind as to what you are trying to achieve. If you view the GPL and copyright abolition as ends in their own right then fair enough; but that rather places you in the realms of blind faith and religion.
Personally, I don't think that's a particularly good basis from which to debate legislative policy.
On the other hand, if your aim is (say) maximizing the free flow of information among the people of Planet Earth, then there is no inconsistency at all. The GPL is a good workaround for current legal systems, and copyright abolition is a superior solution,
but one which we haven't got around to implementing yet.
Consistent enough for you?
if you're a genuine copyright abolitionist, you'd support BSD instead
No, because BSD derivative works are still protected by copyright, which means I can be locked out of using derivatives of my own works.
I may not want that.
TFA appears to propose some sort of nebulous copyright replacement legislation which would enforce GPL sharing
As I read it, TFA says that if the important issue (as gbulmarsh appeared to suggest) is proper attribution, then a law could be enacted to require proper attribution. The author doesn't propose it as such, doesn't suggest it would enforce GPL sharing, and goes out of his way to draw a distinction between copyright and "creditright".
Are you sure you read the same article as everybody else.
I might be missing something obvious, but it seems likely that it would just be copyright by a different name.
You're missing something obvious. Read the article again.
Quite. While it's obviously true that there is only going to be a market leader, it in no way follows that that market leader will therefore have lousy security.
And even if it did, that wouldn't be a reason to deploy products from a vendor with Microsoft's lamentable track record on security in in cases where security is paramount.
It's time for all the people who have entertained this fantasy to stop deluding themselves.
Go look at the Layers of NT model, the NT4 changes and the Vista changes. Not only is NT far more structured, isolated, but even has concepts than Linux can't do like run OS subsystems because of its rich structured layers even at the kernel API interface level.
Yes, yes, yes. Given NT's connection with VMS I would expect the architecture to be sound and well thought out. Furthermore, I
don't think anyone (in this thread at least) has said anything that sounded like "Windows totally devoid of all worth"
That said, the GP does have a point. The problem with NT family operating systems is not that it lacks layers. The problem
as I understand it is Microsoft keep making technical decisions driven by political and/or marketing concerns which have the effect of
short circuiting the protection that these layers would otherwise offer.
A recent example would be Vista's treatment of install.exe and setup.exe. Both of these trigger UAC elevations, since it is assumed that any.exe with such a filename is an installer. However, recent reports suggest that the UAC elevation is both silent and unstoppable. If true,
this opens an obvious attack vector - a classic case of MS weakening their security model to make things easier for the naive user.
This is the down side of "thinking across layers". Once you accept that it's ok to violate the layer model, then there will always be
one more special case. And if your decisions are driven by marketing or by (say) anti-trust concerns, then some of those layer violations are probably not going to be very well thought out from a technical viewpoint.
But why do so many Slashdotters seem to be in favor of ripping off artists, programmers, writers, directors, and so forth? All I ever see in response are lame critiques of copyright law (especially since the GPL relies on copyright law) or more bashing of the RIAA ("The RIAA made me do it!").
OK. So you don't want to hear about copyright law or corrupt distribution cartels. Tell ya what, why don't you just give us a list of
all the resposonse for which you have prepared pat answers, and we'll try and feed you straight lines that make you look good.
The problem here is that the media industry made its money on distribution. The record companies in particular made their money
by distributing. If they paid artists or promoted new talent, that was just to make sure they had something to distribute. It wasn't
what people paid for. People paid to get their hands on the vinyl, and everyone thought it was a good deal.
The trouble is that the combination of the Internet and digtal media changes the economics of distribution. So the cartels are trying to re-invent themselves as content creators and rights holders. And the public aren't buying it.
furthering its descent into homogenization and sequel-itis as studios are forced to rely on tried-and-tested money-makers because piracy makes risky investments not worth the cost? Haven't you guys made the connection
So if everyone stopped downloading tomorrow, the studios would go "Phew, thank goodness that's over. Hey, Morrie! Cancel Scooby Doo 32 and commission something new and original!". because, you know,I just can't see it myself. As far as I can tell, business are risk-verse right across the board at the moment. I think that's a red herring, thank you.
Getting back to the main point - why support The Pirate Bay? Because I don't that propping a failing business model with government monopolies is a sound economic strategy.
No - the term "net neutrality" has no formal definition. A neutral network would be one that handles all traffic in the same way
But the informal one you just supplied works for me, so why not use that? It's the alternatives that are worryingly fuzzy and ill-defined.
But in any case, the concern here is that
if ISPs are allowed to levy charges on packets passing through their subnets, they will abuse it to their own short term gain,
and the long term detriment of the Internet.
I believe that traffic prioritisation based on the type of traffic is a good thing, but prioritisation based on charging content providers is evil.
Overly broad. The same legislation that allows you to limit bittorrent also allows you to squash VOIP. Or to drop all video streams except those using your own (patent and proprietary) protocol. I can't see that as a good thing.
Yes they do have accountability to the end users. Not _direct_ accountability of course, but if they provide a sucky service then the end user will change to an ISP who uses a different transit provider.
You may be able to make a good argument that stupid self-centered greed works against everyone's interests in the long term. Based on
my observations of current standards of corporate ethics, I don't have a lot of faith in that altering anyone's behavior.
Ah, but the thing is that you probably aren't already paying for it.
I am too. I have a contract with my ISP that entitles me to the service defined in our agreement. Contention rates don't enter into it.
the consumer is already paying for their connection, why should the content provider pay more?
The content provider is already paying. They pay their ISP bills too. The "tiered internet" argument is about the ISPs in the middle
extorting cash from those who have contracts with someone else.
However, I am worried that outlawing non-neutrality would also squash the ISPs' ability to do legitimate traffic shaping.
Personally, I'd sooner see traffic shaping outlawed than I would allow third party carriers to levy arbitrary charges on the traffic passing through their machines.
On the odd occasion I fire up BitTorrent I should expect to get a reasonable amount of bandwidth out of it - if low priority traffic can never get the full bandwidth, the ISP is underprovisioned and that needs to be fixed.
This isn't about bittorrent, and it isn't about your ISP. It's about being able surcharge web proividers so as to drive the small sites off the web. It's about being able to crush disruptive technologies such as VOIP to protect the PTT's investment in land based telephony. It's about every node in the internet being able to charge you whatever sum they like whenever one of your packets hops through one of their boxes, or else risk being deprioritised to the bit bucket.
This is what we risk if we sanction a tiered Internet. The middle ISPs have no accountability to the end users. They will have no incentive to be fair or competitive, and every incentive to soak every last cent they can out of anyone using their fibre.
Net neutrality is both necessary and workable for what I call Jeffersonet, which comprises the "classical", bandwidth-light parts of the Internet.
I read that as, "if your application uses so little bandwidth as to be negligible, then net neutrality is ok. But if you want to actually use some of that
broadband bandwidth that you're already paying for, then I want to charge you extra".
Or in other words Let's compromise - do it my way.
A perfect implementation of HTML wouldn't need javascript.
In much the same way as a perfect implementation of integer addition wouldn't need string manipulation. I mean it's
absolutely, unarguably correct, and at the same time, utterly misses the point.
JavaScript and HTML do different things. Now if you want to argue that using javascript to implement mouseover effects
is not a good idea, then fair enough. On the other hand, I don't want a specification for HTML that is Turing complete, either.
Separation of concerns and all that.
Poor Little Microsoft
on
AMD's New DRM
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
you'd do better directing your misplaced anger at things like the BluRay consortium which make the DRM demands that Vista meets.
"Things like the BluRay consortium". That would inlcude the HD-DVD group right? Only, Microsoft are members of that consortium. So maybe it's ok to be mad in that case. It's not like this feature is going to be BluRay only,
after all.
And after all is said and done, Microsoft surely do seem to have a passion for hardware that restricts what the users can do.
Remember Paladium? Microsoft were founder members of the TPCA. And they've gifted the world with no shortage of software DRM.
There's the Plays For Sure fiasco, and all the helpful DRM features built into windows media player...
And somehow I can't help think that if they were opposed to the idea, they could do something about it.
Then there's
Microsoft may not be solely to blame in this instance, but somehow I have
difficulties buying into this image of them as weak and helpless, adrift at the mercy of Market Forces.
I see you're trying to rephrase your argument in such a way as to make my objections seem unfair.
And I see that you're determined to place your own interpretation on my words, and that you're
not going to let a little thing like me explaining what I actually meant get in the way of that process.
That doesn't seem like a workable basis for a dialogue, so I think I'll leave you too it,
I'm not claiming that those who use MS tools are particularly innovate, bright, etc, but you and a number of others are making such a claim about users of other tools.
Actually, no. I can't speak for the others in the thread, but I'm claiming nothing of the sort. This is what I said:
I think that tells you a lot about Paul Graham's everyday environment. He's working with startups, he's trying to put together teams of the bright and innovative, and what he's finding is that most of these people are not using Microsoft software.
See? I'm talking about what Paul Graham is trying to do (as I understand it) and about the relative proportions of
operating systems he reports finding in the groups with which he works.
I go on to acknowledge both that I don't fully understand the group Graham is commenting upon, and
that there may be an element of subconscious bias in the composition of the groups
he encounters. Then I wonder how much of windows marketshare is due to
history and to speculate that the next wave of innovators might indeed be turing away from Microsoft.
None of resembles the
interpretation
you placed upon it "Buy a Mac and you can be bright and innovative too!". What you've done is responded to the argument
you wanted to hear, and refuted that, rather than addressing what I actually said. It's what's known as a
straw man argument.
In fact, as far as I can see, you've repeated the pattern with all the comments on this thread. You've looked through a post
hunting for something that could be construed as meaning "apple good" or "microsoft bad", and then added it to the
increasingly ridiculous construct you've been assembling and then attempted to dismiss these posts as a body with nothing
more than sneers.
Now, if you want to comment on what I actually posted, and if you can identify some way in which you think
my opinions were inadequately supported, then please do. Otherwise, this has drifted about as far off topic as I
want to go.
I find it quite incredulous that someone can devote so much time to this cause
Much the same way that Ken Brown of AdTI had problems believing that Linux wasn't based on the
Minix codebase. In fact he had so much trouble that he went ahead and published even after
Andrew Tannenbaum (no great friend on Linus' in the past) uncategorically told him that
this was not the case.
The thing is though, if you accept the notion of computer programmers (Linus, rms, and all the rest of them)
devoting all their spare time to creating a Free Software operating system, who do you find it so
strange that someone whose expertise lies in the legal sphere should devote her time to defending
the same?
There are people who can't program but who write documentation to support their favourite
free software projects. Must we assume they too are secretly funded by IBM?
I think people still want to use Windows, on the whole, but they don't want to use spyware and adware,
and they don't want to use McAffee or Symantec because in many cases these products hit your
performance just as badly.
See, I think that on the whole, Windows users have no experience of trying anything else, This is a difficult
point to argue on such a technophile site as Slashdot, where most of us have probably at least tried
two or three different operating systems. That said, my impression is that for the majority of
users, they've heard of Apple but hear it's very expensive and mainly for media people
and they've never heard of Linux at all
they say, "But what about my programs?" and you respond, "Do you seriously use that much besides IE, AIM, and Outlook Express?" you get some converts pretty easily.
Exactly! They don't want to use Windows. They want to send email and instant messages and surf the web.
They may not want the learning curve that goes with a new OS, but I don't think thye have any particular
loyalty to OS. Thet just want one that gets out of their face and lets them get on. Operating system loyalty
seems to me to be a geek thing.
But the people Paul Graham is talking about aren't the sort of people who have virus and spyware problems.
They're the ones who are going to be writing the next generation of applications. And if they're not using
MS, then that's a whole load of reasons to migrate coming down the pipeline, as if MS didn't have enough
troubles.
The only thing Microsoft should be worried about is Google IMHO. Anybody smaller will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
I think it's a mistake to look at this as "MS vs. Apple" or "MS vs. Google". I don't think its about brand names, I think it's to do with the technologies that the new kids on the block are choosing.
If Apple fit into the picture at all, it's because most people
look at a windows system and see Work. They see hours spent
down the office writing reports and shuffling email. They see homework
assignments. They see stress. Apple's ads are cleverly leveraging that
by reminding people that computers used to be fun - and still can be.
But I don't think that's what Paul Graham is talking about.
I as at Spa2007 a couple of weeks back. It's a developer
conference, tends to attract people who want to stay on the cutting edge.
One of the things I kept hear there was people choosing open technology, not because it was better or worse
than MS particularly, but because the barrier to entry was lower. I find this too. Suppose
I want to do something new with Technology X, and I google an open solution; I'll get half a dozen howtos.
If I do the same for the MS package, I'll get half a dozen MS MVs selling seventy dollar books that promise
to remove the pain of Technology X. I almost always end up choosing the open tech.
And that's what I think is at work here.
Loyalty to any specific company in the computing industry is like being loyal to vaccuum tubes over transistors... People who choose Microsoft do so because it is simply the best solution in today's workplace for productivity.
Well, I can see why you might think that. I mean, I think that Linux is far and away the best solution. And it is:
for the type of work I do, and for the way that I like to work. The trouble is that it's too easy to forget the qualifier
and assume that "the OS I use is the best, full stop". And that's when the flame wars start.
The way I see it, imagine Windows, OS/X and Linux as a Venn diagram. In fact, better yet.... I've put a bit of overlap in there to reflect the existence of cross platform apps and toolkits.
Now as I see it, the best solution for a given task depends on a lot of variables,
but I think there's a sort of fuzzy sweet spot (if that's not too oxymoronic) - a loosely defined zone marking out the set of more-or-less optimum solutions. Ten to fifteen years ago, I think that graph would have looked like this, with most of the optimum solution space lying inside
the windows domain.
The thing is, I don't think that locus is static, and for the last five years or so I think it's been
moving away from Microsoft, and I think it still is.
And I think that is
what Paul Graham is seeing, even if that's not how explains it.
Slashdot Mirror
Which is of course why the convention evolved. It's not necessary, but it is useful. Which was rather my point in the first place.
mmm... but so long as programmers create filenames based on externally supplied strings, then mapping mixed case text onto a case insensitive filesystem is an accident waiting to happen. Don't you think?Of course, you could encode all file names jsut to make sure there were no case issues, but then you have debug problems. Whereas if the filesystem handles the full charset for file names then the problem just goes away.
Now if you could abolish the notion of case throughout the computing world, I could maybe see your point. You might even find some support for the notion among the "OMG!!! WTF!?!" set.
That may well be the case, but that's not a name I'm calling you :)
In which case, I'd expect you to be more interested in the part of my message you didn't quote; the part where I talked about case-insensitivity in shells and command line tools rather than the file system itself. I think you're trying to fix this problem at the wrong level.
Of course not. I'm jsut pointing out that there are cases where you can use the same word, differently captialised to represent related concepts. I don't even think it's the best way to solve the problem in a file system, since directories would seem better suited. But that doesn't mean we should remove the capability from our file systems.
Well, they don't have to be so distinguished. They do need to be lexically distinct, or else the macro processor will operate over tokens that you didn't intend, but you can use any sort of captialisation you liek for your macro names. We tend to spell constants all in caps because that's a good way to remind ourselves that something is a constant value. But you can make your #defs look just like normal variables or functions if you like, and in the case of pseudo-functions, people often do. But yes, that's another debate.
From a user's perspective, perhaps. From a progammer's perspective, you just write the app to organise its internal data directory along the lines of the convention you set out. Certainly there are other ways to achieve the same end - but I don't think that's a good reason to cripple a file system. I mean just because you can drive from A to B, that's not a good reason to take away your car. Or your feet, for that matter. It's useful to have the option.
Yeah yeah yeah Hardly rocket science, is it? If you're using Java or
Agreed. And I think what you're really looking for is not a case insensitive file system. I think all you need are tools to navigate the file system that are case insensitive by default. In unix terms, you could set an environment variable somewhere such that "vi Readme" and "vi readme" would both open the same file. You'd need something to disambiguate cases where there was a clash, a but like the way zsh prompts you for misspelled commands.
Then again, most people who want case insensitive file systems tend to use GUI file managers anyway. So what you really want is case insensitive search, and that's old news.
Semantic flexibility. If you want you can design an application which uses filenames such that "foobar" means something different to "FooBar" which is different again to "FOOBAR".
Developers have been using this idea for years. In C++, for instance, FOOBAR is (by convention) a macro constant value, FooBar a class name, and foobar a variable, Nor is it entirely unheard of to use all three valiants in one context: FooBar foobar = FOOBAR; You use the same name with different capitalisation to show that the three tokens are related to one another.
The thing is, I don't see anyone criticising Visual C++ for being primitive because it supports case sensitivity. So why is it that you think reducing the expressiveness of a system is a good idea in the case of filesystems? It's not like ANDing a string against 0x20 is particularly difficuly; even in these days of unicode, it still can't be that hard to downshift a file name. So what's the big deal?
Well... When I did my masters, we were taught that we needed to demonstrate an awareness of the issues surrounding a topic (so that the reader can tell that we do not argue from a position of ignorance) and that we need to treat those issues more or less even handedly (so that the reader can tell that we do not argue based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the issues).
That, I believe, is the basis of a well structured article. Observe the structure and if the reader dislikes your conclusion, he at least has to acknowledge that the case has been argued fairly. Depart from that structure, and you risk being dismissed out of hand by your readers.
The editorials I remember reading (The Daily Telegraph, about 10 years ago) seemed pretty well structured from what I can recall. If you tell me that standards have dropped, I can't really argue with you. On the other hand, I'm not ready to accept the drop in standards as a justification for that same drop in standards. "Everybody else is doing it" should not be a valid excuse.
Quite. And I don't expect a reference list, although the occasional hyperlink in support of an argument is rarely out of place. But, for reasons I've already explained, I think there is a certain basic structure that is common to all well written articles. Depart from that structure and there is little that separates you from the legion of angsty, self-important teenagers over on MySpace.
Slanted as it is, this article reads more like propaganda than insight. As such, it damages the reputation of Mr. Kanellos, and since he writes in an editorial capacity, it damages the credibility his publisher. Were I paying his wages, I would less than happy with his performance in this instance.
Umm... actually, no. To be "biased" means to give more weight to one side of an argument than the other, Or, in this particular case, to only consider one side at all. That's acceptable behaviour for someone posting on slashdot who just fancies a quick rant. On the other hand, to post in your capacity as an editor of what is ostensibly a respectable news source... I think we're entitled to expect a higher standard of debate in such cases,
That's not to say that Kanellos isn't entitled to draw a conclusion; I just expect a little more support than "I've spoken to a lot of patent trolls and they were all nice blokes! Plus there's money to be made, so there!". Ad if you have any expectations at all for professional media, then I think you require higher standards as well.
Sadly, the perception that perception is reality may indeed be widespread. Alas, the reality is that perception is frequently other than reality. If anyone ever tries to sell you on the notion that perception is in fact reality, I advise you to check your wallet and to refuse to sign anything.
Interestingly enough, if perception were reality, than your statement would imply that anyone owing a copyright was indeed trying to fuck their customers over any way they could, and therefore, arguably, justify the very stance you appear to be criticizing. Since that doesn't seem to be your point, perhaps your perception is that perception is not after all reality, your statement to the contrary notwithstanding. Maybe what you're trying to convey here is that your perception is that the perception is that perception is reality. I don't think anyone could really argue in which case.
Drifting back towards the topic, you could have said something like "a lot of people think the software and media companies have overstepped their bounds of late". Admittedly, that leaves you open to responses like "well they have so overstepped their bounds". Which, while perhaps predictable at least has the merit of being a discussion about behaviours rather than perceptions. You know, about what what people can be observed to do, rather than about what you think they think, and about what you think they think you think.
Because there's a limit to just how meta you can take a debate before it loses all meaning.
There is no inconsistency - you just need to be clear in your own mind as to what you are trying to achieve. If you view the GPL and copyright abolition as ends in their own right then fair enough; but that rather places you in the realms of blind faith and religion. Personally, I don't think that's a particularly good basis from which to debate legislative policy.
On the other hand, if your aim is (say) maximizing the free flow of information among the people of Planet Earth, then there is no inconsistency at all. The GPL is a good workaround for current legal systems, and copyright abolition is a superior solution, but one which we haven't got around to implementing yet.
Consistent enough for you?
No, because BSD derivative works are still protected by copyright, which means I can be locked out of using derivatives of my own works. I may not want that.
As I read it, TFA says that if the important issue (as gbulmarsh appeared to suggest) is proper attribution, then a law could be enacted to require proper attribution. The author doesn't propose it as such, doesn't suggest it would enforce GPL sharing, and goes out of his way to draw a distinction between copyright and "creditright".
Are you sure you read the same article as everybody else.
You're missing something obvious. Read the article again.
Quite. While it's obviously true that there is only going to be a market leader, it in no way follows that that market leader will therefore have lousy security.
And even if it did, that wouldn't be a reason to deploy products from a vendor with Microsoft's lamentable track record on security in in cases where security is paramount.
I know who gets my vote for delusional.
Yes, yes, yes. Given NT's connection with VMS I would expect the architecture to be sound and well thought out. Furthermore, I don't think anyone (in this thread at least) has said anything that sounded like "Windows totally devoid of all worth"
That said, the GP does have a point. The problem with NT family operating systems is not that it lacks layers. The problem as I understand it is Microsoft keep making technical decisions driven by political and/or marketing concerns which have the effect of short circuiting the protection that these layers would otherwise offer.
A recent example would be Vista's treatment of install.exe and setup.exe. Both of these trigger UAC elevations, since it is assumed that any .exe with such a filename is an installer. However, recent reports suggest that the UAC elevation is both silent and unstoppable. If true,
this opens an obvious attack vector - a classic case of MS weakening their security model to make things easier for the naive user.
This is the down side of "thinking across layers". Once you accept that it's ok to violate the layer model, then there will always be one more special case. And if your decisions are driven by marketing or by (say) anti-trust concerns, then some of those layer violations are probably not going to be very well thought out from a technical viewpoint.
OK. So you don't want to hear about copyright law or corrupt distribution cartels. Tell ya what, why don't you just give us a list of all the resposonse for which you have prepared pat answers, and we'll try and feed you straight lines that make you look good.
The problem here is that the media industry made its money on distribution. The record companies in particular made their money by distributing. If they paid artists or promoted new talent, that was just to make sure they had something to distribute. It wasn't what people paid for. People paid to get their hands on the vinyl, and everyone thought it was a good deal.
The trouble is that the combination of the Internet and digtal media changes the economics of distribution. So the cartels are trying to re-invent themselves as content creators and rights holders. And the public aren't buying it.
So if everyone stopped downloading tomorrow, the studios would go "Phew, thank goodness that's over. Hey, Morrie! Cancel Scooby Doo 32 and commission something new and original!". because, you know,I just can't see it myself. As far as I can tell, business are risk-verse right across the board at the moment. I think that's a red herring, thank you.
Getting back to the main point - why support The Pirate Bay? Because I don't that propping a failing business model with government monopolies is a sound economic strategy.
Ah, right. I got as far as the code tags, I just forgot about the plain old text option.
:)
Thanks for that
#include "bsod.h"
/* anyone remember the days when slashdot allow you to quote pre-formatted text? */
main() { if(running_on_linux()) { crash(horribly, messily); } return proprietary_blob(patented); }
I'm sure he'll make an absolutely splendid slime mould.
I mean, after all that practice...
Oh goody! Can we start with the false dichotomies, please?
But the informal one you just supplied works for me, so why not use that? It's the alternatives that are worryingly fuzzy and ill-defined.
But in any case, the concern here is that if ISPs are allowed to levy charges on packets passing through their subnets, they will abuse it to their own short term gain, and the long term detriment of the Internet.
Overly broad. The same legislation that allows you to limit bittorrent also allows you to squash VOIP. Or to drop all video streams except those using your own (patent and proprietary) protocol. I can't see that as a good thing.
You may be able to make a good argument that stupid self-centered greed works against everyone's interests in the long term. Based on my observations of current standards of corporate ethics, I don't have a lot of faith in that altering anyone's behavior.
I am too. I have a contract with my ISP that entitles me to the service defined in our agreement. Contention rates don't enter into it.
The content provider is already paying. They pay their ISP bills too. The "tiered internet" argument is about the ISPs in the middle extorting cash from those who have contracts with someone else.
Personally, I'd sooner see traffic shaping outlawed than I would allow third party carriers to levy arbitrary charges on the traffic passing through their machines.
This isn't about bittorrent, and it isn't about your ISP. It's about being able surcharge web proividers so as to drive the small sites off the web. It's about being able to crush disruptive technologies such as VOIP to protect the PTT's investment in land based telephony. It's about every node in the internet being able to charge you whatever sum they like whenever one of your packets hops through one of their boxes, or else risk being deprioritised to the bit bucket.
This is what we risk if we sanction a tiered Internet. The middle ISPs have no accountability to the end users. They will have no incentive to be fair or competitive, and every incentive to soak every last cent they can out of anyone using their fibre.
There are wider concerns here than bittorrent.
I read that as, "if your application uses so little bandwidth as to be negligible, then net neutrality is ok. But if you want to actually use some of that broadband bandwidth that you're already paying for, then I want to charge you extra".
Or in other words Let's compromise - do it my way.
In much the same way as a perfect implementation of integer addition wouldn't need string manipulation. I mean it's absolutely, unarguably correct, and at the same time, utterly misses the point.
JavaScript and HTML do different things. Now if you want to argue that using javascript to implement mouseover effects is not a good idea, then fair enough. On the other hand, I don't want a specification for HTML that is Turing complete, either. Separation of concerns and all that.
"Things like the BluRay consortium". That would inlcude the HD-DVD group right? Only, Microsoft are members of that consortium. So maybe it's ok to be mad in that case. It's not like this feature is going to be BluRay only, after all.
And after all is said and done, Microsoft surely do seem to have a passion for hardware that restricts what the users can do. Remember Paladium? Microsoft were founder members of the TPCA. And they've gifted the world with no shortage of software DRM. There's the Plays For Sure fiasco, and all the helpful DRM features built into windows media player... And somehow I can't help think that if they were opposed to the idea, they could do something about it. Then there's
Microsoft may not be solely to blame in this instance, but somehow I have difficulties buying into this image of them as weak and helpless, adrift at the mercy of Market Forces.
And I see that you're determined to place your own interpretation on my words, and that you're not going to let a little thing like me explaining what I actually meant get in the way of that process.
That doesn't seem like a workable basis for a dialogue, so I think I'll leave you too it,
Actually, no. I can't speak for the others in the thread, but I'm claiming nothing of the sort. This is what I said:
See? I'm talking about what Paul Graham is trying to do (as I understand it) and about the relative proportions of operating systems he reports finding in the groups with which he works.
I go on to acknowledge both that I don't fully understand the group Graham is commenting upon, and that there may be an element of subconscious bias in the composition of the groups he encounters. Then I wonder how much of windows marketshare is due to history and to speculate that the next wave of innovators might indeed be turing away from Microsoft.
None of resembles the interpretation you placed upon it "Buy a Mac and you can be bright and innovative too!". What you've done is responded to the argument you wanted to hear, and refuted that, rather than addressing what I actually said. It's what's known as a straw man argument.
In fact, as far as I can see, you've repeated the pattern with all the comments on this thread. You've looked through a post hunting for something that could be construed as meaning "apple good" or "microsoft bad", and then added it to the increasingly ridiculous construct you've been assembling and then attempted to dismiss these posts as a body with nothing more than sneers.
Now, if you want to comment on what I actually posted, and if you can identify some way in which you think my opinions were inadequately supported, then please do. Otherwise, this has drifted about as far off topic as I want to go.
Much the same way that Ken Brown of AdTI had problems believing that Linux wasn't based on the Minix codebase. In fact he had so much trouble that he went ahead and published even after Andrew Tannenbaum (no great friend on Linus' in the past) uncategorically told him that this was not the case.
The thing is though, if you accept the notion of computer programmers (Linus, rms, and all the rest of them) devoting all their spare time to creating a Free Software operating system, who do you find it so strange that someone whose expertise lies in the legal sphere should devote her time to defending the same?
There are people who can't program but who write documentation to support their favourite free software projects. Must we assume they too are secretly funded by IBM?
See, I think that on the whole, Windows users have no experience of trying anything else, This is a difficult point to argue on such a technophile site as Slashdot, where most of us have probably at least tried two or three different operating systems. That said, my impression is that for the majority of users, they've heard of Apple but hear it's very expensive and mainly for media people and they've never heard of Linux at all
Exactly! They don't want to use Windows. They want to send email and instant messages and surf the web. They may not want the learning curve that goes with a new OS, but I don't think thye have any particular loyalty to OS. Thet just want one that gets out of their face and lets them get on. Operating system loyalty seems to me to be a geek thing.
But the people Paul Graham is talking about aren't the sort of people who have virus and spyware problems. They're the ones who are going to be writing the next generation of applications. And if they're not using MS, then that's a whole load of reasons to migrate coming down the pipeline, as if MS didn't have enough troubles.
I think it's a mistake to look at this as "MS vs. Apple" or "MS vs. Google". I don't think its about brand names, I think it's to do with the technologies that the new kids on the block are choosing.
If Apple fit into the picture at all, it's because most people look at a windows system and see Work. They see hours spent down the office writing reports and shuffling email. They see homework assignments. They see stress. Apple's ads are cleverly leveraging that by reminding people that computers used to be fun - and still can be.
But I don't think that's what Paul Graham is talking about.
I as at Spa2007 a couple of weeks back. It's a developer conference, tends to attract people who want to stay on the cutting edge. One of the things I kept hear there was people choosing open technology, not because it was better or worse than MS particularly, but because the barrier to entry was lower. I find this too. Suppose I want to do something new with Technology X, and I google an open solution; I'll get half a dozen howtos. If I do the same for the MS package, I'll get half a dozen MS MVs selling seventy dollar books that promise to remove the pain of Technology X. I almost always end up choosing the open tech.
And that's what I think is at work here.
Well, I can see why you might think that. I mean, I think that Linux is far and away the best solution. And it is: for the type of work I do, and for the way that I like to work. The trouble is that it's too easy to forget the qualifier and assume that "the OS I use is the best, full stop". And that's when the flame wars start.
The way I see it, imagine Windows, OS/X and Linux as a Venn diagram. In fact, better yet.... I've put a bit of overlap in there to reflect the existence of cross platform apps and toolkits.
Now as I see it, the best solution for a given task depends on a lot of variables, but I think there's a sort of fuzzy sweet spot (if that's not too oxymoronic) - a loosely defined zone marking out the set of more-or-less optimum solutions. Ten to fifteen years ago, I think that graph would have looked like this, with most of the optimum solution space lying inside the windows domain.
The thing is, I don't think that locus is static, and for the last five years or so I think it's been moving away from Microsoft, and I think it still is. And I think that is what Paul Graham is seeing, even if that's not how explains it.