>You talk about this as if it were a horrible thing. What exactly is the problem here?
The "problem" is that, free-marketeer blustering aside, privatization of large government assets is just another form of Corporate Welfare.
Tax dollars go into developing an asset for pure research. Republicrats in Congress get tired of paying for it and raffle asset off to corporate friends/sponsors. Corporate friends make lots of money (at US Taxpayer expense mind you, since we paid for the initial investment) while killing initial purpose of the asset (since 'pure research' isnt profitable). Taxpayers get ZERO benefit from this unless they happen to be significant shareholders, which very few of us are.
At least with the current setup, NASA can function as a pure-research organization, with benefits available to everyone (including corporations which would like to exploit any developed technologies, using their own investment capital). Privatize it all, and the public benefit of the space program wont extend past cellphones and satellite tv. The space program, as science, will be dead.
The supposed "efficiency" of large corporations was one of the most pernicious myths of the 20th century. If Corporate America were so damn efficient at exploiting technical opportunities, I'd be able to book my Pan Am flight to the moon right now.
What, exactly, is WRONG with the current web standard? HOW IS IT BROKEN? It already does anything that we would need.
Can we exchange text on the web, already, of any arbitrary type and format? Yes.
Can we exchange images on the web, already, of any number of supported types? Yes.
Can we run backend scripts, already, to add functionality (such as, say, to implement a discussion board?). Yes.
Sound? Yes. Video? Yes. etc etc.
In fact the only niches for patented 'standard extensions' all involve commerce.
It's not very trendy to say so, but virtually all of the basic infrastructure technologies we're now using were developed at government expense. From TCP/IP to HTTP itself (Berners-Lee was on Supercollider funds at CERN when he developed it), WE paid for these inventions. Which makes them COMMONS which makes them OURS to share however we choose. Period.
Honestly, what business does Corporate America have using cynical exploitation of patent law to co-opt what was developed with taxpayer money? Can anyone without secret (or not so secret) fantasies of being the next Bill Gates really give me a logical, non-theological reason why we should let that happen?
I have grown so weary of even having to argue this anymore.
I have been wondering if we could use this for leverage... if the IT/Software professional class started emigrating to other countries... vocally... in such a way that the US Media and Congress would *have* to notice the brain drain... perhaps that would get the general public's attention.
What would it take to organize such a movement? I'm not really the "organizing" type so I havent a clue.
Seriously... has anyone with a legal background thought about this?
Price gouging. Protectionism. Unethical quashing of the competition. These are *supposed* to be against the interests of a truly free market, and therefore illegal.
Most of those lines were laid out during the govt-sanctioned monopoly days, so an argument could be made that the taxpayers are entitled to use those lines however they see fit. Why should the telcos act entitled?
Perhaps if a large enough group of people threatened to sue the telcos for fraud under anti-trust or (much harder to prove but also more powerful) RICO laws, we could bring things back into check?
When humans shifted from neolithic hunters to agricultural settlers about 10K years ago, civilization had to change, as did laws about land use: Modern notions of property were invented.
When humans shifted from simple agriculture to larger, more complicated cultures that required administration and trade, civilization changed. That's why things like writing, math, governments, and money were invented.
When humans shifted from those cultures to ones we would recognize as 'modern', civilization changed. Something like IP, or Copyright would have made no sense at all in the era before the printing press. And something like modern capitalism would not be able to exist without things we take for granted, like effective transportation and communications systems.
And if (and that's a big 'if' since the 'grey goo' is still science fiction) ever comes to be, guess what? Civilization will radically change to accomodate that shift. Inevitably.
Imagine a world where you could, quite literally, make something out of nothing. A lot of the basic assumptions driving modern capitalism would be violated: No more scarce resources to allocate, since nothing is scarce anymore. Much less power over individuals since (to be brutally honest) the only thing keeping the masses in check under our system is that pesky need for 2000 calories a day.
Honestly, how could IP law be applied? I've copied the gasoline you patented... now what? Will you tell my employer to fire me? Fine, I'll make food from dung. Will you put me in jail? Well, I have 10^6 nanobots in my pocket that will dig me a tunnel in seconds. You'd have to make IP violations a capital offence. Good luck building a stable society on THAT principle, my friend.
My point is that wondering how IP law would deal with the advent of nanotech is roughly like a caveman pondering how the Internet will effect the comings and goings of the herds he follows for hunting: The old way of looking at the world just wont 'stretch' to fit the new technology. This has happened many times before, and it will happen again for as long as we survive.
In some ways you can already see the current paradigm starting to burst at the seams: DMCA, Congress passing laws against cloning (with amusing discussions about souls and cheek cells worthy of medieval thelogians), etc.
My concern is that Rather, Jennings and Brokaw are paid employees of CBS/Viacom, ABC/Disney and NBC/GE respectively. Despite a few extra zeroes in their salaries, they are essentially working professionals like you or I. How much freedom do they really have to defy their employers?
When dealing with large and powerful agents, like large corporations or governments, a cautious mistrust is probably the most healthy attitude to adopt.
By all means, use the media to spread the message. But use peaceful protest* to show public support in numbers, so that those who would abuse their power must listen.
*and that 'peaceful' part is important, since ill behavior would enable the media to paint protesters as bad elements, fanatics and communists (think back to the WTO protests).
To hell with the media. They are owned by the very corporations which pushed for the DMCA. Honestly, how sympathetic do you expect mainstream media to be?
WTO-style protests may be counter-productive, but peaceful, organized, and non-violent protest is one of the most effective ways of getting the public to focus on a given issue, and history is full of examples. So I must disagree with you.
My gut feeling is that this case is the proverbial "it". An arrest has been made, charges pressed, and a foreign national has been denied access to the diplomats of his native country. So Adobe cant back out with "just kidding" tactics like the RIAA. Nor can the Feds.
DMCA will be tested in court, with all that entails for the First Amendment. Why would we want to let the very organizations that drafted the faulty legislation in the first place set the tone of the debate???
Whenever a NASA article comes up on slashdot, the user comments always break my heart.
Fact: Good engineering is EXPENSIVE. Building, testing, and operating a manned spacecraft is a tad more complex than writing a perl script or configuring a linux kernel.
Add to those pressures a dwindling budget (a fraction of what it was during the Apollo era) and very little public support, even from those who would present themselves as forward-thinking technical types, and I'm frankly surprised that NASA's track record in the 1990s was as good as it was.
Alas, I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that modern American culture is probably incapable of supporting a serious and useful space program, and I can only hope that I am still alive, and useful, when other nations get their act together to pick up where we left off.
You dont have to be wealthy to be greedy.
The destroyed source of income would be the potential future sales of their work to print media. Web exposure == free advertising == increased name recognition == increased print sales. Were writing my main source of income, I'd take the free advertising and name exposure over paltry royalties from web journals any day of the week.
Your argument about the gift culture doesnt make sense to me: Programmers also need to make a living from their work, yet there's no shortage of programmers willing to give away the products of their labors. I wasnt saying anything about letting the NYT give away someone's work under duress. I was more making a general comment as to why I see so many professional-grade programmers and other technical types willing to share what they create, and so few professional-grade artists/writers/etc doing the same.
BTW I rent, I drive a little Saturn, and I happen to be quite fond of ramen noodles (throw out the little pseudo-flavor packet, makes a gret side dish with any meal!), so I'm not sure what imaginary person you're yelling at here.:Michael
The funny thing is that, freelance authors, eager for more money from online distribution of their work, may have just destroyed that very source of income.
Beautiful Irony, that.:)
Just as an aside: Does anyone have any theories as to why the 'gift culture' model doesnt seem to apply at all to the arts world? You'd think freelancers would appreciate the online exposure (it's basically free advertising, which can lead to further work for the print rags, but no one seems to see it that way).
We dont have federal referenda in the US. At the federal level it's a pure republic, not a democracy. Little town meetings dont usually concern themselves with the side effects of corporate power abuse (at least not directly).
The East India Company was hardly a shining example of benevolent corporate power: The British, ever creative, basically formed the organization to implement their conquest of India in the 1600s: Very mercantilist actually.
The EIC is not generally regarded as having led to any scientific progress, it was a trade and plunder operation, so I'm not sure why you mention it here.
Well (1) The U.S isnt a democracy, it's a Republic and (2) the modern limited-liability corporation as legal construct didnt exist until the mid-1800s: The Founders were mercantilists who tended to be suspicious of any accumlation of power, public or private.
Without ARPAnet (gov't funded research), TCP/IP (gov't funded research), small cheap microprocessors (gov't funded research), or the web, for that matter (Berners-Lee was on a project paid for by supercollider funds... surprise surprise, gov't funded research) there'd be no Slashdot, either.
Corporations are useful constructs for production and the accumulation of wealth. Once they leave that realm and begin interfering with culture, politics, technology and science, they have overstepped their bounds and are an obstacle to progress.
I may need to eat, but I refuse to lick the hand that feeds.
I have become more and more convinced that the net is simply not a serious vehicle for business. Which is basically what those in the know were saying back in 1993/94 when the whole Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "hey kids... let's start a web shop!" hysteria began. Full circle.
So this doesnt worry me at all. Television, newspapers, magazines: We already have our gullets chock full of for-profit journalism. And guess what? it's all homogeneous and shallow crap.
If the web isnt capable of supporting for-profit journalism, so what? Independant journalism wont die. In fact, with the wanna-be-future-media-moguls out of the way, there will be room for new players with better ideas.
So goodbye, net mags. Maybe now new, more interesting models can evolve.
It's not coincidence, it's resonance. The earth's gravity pulling on the moon as it orbits will slow it down over time, until it eventually reaches a stable resonance point (in this case 1:1). I think most of Jupiter's moons exhibit the same ratio, and Mercury gets a similat effect from the sun (I think it's 3:2 but that's off the top of my head).
It works in reverse, too, the earth's rotation has been slowing down over time, so the day is longer now than it was, say, during the Triassic or Permian or .
Either you're a troll or completely unaware of the publication process.
Well (1) I'm not a troll, I am someone you happen to disagree with, and (2) I have both published *and* reviewed papers in the past (I am an engineer, not a scientist, but the process is much the same). Perhaps things are different in your field.
Most paper reviewers do *not* get paid for their efforts. It's part of the "professional networking" process (people pass papers on to one another for review, based on what they know about each other's interests). And most of the "coordination" you speak of is done over email/ftp. Most academic writers work in TeX,.ps and.pdf files. So I fail to see the substantial added value here.
Nor are most journals the official organs of academic societies. 50 years ago, maybe, but not now.
The ACM. The IEEE and its huge family of discipline-specific journals. The American Physical Society. Most of the medical journals are also still affiliated with professional societies. There's a few right there. All relevant.
Honestly, the only reason I could think of for restricting access to this kind of information would be to enforce a high cost-to-entry to a given scientific discipline.
While it is nice to say that these guys owe us a living, they don't. They are businessmen, pure and simple, and will only stay in the business if it makes them a buck.
This isnt true. Most scientific peer-reviewed journals are associated with professional institutions, which are supposed to be largely subsidized by member fees (which are generally quite high). These professional institutions are non-profit organizations, which shouldnt be concerned with maximizing profit at all. If they are, they need to be taxed at business rates.
These abstract "businessmen" you speak of have absolutely no god-given right to parasitic profit from the free expression of others. They add no value. Period.
No free inquiry means no pure-science research. No pure-science research means no technological advance. No technological advance means no new business opportunities. And no new business opportunites means the death of capitalism.
I work with VxWorks on a daily basis as part of my job, and I'm not sure why people think this is a good thing? Wind River is *anything* but an Open Source company in their business model:
Strict licenses which must be renewed annually for access to tech support, bugfixes and updates (we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars here).
Mediocre tech support for smaller customers (unless, of course, you are willing to pay for them to send out one of their consultants).
A draconian closed-source policy that, among other things, forces customers to pay exhorbitant fees for read-only access to source code. Right-to-modify licenses are even more exhorbitant.
And the Tornado tools are supported on any OS you like... as long as that OS is Windows NT or Solaris 2.x.
Okay fine, WRS isnt Microsoft. But the enemy of your enemy is *not* necessarily your friend.
What's amazing to me is that we, the geek community, have done very little about this. The work that we do is being criminalized, rather than cherished as it should be. Reverse engineering, the act of figuring out how things work, is all but illegal, now that we have the DMCA. Freedom of speech is diminished, because you can't describe how something works if the creator made some half-assed electronic attempt to maintain control over it, thanks to the DMCA.
Why have we been so quiet about this?
I think that it is because "We, the geeks" can be roughly divided into three groups regarding this issue:
(1) Those who feel so disconnected from the mainstream that, frankly, they dont care.
(2) Those who assume that geeks, being so very clever, will always be able to outwit the laws should they become too oppressive. (There's always a technical solution, yes?)
(3) Those who, openly or secretly, are the ones profiting from this new oppressive system-- or hope to someday. Dont hold your breath waiting for the self-proclaimed "Advocates" a la ESR to ride to the rescue, folks: They see this as *their* gold rush.
If you wanted to start a new approach, the most feasible way would be to start from one of the on-going versions, and "fix" whatever you saw as wrong with it. Perhaps. But this is a large enough project that you would, indeed, need a team of folk who agreed with you.
This approach is ok for "fine-tuning" or bug-fixes... but what if one's problem is with the fundamental architecture? You can add code, or fix existing code, but you cant really subtract code or change the architecture. Given the fact that forking the code is considered very bad manners, I doubt if any serious, lasting changes could be made.
(I'd prefer to see it [either of them {KDE or Gnome}] implemented in a well structured language like Ada or Eiffel. That way they could be easier to understand. But there would be a smaller pool of developers to draw on. [sigh!])
I prefer Objective C, but we agree in spirit. >}:)
IMO if one were truly interested in this kind of component architecture, one would be better off leveraging existing UNIX metaphors... somehow find an elegant way to extend the pipe metaphor to work with abstract components, for example, so it'd still 'feel' like natural UNIX, rather than taking the OS and trying to make it look like something which it is not. It's more of an architecture/design problem than a coding/implementation problem.
Its open source. Do something about it. If you don't like it, change it. If its broken, fix it. Its the open source mantra.
I've been thinking about this a lot, lately, and I've come to the conclusion that this really isn't true anymore. The Bazaar's been bought out, leveled, and turned into a strip mall.
For example, here we already have two groups (GNOME, KDE) whose architectures, approaches, and hidden assumptions are basically entrenched in the marketplace. The "community" has already decided that we shall use CORBA (with all that entails). It's already been decided that we're going to use the same basic windows/mac/amiga hybrid interface (look and feel between KDE and GNOME are basically the same IMO). Other window managers are begrudgingly supported, but each environment has a definite pressure towards the One True Window Manager. It's already been decided that the ideal free office suite is essentially going to be a pale copy of Microso~1's suite... I could go on but you get the point.
Honestly, I'd love to help change this, but think about it. If a third team came from out of nowhere and proposed/implemented a simpler component architecture that wasnt so tied to one GUI (or tied to a GUI at all -- GUIs should be wrappers, not core software), or tied to one huge set of libraries, that didnt require developers to buy into one overarching desktop environment... or that wasnt subsidized by RedHat, TrollTech or Corel for that matter... what do you think would happen? It would go undernourished and die a slow whimpering death, amid cries of "but we already have one component architecture too many!"... assuming that anyone noticed it at all.
There's no point, anymore. It's actually become a very repressive and stifling environment. It's the 1980s all over again.
Hmmm... does Miguel have the courage to take a step towards consolidation?
To hell with consolidation. Some of us still believe that UNIX is about innovation, diversity, and beautiful, sweet, ubiquitous chaos. >}:)
Did you read his post? He mearly stated the same thing that games are now more about art, so the engine should be opensourced while the files that make up the art and story of the game would be the sellable product.
Yes, I did read his post. And IMO, this model doesnt fit the definition of Open/Free. Unless the artwork is also copylefted, able to be copied, distributed, shared, and used by other game authors, the game isnt Open.
Slashdot Mirror
>Was ARPANet somehow better?
Yes. Infinitely. I was there.
:Michael (feeling wistful...)
>You talk about this as if it were a horrible thing. What exactly is the problem here?
The "problem" is that, free-marketeer blustering aside, privatization of large government assets is just another form of Corporate Welfare.
Tax dollars go into developing an asset for pure research. Republicrats in Congress get tired of paying for it and raffle asset off to corporate friends/sponsors. Corporate friends make lots of money (at US Taxpayer expense mind you, since we paid for the initial investment) while killing initial purpose of the asset (since 'pure research' isnt profitable). Taxpayers get ZERO benefit from this unless they happen to be significant shareholders, which very few of us are.
At least with the current setup, NASA can function as a pure-research organization, with benefits available to everyone (including corporations which would like to exploit any developed technologies, using their own investment capital). Privatize it all, and the public benefit of the space program wont extend past cellphones and satellite tv. The space program, as science, will be dead.
The supposed "efficiency" of large corporations was one of the most pernicious myths of the 20th century. If Corporate America were so damn efficient at exploiting technical opportunities, I'd be able to book my Pan Am flight to the moon right now.
Still waiting...
:M
...you dont know me from Adam but I've been lurking and posting for over 3 1/2 of those four years.
You are all doing what you need to, given current circumstances. Just do it with class, and taste, and fairness.
:M
What, exactly, is WRONG with the current web standard? HOW IS IT BROKEN? It already does anything that we would need.
Can we exchange text on the web, already, of any arbitrary type and format? Yes.
Can we exchange images on the web, already, of any number of supported types? Yes.
Can we run backend scripts, already, to add functionality (such as, say, to implement a discussion board?). Yes.
Sound? Yes. Video? Yes. etc etc.
In fact the only niches for patented 'standard extensions' all involve commerce.
It's not very trendy to say so, but virtually all of the basic infrastructure technologies we're now using were developed at government expense. From TCP/IP to HTTP itself (Berners-Lee was on Supercollider funds at CERN when he developed it), WE paid for these inventions. Which makes them COMMONS which makes them OURS to share however we choose. Period.
Honestly, what business does Corporate America have using cynical exploitation of patent law to co-opt what was developed with taxpayer money? Can anyone without secret (or not so secret) fantasies of being the next Bill Gates really give me a logical, non-theological reason why we should let that happen?
I have grown so weary of even having to argue this anymore.
:M
I have been wondering if we could use this for leverage... if the IT/Software professional class started emigrating to other countries... vocally... in such a way that the US Media and Congress would *have* to notice the brain drain... perhaps that would get the general public's attention.
What would it take to organize such a movement? I'm not really the "organizing" type so I havent a clue.
:Michael
Seriously... has anyone with a legal background thought about this?
Price gouging. Protectionism. Unethical quashing of the competition. These are *supposed* to be against the interests of a truly free market, and therefore illegal.
Most of those lines were laid out during the govt-sanctioned monopoly days, so an argument could be made that the taxpayers are entitled to use those lines however they see fit. Why should the telcos act entitled?
Perhaps if a large enough group of people threatened to sue the telcos for fraud under anti-trust or (much harder to prove but also more powerful) RICO laws, we could bring things back into check?
:M
When humans shifted from neolithic hunters to agricultural settlers about 10K years ago, civilization had to change, as did laws about land use: Modern notions of property were invented.
When humans shifted from simple agriculture to larger, more complicated cultures that required administration and trade, civilization changed. That's why things like writing, math, governments, and money were invented.
When humans shifted from those cultures to ones we would recognize as 'modern', civilization changed. Something like IP, or Copyright would have made no sense at all in the era before the printing press. And something like modern capitalism would not be able to exist without things we take for granted, like effective transportation and communications systems.
And if (and that's a big 'if' since the 'grey goo' is still science fiction) ever comes to be, guess what? Civilization will radically change to accomodate that shift. Inevitably.
Imagine a world where you could, quite literally, make something out of nothing. A lot of the basic assumptions driving modern capitalism would be violated: No more scarce resources to allocate, since nothing is scarce anymore. Much less power over individuals since (to be brutally honest) the only thing keeping the masses in check under our system is that pesky need for 2000 calories a day.
Honestly, how could IP law be applied? I've copied the gasoline you patented... now what? Will you tell my employer to fire me? Fine, I'll make food from dung. Will you put me in jail? Well, I have 10^6 nanobots in my pocket that will dig me a tunnel in seconds. You'd have to make IP violations a capital offence. Good luck building a stable society on THAT principle, my friend.
My point is that wondering how IP law would deal with the advent of nanotech is roughly like a caveman pondering how the Internet will effect the comings and goings of the herds he follows for hunting: The old way of looking at the world just wont 'stretch' to fit the new technology. This has happened many times before, and it will happen again for as long as we survive.
In some ways you can already see the current paradigm starting to burst at the seams: DMCA, Congress passing laws against cloning (with amusing discussions about souls and cheek cells worthy of medieval thelogians), etc.
It's all going to change. Period.
:Michael
Well, let's see, it was *my* tax dollars that paid to develop and build the Internet, years before Corporate America had even heard of it.
:)
So yes, I feel pretty damn entitled, thank you.
:M
My concern is that Rather, Jennings and Brokaw are paid employees of CBS/Viacom, ABC/Disney and NBC/GE respectively. Despite a few extra zeroes in their salaries, they are essentially working professionals like you or I. How much freedom do they really have to defy their employers?
When dealing with large and powerful agents, like large corporations or governments, a cautious mistrust is probably the most healthy attitude to adopt.
By all means, use the media to spread the message. But use peaceful protest* to show public support in numbers, so that those who would abuse their power must listen.
*and that 'peaceful' part is important, since ill behavior would enable the media to paint protesters as bad elements, fanatics and communists (think back to the WTO protests).
:Michael
To hell with the media. They are owned by the very corporations which pushed for the DMCA. Honestly, how sympathetic do you expect mainstream media to be?
WTO-style protests may be counter-productive, but peaceful, organized, and non-violent protest is one of the most effective ways of getting the public to focus on a given issue, and history is full of examples. So I must disagree with you.
My gut feeling is that this case is the proverbial "it". An arrest has been made, charges pressed, and a foreign national has been denied access to the diplomats of his native country. So Adobe cant back out with "just kidding" tactics like the RIAA. Nor can the Feds.
DMCA will be tested in court, with all that entails for the First Amendment. Why would we want to let the very organizations that drafted the faulty legislation in the first place set the tone of the debate???
:Michael
Whenever a NASA article comes up on slashdot, the user comments always break my heart.
Fact: Good engineering is EXPENSIVE. Building, testing, and operating a manned spacecraft is a tad more complex than writing a perl script or configuring a linux kernel.
Add to those pressures a dwindling budget (a fraction of what it was during the Apollo era) and very little public support, even from those who would present themselves as forward-thinking technical types, and I'm frankly surprised that NASA's track record in the 1990s was as good as it was.
Alas, I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that modern American culture is probably incapable of supporting a serious and useful space program, and I can only hope that I am still alive, and useful, when other nations get their act together to pick up where we left off.
:Michael
You dont have to be wealthy to be greedy. The destroyed source of income would be the potential future sales of their work to print media. Web exposure == free advertising == increased name recognition == increased print sales. Were writing my main source of income, I'd take the free advertising and name exposure over paltry royalties from web journals any day of the week. Your argument about the gift culture doesnt make sense to me: Programmers also need to make a living from their work, yet there's no shortage of programmers willing to give away the products of their labors. I wasnt saying anything about letting the NYT give away someone's work under duress. I was more making a general comment as to why I see so many professional-grade programmers and other technical types willing to share what they create, and so few professional-grade artists/writers/etc doing the same. BTW I rent, I drive a little Saturn, and I happen to be quite fond of ramen noodles (throw out the little pseudo-flavor packet, makes a gret side dish with any meal!), so I'm not sure what imaginary person you're yelling at here. :Michael
The funny thing is that, freelance authors, eager for more money from online distribution of their work, may have just destroyed that very source of income.
:)
Beautiful Irony, that.
Just as an aside: Does anyone have any theories as to why the 'gift culture' model doesnt seem to apply at all to the arts world? You'd think freelancers would appreciate the online exposure (it's basically free advertising, which can lead to further work for the print rags, but no one seems to see it that way).
:Michael
We dont have federal referenda in the US. At the federal level it's a pure republic, not a democracy. Little town meetings dont usually concern themselves with the side effects of corporate power abuse (at least not directly).
The East India Company was hardly a shining example of benevolent corporate power: The British, ever creative, basically formed the organization to implement their conquest of India in the 1600s: Very mercantilist actually.
The EIC is not generally regarded as having led to any scientific progress, it was a trade and plunder operation, so I'm not sure why you mention it here.
:Michael
Well (1) The U.S isnt a democracy, it's a Republic and (2) the modern limited-liability corporation as legal construct didnt exist until the mid-1800s: The Founders were mercantilists who tended to be suspicious of any accumlation of power, public or private.
Without ARPAnet (gov't funded research), TCP/IP (gov't funded research), small cheap microprocessors (gov't funded research), or the web, for that matter (Berners-Lee was on a project paid for by supercollider funds... surprise surprise, gov't funded research) there'd be no Slashdot, either.
Corporations are useful constructs for production and the accumulation of wealth. Once they leave that realm and begin interfering with culture, politics, technology and science, they have overstepped their bounds and are an obstacle to progress.
I may need to eat, but I refuse to lick the hand that feeds.
:Michael
I have become more and more convinced that the net is simply not a serious vehicle for business. Which is basically what those in the know were saying back in 1993/94 when the whole Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland "hey kids... let's start a web shop!" hysteria began. Full circle.
So this doesnt worry me at all. Television, newspapers, magazines: We already have our gullets chock full of for-profit journalism. And guess what? it's all homogeneous and shallow crap.
If the web isnt capable of supporting for-profit journalism, so what? Independant journalism wont die. In fact, with the wanna-be-future-media-moguls out of the way, there will be room for new players with better ideas.
So goodbye, net mags. Maybe now new, more interesting models can evolve.
:M
It's not coincidence, it's resonance. The earth's gravity pulling on the moon as it orbits will slow it down over time, until it eventually reaches a stable resonance point (in this case 1:1). I think most of Jupiter's moons exhibit the same ratio, and Mercury gets a similat effect from the sun (I think it's 3:2 but that's off the top of my head).
It works in reverse, too, the earth's rotation has been slowing down over time, so the day is longer now than it was, say, during the Triassic or Permian or .
:Michael
Well (1) I'm not a troll, I am someone you happen to disagree with, and (2) I have both published *and* reviewed papers in the past (I am an engineer, not a scientist, but the process is much the same). Perhaps things are different in your field.
Most paper reviewers do *not* get paid for their efforts. It's part of the "professional networking" process (people pass papers on to one another for review, based on what they know about each other's interests). And most of the "coordination" you speak of is done over email/ftp. Most academic writers work in TeX, .ps and .pdf files. So I fail to see the substantial added value here.
Nor are most journals the official organs of academic societies. 50 years ago, maybe, but not now.
The ACM. The IEEE and its huge family of discipline-specific journals. The American Physical Society. Most of the medical journals are also still affiliated with professional societies. There's a few right there. All relevant.
Honestly, the only reason I could think of for restricting access to this kind of information would be to enforce a high cost-to-entry to a given scientific discipline.
Which some academics may appreciate.
:Michael
While it is nice to say that these guys owe us a living, they don't. They are businessmen, pure and simple, and will only stay in the business if it makes them a buck.
This isnt true. Most scientific peer-reviewed journals are associated with professional institutions, which are supposed to be largely subsidized by member fees (which are generally quite high). These professional institutions are non-profit organizations, which shouldnt be concerned with maximizing profit at all. If they are, they need to be taxed at business rates.
These abstract "businessmen" you speak of have absolutely no god-given right to parasitic profit from the free expression of others. They add no value. Period.
No free inquiry means no pure-science research. No pure-science research means no technological advance. No technological advance means no new business opportunities. And no new business opportunites means the death of capitalism.
Please ponder that.
I work with VxWorks on a daily basis as part of my job, and I'm not sure why people think this is a good thing? Wind River is *anything* but an Open Source company in their business model:
Strict licenses which must be renewed annually for access to tech support, bugfixes and updates (we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars here).
Mediocre tech support for smaller customers (unless, of course, you are willing to pay for them to send out one of their consultants).
A draconian closed-source policy that, among other things, forces customers to pay exhorbitant fees for read-only access to source code. Right-to-modify licenses are even more exhorbitant.
And the Tornado tools are supported on any OS you like... as long as that OS is Windows NT or Solaris 2.x.
Okay fine, WRS isnt Microsoft. But the enemy of your enemy is *not* necessarily your friend.
:Michael
Select a future:
(1) Colonize the universe.
(2) Hang out on Slashdot and write perl scripts until the sun goes nova and all human history and culture is erased from the cosmic record.
Pick one.
:M
Why have we been so quiet about this?
I think that it is because "We, the geeks" can be roughly divided into three groups regarding this issue:
(1) Those who feel so disconnected from the mainstream that, frankly, they dont care.
(2) Those who assume that geeks, being so very clever, will always be able to outwit the laws should they become too oppressive. (There's always a technical solution, yes?)
(3) Those who, openly or secretly, are the ones profiting from this new oppressive system-- or hope to someday. Dont hold your breath waiting for the self-proclaimed "Advocates" a la ESR to ride to the rescue, folks: They see this as *their* gold rush.
:Michael (who's about a 1.8 on this system)
This approach is ok for "fine-tuning" or bug-fixes... but what if one's problem is with the fundamental architecture? You can add code, or fix existing code, but you cant really subtract code or change the architecture. Given the fact that forking the code is considered very bad manners, I doubt if any serious, lasting changes could be made.
(I'd prefer to see it [either of them {KDE or Gnome}] implemented in a well structured language like Ada or Eiffel. That way they could be easier to understand. But there would be a smaller pool of developers to draw on. [sigh!])
I prefer Objective C, but we agree in spirit. >}:)
IMO if one were truly interested in this kind of component architecture, one would be better off leveraging existing UNIX metaphors... somehow find an elegant way to extend the pipe metaphor to work with abstract components, for example, so it'd still 'feel' like natural UNIX, rather than taking the OS and trying to make it look like something which it is not. It's more of an architecture/design problem than a coding/implementation problem.
:Michael
I've been thinking about this a lot, lately, and I've come to the conclusion that this really isn't true anymore. The Bazaar's been bought out, leveled, and turned into a strip mall.
For example, here we already have two groups (GNOME, KDE) whose architectures, approaches, and hidden assumptions are basically entrenched in the marketplace. The "community" has already decided that we shall use CORBA (with all that entails). It's already been decided that we're going to use the same basic windows/mac/amiga hybrid interface (look and feel between KDE and GNOME are basically the same IMO). Other window managers are begrudgingly supported, but each environment has a definite pressure towards the One True Window Manager. It's already been decided that the ideal free office suite is essentially going to be a pale copy of Microso~1's suite... I could go on but you get the point.
Honestly, I'd love to help change this, but think about it. If a third team came from out of nowhere and proposed/implemented a simpler component architecture that wasnt so tied to one GUI (or tied to a GUI at all -- GUIs should be wrappers, not core software), or tied to one huge set of libraries, that didnt require developers to buy into one overarching desktop environment... or that wasnt subsidized by RedHat, TrollTech or Corel for that matter... what do you think would happen? It would go undernourished and die a slow whimpering death, amid cries of "but we already have one component architecture too many!"... assuming that anyone noticed it at all.
There's no point, anymore. It's actually become a very repressive and stifling environment. It's the 1980s all over again.
Hmmm... does Miguel have the courage to take a step towards consolidation?
To hell with consolidation. Some of us still believe that UNIX is about innovation, diversity, and beautiful, sweet, ubiquitous chaos. >}:)
Yes, I did read his post. And IMO, this model doesnt fit the definition of Open/Free. Unless the artwork is also copylefted, able to be copied, distributed, shared, and used by other game authors, the game isnt Open.
:Michael.