TFA's a fine intellectual exercise, but as explicitly pointed out, the willingness to commit kidnapping and inflict torture rather pathetically trumps all of that.
Interesting. Not completely practical, but interesting.
I'm curious what you propose to do when that doesn't work. Because it won't, unless you've systematically cronied up with the bosses' boss more than the boss has. And I don't see how you could have gotten away with that; a boss won't tolerate that kind of threat to their own authority and autonomy.
The only thing a PHB fears is a subordinate with an effective means to go over his head. And he will do anything necessary to prevent that from happening.
You actually mentioned the "T" word and didn't mention Newegg? WTF?
I go to tigerdirect only because the occasional "on-line gift certificate" thing my employer does as "attaboy" rewards* are redeemable there and not at Newegg.
If I'm spending my own money, it's Newegg.
*Yeah, tangible rewards for good performance. It does happen. I'm at a loss why it happens to me, given the "good performance" thing, but that's ok, I'll spend it whether or not I think I deserve it.
Conceding a market is a rational response, assuming the market's already dominated pretty well. The smart time to do it is before introducing a product.
Only the damnest fool of a fisherman dips a line in a lake that's already being strip-fished by half a dozen commercial fishing ships. Don't even get out of the car. Find another pool.
Well, since you seem to want a fishing analogy, not many anglers just drop the lure into the water and reel in if there's no immediate hit. (Discounting working a lure that needs to be reeled in just to play it. I'm thinking like fly fishers or maybe good ol' fashion bobber and sinker fishing.)
Anyway, some of these product introductions is like making one cast and then giving up on the entire pond after 15 seconds.
Offloading costs onto someone else is a fine upstanding business cost-reduction strategy. I don't understand why you raise irrelevancies like this.
Next, you're gonna insist that non-mandated "externalities" like pollution emission or local wildlife population impacts need to be factored into cost/benefit analyses. Sheesh.
No, but we can argue that not all software is sufficiently creative to merit copyright protection. Since APIs are both creative/expressive and functional, the question boils down to "does the non-copyrightable functional aspect outweigh the creative/expressive aspect"? If the answer to that is "yes", then bare API signatures aren't copyrightable.
And how to answer that question? I don't think there's any objective self-contained criteria. Since an API signature would work as well if you, for instance, renamed all the parameter names... and even the method name, assuming you have some kind of mapping mechanism... they're not explicitly creative (i.e., the method itself, and its parameter order, are pretty much functional). But the canned signature usually reproduces the original method and parameter names, which can be amazingly creative sometimes.
So... it may come down to social and commercial effects (that is, costs and benefits outside of the work itself, but coming from the precedent set.)
If you can copyright APIs, interoperability is dead. A proprietary software developer can forbid any kind of unlicensed interoperability because you have to copy the APIs to have interoperability. Farewell, most free software compatibility with proprietary protocols, libraries, interfaces, and data formats.
Whether that's good or bad depends on if you depend on lock-in to make your money, or not.
That's a good insight, and the previous mention of phone numbers is also useful.
Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co.: the actual phone numbers in a telephone book are not copyrightable, but are rather mere facts, and therefore can be copied into another phone book without infringement. Structurally, this smells like the whole API signature thing to me.
Along the same lines, a cookbook is copyrightable, as a creative assembly; the individual recipes aren't, if the "copy" of the recipe expresses the facts of the recipe (the ingredients, the steps) in a manner that is at least slightly different than the original.
If you google Idea-Expression Dichotomy, you can get a pretty good overview of the current thinking.
I think Oracle's chances aren't that good, other than the whole "it doesn't have to make sense or be consistent with precedent in other areas of copyright law" thing. (I.e., Oracle could win this just because they confused a judge thoroughly enough, or because the judge thinks computer programs are somehow fundamentally different than recipes and phone books, or Oracle's lawyers are better-looking, or whatever.)
You know, the sad situation where the logically wrong and socially bad thing wins and becomes the law of the land, simply because Justice is an imperfect process.
That precedent is: "The judiciary will not always roll over and give 'law enforcement/national security actors' trolling licenses in company-held private databases."
The lesson that community learned is: "Since the courts may say 'no', we just have to stop asking permission."
There are plenty of ways to secure back-door and under-the-table access to the data they want. None of those risk the embarrassment and delay of some judge kicking over the traces and mistakenly deciding the Constitution matters. Any of this which somehow comes to public notice will be smoothed over after the fact, legitimized by retroactive fiat, or settled with selective sacrifices of low-level peons who will be painted as "acting outside of their authority" although they were acting entirely within their off-the-record orders.
You missed the other, more significant part of the comet's name. "eleNIN"... Which means the Extinction-Level Event involves Nine Inch Nails.
I knew Trent Reznor was wrapped up in this Doomsday thing. I just knew it. This comet is His herald, a harbinger of a brave new world full of stuff from NIN songs. And videos. And maybe Quake-related weaponry.
I assume it's like a Google recruitment thing. Solve the puzzle (complex math, cryptography, locating the Undisclosed Location) and submit your resume.
Me? I wouldn't work for either. I'll just go to my Vault-Tec Vault and wait for the fallout to settle and clear.
Nota bene: "lulz" is not an alternate spelling of "lol" and isn't necessarily about any commonsense notion of laughing. Most of lulz is, in fact, about attention. Sometimes, a manifesto is sincerely meant, and sometimes it's just more trolling. And sometimes it's just not there (which happens too). And since lulz are about attention and power and self-satisfaction, and since website defacing is pretty much always about "look at what I did" (cracking culture has always been this way), it'd be silly to expect anything else.
I suppose a monolithic unified market marching lockstep into the future would be much better.
Freedom is fragmentation. Arguing against fragmentation is arguing that somehow, darn it, those users are going to use their freedom for THE WRONG THING!
Fragmentation is just how you make the sheep fear leaving the flock. Let the sheep bleat. It means nothing, and mutton is yummy.
Unfortunately, the capacitive multitouch screen of the standard Fusion hardware has problems with over-dry fingertips. So, clearly, it will have to be finger-licking good.
Slashdot Mirror
Not inflammatory enough.
Seriously.
Think of the page views. Why won't ANYONE think of the PAGE VIEWS?
Yes.
TFA's a fine intellectual exercise, but as explicitly pointed out, the willingness to commit kidnapping and inflict torture rather pathetically trumps all of that.
Interesting. Not completely practical, but interesting.
I'm curious what you propose to do when that doesn't work. Because it won't, unless you've systematically cronied up with the bosses' boss more than the boss has. And I don't see how you could have gotten away with that; a boss won't tolerate that kind of threat to their own authority and autonomy.
The only thing a PHB fears is a subordinate with an effective means to go over his head. And he will do anything necessary to prevent that from happening.
So, going over the boss' head fails. What now?
I bet he meant that carbon is the most abundant element in diamonds. That's pretty much true.
think you're just imagining things.
I mean, really, is it that complex?
You actually mentioned the "T" word and didn't mention Newegg? WTF?
I go to tigerdirect only because the occasional "on-line gift certificate" thing my employer does as "attaboy" rewards* are redeemable there and not at Newegg.
If I'm spending my own money, it's Newegg.
*Yeah, tangible rewards for good performance. It does happen. I'm at a loss why it happens to me, given the "good performance" thing, but that's ok, I'll spend it whether or not I think I deserve it.
Trying to convince them that we need to properly employ the scientific method is like farting in the wind.
OMG, don't do that! Methane is an even more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2! Fart into a bag and bury the bag deep in the earth! Fart sequestration!
Conceding a market is a rational response, assuming the market's already dominated pretty well. The smart time to do it is before introducing a product.
Only the damnest fool of a fisherman dips a line in a lake that's already being strip-fished by half a dozen commercial fishing ships. Don't even get out of the car. Find another pool.
Well, since you seem to want a fishing analogy, not many anglers just drop the lure into the water and reel in if there's no immediate hit. (Discounting working a lure that needs to be reeled in just to play it. I'm thinking like fly fishers or maybe good ol' fashion bobber and sinker fishing.)
Anyway, some of these product introductions is like making one cast and then giving up on the entire pond after 15 seconds.
None of United's, that's how many.
Offloading costs onto someone else is a fine upstanding business cost-reduction strategy. I don't understand why you raise irrelevancies like this.
Next, you're gonna insist that non-mandated "externalities" like pollution emission or local wildlife population impacts need to be factored into cost/benefit analyses. Sheesh.
-- Derek Bok
This is Slashdot. Why would TFA have given anyone any idea about anything? That would have required reading it, and that never happens. Ever.
No, but we can argue that not all software is sufficiently creative to merit copyright protection. Since APIs are both creative/expressive and functional, the question boils down to "does the non-copyrightable functional aspect outweigh the creative/expressive aspect"? If the answer to that is "yes", then bare API signatures aren't copyrightable.
And how to answer that question? I don't think there's any objective self-contained criteria. Since an API signature would work as well if you, for instance, renamed all the parameter names... and even the method name, assuming you have some kind of mapping mechanism... they're not explicitly creative (i.e., the method itself, and its parameter order, are pretty much functional). But the canned signature usually reproduces the original method and parameter names, which can be amazingly creative sometimes.
So... it may come down to social and commercial effects (that is, costs and benefits outside of the work itself, but coming from the precedent set.)
If you can copyright APIs, interoperability is dead. A proprietary software developer can forbid any kind of unlicensed interoperability because you have to copy the APIs to have interoperability. Farewell, most free software compatibility with proprietary protocols, libraries, interfaces, and data formats.
Whether that's good or bad depends on if you depend on lock-in to make your money, or not.
That's a good insight, and the previous mention of phone numbers is also useful.
Feist Publications, Inc., v. Rural Telephone Service Co.: the actual phone numbers in a telephone book are not copyrightable, but are rather mere facts, and therefore can be copied into another phone book without infringement. Structurally, this smells like the whole API signature thing to me.
Along the same lines, a cookbook is copyrightable, as a creative assembly; the individual recipes aren't, if the "copy" of the recipe expresses the facts of the recipe (the ingredients, the steps) in a manner that is at least slightly different than the original.
If you google Idea-Expression Dichotomy, you can get a pretty good overview of the current thinking.
I think Oracle's chances aren't that good, other than the whole "it doesn't have to make sense or be consistent with precedent in other areas of copyright law" thing. (I.e., Oracle could win this just because they confused a judge thoroughly enough, or because the judge thinks computer programs are somehow fundamentally different than recipes and phone books, or Oracle's lawyers are better-looking, or whatever.)
You know, the sad situation where the logically wrong and socially bad thing wins and becomes the law of the land, simply because Justice is an imperfect process.
They want their boot-sector viruses back.
That precedent is: "The judiciary will not always roll over and give 'law enforcement/national security actors' trolling licenses in company-held private databases."
The lesson that community learned is: "Since the courts may say 'no', we just have to stop asking permission."
There are plenty of ways to secure back-door and under-the-table access to the data they want. None of those risk the embarrassment and delay of some judge kicking over the traces and mistakenly deciding the Constitution matters. Any of this which somehow comes to public notice will be smoothed over after the fact, legitimized by retroactive fiat, or settled with selective sacrifices of low-level peons who will be painted as "acting outside of their authority" although they were acting entirely within their off-the-record orders.
Ultimately, there's nothing to see here.
That's OK, though. Someone will work Bitcoins into it and it'll be like braaaand new.
At least for the first couple of times it's duped that way.
-- Security Engineering Officer Ellen Ripley
You missed the other, more significant part of the comet's name. "eleNIN"... Which means the Extinction-Level Event involves Nine Inch Nails.
I knew Trent Reznor was wrapped up in this Doomsday thing. I just knew it. This comet is His herald, a harbinger of a brave new world full of stuff from NIN songs. And videos. And maybe Quake-related weaponry.
I assume it's like a Google recruitment thing. Solve the puzzle (complex math, cryptography, locating the Undisclosed Location) and submit your resume.
Me? I wouldn't work for either. I'll just go to my Vault-Tec Vault and wait for the fallout to settle and clear.
Nota bene: "lulz" is not an alternate spelling of "lol" and isn't necessarily about any commonsense notion of laughing. Most of lulz is, in fact, about attention. Sometimes, a manifesto is sincerely meant, and sometimes it's just more trolling. And sometimes it's just not there (which happens too). And since lulz are about attention and power and self-satisfaction, and since website defacing is pretty much always about "look at what I did" (cracking culture has always been this way), it'd be silly to expect anything else.
I think it's a plan. You display your finest jewels against dark, innocuous material to highlight the contrast.
I think BBC is trying to enhance the glittering wonder of its true gems by playing them off against drek.
The main issue with this theory is I'm having trouble discerning which programming they intended to be gems, but I'm sure it'll come to me eventually.
Wait, what are you trying to insinuate about Macintosh users? Only petty thieves use Macintoshes? Or only petty people use Macs?
Either way... woo, boy howdy, are you in for a royal flaming.
I suppose a monolithic unified market marching lockstep into the future would be much better.
Freedom is fragmentation. Arguing against fragmentation is arguing that somehow, darn it, those users are going to use their freedom for THE WRONG THING!
Fragmentation is just how you make the sheep fear leaving the flock. Let the sheep bleat. It means nothing, and mutton is yummy.
Unfortunately, the capacitive multitouch screen of the standard Fusion hardware has problems with over-dry fingertips. So, clearly, it will have to be finger-licking good.